I nod. I channel the fierce fire Elder Soryn claimed made me a prime target. I am no victim of the Vanguard. I am a willing participant in my own salvation.
"Let's go," I say.
I take the lead.
Squeezing my lean body through the narrow fissure, the jagged rock scrapes my healing shoulder. A hot jolt of pain radiates down my arm. Biting my lip to trap the cry, I push through the gap. The rocky passage is tight, forcing my fine fins flush against my body.
The trapped water is stagnant. Colder than the outside smog. A cloying smell bypasses the nose, coating the back of the throat. Formaldehyde, rotting flesh, and old, dry spices.
I emerge into the main cavern.
Small, cramped, and cluttered.
The curved walls forgo solid stone for smooth glass. Thousands of sealed jars of every conceivable shape and size stack from the sandy floor to the high ceiling on shelves carved into the rock. The sickly, pulsing green light of phosphorescent moss clinging to the ceiling in dripping stalactites illuminates them.
Inside the glass jars, dead things float.
I fight the urge to look, but the horror draws my attention.
A severed, gray hand fingers curled into a fist. A blue, forked tongue, pinned to a piece of floating cork. Eyes. Hundreds of them, staring from cloudy preservation fluid. Shredded fins. Plucked scales. Human teeth threaded onto wire.
And a suffocating silence.
The small cave chokes on it. This is no peaceful, comforting silence of the House of Drift. This is a stolen, violent silence. A terrible silence woven from things that used to scream.
Kael squeezes his shoulders through the fissure. Swimming to my front, his body forms a rigid shield between my scales and the glowing jars.
"I have visitors," a voice croaks.
The sound comes from everywhere and nowhere. Bouncing off the thousands of glass walls, it distorts into a sinister echo.
Oona emerges from behind a macabre curtain of dried, inflated puffer-fish skins.
A horrific sack of loose, pinkish skin. Bloated and draped over a skeletal frame lacking rigid bones. She has no eyes. Smooth, indented patches of pale skin sit where the sockets belong. Her mouth forms a circular, toothless maw wreathed in long, sensory barbels, writhing in the water like living worms.
"Ah," she wheezes, the sound wet and terrible. "The broken Shark. And the pretty Prince."
Swimming closer, the long barbels around her mouth twitch, tasting our scent in the stagnant water.
"You want the noise back," Oona croons, her eyeless face turning toward Kael. "You want the monster to roar. You want him to sing you sweet, bloody lullabies in the dark."
Swimming forward, I emerge from Kael's protective shadow. I hold the silver mirror to my chest, gripping it until my knuckles turn white.
"We want the specific antidote," I say, keeping my voice steady and authoritative. "Mira offered your name."
Oona laughs. Grinding stones in the dark.
"I have it," Oona admits. Reaching a flabby, boneless arm toward the ceiling, her long fingers wrap around a glass vial of clear liquid resting on a high shelf. "The small Vanguard warrior paid a handsome price to silence the shark. But to reverse the magic, the price is no simple coin. The price is vanity."
Pointing a pale finger at the silver mirror clutched in my hands, her barbels twitch.
"Give me your precious reflection, Prince," she hisses. "Give me your beautiful glass. Swear to forget your own beauty, and I will give the shark his tongue."
Lowering my attention to the polished silver mirror, frightened golden eyes stare back. I trace my vibrant hair. The final physical tether to my identity from the glittering upper world.
I shift back to Kael.
He shakes his head.No.Reaching for my arm, he tries to pull my body toward the safety of the fissure.Keep the mirror, he signs, panic widening his dark eyes.I will stay silent. Let's go.
