“Mmmm.” His chest vibrated against my shoulder. “That’s quite a lot for a pair of little lungs. You were under longer than that.”
Eyes on the silver moon, I fought against the urge to look at him. “Did you time me?” I asked, striving for curiosity to furnish my voice rather than the alarm sinking in. Had he seen my tail?
No. He couldn’t have. I’d waited until I’d been well below the waves to transition, and I’d changed back before I’d even neared the surface.
“I went to find you after you left. You’d forgotten the lure and fishing line.”
“I catch more without it,” I murmured. “Leihaniians catch fish with their hands.”
“Mmmm,” he said again, drinking in my words with faux consideration.
I waited for him to call my bluff. He’d spent four weeks on Leihaniian fishing boats; he knew we didn’t catch them bare-handed. Not in the center of the wide-open sea.
But he said nothing, his dark lashes ticking as his eyes roamed the sky. “Don’t go into the channel again, Leihani.”
7
Maren
Kye and I walked the coastline two more days, pausing where the rocks sank into the water to sit on the edge and pass the fishing line back and forth.
For two days, our hook came up empty.
There was simply nothing alive in the channel. I was almost sure of it, though without diving in and searching myself, I couldn’t be certain. Each time we wound the line up, our eyes met, quiet failure snapping between us.
“It’ll be fine. Just be patient,” Kye said, though I caught the hesitancy in his voice. He began angling his eyes opposite the sea, and I wondered if he was looking for roads. If he’d begun doubting the decision to follow the channel.
The only thing I doubted was that the water could harm me. In the aftermath of my last swim, with my naked body pressed against his warmth, the sound of his plea in my ear, I’d strengthened all resolve to heed his warnings, even if they were unnecessary.
But I’d begun to crave salt on my body. My skin felt tight without it, as though by neglecting the urge to swim, I deniedmyself the ability to molt and stretch. The sea taunted me as we walked. Humming and crashing, the distant spray brought by wind wasn’t enough to satisfy the need to float and stroke and dive. The rumble of my hollow stomach didn’t help. The longer we walked on empty bellies, the more worry nestled between my muscles.
Could I let us starve, just to assuage him?
The channel stretched wide, disappearing into fog over the sea—shallow at first, but it deepened enough that the water grew black. I kept my eyes open for the indication of other Naiads, though I couldn’t imagine they’d live here in these frigid waters. If there was acolony here, their monarch would have already sensed my presence in their water. Walking the cliff line beside Kye, my hand often found the back of my neck, feeling for the prickled chill ofspiculae. But my spine remained quiet.
Though it kept to a fairly straight line, the channel seemed to grow on and on. I tracked the points on the horizon where the sun emerged and dropped from view. I counted swells, memorized wind patterns. At night, I charted the stars. Kye watched in pensive silence, a wistful look in his eyes.
The land only grew more barren. Even the weeds had vanished.
“Don’t, Leihani,” Kye said. Finding the bottom hem of a freshly scrubbed shirt, he paused before donning it, gold eyes cutting mine as I approached the edge of a cliff to search for a meal. Fish, kelp, sea creatures—I had to try and findsomething.
Stomach growling, I shook my head. “We can’t keep this up. The channel killing me is a possibility, but starvation is a given. I can’t let us just die when I can do something about it.”
His jaw firmed, eyes darting over the vast, empty wasteland. “Following the channel was a bad idea.”
“Well, it’s not as though we had options,” I said, pulling my own shirt off in front of him with firm resolution. He crossed his arms, watching me in disapproval.
Layered under my clothes, my satin dress unrolled over my hips as my pants dropped. I hadn’t yet found a way to mend the ripped seam, which left a slit up the side to my waist, but it hardly mattered when Kye was my only audience—except that I’d left all my underthings on the beach at Cynthus Castle, leaving me effectively naked under the thin satin, a fact I often tried to hide with crossed arms and huddled knees. At least the dress made it easy to transition and hide my tail while swimming.
Kye’s eyes narrowed. “The channel iscursed.”
“They said that about Neris Island, too,” I mused, shaking warmth into my arms before they inevitably drowned in the cold. Preparing to dive, I eyed the water with scrutiny. Kye’s hand snatched my arm.
I made to shake him off, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixed on the corner of the horizon.
Where a ship was slowly sliding into view.
My heart leapt in my chest. Kye swiveled, facing the fire, and began shoveling wet gravel into the flames with the side of his foot. I hastened to help, though the line of smoke rose into the sky over our heads, a direct beacon to our location.
