‘Grieving …’ Dev sounds like he’s trying to remember the word. ‘Have you really forgiven the ship?’
‘I’m working on it,’ I say, which is the truth. Dev and the Nautilus deserve nothing less. With my eyes still locked on my brother, I give the ship a command I’ve been avoiding since I first stepped on board. ‘Nautilus, take us to the bottom of the lagoon, please. Show us the gardens.’
Immediately, the engines hum. The moorings retract. Water laps over the great windows as we submerge.
We sink slowly, almost reverently, into the dark centre of the old volcano.
‘What are the gardens?’ Dev asks warily.
‘We’ll see,’ I tell him.
I walk to the prow and stare out of the windows. After some hesitation, Dev joins me.
We watch in silence until the Nautilus comes to a stop, hovering in the deep. She switches on her forward lights. Before us stretches a seascape of a thousand different marine plants: orchards of kelp that ripple orange in the submarine’s light, thick fields of purple moss, rows of bright-green sea-grape bushes. Some of the plants seem to be there only for decoration, dotted with strange flowers that could be anemones, or orchids, or something from another planet, blooming in shades of violet and red.
Dev swallows. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘The gardens are where our parents found the Nautilus,’ I say. ‘It’s also where Luca and Ophelia scattered the ashes of the dead. Prince Dakkar is here. Mom and Dad, too.’ I look at my brother. ‘We never got to say goodbye properly. I thought you might want to. I know I do.’
The trembling becomes too much for him. He falls to his knees. He begins to shake and cry, letting out years of anger and sorrow. I hope he’s letting out some of his bitterness, too. I remember a little boy dancing through the botanical gardens with his sparkler on a summer evening. I remember my parents sitting together, looking out contentedly over the sunflowers and baby blue eyes.
I can’t trust Dev. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to, but I do love him. He’s still my brother. Maybe he can start to realize what he has done, and how far he needs to climb to come back to me. I have to be strong for him, as I was for my crew. I stand over him as he cries, and I watch the flowers of the sea changing colour in the light of the Nautilus.
I say goodbye to my mother and father.
I say a prayer for my brother, and for the future. I will not give up on either of them.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank my advance readers for their help with this book: Roshani Chokshi, author of the bestselling Aru Shah quintet; sensitivity readers Riddhi Kamal Parekh and Lizzie Huxley-Jones; and Dr Robert Ballard, a retired United States Navy officer and professor of oceanography who is now a full-time deep-sea explorer. If you want to read about his amazing real-life underwater adventures, check out his book Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found the Titanic.