Page 35 of Drown Me Gently (Flipped Fairytales)

“Ulric!”

His name tore from Auren’s throat as he fell to the sand, hands sliding beneath the Kraken’s shoulders, trying to keep him upright. Ulric was trembling, skin ghost-pale, every breath coming ragged and wet.

“Stay with me—please, come on, talk to me!”

Ulric’s tattoos were vanishing. One by one, those ancient symbols, marks that once pulsed with magic, dissolved like ink in water, leaving pale, bare skin in their wake. The lines on his chest faded beneath Auren’s fingers. His arms. His throat. Gone.

Ulric’s lips parted, his breath a ragged gasp as though each tattoo that faded was a vital part of him.

On his forearm, a final tattoo flared white-hot, casting sharp light across the sand.

Auren watched, stunned, as the ancient glyph pulsed, not fading like the others, but glowing brighter, glowing defiantly, as though the very ink of it had caught fire.

It wasn’t burning out.

It was burning to speak.

One last message.

“What does it say?” Auren asked, his voice shaking. He knew it was important. That this one was different. “Ulric—what does it say?”

Ulric grit his teeth, voice rasping. “Oath… breaker.”

Auren’s eyebrows knit in confusion. What oath? What had Ulric done to— but his thoughts were erased as Ulric’s body went slack in his arms. Like he wasn’t trying to get up anymore.

“No, no—don’t you dare,” Auren choked. “I’ve got you. I’ll get you back to the cabin. I’ll give you your tonics?—”

Ulric shook his head. “Auren, listen. You have to go. Go back to the sea. I can’t—can’t hold it any longer.”

Auren reeled. “No. No, I’m not leaving you. All you need is a tonic, and it’ll get better,” Auren gently laid Ulric’s head on the sand, standing, ready to take off at a run. “I’ll be back with?—”

Then pain.

Agony.

It lanced through his neck and into his throat, as though claws sank behind his ears and dragged down, tearing him open.

He staggered, eyes wide, clutching his neck as his knees buckled.

He gasped—no, screamed —as the fire spread into his legs, his calves cramping, bones grinding beneath skin that didn’t feel like his own.

And then—just as fast as it had come—it vanished. A shaky, phantom ache lingering in its place.

Ulric looked up at him, eyes full of pain and— guilt .

“It’s what I’ve been holding back,” he rasped. “All this time… I’ve kept it off you.”

Auren’s heart broke open. This was what Ulric had been bearing. The weight. The agony he took upon himself to give Auren just a few more days in a borrowed body.

“Come with me,” Auren begged. But Ulric didn’t move—didn’t even try. Panic flared sharp in Auren’s chest. “Then I’ll carry you, you stubborn ass!” he shouted, looping Ulric’s arm over his shoulder. “I’ll carry you—we’ll make it to the water, just hold on?—”

But he barely managed a few staggering steps before Ulric let out a cry that ripped the sky open. His body jerked, twisted, and then erupted .

A sickening sound split the air as his clothes shredded apart.

Muscle rippled, and from his back erupted all nine tentacles—slick, black, massive.

They curled on the sand like wounded things, recoiling from the heat of the sun as though it burned.

The Kraken had returned in full. The sight stole Auren’s breath—and what remained of his strength.

Another scream burst from his lips as he hit the ground, clutching his ribs as pain flared again. Gills tore open on his neck, his vision fractured with pressure. His Mer form clawing its way to the surface.

“No—no, I can’t?—”

He couldn't hear himself over the roar of the tide, as though the sea were calling him home.

“Go!” Ulric’s voice wasn’t human anymore. It echoed, reverberated—deeper than any voice should go. “It’s taking all I have to keep it off you. Please, go !”

Auren couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think through the panic.

“I won’t leave you!”

“As soon as you hit the sea,” Ulric growled, “you’ll transform. I won’t have to hold it anymore. I’ll have enough strength to follow. But not unless you go. You have to go first. ”

Auren’s chest heaved. Gills tore wide, fluttering. The pain was unbearable—but Ulric was right. He could feel it. The second he submerged, the transformation would be complete. Ulric could release him. And they’d survive this.

“You’ll be right behind me?”

Auren’s voice was a raw, bleeding wound.

“Yes,” Ulric gasped. “I swear.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Then, with legs barely steady enough to hold him, Auren turned toward the ocean-

-and ran.

Sea and sand blurred in his vision as the world tilted. Auren held onto consciousness by sheer will alone. Each step a war against his own body. But he didn’t stop until his feet slammed into the first rush of incoming tide.

The moment salt water touched his skin, the pain hit him full force. Auren screamed as the ocean yanked him under. His body convulsed. His vision went white.

He felt it then—the release. A protective grip around his body, one he hadn’t even known was there, let go. Ulric had been holding him the entire time. Without that shield, the full weight of Poseidon’s blood ripped through him. Tore him open and reshaped his flesh.

There was no mercy of unconsciousness this time. Auren felt every twist of sinew and bone, every searing shift beneath his skin as his legs fused, his spine elongated, and his scales erupted. The gills at his neck flared wide, and fins split from his hips and wrists like living sails.

It was agony.

His scream dissolved into bubbles. Water flooded his ears. Still, even in the white-hot hell of transformation, Auren waited.

For a splash.

A pulse of magic.

The humming ripple of someone entering the sea behind him.

He waited, breathless in his gills, tail twitching where it had reformed—sleek and green and opalescent, as though it had never left.

The water swirled around him. Silent. Empty.

Nothing came.

No surge. No shadows in the deep.

Only the crash of white-capped waves above him and the shifting tide around his body.

Please. Please. Please.

But with every heartbeat, every passing moment?—

The dreadful words in the back of his mind surged forward. Until they were no longer words. But screams.

He isn’t coming.

Auren’s tail curled weakly beneath him, twitching in disbelief. His chest heaved as if he still needed to breathe air. The truth hit him with the weight of a sinking ship.

Ulric was gone.

Not following. Not behind him.

Gone.

Ulric said he would follow. When Auren transformed, he’d have the strength to meet him in the water. He swore.

He lied.

Auren’s heart lurched in his chest. He was helpless. Powerless. His magic was hidden somewhere inside him—dormant, unreachable—coiled deep in his blood like a sleeping beast. Useless. Stagnant. It couldn’t do a damn thing to help him.

A scream clawed its way up Auren’s throat, hands tearing at his hair in rage — And then, like a mountain falling, realization crushed him.

The tattoo.

The final mark.

“Oath Breaker.”

Weeks ago, in the cave, Ulric’s voice, quiet and distant:

“Those of the Kraken people chosen by Poseidon’s will to wield his magic… do not take mates. We serve. That is our calling. That is our promise.”

Auren’s lips parted.

How had he not seen it?

How had he not put it together?

By falling in love with him…

By coming on land to save him…

By choosing Auren over Poseidon?—

Ulric had broken his sacred oath.

And now…

Now he was paying the price.

Auren let out a sound that didn’t belong in this world. A wail of grief, rage, despair. He curled beneath the waves, clutching his chest.

But something inside him hardened. He would not let this be the end. He surged upward, a trail of foam and fury in his wake.

No. I refuse. I won’t!

With one violent thrust of his tail, Auren shot through the water, slicing toward the surface like an arrow loosed from a bow.

He broke through the shattering waves, flinging his body to shore.

He landed hard.

Auren’s tail hit the sand with a sickening thud, the impact dazing him momentarily. Gravity laughed at him, the weight of his Mer body dragging along the beach like a dying thing. Heavy. Mired. A creature who had no business being on land.

The sand was scorching, searing into his skin.

His human footprints, made only minutes before, vanished under his weight as he clawed forward.

His elbows and palms scraped raw. He didn’t care.

He didn’t stop. Auren dragged himself forward—up the slope, through dune grass and sun-dried kelp, back toward the place where Ulric fell.

Auren would find him.

He would drag them both back to the sea if it killed him.

“Ulric!” he cried, wasting breath he didn’t have. His voice cracked like a whip across the empty shore.

No answer.

The wind whispered. The waves crashed. But no one called back.

“Ulric!” he screamed again, throat raw, the salt from his tears stinging the open, gasping gills at his neck.

Still nothing.

Auren forced himself further inland, fingers digging trenches in the sand. His tail caught on a rock and tore open along the scales. Blood smeared the dunes in streaks as he dragged himself.

Auren didn’t care.

He didn’t care if every human on the island saw him. He didn’t care if he suffocated. He didn’t care if he died doing this.

He had to find him.

And then?—

Not a body. Not a shape.

But a shadow.

A mark in the sand like a scorch or a stain. The outline of a collapsed man, but lower—lower the silhouette of nine long, coiled tentacles sprawled across the beach like ink spilled from a dying god.

Auren choked.

He reached forward, trembling, and touched it.

Sand.

Just sand.

Blackened grains, fine as powder, warm from the sun. But it had shape. His shape.

Auren’s fingers clawed through it, trying to find something beneath—bone, cloth, anything. But there was nothing. No weight. No resistance. Just dust. Ash. Absence.

“No.”

His voice cracked. Broke.

He grabbed at the sand again, holding it in both hands, letting it sift between his fingers like spilled time.

And truth descended on him like a messenger of death. Ulric was gone.

“No, no, NO!”

Auren’s howl split the sky.

“DAMN YOU!” he screamed. He was gasping now, all the breath gone from his body. Wasted in his wails. But the cursing didn’t stop in the confines of his mind, even as his body began to reject the land it rested on.

“Damn you, Poseidon! Damn your oath, damn your laws, damn your fucking judgment!”

He slammed his fists into the earth. He clawed at the sand until his palms bled, until the black grains were embedded under his nails.

“You took him!” Auren sobbed. “He broke the rules for me… and you punished him for it!”

His tail thrashed behind him, kicking sand and rocks, drying fast in the heat. His gills fluttered, gasping. His whole body screamed for the water, but Auren stayed.

He crumpled over the mark in the sand, clutching the last remnants of the only man who had ever truly loved him.

“You bastard,” Auren whispered with the last of his held breath. “You left me. You said you’d follow. You said you’d be right behind me…”

He curled around the mark as if he could shield it.

Hold it.

Hold him.

He buried his face in the sand, fingers tangled in the shape of Ulric’s memory.

“Please come back…”

But no one came.

No great hand reached from the sea.

No dark figure appeared on the horizon.

Auren closed his eyes, and his final breath—shallow, dry, too thin for gills—shuddered through him.

And as the blackness crept in, his last thought was not of the pain, nor the rage.

It was of eyes like the deepest trench.

And a kiss soft enough to tame storms.