AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Clawing my way downward isn’t an option. I have to leave the water in order to reach my real home.
A voice calls to me from above. “Alosa, get out of the water.”
The voice is male. The same male from before. The pretty one. The one I’ve still failed to turn into a corpse.
I raise my head out of the water, peer at him through eyes that see so much better under the sea.
“No human commands me!”
I wait for him to cower, to shrink away. But if anything, he holds himself taller.
“Part of you is human, too. Let it out.”
I stand, my eyes landing on the exit. The human is between me and it. I raise my first finger, examining the pointed claw at the end. “I think I’ll draw a line across your throat. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” My tongue curls around a sweet note, letting my will become this man’s as well.
“Yes,” he says eagerly, extending his neck toward me.
I could draw the prettiest red pictures all over you,I sing. I delight in deciding where to start. With that muscled torso? On his lean legs?
But being away from the sea is like having an uncomfortable itch; I need to hurry back to her.
I suppose I’ll just have to take him along with me. I step out of the tub.
And hiss through my teeth as red hot pain slices into my arm.
There’s another human in the room. A woman hidden from my sight until now. Her sword drips with my blood. I’ll tear off the arm holding that sword.
But before I can move, a body presses against my back. One arm clamps around my waist, the other bars across my shoulders and chest. A chin rests against my shoulder, pressing a scruffy cheek next to mine.
“You will not harm those you love, Alosa,” Riden says. “Not while I still breathe.”
My legs lose their strength. I’d tumble to the floor if Riden weren’t still holding me. Tears prick at my eyes, but do not fall. My stomach turns at the thought of what I almost did. To Riden. To Sorinda. To the rest of the crew.
I could have killed all of them.
“I’m me,” I say quietly, trembling. The movement is shaking Riden, too. I absorb the water still clinging to my clothes, thinking perhaps I’m only cold.
But the shaking doesn’t cease.
“We’re done for now,” I say to Sorinda. “You can go.”
“I’ll send for Mandsy,” she says, nodding to the cut she gave me.
“No, I’ll tend to it. I think I need to… to properly process.”
She doesn’t argue. I love that about Sorinda. She leaves silently. I don’t even hear the door close behind her.
“You can go, too,” I say to Riden, who still has himself tucked behind me.
“Not yet,” he says, holding me as I wait for the shaking to subside. When it does, I say, “We are never doing that again.”
He loosens his hold on me, letting one of his hands rub circles into my back. “Yes, we are.”
I turn on him, breaking his hold on me completely. “How can you say that? You haven’t liked any of this from the beginning. You only did it because you’re too damn selfless for your own good.”
“I care about this crew. So do you. That’s why we have to try again. Until we get a handle on this, just as we have with restocking your abilities.”
“I was overconfident. I thought it would be easier because we’d practiced so much beforehand. But this was different. I nearly killed you and Sorinda. Then I would have been looseon this ship. I don’t even want to imagine the damage I could have done.”
