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18

Cindi

It took a total of seventeen hours to get from San Diego to Shanghai.

I spent the thousand-and-twenty minutes shaking, thinking Tommy or his family would appear out of thin air and drag me back to the mansion.

I never saw a single Gallagher.

Not when I found a place to stay, two cities over, or further north, when I was too scared to stay stagnant for another day.

It wasn’t until I saw Matthew—one of Tommy’s friends—in the crowd while I was at the market.

Every day since the night I killed Tommy has felt much the same, paralyzed by fear and paranoia.

Except now.

For the first time in a year and half, I let myself simply be .

I feel…safe, like I can finally take a breather from running and looking over my shoulder.

Like there’s someone else in my corner looking out for me.

I could get addicted to this.

Three bags rustle against the currents, oscillating and pulling against Ordus’ powerful propulsions as air bubbles climb over the oxygen dome over my head.

The nonperishables and food in wrappers are in the nylon bags strapped to his back.

The waterproof one has the basic necessities.

My legs tremble around his waist from the hour we’ve already spent in the sea on the way back to the island.

Pain lances my arm, from my shoulder all the way down to my fingers.

My elbow throbs from the use, and the cold is making it even worse.

The wetsuit isn’t helping nearly as much as I want, and I don’t want to admit how much I want Ordus’ suckers to do that thing it does that makes my arm hurt less.

Being carried bridal style isn’t an option when he’s holding a gallon of mineral water in each hand.

To add insult to injury, it feels like someone lit a fire on my tattoo, then took a grater to it.

At least I feel the best I have in days—it was probably the chicken essence.

I can hear Dad’s “I told you so” from the grave.

Still, I feel sick to my stomach.

What might have happened if Ordus never intervened?

What would those guys have done to me the night of Nat’s birthday?

What if I decided not to run that day, and some man showed up at my house?

I could have found out firsthand what is worse than death.

Silver lining? I have a semblance of a plan when it comes to preventing death by lack of food and water.

I packed some plastic containers to collect rainwater.

I managed to find my old, barely functioning tablet to access the internet.

Reddit suggested filtering seawater with a T-shirt, and in my nonprofessional opinion, it sounded like bullshit.

If I’m desperate, I’ll give a solar a go.

If all else fails, Ordus can swim to the mainland to get me another couple gallons of distilled water.

The crappy, lagging, jailbroken iPad also helped teach me how to start a fire so I can cook water and fish—shit, I forgot seasoning.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

This is one long episode of Survivor .

I’m not about to fuss over the fact that I can’t have sambal with crab.

But chances of me successfully starting said fire?

Closer to zero percent than a hundred.

I’m crossing my fingers the matches and lighter I packed stay dry.

A cramp goes through my whole body, and I bite back a whimper.

I untuck myself from his neck to glance at the surroundings.

Sunlight streams through the waves.

Silver beams of light illuminate the surrounding blue.

Minutes pass. I stare over his shoulder, waiting for pops of color or evidence of sea life, but…

nothing? Just trash floating around like water bottles, cigarette buds, straws, plastic, the occasional wreckage of what I can only assume came from a boat.

No fish. No reef. No evidence to suggest we’re swimming though something other than a graveyard.

It continues for miles.

It’s like a wasteland—rocks, sand, the corpses of animals long dead.

Are these the side effects of global warming scientists warned us about?

Where are we on the map?

Are we going north through the Java Sea, where we’d eventually hit Borneo or Sulawesi—or the Philippines, if we’re going through the Strait?

Singapore if we’re heading northwest.

Or south toward the Indian Ocean.

Or southeast to Australia.

All I know is, the scenery doesn’t change as we head further away from Bali, other than there being less and less trash the further away we get.

“What happened here?” I ask, more to myself than to Ordus.

I can’t hear much of the other side of the bubble, so consider me unnerved when the dome expands, and suddenly, another person’s breathing fills the small space.

I lurch back to put distance between our faces—as if I hadn’t spent the past few hours leaning my head on his shoulder.

“My kingdom is now known as the Dead Lands,” he says quietly, as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear.

I’m sorry. Did he say his kingdom?

The proper noun or whatever would be our pronoun—as in us krakens’ kingdom, right?

It’s a slip of the tongue.

“Now? Has it always been so…” Don’t say dead.

“Barren?”

He shakes his head once, watching me closely from the corner of his eye.

He’s on edge, stiffening every so often, darting his gaze all around.

It’s putting me on edge.

What if Ordus isn’t the biggest creature out there?

I tighten my grip on him.

“My territory was booming with life fifty years ago. Game was ripe. There was coral of every color each way you looked.”

My.

I swallow. “Global warming?”

His brows pinch in confusion.

“A Curse,” he says, like he isn’t sure if they’re the same thing.

The air in the dome grows frigid, but the water’s temperature increases with the shifting landscape.

It rises by at least ten degrees, rapidly ticking upward until it feels like I’m swimming through a hot pool in my wetsuit.

Worse is the scene below.

The sand changes from grey to pitch-black, broken only by the protruding white bones.

The energy feels all sorts of wrong.

The atmosphere is staticky, cloying, like stepping into an abandoned hospital, or standing alone in a forest when all the insects have got silent.

Ordus stops us before it reaches jacuzzi level.

I slowly pry myself away from him.

The reprieve of moving my aching limbs is instantaneous.

One of his tentacles helps me turn to survey the area, still close enough to him that the air dome remains around us.

In the distance, a single boat lies on a pile of animal corpses.

It looks like one of those traditional Balinese fishing boats, the old-timey ones that often find their way to the bottom of the ocean, except this one has more color and parts.

Dad’s buddy Marcus would take us out on his boat every summer to go fishing or tubing with his two kids.

When I was nineteen, Dad, Marcus, and a couple of their other friends took us snorkeling at Wreck Alley.

Majority of us were way too beginner to check out the Ruby E, but Dad’s biker friend Saul had been snorkeling since birth and showed us the pictures he took after he went down.

The Ruby E looks nothing like the fishing boat in front of us.

The photos showed the deck and hull covered in pinks, yellows, and greens from algae, every inch of surface left exposed to the unforgiving elements.

This boat isn’t blanketed in moss.

Streams of green aren’t floating off it or winding around the lines.

The lines of blues and reds painted on the bow and hull look like they could’ve been done in the past year.

It isn’t rusted either.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the boat just went down in the past day.

“What is this place?” I whisper.

It doesn’t feel right to talk here.

Sensing my unease, Ordus draws me closer to him.

I shouldn’t be breathing a little easier with him near, but nothing about this place is natural.

“Fifty years ago, a kraken killed the daughter of a sailor.” His voice is low.

I watch him over my shoulder, listening intently.

“He stole her from the ship and killed her before swimming away.”

My lips part as I shift my attention back to the boat.

Are there dead people in there?

I instinctually move closer to Ordus.

“My mother, the queen—” His mother, the queen ?

Excuse me? “—wasn’t aware of what he had done until that very vessel returned a month later, bringing with it the woman’s mother. A witch. An incredibly powerful one.”

Witches.

Queens. Krakens. I clench my jaw and silently urge him to continue.

“And so started the Witch’s tirade for revenge. She didn’t care who the offending kraken was. In her eyes, all kraken-kind was complicit, all suffering for the crimes of one. She sacrificed her crew, used the energy from their souls to kill my mother and cast a Curse over our territory for all plants to wither and die so krakens will starve to death or succumb to the Waste,” he says, like he’s repeating a story out of a kid’s book, not something he’s lived through.

I stare at the boat.

His story makes sense.

In a way.

It justifies the miles upon miles of desert land we passed.

It explains this eerie place, the lack of vegetation on Ordus’ island.

I believe him.

“My sister was agile.” There’s the first inflection in his tone, a dip that says this isn’t just a story for him.

“She snapped the Witch’s neck, but it was too late. The damage was done. My mother was dead, and our territory cursed. It is why…” He clears his throat.

“Why my kingdom is known as the Dead Lands.”

I’m not sure whether I’m more shocked by the fact that one witch could cause this much destruction, or that Ordus is a fucking king .

“Forever?” I whisper, turning back to face him.

The Earth is already screwed because of human greed.

I’m no scientist, but I’m fairly certain the last thing our world needs is for part of the sea to be uninhabitable for all forms of life.

The full weight of his attention falls on me.

“No. The Curse can be lifted.”

Ordus’ tentacle squeezes my waist. The blues of his irises have darkened into thunderclouds, the glint of sunlight in them a thunderbolt.

The intensity makes me suck in a sharp breath, wanting to turn back around to avoid seeing his gaze.

I wet my dry lips. “How?” Something tells me I don’t want to know.

“By the ruler marrying their destined bride.”

His words slam into me, heavy and suffocating.

Me.

I’m his so-called mate.

How much more destined can it get?

“My brother and sister both married krakens their souls didn’t call to. The Curse remained.”

The dome is running out of oxygen.

I don’t think I can breathe.

Me? Save kraken-kind?

No. No. That’s not me.

He’s got the wrong person.

Being his mate is hard enough to wrap my head around.

Having the fate of his species rest on my shoulders?

The same shoulder that was dislocated the one time I tried protecting myself from Tommy?

The same person who jumps at her own goddamn shadow?

I don’t think so.

Wait.

So this is the real reason why he wants me?

Not because I’m his mate, but out of moral obligation to protect his people?

That stings more than I care to admit.

Does that mean he will force me to…

Panic roars in my veins.

His eyes round in alarm.

“The bride must be willing,” Ordus quickly adds.

“I’m not willing,” I seethe.

Like fuck am I getting married again.

Been there, done that.

Got the T-shirt and bruises to prove it.

I expect Ordus to argue or go on about how he’ll protect me and blah, blah, blah.

His reaction surprises me instead.

“I know.” Nodding solemnly, he says, “I want anything you are willing to give. Even if it’s nothing, I will spend the rest of my life eternally grateful for the chance to be in your presence.”

Heat blossoms in my chest. Why couldn’t he say something that would piss me off?

When he’s all nice and somber, it’s hard for me to villainize him.

I break eye contact and wrap my arms around his neck to resume the position we were in before we stopped.

“I want to leave.”

He says nothing.

Neither do I. I can tell he doesn’t miss I never said I wanted to return to my cabin, because there’s something easy about the way he moves.

The grating silence stretches well beyond the site of the casting.

The tension is palpable.

He shrunk the dome back down so it’s large enough for me to stew alone in my turmoil.

The right thing to do would be to give him my hand and let him pop a ring on it.

But one, who says he’s telling the truth about this whole thing?

And two, I’m not going to do something just because a man wants it.

I need to put myself first.

A few more hours roll by before the landscape shifts, more rock than sand.

A dark wall looms ahead, spreading as far as the eye can see, reaching toward the heavens.

A field of promised death borders the island.

Rugged chunks of spear-shaped stone with sharpened tips protrude from the ground.

A single wave would send a human crashing into it.

I can’t imagine how horrifying it would look at night or during a storm.

Suppressing a shudder, I tighten my weak grasp around Ordus.

At some point, he shifted one of the gallons to his tentacles to keep me upright with his free hand after noticing my slipping grip.

He rubs slow circles over my back, and I glare over his shoulder.

It feels nice. I hate that it feels nice.

Nothing Ordus does should feel nice , but it does.

Too much does.

The stray tentacle that always seems to seek me out feels nice.

The suckers feel nice—especially when they start plucking.

The way his claws brush against my cheek as he tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear feels nice.

The approaching wall of rock snags all my attention.

The gargantuan, round stone stands out against the expanse of sharp edges.

It looks like the “he rose on the third day” type of tomb, minus the sentries.

Some type of inscription has been engraved into the eroded surface of the wall and door.

I gape when the sigils glow piercing blue before the stone painstakingly rolls to the side with an earth-rumbling groan.

Ordus tucks me closer to him, and I let him.

He dives into the tunnel, slowly navigating the pitch-black darkness with what feels like ease.

I use whatever energy I have left to force my muscles to comply and keep my limbs as close to his body as possible—which is nice too.

When was the last time I had my legs wrapped around someone, and they happily held me back?

Nathan Chen when I first started university?

He was an on-again, off-again biology major whose interest in me was purely physical, which was fine by me because I wanted the touch of another person.

Thomas Gallagher was never the cuddly type.

I had foolishly assumed his way of showing me he cared about me was through gifts and quality time.

In hindsight, he was only buying my freedom.

Blue light filters through the darkness, and I blink against the first pass of the glowing algae.

We’re plunged into darkness again before the light grows until it’s near blinding.

The dome pops. Saltwater rushes into my mouth before I break past the surface, gasping for air.

I swing my attention toward the sound of movement.

Vasz perks up into a sitting position and patiently watches as Ordus lowers me to my feet.

My legs wobble from fatigue and overuse, and he catches me before my knees can slam against the hard ground.

He sets me closer to Vasz, deposits my things against another wall, gives me a swift, “I will return soon. Stay,” and he’s off, leaving me in my jail cell for the indeterminate future.

I blink at the space he once occupied.

Before I can begin to question where he’s going in such a rush, Vasz nudges my shoulder then stares down at the coconut skin he’s dropped beside me.

His eyes flick between me and the fruit.

“Thank you,” I say, cautiously patting his head.

“Keep it.” I sigh, pushing the coconut back to him.

“You deserve it.”

Silver lining?

I’ve always wanted a dog.