We push through the heavy kelp curtain.
Mira is exactly where we left her, huddled pitifully under the sailcloth blanket. She looks weakly up as we enter the room. Her milky eyes widen in absolute shock when she truly sees Kael.
She sees the confident way he holds himself now. Taller. Broader. Unapologetic.
She sees the deeply possessive way he looks at me.
"You're back," she croaks nervously.
Kael swims forward.
He does not sign. He does not use a single hand gesture.
"We're back," he says aloud.
Mira flinches. The sudden sound of his voice, deep, profoundly human, and undeniably male, seems to hit her harder than an iron blow.
She stares blankly at him, her pale mouth opening and closing in pure, terrified shock.
"You," Mira whispers, her voice a fragile thread of disbelief in the dim light. "She had a cure. And it actually worked." Her sharp eyes dart between us, calculating, hungry. "What price did she name?"
"My human mirror," I declare, a surge of fierce pride propelling me forward to glide beside Kael. I flick my tail, sending a small cloud of silt swirling. "Piece of sea junk anyway. Right, Kael?"
He fails to hide the smirk that tugs at the corner of his mouth, but it's the sudden, flush of pink that blooms across his gray cheekbones that nearly undoes me. It's a color so out of place, so vulnerable, it feels like a secret only for me.
"Did she have a cure for me?" Mira presses, her hope palpable.
I look at Kael. He looks back, the pride in his eyes already dimming, replaced by that familiar, heavy sorrow. "She disappeared once we gave her the mirror. We'll go back—" he starts, but Mira is already moving, sitting up with a strength that wasn't there moments before.
"Youdidn't get mewhat I gave you the information for!" She shrieks.
Pip, ever the opportunist, scurries over, its delicate limbs trying to soothe, combing through her scraggly white hair.
"Getoffme!" Mira yells, weakly attempting to brush the creature away to no avail. "Get off me, youscavenger!"
Kael laughs. A deep, genuine boom of a sound that startles the dust from the ceiling beams. It's the best sound I've ever heard, a vibration of pure, unadulterated joy that washes away Mira's rage and my own lingering fear, leaving only the warmth of him beside me.
I move purposefully to the cage in the center of the shell.
"Bolt!" I call out, my voice ringing with a new authority. "Wake up."
The giant eel uncoils slowly from the copper cage, the water around him crackling with lazy sparks of blue energy. "It is about time," he yawns, a cavernous display of needle-like teeth. "I was getting bored in here. Mira has been dreadful company. It's as if she has always been a grumpy old mer."
Mira simply pouts, turning her head away.
"Did you successfully get the magic voice back, or are we still playing silent charades?" Bolt asks, his long body swaying in the current.
Kael looks over at the glowing eel. He grins that terrifying, feral grin.
"Loud," Kael booms, and the sound is a physical force, a concussive wave that hits the shell and makes the very water vibrate.
Bolt violently jumps.
He shoots backward in the water, a spark of bright blue electricity arcing aggressively from his long tail to the iron bars with a deafening crackle.
"By the bleeding Tide!" Bolt yelps, his bioluminescent patches flashing in genuine shock. "Warn a fish the next time you speak, shark."
Kael laughs, a deep, rolling sound that seems to stir the very silt on the floor.
