“Oh yeah,” I breathed. In the hours since we dropped anchor, I’d felt Ryland’s attention on me nearly every time I stood on deck, and I was becoming less convinced Zola’s orders to the crew would hold long enough for me to get off his ship alive.

I jumped, and the cold air whipped around me before I plunged into the water, every muscle in my legs burning with fatigue. Koy came up behind me when I broke the surface and we didn’t speak as we filled up with breath. The milk-white moon hovered above the horizon, where it was rising at a slow, steady pace.

“I thought you said you weren’t Jevali,” he said, breaking the silence between us.

“I’m not,” I spat.

He arched an eyebrow knowingly, a smirk changing the composition of his face. I’d never admit it, but the most honest part of me knew what he meant. Getting back into the dark water after an entire day of diving was insane. It was something a Jevali would do. That’s why I’d known that Koy would come with me.

Whether I liked it or not, there were pieces of me that had been carved by those years on Jeval. It had changed me. In a way, it had made me.

He grinned, reading my thoughts, and gave me a wink before he sank under the surface. In another breath, I followed.

SEVEN

I pulled the mallet through the water and brought it down, hitting the top of the chisel squarely as Koy’s shadow moved over me. I could barely feel the burn in my chest anymore, my mind giving way to a wandering train of thought. Memories strung together in unraveling stitches as my hands worked the sunlit rock in a practiced pattern.

I was diving the salty waters of the Unnamed Sea, but in my mind I was standing barefoot on the hot deck of the Marigold. Auster at the top of the main mast with a cloud of seabirds around him. The threads of gold lighting in Willa’s hair.

West.

Again and again, my mind found its way to him.

It wasn’t until the mallet slipped from my numb fingers that I blinked and the reef came rushing back to me. The blue swallowed up the vision, a twist behind my ribs threatening to pull me to the black. I found one of the iron anchors driven into the reef and held on, pinching my eyes closed. The ping of Koy’s pick down the ridge sharpened my thoughts enough for me to realize I needed air. He stilled, looking up at me over the waving fronds of red coral for only a moment before he got back to work. There was probably nothing Koy would love more than to see me dead on this reef.