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One of Leander’s hands left me, and I heard a smack followed by a yelp. “They’re too fucking bright! Let Claira take over so the dark spawn don’t see us.”
“Okay, dude, okay. Let go. I’ll close them!”
I pulled away from Barren and opened my eyes, blinking rapidly until I was sure it was dark. Leander removed his hand from Kai’s eyes and settled it back on me with a satisfied smirk.
I scanned the ground, chasing the lines rippling over my sight. “What am I looking for?” Something clicked,and I saw circles underneath us, dotting the ocean floor. Waymarks similar to the ones we’d followed before.
Far off in the distance, barely a monochrome speck in my vision, loomed the long, mottled stretch of a wall.
I gulped. “You weren’t kidding when you said we’re close.”
We weren’t swimming as fast now. Were they nervous? Unsure of whether I’d lead them the right way?
“Hey, guys,” Kai called loudly, his eyes screwed tightly shut. “I don’t really get what’s happening right now?”
“Claira can see underwater,” Leander answered hotly, his tone suggesting Kai shouldn’t ask stupid questions, but all my attention was on Barren.
Leander said those words, and I swear every tight plane on Barren’s body recoiled.
“Barren?” I whispered, looking up to search his eyes. He had all but turned to stone underneath me. His face, his body, his dark pupils, everything deadened under my gaze.
He knew something.
He knew something about my underwater vision.
And that embrace we’d shared? Gone. Now I held tight to a titan made of cold, jagged boulders.
“Barren?” I whispered again, pleading for an answer to a question I was too afraid to ask, and dammit, heflinched.
Something was breaking in me. Twisting and tugging, threatening to destroy me from the inside out. I was so distracted by whatever it was about me that made Barren react in such a way that I didn’t see the tentacle until it had wrapped around the end of Leander’s tail.
Leander’s body jerked, held back, and it ripped my world into two. I cried out, every hand on me locking into place for dear life, and miraculously, all of them held. We fell into a nosedive, Kai and Barren apparently deciding the only way to break Leander free was down.
Leander worked the harpoon from his shoulder as the black slash of a tentacle curled up around him, joined quickly by two others. One went for Barren, but he already had his harpoon in hand.
But they couldn’t see! How could they fight? I opened my mouth to yell for Kai to open his eyes when Barren roared, “The bag!”
The bag?The bag!
Kai jerked as a tentacle went to wrap around him, a shriek sounding when he turned down to sink his wide jaws into it.
“The pearls, Claira!” Barren boomed, and I knew he regretted giving me the damn bag.
Hands shaking, I loosened the drawstring with the help of my teeth, digging inside and pulling out a small cluster of pearls. “H-how many?”
“Guys?” Kai garbled, his mouth sounding full. “Should I open my eyes?”
“Not yet!” Barren grunted, and his harpoon extended, slashing a broad line underneath us that barely even edged one of them. I turned down to Leander only to find a face staring back at me.
“My, my,” a silvery voice drew out, and I froze under the delighted look in the creature’s gaze. Thin lips widened past the point of madness, and the corners of the cecaelia’s eyes crinkled, setting off the pitch black in their centers. “What have I found?”
Kai’s teeth were still ground in a tentacle, his head jerking like a dog ripping meat off a bone, though the cecaelia didn’t seem to notice. And Leander—Where was Leander? I felt his fingers digging into me, but I couldn’t turn far enough to see him.
The long stretch of a man’s torso drifted underneath us, narrowing to a sharp point that exploded into reams of black. He looked straight at me, cackling, his long tentacles carrying him in a dizzying dance, pulling him this way and that, drifting to and fro. “And they broughttoyswith them. How fun.”
My eyes fell on Leander and—oh no—the narrow end of a tentacle had wrapped around his neck. The tip of the appendage gave a little wave, taunting me, beckoning me to just try to pry it off, but not even Leander had the strength to unwind it.
One hand was determined to stay latched on to me while the other labored at his throat, his harpoon dangling uselessly at his elbow. Could he even breathe?
