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My heart spasmed; grief became the worst pain of all.
With a grunt, I grabbed the girl’s wrist, shoved her off me, and sat upright.
The room tipped upside down.
Sourness splashed on my tongue as I swung my legs over the edge of whatever I lay on.
I went to stand.
I have to find them—
I stood.
My left leg buckled beneath me, sending me plummeting to the floor.
I blacked out for a second, blinking back spots as the girl dropped to her knees beside me and wrapped a slight arm around my quaking shoulders. “I told you, you’re broken. Dad reckons your ankle is fractured. And your right wrist is almost certainly too. And there’s a gash on your forehead that probably needs stitches, and I don’t know about you, but no one should be as black and blue with bruises as you are, so they need tending to as well.”
I fought the urge to throw up as wave after wave of debilitating pain crashed through me. Heavy and relentless, just like the waves from the storm.
Horror clutched at my throat. “Please...take me to them. You have to take me to them.” I shook my head and clutched blindly at her hands, losing myself in a whirlpool of despair. “I’ll do whatever you ask. Just please. Please, let me see my family.”
Her fingers clutched hard around mine, her eyes sad even as she smiled and refused to answer me. “I knew it.” Her closeness interrupted my spiralling sorrow. “I knew you spoke English. Mum wasn’t sure, but I knew you screamed the word shark when I touched you.”
She leaned closer, her body heat sinking into me. “Do you remember me telling you it wasn’t a shark? It was Sapphire. She’s the leader of the pod of bottlenose dolphins that led us to find you.”
I struggled to care about anything that wasn’t my family.
I’d done this.
I was the reason we were fugitives—
Swaying away from her, I cursed the rock and roll of my head. Sitting on the floor, I felt a different rock and roll beneath me, blending with my sickness. The steady slap-slap of water, the constant drum of sea rushing past a hull.
A hull that didn’t groan as if it were butchered or break apart into pieces.
A boat.
I’m on another boat.
I glanced upward, flinching at the white ceiling, sun-beaming window, kitchenette, and table full of paperwork, mugs, and plates.
This wasn’t just a boat.
It was a floating kingdom.
If my father had commissioned a vessel like this to carry us, he might still be alive.
This ship wouldn’t have capsized. This boat would’ve protected us.
A tearing kind of anguish ripped through my chest.
An awful keening knowledge that I might have survived but everyone else—
A sob caught in my throat.
The guilt—
I tried to scramble away from the girl but I had no strength. I only had horror as I dropped my stare and froze.
