She reaches up with a trembling, clawed hand and selects a small, unassuming vial. Carved from a single piece of dense, gray sponge. She carefully uncorks it.
A tiny cloud of dark purple liquid swirls out of the opening, dissolving instantly into the water.
"The pure venom of the Hush-Urchin," she says reverently, holding the vial up to the dim light. "Found only in the deepest trenches of the Abyss. It does not kill the body. It numbs the throat. It aggressively seeks out the vocal chords, the deep resonance chambers, the hum of the gills. It completely paralyzes the ability to create sound."
My heart skips a hard beat. "Permanently?"
"Nearly nothing in the violent sea is permanent, child. Only the displacement of time. But it lasts long enough. Long enoughfor the intoxicating song to fade from the blood. Long enough for the charmed prey to wake up and realize it is holding a mindless monster's hand."
She holds the gray vial out toward me. "If the beast cannot speak, he cannot charm. If he cannot hum, the biological resonance shatters. He becomes exactly what he was born to be. A fish. A mute, dumb, ugly brute."
It's perfect.
Without his voice, the shark is nothing to Vaelis. He can't spin his dark webs of lies. He can't vibrate Vaelis's bones into submission. Vaelis loves beautiful, articulate, elegant things. If the terrifying shark becomes a silent, stumbling, mute animal, the spell will break. Vaelis will finally see him for the horrific threat he truly is.
"How do I give it to him?" I ask, reaching out.
"It must be ingested. Or it must enter directly through the blood. But the stomach is far faster."
My fingers stretch toward the gray vial.
Oona snatches it back, her milky eyes narrowing where they should be. "The price?"
My hand freezes. I carry no currency. My patrol scripts—marked, traceable. The Council would know.
Then, the burning weight at my hip.
I reach into my belt. My fingers close around the jagged shard. The obsidian Vaelis had hidden so carefully in his wall. I pull it free.
Oona gasps. A sharp, wet sound.
Her barbels quiver violently, tasting the heat radiating from my palm.
"Trench-glass," she whispers, reverence in her voice. "Fresh from the vents. It still carries the fire."
"Is it enough?"
"Morethan enough." She lunges. The speed shocks me. Her clawed hand snatches the heavy rock from my grasp. She cradles it against her chest, crooning softly to the dark stone.
She tosses the gray vial. I catch it.
"Be careful, little guard," Oona rasps, melting back into her rotting shadows. "Silence is a heavy thing. Once you give it, you cannot take it back."
"I'm not giving it to him," I say, my voice firm as I tuck the vial deep into my pouch. "I'm taking it back for Vaelis."
The fissure spits me back into the murky water of the Silt District. The rot tastes different now. Cleaner. Purposeful. The vial sits heavy in my pouch, a single cold truth against my skin. A weapon. Not of steel, but of silence.
But I can't simply swim to the boundary and force the dose down the shark's throat. Vaelis is always with him. He hovers, a faithful shadow. He watches.
I need to separate them. Or better yet.
No.
I need Vaelis to witness it. I need him there when the crushing silence falls. I need him to watch the mighty shark try to speak, to see its jaw work uselessly, to witness the dark power drain away like sand through fingers.
But I cannot be the one to do it. Not directly. Vaelis would see. He would hate me for the deception. I must be stealthy.
I swim upward toward the light, my mind a frantic, tactical whirl.
