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I manage to crawl over the wood splinters and metal that have been destroyed by the cannon shot and reach through the newly opened space in the bars, dragging myself through them toward her. Once I’m through the bars, I put my hands on her shoulders and roll her over.

And I scream.

A large piece of metal is stuck straight into her chest, blood spilling out. Her eyes have rolled back in her head, her mouth open.

She can’t be dead. This can’t be my certainty.

“Daphne?” I say, my voice weak, a whisper. I tap the side of her face gently. “Please wake up. Please.”

But she doesn’t stir.

Maybe if I take the shrapnel out of her…

I run my hands over her chest, over the metal, but I can’t seem to pull it out. It’s lodged in too tight, and my nails are broken and short from the last few days. If only I had the claws that I had as a Syren, I’d be able to pull it out. Maybe I can use my dress to stem the bleeding?

“What are you doing?” Aerik says and I look over my shoulder to see him free from the cell and standing over me, blood running down the side of his head. “She’s dead. We’re free.”

I shake my head, glancing back down at her. Already the pink flush that she always had in her full cheeks is fading away.

She’s fading away.

Maybe she was gone before I even touched her.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone die before. Even when my mother would bring home sailors for us to eat, they were dead a long time before they got to the depths of Limonos.

But Daphne…she’s been like a mother to me, if not a friend. The only friend I’ve had these last ten years.

I can’t lose her. If I lose her, I lose the only good thing I had in my life above and I’m cursing myself for never telling her this. I’m cursing myself for never telling her the truth about me. Maybe she would have believed I was once a Syren, maybe she wouldn’t have, but it would have been nice to have someone know my secret, someone I trusted.

Now I’m truly alone.

“I can’t leave her, Aerik,” I say, the tears starting to burn under my eyes. “I can’t.”

“Then you’re on your own,” he says and staggers out of the room and into the rest of the ship.

I’m aware that there is chaos all around me. There are screams from above deck and below, shouts and more gunfire, muskets now, and guns on the top of the ship, and the cannons on this level going off again and again. There’s smoke and there’s the smell of burning and tar and though the ship has stopped shaking so violently, it’s still shuddering with each blast from the cannons.

And yet my world is all whittled down to just one thing: my lady-in-waiting.

Dead.

Aerik may have gone but it feels so wrong to leave her like this. I don’t know what death means right now. I don’t understand how she can just cease to be.

But she isn’t moving. She isn’t breathing.

She has ceased.

And if Aerik ends up escaping and I don’t, then I’m going to regret it forever. Daphne would want me to at least try.

It takes time for me to do something about it. I just can’t seem to move. Minutes stretch on and I’m holding my breath hoping, praying, wishing that she will open her eyes and come back to life. What if I walk away and then she comes out of it? What if I could have saved her but I didn’t? How can I just leave her like this?

But she doesn’t come back.

So I lean down and close her mouth and press my lips against hers, as is the custom in Limonos, and with tears streaming down my face, I get to my feet unsteadily. Syren’s have the ability to rejuvenate people with their kiss and though I never knew anyone who had done it, the elders said that a kiss could even bring a drowned sailor back to life.

But Daphne remains dead.

And have to flee. I’d say I’d wasted so much time already, but none of these last moments with Daphne could have been called a waste.