The feral armor I've built around my heart cracks. My arms wrap around his waist, pulling his body flush against my chest. I bury my face in the crook of his neck, the scent of him filling my senses like life-giving oxygen. A heavy, silent sob tears from my throat, vibrating against his collarbone in the warm water.
Mira closes her eyes, turning her pale face away from us in shame.
"You are both fools," she mutters into the sand. I squeeze Vaelis tighter, gathering myself until he pulls back to wipe the tears from my face with his thumb. "Both of you," Miracontinues. "The High Council will skin you both alive if they catch you inside the perimeter."
"That's why we need your help to find Oona," Vaelis says, kneeling beside her. "You are Vanguard. You know the active patrol routes. You know where the blind spots in the perimeter are located."
Mira laughs again. A dry, hacking, hopeless sound. "I can't even lift my own head, Vaelis. What tactical use am I to you?"
Reaching down into my heavy belt pouch, I pull out a broken chunk of wax. It is the heavy, hardened seal from the empty vial of Abyssal Draught we found discarded in her patrol pouch when we pulled her from the Wastes. It bears the deeply pressed thumbprint of Oona the Trench Witch.
I hold it up into the blue light.
Mira's milky eyes snap open. She recognizes the dark wax. She knows what the symbol pressed into it means. It is the physical proof of her terrible, desperate bargain.
I place the heavy wax seal into her trembling hand. It's cold to the touch. It smells of bitter herbs and dark magic.
I point a finger toward the east. Toward the looming Silt District.
Guide us,I sign.
"Guide us safely to Oona," Vaelis translates for me, his voice a low hum in the warm water of the shell. "She took your life force. Show us where she hides, and maybe you can demand those stolen years back."
Mira clutches the broken wax. Her thin fingers curl around the rough edges, turning her knuckles bone-white. The effort seems to exhaust her, her hand trembling with the strain.
She looks up at me. She studies me for the first time without the lens of her military prejudice. Her milky eyes trace the jagged scar on my forehead. The wound I received fighting the Great White to save Vaelis's life. She notes the protective way Ifloat between her and the open door, not to block her escape, but to physically shield her from the freezing draft.
"The Silt District," she whispers, her eyes darting to the floor. "You need the North quadrant. The intake pipes are quieter on the third patrol shift."
I nod my head in thanks.
Rising up to my full height, I swim back to the steering wheel. The iron groans under my touch, the metal protesting my weight.
"Ready for the approach," Bolt grumbles, coiling himself around the pistons. "Let's get this over with."
I steer the shell through the dark water. The journey is rough, the water growing heavier with pollutants as we near the city's underbelly.
We are an exiled shark, a martyred prince, an imprisoned eel, a headstrong shrimp, and an old betta-mer.
A strange, chaotic crew.
As the sickly lights of the Silt District appear in the dark distance, glowing with a murky, toxic yellow hue through the heavy smog, a truth settles over me.
We are all broken things.
And broken things fit together in beautiful ways that whole things simply cannot.
We hit the heavy smog layer an hour later.
The water quality dramatically drops. The stench hits me first—a foul cocktail of raw sulfur and untreated sewage that burns my sensitive gills. The ambient visibility drops to zero, the polluted water clinging to my scales like a shroud of filth.
"This is perfect," Bolt crackles from his copper cage, his electric light dimming in the toxic haze. "I can't see a single blasted thing out there. We are going to crash this house into a solid wall."
I can see,I sign to Vaelis, my movements quick and confident in the darkness.
"He can see fine," Vaelis tells Bolt, his voice full of unwavering trust. "He can navigate this mess."
I can. My dark eyes are biologically adapted to the pitch-black void of the trench. I don't need ambient light to navigate. The glowing red heat signatures of the thermal vents shine like warning beacons. The jagged, magnetic interference of the city's buried power lines pulses against my lateral line, a chaotic rhythm only I can read.
