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15

Cindi

Everything I endured was for nothing.

Those are the words repeating in my head as I watch the sun descend beneath the shoreline.

I was beaten, abused, starved all so my father could die alone, waiting for me to call him to restart our Sunday routine like we did before I fell into Tommy’s trap.

I stabbed my husband.

I ran to the other side of the world.

And all of it was for nothing.

I’m going to die out here, at the hands of my so-called mate .

Whether by plain ignorance or pure naivety, he’s going to be the death of me.

Hunger pains stab at my stomach.

My throat is raw from crying, the heat, dehydration, and many mouthfuls of saltwater.

My skin feels like it’s peeling off my body from the hours I’ve spent in the sun, staring into the distance, willing someone to see me.

I think the tattoo on my back has blistered.

I’ve circled what I could of the island, coming face-to-face with a steep rock wall or the edge of a cliff every time I think I’ve finally found a way back to civilization.

But no one is coming.

The only form of escape I could find was a dinghy with a rusted, busted engine.

There wasn’t a single salvageable part.

I searched the trees as I ran around the island, hoping to find any fruit or vegetable I could eat or drink, but nothing.

No freshwater stream.

No coconuts I could attempt to pick.

No way to make a fire because I’m far from being a Girl Scout.

A person can last three days without water.

I’d venture I’d die in less, based on how the past twenty-four hours have played out, not to mention the whole chronic fatigue thing I’ve been sporting for the last six months.

The last thing I ate was a single lumpia yesterday afternoon, followed by two cocktails later that night.

By my calculation, I have until tomorrow evening to get out of here before I waste away.

At one point, I considered jumping into the sea and swimming until I reach land, drown, or get eaten by whatever fucked-up thing is out there, but I figured Ordus would catch me before I could make it far.

I haven’t seen him, but I know he’s out there somewhere, sulking, watching, doing mental gymnastics to come to some justification that keeping me—his supposed mate —out here is fine.

He’d rather let me die on this island than take me back.

Just because a monster has a gentle touch doesn’t mean he isn’t a monster.

I’ll do well to remember that.

The water splashes against my feet, sand sticking to my grimy, sweat-stained skin.

The fabric of my dress feels like matted cardboard.

I’ve turned into a slab of meat for the nearby mosquitoes to feast on.

I’d kill for many things right now.

A shower is near the top of that list.

I need to find the silver lining in this, right?

That’s what Dad always did.

Oh, I got seven out of ten on my spelling test?

At least I passed and learned from my mistakes.

Burned dinner? Once you shave off the char, the inside is edible.

He was an optimist, a yes-man through and through.

He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

He’d say I was enough of a pessimist for the both of us.

Well, he only said that once I started seeing Tommy.

So, silver lining? The Gallaghers can’t reach this island.

I squeeze my eyes shut against my plummeting blood pressure and sugar levels that send my body on a toxic tailspin where I want to discard the nonexistent contents of my stomach.

My body sways with the gentle breeze, eyelids drifting open and closed.

The sea isn’t giving me any peace like it usually would, but still, if there were ever a place for me to die, it would be here, overlooking the ocean as the water cools me down.

Because when all is said and done, my corpse will be mine alone.

I’m trapped on this island where no one will ever find me here.

The Gallaghers can’t turn me into a warning if they never find my body.

With that thought, I weakly dart my eyes to the trees in case one of the Gallaghers magically teleported here.

For a second, I see a glimmer of Tommy’s ghost, but I know he isn’t there.

It’s been…nice not looking over my shoulder every minute I’ve been outdoors, waiting for the Gallaghers to be around the corner.

My fear of them isn’t at the forefront of my mind.

Paranoia isn’t choking me.

Natural survival is the only thing I’m thinking of.

That, and Ordus, who’s left me to my own devices, watching me slowly wither away.

Movement sounds behind me.

I don’t bother turning.

I know who it’ll be.

I have no desire to give him more attention than he deserves.

I hate that I flinch when he raises his arm, that I instinctively tuck my chin up against my collarbone to brace for a strike that never comes.

I never used to be like this.

I was a stranger to hurt until pain became all I knew.

What I hate even more is watching Ordus’ fingers curl into fists, how my heart hammers in my chest at the memory of what knuckles feel like against soft tissue.

Maybe somewhere deep down, there’s a part of me that believes he’d never raise a hand against me, but that’s what I believed about Tommy.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I paid for it with my life and a screwed-up arm.

Ordus lowers himself to the ground and very intentionally hunches to seem less imposing.

The silence stretches for long minutes as I watch the water draw his tentacles in and out of the shore.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to open my mouth and demand the same thing I’ve been demanding since I got here, but he beats me to it.

The monster clears his throat, offering me his hand.

“Come, female.”

Of all the things to be mad about, that sets me off.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion.

Maybe I just want to argue to feel something other than hopelessness.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” I snap, my voice a garbled rasp of shards of glass that tear through the fibers of my throat.

“Female?” Ordus questions, bewildered.

“ Woman ,” I correct.

It’s a stupid argument, a waste of my precious energy when I should be conserving whatever moisture is left in my mouth and throat.

But I don’t want him to have a moment of peace.

I want him to hate me as much as I hate him for putting me through this.

My eyes heat once more.

Exhaustion. Frustration.

Despair. It hits me, spilling down my salt-burnt cheeks into my lips.

“Or Cindi.” I almost say Kristy, because I might as well let someone else know my real name, since I’m going to die anyway.

But Kristy is already dead—even if her ghost is insistent on haunting my every waking moment.

I ignore his outstretched hand and jump to my feet, hating that he towers over me either way.

“Do not lessen my person to the organ between my legs,” I yell.

That’s what Tommy did.

His family. Every other person I came across during the three years I was with him.

I was nothing more than a thing to hang off his arm, a toy for him to throw around when no one was looking.

If I’m going to die, I want to do it without feeling less than human, even if the kraken sees me as nothing more than an object of fate.

“I’m a person. A human being with feelings. Emotions. Needs.” I don’t know why I bother.

He’s not going to change his tune.

I doubt he’s capable of it.

He’s a monster through and through.

Being humanoid doesn’t give him humanity.

“And you’re a monster,” I seethe.

He says nothing, staring at me with eyes I can’t read.

Muscles bunched. Lips twitching.

Arms stiff.

I’m torn between cowering away and doubling down.

Tommy would have hit me before a sound could come out.

I hate Ordus, but not in the same way I hated Tommy.

I hated my husband with a force that moved mountains and raised hell to my feet.

I hate Ordus because he looks like Tommy in certain lights.

He’s giving me the same clouded look Tommy used to give me before he twists his words until they’re sharp enough to puncture an artery.

Except Ordus doesn’t speak.

He’s looking at me like he wants me to say more, to lay everything out at our feet in the hopes he can pick at the words to see them from a different angle and figure out how it works out of plain curiosity.

“You’re killing me,” I croak, tears stinging my burnt cheeks, vocal cords like sandpaper.

A look of pure torture crosses his eyes.

Then, a flash of guilt, followed by unbridled desperation.

Every hair on my body stands on end, though not out of fear.

I just… I don’t know how to react to him.

He doesn’t want me to die, but he won’t do what needs to be done to keep me alive.

He doesn’t want to hurt me, but he’s letting me starve.

“I need water, Ordus,” I whisper.

He motions to the sea.

“The?—”

“ Water ,” I repeat.

“Drinking water. Human water. Fucking mineral water. Aqua. Air ,” I say in Indonesian, in case that registers in his thick skull.

“And I need to wash and cook the fish.”

No one ever fucking listens to me.

It’s like I’m mute to everyone, and I’m screaming at a brick wall.

I can feel his distress oozing off him.

Well, if he’s upset about this, how the fuck does he think I feel?

“I…I do not understand.” His eyes dart toward the sea once more.

“Take me back! Take me back. Take me back. Take me back,” I chant.

Scream. Heave. Hit. Cry.

Drop to the ground and sob some more.

I feel like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop where he starts yelling back, berating me, or exerts some level of force to make me stop seeing any semblance of good in him.

He says nothing, staring into the distance as I try to get my breathing under control.

Over and over, one of his tentacles comes toward me, and another snatches it away, as if each of his limbs has a mind of its own.

It’s…nice having someone there.

I’m too tired to think of a better word to describe how it feels to have another person beside me as I let go of the restraints on my emotions.

To not be touched. To simply sit in the silence.

Even if he is the cause of my meltdown.

This is the most fucked-up situation any person could imagine.

It’s nice when it shouldn’t be.

It could be worse. It’s not the metric I should use to judge my situation, but there’s no escaping the truth.

I could be the Gallaghers’ new punching bag.

Lord knows what the pirates would do to me, who they might sell me off to.

The kraken could be intentionally harming me.

He could have forced himself on me.

Or worse: I could still be with Tommy.

I hug my knees, wishing for a different life, staring out into the vast unknown and wallowing in my misery beside a monster who isn’t acting how I thought a monster would.

“Krakens would…” I watch Ordus out of the corner of my eye.

His gaze drops to the hands in his lap.

The striking familiarity of that single, pained look winds me.

I can recognize grief anywhere.

“I would die if you left.” His voice is just above a whisper.

“I’ll die if I stay here.” I sound like a broken record.

“Look, I’ve read the books. My kind has a vague belief in soulmates. I know… I think I understand the magnitude of your…” I search for an appropriate word.

“Position.”

I can’t possibly know what mates mean to him.

I’m unconvinced he’s right about what I am to him.

I spent a solid six months certain Tommy was my other half.

We’d laugh at the same jokes, have the same interests, listen to the same music.

Yeah, I’ve met people who I've gelled with immediately or felt something low in my stomach from a single look. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s putting too much stock into a concept with no real basis.

“Word of advice,” I rasp, tasting ash, sand, and salt in the back of my throat. If I’m dying anyway, I might as well give the monster a piece of my mind. “Fate’s a bitch.”

Ordus’ eyes damn well nearly pop out of his head.

Fate got my dad killed before I could say goodbye. Fate took my mother before I could meet her. Fate made my rabbit die a week after I got it. Fate gave me appendicitis the day of my exam. It made me spill Ribena all over my cream prom dress. It caused a motorcyclist to ram into the back of my car and break his shoulder when he was a single parent of three. Fate gave my friend in eighth grade cancer, then let her live and took her mom instead.

Fate put me on Tommy’s path, and now, Ordus’.

Fate is a downright wretched bitch, and I’m sick of being her victim.

I continue before he can respond. “ Vibes don't equal compatibility. And you and me? We will never be compatible.”

My subconscious seems to be taking the “gently break up with the kraken” approach, since nothing else seems to be working. It’s not like it’s a lie. How could we possibly work?

Size is one thing. I’m not made to live underwater is another. Oh, and let's not forget one tiny, itsy-bitsy matter. He fucking kidnapped me.

“In time,” is all he says.

As if time is going to change any of the reasons I listed.

“You can’t love a corpse.” Either now, or in two days. I’m already dead.

“Love would surpass death.” The atmosphere grows somber. “Our bodies would decay, but our souls will forever be one.”

I’m not about to argue metaphysics with a mythical creature, so I don’t reply. Clearly, I don’t know a thing about how the world works. Sea Goddesses? Sirens? Actual, written in stone soulmates?

“What happens after death is none of my concern,” I mumble. It will finally be over. I wouldn’t have to run anymore or look over my shoulder.

My entire life feels like a lie, and I don’t know if I can keep myself up above the water.

I’ll probably meet Tommy in hell to kill him all over again.

There’s a pregnant pause before Ordus says, “My kind buries our dead beneath stone so reef may grow from their physical body to allow for new life. Existence is a cycle. A fish feeds from coral so it may one day be food for a shark that will end up in the hands of a kraken that’ll end up back feeding the coral so the fish can eat once more.”

The golden light of the setting sun kisses his bronze and deep russet skin, illuminating the iridescent threads that glimmer in golds and blues more prominent along his tentacles. The white dots along his shoulders and brow area look like a smattering of pearls. Streams of silver and sea glass glitter in his cerulean irises as he stares at the horizon.

He might be a monster, but right now, he looks like a broken shell of a man. A pretty disaster.

“The soul sets each individual kraken, human, siren, bird apart,” he continues. “It’s what gives the body drive beyond food and shelter. Personality beyond natural instinct. Different patterns of a million threads no mortal being could deign to understand.”

Ordus’ voice is rough, yet smooth all the same. It’s thick but glides over my bone-dry skin in a gentle caress. The deep, warm tenor threatens to put me to sleep. I rest my chin atop my knees, facing him, too tired to hold my weight.

As awful as my circumstance is, I like hearing him speak. It feels like a messed-up safety blanket.

“A mate is the soul’s drive, two pieces of a puzzle designed to fit perfectly with the other. Once it meets, they become inseparable, braided and wound together. To tear them apart is to come undone.” The weight of Ordus’ attention falls onto me. “I cannot let you leave, Cindi. We will both surely die.”

I avert my gaze. I don’t believe him, but I don’t think it’s an outright lie either. For all I know, those could be rules that apply only to krakens. I doubt he knows much about the inner workings of humans if he thinks he can feed me raw fish and ask me to drink seawater.

My mind conjures memories of Dad.

For the first decade and a half of my life, we would have fish for dinner every eighth day in memory of the woman who gave birth to me. Apparently, Mom was horrendous at fishing. After years of trying, she finally caught one, then eight days later, she caught another. By a stroke of luck, another eight days rolls around, and a fish ends up caught on her line. She never managed to catch another fish after that, so it became their thing to eat fish every eight days. A little inside joke.

My father never cried. He didn’t when he broke his arm, or when he fractured three bones in his hand. He didn’t when my grandparents died, or when my uncle was diagnosed with cancer. But on those nights, every eight days, I’d see him shed a tear when he thought I wasn’t looking.

He didn’t believe in soulmates, but she was the sun, the moon, the stars, and every wave he’d ride. She was everything to him before I came along, and she was still, long after I took my first steps or rode a bike alone. Not once did I see him look at another woman or go on a single date after she died.

Dad loved me with every fiber of his being, gave me the world and then some, but there was always something missing. Mom.

A dry cough rattles through my lungs. I choke into my shoulder before rasping, “What makes you so certain I am your mate?”

A deep divot forms in Ordus’ forehead. A tentacle curves around my lower half, staying on the ground, and I don’t bother pushing it away. It feels nice. A cushioned chain. Bedazzled shackles.

His stare lands on the spot where our skin touches. He softens, eyes brightening like I’ve just given him the world. “As cubs, we are taught about souls and the Goddess' influence on them. I spent an entire lifetime thinking she forgot to grant me one, or that she may have started with mine but left too many fractures she did not want to bother fixing. When I saw you, that was the first time I felt my soul sing. I felt complete.”

I shift my gaze, unable to look him in the eye. “I feel nothing.”

Is that a lie? I’m not experiencing the full scale of hatred and loathing someone in my position, with my background, should feel.

I’m sympathizing with him, thinking he’s attractive. I even felt tingles between my legs last night when he took advantage of my vulnerabilities. Is that because of fate, or because I’m fucked in the head?

“You are human,” Ordus answers, confirming my earlier assumptions. “Damaged.” My eyes fly to him. Excuse me? “By the hands of another,” he explains before I can lash out, even though he’s correct. “Lost. Running. Alone.” I’m not sure if he’s talking about himself or me. “Do you feel your soul, Cindi?”

I… My throat bobs.

If I had one, there’s nothing left of it. I got rid of it for the sake of keeping my heart beating. Is that why I don’t feel the pull toward him, or am I entertaining the ramblings of a species different to my own?

The waves brush my feet, sending cool splatter up my thighs. I focus on it to keep myself from spiraling, reliving everything that happened over the past five years.

This would be a good surf spot. I’d have the whole beach to myself, decent waves, silence, an aquatic lifeguard.

My brows knit together as I watch Vasz bustle out of the sea, drop something on the beach, then hack up liquid like he’s a typical dog who thought drinking saltwater was a good idea.

Fucking Vaseline.

We both watch as he picks up the round thing he dropped and coats it with his slobber before trotting over to us, tail wagging, ears flopping, paws pitter-pattering on the ground. He disregards Ordus, coming to a stop in front of me. The coconut thuds as it hits the sand, and he noses it toward me, growling when the waves move it back to him.

I blink at the green-yellow item. A coconut .

Wait.

I hesitate when I reach for it. “Is it for me?” I swing my gaze between the two creatures.

Vasz chuffs a noise that sounds eerily like “Duh.”

I snatch the coconut off the ground before he can change his mind. I use more of my energy reserves to turn the fruit around to search for major cracks. There are holes from his teeth, but they haven’t punctured very deep.

“The knife.” For the first time today, a flutter of hope starts in my chest. “Get me the knife,” I repeat to Ordus.

He leaves without question, saying something to Vasz in a language I don’t understand. The shark-dog rolls his eyes then fixes his focus on me, tipping his head side to side. I study the fruit, praying to every god and goddess it’s not filled with seawater.

I look around the beach for a solid surface and pull myself onto my feet to stumble for it. I’m panting from the minute walk it takes to reach the stone.

Ordus returns soon after, handing me the weapon with no care that I might use it to kill him. I stare at the blade for a moment. It’s different to the one I stabbed him with.

Grabbing a fistful of my dress, I clean it as best as I can. I’ll just need to accept that food poisoning is my other greatest threat.

Taking a deep breath, I balance the coconut on the stone and raise the knife above my head. Here goes nothing. I use the force of gravity to plunge the blade into the upper half of the fruit before taking it out.

Liquid sputters and spurts from the gap, foaming around where the thin hole is. I repeat the process three more times, careful not to crack the husk. Each stab takes more energy than the last until I’m buckling over, my injured hand splayed out to hold my weight as a wave of lethargy hits me.

I can feel the two creatures watching me—a quick glance at Vasz tells me he thinks I’m committing sacrilege.

There are better ways to be doing this, but I don’t trust myself not to fuck it up and waste any juice that might be inside.

I rock back on my heels, inspecting the banged-up square I’ve made, wedging the pointed edge to dislodge the lid so I can peek inside. It smells like coconut and the sea, and I can’t for the life of me figure out if the liquid inside will kill me or not. I don’t know jack shit about what the inside is meant to look like. I only know what it looks like in a can, plastic bottle, or a glass mixed with rum and pineapple.

Giving up, I bring it to my mouth without hesitation, ignoring the fact that I swear I can taste Vasz’s slobber. The first drop of liquid hits my tongue, and my eyes drift shut. Sweetness explodes over my taste buds. It trickles down the back of my throat. A moan builds deep in my chest, and I’m out of fucks to stop it.

I might as well be drinking the elixir of the gods.

It’s the best thing I’ve ever had.

I can’t think about pacing myself. I drink every last drop, tipping my head back and shaking the coconut until nothing else comes out.

I grab the knife and chop the top off with renewed energy, scraping the flesh before I put that baby right into my mouth, nibbling at the meat I’ve never dared to eat before. I try stripping the skin off instead to savor all I can.

By the time I’m done, the sun has fallen beneath the horizon, and I learn what a shark-dog looks like when he’s mortified.

“Good boy,” I say without thinking, patting his head.

My stomach is full, my throat doesn’t feel like sandpaper, and I think I could cry from such a simple joy.

I scratch the back of his ear, muttering, “Good job, Coco. You’re so good. You’re such a good boy.”

His eyes light up, and his tongue lolls to the side like he’s in heaven.

“Coco? Yeah? That’s a better name for you, huh?” I coo. “Can you get me more coconuts?” Hope is alight in my tone.

He yips and runs back into the water, faster than I’ve seen him move.

Maybe I won’t die after all, and it might all be because of a shark-dog named after petroleum jelly.