My eyes shoot open.
I blink several times before I can make sense of what I’m seeing. Light threading down from above. Thick shapes hovering above me. A large void spread out in front of me: darkness in every direction as far as I can see. Which admittedly isn’t that far.
I try to stand, to move my fingers. Pinch myself awake.
But then I realize I’m restrained.
I look down, my head moving more sluggishly than usual. Some sort of iron weight rests on the ground, dirt flecks stirring when it shifts. My arms are bound in front of me at the wrists, and as I try to free myself, to thrash, bubbles drift upward.
Bubbles?
The realization sends my pulse hammering away at lightning-fast speeds.
I’m underwater.
I’ve been underwater for stars’ know how long, and yet I’ve been breathing just normally. Or at least I was before I realized my predicament.
Now my lungs have increased their pace.
This is a horrible nightmare.
Except …
That heat within me, the numbness to temperature in my limbs. That all really happened, didn’t it? Some frozen, sleeping man did something to me. The faint taste of bile still sits on my tongue.
I don’t know what’s real and what’s not at the moment, but I know one thing. Regardless of whether or not I’m dreaming, I do not want to be down here.
I lift my head, realize the floating blocks above me are ice. I’m still in the frozen northeast. The water should freeze my limbs into immobility, yet I cannot feel it.
But my cheek still stings from where the man cut me on his spearpoint.
Right after I came out of that ice tomb with Kearan.
Kearan.
They’ve taken him or killed him.
And that thought, while it once would have not made a difference to me—now I feel incensed.
That is a member of my crew. He is no one’s for the taking. Not while I’m still alive.
I need to get out of here.
My cutlass is gone, of course. So are a good majority of my knives. But surely, I had far too many on me for those men to find them all.
I slip my fingers into my boots, only to come up empty. I try for pockets in my clothing, but the water has made the fabric stiffen, and it’s hard to reach inside my coat with my hands bound. I hear something move behind me, and I go very still.
Sound travels faster underwater, doesn’t it? It could be something very far away, I reason.
You can’t be afraid of the dark when you’re the monster lurking in the shadows.
That’s always been true on land. But underwater?
Believe it.
I have to.
I am the deadliest thing in this ocean. I will not let panic consume me. I have nothing to fear in death.
Except, Alosa gave me a job to do. I have not yet done it. I cannot die before I save those girls.
I try to bend my arms and legs. The ropes are too tight at my wrists. My legs have little sway from the weight of iron bound to them. Thinking to pick up the iron and take it with me, I reach for it, but it’s far too heavy to budge.
I search the seabed, looking for something sharp, but there is nothing in sight save a bit of seagrass.
I have to find a knife.
Bending myself in half, I try to feel for where one single weapon could be. Those men couldn’t have found them all. I own fifteen knives, damn it.
And then, at my side, I feel the pressure of steel digging into my skin. I twist my arms, trying to reach for it, fingers scratching against my clothing. Eventually, the tip of one finger presses against steel, the pommel of the dagger. I try to grasp the edge with my fingernail, but I always keep them short and can’t get a grip.
A fish half my size swims in front of me, and I nearly scream from the surprise of it. With the scant light, it looks brown with no remarkable features, save its sheer size. It circles me once curiously before moving on.
I try again for the knife, twisting until my muscles burn and my fingers cramp. But finally, my fingers pinch at the hilt, and I pull it free.
Another ten minutes and I have my hands free of the ropes. In just two more, I have my feet free of the iron weight. I push for the surface, swimming fast as I kick my legs.
When my head breaches, I gasp in a hard gulp of air, despite not needing the extra burst of oxygen. My stomach sinks as I look ahead, seeing nothing but endless ocean on the horizon.
When I turn, I feel sick because there is still nothing. I’m in the middle of nowhere. With nothing. Just emptiness above and beneath me.
This is a nightmare.
Except it’s not.
I know it’s not. Because I am fully alert, fully aware of myself. I may be different, but I am present. No dream is this real.
Across the horizon, the sun is close to setting. I’ve never been afraid of the dark before, but it’s never been combined with the void of an ocean beneath me. It is so very quiet except for the softly moving water breaking against my skin.
I want to scream. I want to look down, for fear of what else could be below me. I’d estimate that a good thirty feet of water waits between me and the ocean bottom.
I am not afraid.
I will not be afraid.
I am what people fear.
And then I see it. Far, far in the distance to my right. A stripe of green.
Land.
Those bastards sailed me out here, dumped my unconscious body overboard. What had they said? Something about putting me where he couldn’t find me? Well, I’m going to find him. I’m going to find them. They’re all going to pay.
For there is nothing I excel at more than vengeance.
I start to swim. One arm in front of the other, kicking my feet behind me. I push my limbs as fast as they will go, swimming as though something were chasing me.
After what feels like an hour but is surely no more than fifteen minutes, my limbs are too tired to move any farther. Too limp to even hold me up. I start to sink below the ocean’s surface. And somehow, I’m still breathing as though oxygen were flowing into my lungs normally.
It feels wrong. I’m wrong. Threydan did something to me, and he needs to fix it.
I focus on nothing but breathing as I hover in the space between air and seabed, waiting for my limbs to regain their strength.
Then I swim for the surface, find land once more, and start the process all over again.
IT IS VERY, VERY late when I finally drag myself onto frozen, snow-covered ground.
I flip onto my back and stare up at the sky. Only a few stars poke between the cloud cover, but their presence is a welcome sight. Little pinpricks of light after I just spent hours hovering in the gloom of the open ocean.
I must fall asleep like that, for when I wake, my limbs feel sore and stiff from the hours of swimming. The sun is well overhead, not that it’s done much good for the landscape here.
When I try to stand, I find that I cannot move. Cannot so much as sit up.
I yank on my right arm, hear some sort of crack, and then finally feel the tension release. When I look to my arm, I note that it is covered in ice.
I’m frozen to the ground.
I should be dead three times over by now. From the water, from the cold, from the night exposed to the elements.
Yet here I am. Breathing, heart pounding, muscles sore.
Numb to everything except that sting on my cheek.
My left arm comes free next, then my legs. I have to wiggle in place for a couple of minutes before my back finally breaks free from the ground. I pat at myself as I stand, ensuring all my clothing is where it should be. The dagger I used to cut myself free is frozen into my clothing. Useless at the moment.