Koy watched him surface, his face expressionless. “You’re not going to take your eyes off me, are you?” The dark humor bled into the words as he climbed up, and I followed.

I waited for him to step into the air before I sucked in a breath and jumped, crashing into the cold water beside him. The rush of bubbles raced over my skin toward the surface above and my eyes lit with the sting of salt as I turned in a circle, trying to get my bearings. The reef below snaked in a tangled labyrinth, deepening the farther it pulled from the islet in the distance.

Clusters of fish in every color swarmed the crests, catching the light with iridescent scales and rippling fins. The coral was heaped like the domes of an otherworldly palace, some of which I’d never seen before.

We were definitely out of the Narrows now. But the songs of the gemstones were something I knew. They bled together in the water around me and once I began to unravel them from one another, we could get to work.

I broke the surface, sucking in the air and rubbing the salt from my eyes. I could taste it in the back of my throat. “Start on the deeper end of each ridge. We’ll use our strength in the first half of the day and can work the shallower crests in the afternoon. The same tomorrow, so mark your tracks. And watch that south side. It looks like the current wraps around the tip of the reef there.”

Two of the Jevali dredgers answered with a nod and started their breathing, pulling in the air to fill their chests and squeezing it back out. Koy did the same, tying his hair back, and I kicked against the weight of my belt as I worked my lungs.

The familiar stretch behind my ribs, surrounded by the sound of the dredgers’ breath, made me shiver. It was too like my memories of diving the reefs on Jeval and the crippling fear that had followed me in those years.

It wasn’t until I stepped foot on the Marigold that I felt it lift from me.

I slipped my fingers into the neck of my shirt, pulling West’s ring from inside the collar. It sat in the center of my palm, glinting in the sunlight. We were well out of the Narrows, and I could feel the distance like a taut string between me and the Marigold.

I pushed the air from my chest, the amber light of West’s quarters illuminating in the back of my mind. He tasted like rye and sea wind, and the sound that woke in his chest when my fingertips dragged over his ribs made that night come back to life inside of me.