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He might be dead already.

Panic seizes me, gripping my heart and I push on, my heart racing faster now with the fear that I may not get to him in time. I can’t watch another person die, I can’t.

I’m close, so close, when the angler fish and the skeleton Syrens appear again coming right out of the deep dark blue, the high-pitched screech of my ilk creating waves across the water. They swim at me fast, their claws extended, and now that I think they’re somehow cursed like the crew is, I know exactly what to do.

For once I’m grateful I have legs and not fins.

As they approach, I pull my knees to my chest and then push out my leg like I’m doing a kick. Even underwater I’m able to do this move fast, my body having more grace and balance down here than up on land.

My foot connects with one of the Syren’s skulls and crushes it completely before knocking it clean off the vertebrae. I watch for a moment as it floats away, rendering the Syren useless before I quickly get in position and do the same to other one.

Crunch.

The other Syren’s head is kicked clean off and it too starts to sink toward the bottom while the rest of the creature made of bones flounders in the water, unsure where to go.

I don’t have time to watch what happens. Instead I start swimming down again, following the sinking heads down, down, down, hoping and praying that I get to Ramsay in time.

Finally, I reach him. With his black shirt and dark hair flowing around him he looks like a fallen angel, one that belongs to the devil, the image made even more significant by the sight of the Syren’s decapitated skulls bouncing along the bottom beside him.

Please be here. Please be okay.

I press my fingers to his face, debating whether I should kiss him or not. My kiss didn’t bring back Asherah, but her kiss did something to me. Do I have that power now? Or is he too far gone?

Because he has to be dead. He’s drowned. No one could survive that long underwater.

I continue holding my fingers against his jaw, wishing I could tell him one last thing but I don’t even know what that would be.

I guess if it weren’t for him, I would have never escaped Aerik.

I would have never been set free.

And even though I’m not quite a Syren anymore, I’m more than I have been in a long time, and I feel like he saw that in me from the beginning.

For all that he’s done, for all that I hate him for, in the end I think he really saw me for me.

And more than that, helikedit.

I swallow the lump in my throat and decide to give it a try.

I lean in to kiss him but before my lips can get close to his, he gives me the biggest fright.

His eyes open.

Ramsay’s eyes open, the blue of them matching the blue of the dusky water, and he stares directly at me.

“Ramsay?” I ask, the sound muffled as bubbles rise from my mouth.

He frowns and slowly tilts his head to look at me, then looks up at the surface that’s so far away. When he looks back to me, a small, satisfied smile turns up the corner of his mouth.

“You came for me,” he says, bubbles floating from his mouth now.

I nod, overjoyed that he’s alive but before I can ask him how he’s still alive and seemingly not needing to breathe under the sea, he leans in, grabs my face…

And kisses me.

CHAPTER20

Ramsay