Page 22 of Storm and Sea

And now that he’d gotten a taste, Nyel wanted more. He didn’t know it before, but now it was so painfully obvious. The missing piece in his mundane life. He was starving for something new—something his mind could latch onto—something to digest and learn.

Something different.

Nyel cautiously touched the metal bowl that once held the roaring fire. Though the flames were gone, the bowl was still warm. He sighed, letting his hands fall flush to the metal. One jump into the waves, and his body would no longer be so sensitive to the difference between hot and cold. He could return, apologize to his mother, and prepare to go on the Tideway with Chel. He scoffed.

No way.

From this height, Nyel could see the shores of the human land. Their settlement sat right beside the curve of the bay before climbing the hill.

Atreus is there.

Nyel squirmed as jealousy took root like a coral in stone.

What is he doing? Who is he seeing?

How could he have spent years in the company of humans without being gutted? Nyel wanted to know more. More about humans. How they worked, what they ate, and the way they socialized. For the first time in his life, Nyel dared to want more.

Nephi gritted his teeth as he lost the trail for the third time. He’d have to double back to find it again. At this rate, he wouldn’t have any fucking fangs left for how hard he was grinding them. Nyel’s scent was faint in the water, but with a general idea of where he was going, Nephi found it. Yet the trail continued to go blank as his damaged scent receptors failed him again and again.

“Fucking damn it!” he cursed, kicking a fire coral where a piece snapped off and fell to the sand. He hadn’t always been so useless. He didn’t used to lose fresh trails. Back then, he was a predator. Back then, he was unstoppable. Back then…

Back then… It might as well have been only hours ago, with how vividly the images now flashed through his mind.

Opalescent fins. Moonlight reflecting off sky blue scales. Then… orange. So much orange.

The color alone was enough to send him into a rage. Overcome with the need to tear, to cripple, to kill—he tore apart his corallite victim. One branch at a time. He only wished the creature had vocal chords. He wanted to hear it scream, to cry out. Maybe its cries could drown out the ones that replayed in his brain.

Every.

Single.

Night.

If I had been faster. Stronger. Smarter. We could have escaped. I could have saved him.

The sudden memories made Nephi lose focus. His vision blurred, the edges turning red. He roared in frustration, tearing into the innocent animal piece by piece.

When his vision cleared, only the stump remained, and scavenger fish picked at the newly exposed flesh. Nephi panted, gills heaving, missing the taste of copper in his mouth as what remained of the bloodless animal floated around him. If anyone saw, they’d think he lost his mind.

Didn’t matter. As a halfling, people made that assumption about him anyway. But now, after everything. Well… Nephi was beginning to think they were right. These days, he was like a torpedo hurling through the water. He was a mortar of repressed fire and wrath - ready to blow with the slightest spark.

He needed to get ahold of himself. Getting lost in memories wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Nyel. A quick visit to the Veritani home told him that Nyel hadn’t returned. Bianca was inconsolable while her sister and his father, Donato, tried to calm her. Donato noticed him peeking into the home but turned away and continued consoling his wife.

Just as well.

Nephi had no intention of talking to his father. Besides the green scales covering his torso, they had nothing in common. And Nephi was more than happy to keep it that way. He had no attachments to these people. Not Bianca, who hated him. Nor his father, who pretended he didn’t exist. And not his half-brother, with whom he shared blood.

They never treated him like family, and why should they? He was a stranger. A living, breathing mockery of the Spirits. Cursed. When he returned to Corallina, fresh burns covering his body and barely clinging to life, they didn’t even offer him a place in the home. Nephi slept beneath the sand hut —where the sandwinder slept. Only occasionally did they remember he was down there, wounded and too weak to move, and they’d set out a bowl of food as if he were a stray leatherback turtle.

Didn’t matter.

Nephi didn’t come here to be babied. He just needed a place to rest. To lie low and take care of his damn self. He was no good to the Pod wounded, and they moved too often for him to keep up in this state. Tariq ordered him to find a place to rest until he was ready to return—and like a fucking idiot, he went home.

Not my home.

But it was where his half-brother lived. And thoughts of Nyel continued to nag Nephi for hours. Since leaving Nyel at that sandbank, the idea of that dumb kid getting close to a human encampment made his skin crawl.

The idiot doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He has no idea what those land dwellers are capable of.