I know I should call Mom and Dad immediately, but I can’t leave her side when she’s like this. “It’s gonna be okay, girl,” I call out to her. It’s a lie.

“Miss Leung!” A deckhand stumbles out onto the trainer deck, his uniform askew. “Carriel wants to know what’s going on.”

My lips struggle to find words that aren’t there. Nothing in my training has prepared me for this. This voyage was supposed to be effortless. Easy. And now Durga is dying, and I can’t do anything to stop it. “I … ” I start, but can’t finish. She’s hurting so much. The water that surrounds her is clouded with blood, and I don’t have the tools to put her out of her misery.

The ship’s all-call crackles on. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Carriel says, a slight tremor in his gravely voice.

No.

“Our radar has picked up a pirate vessel heading our way.”

Not now.

“We ask that you please stay calm and remain inside your cabins until an all-clear is given. Locks will be engaging on the doors in five minutes.”

Any time but now.

“In the meantime, the ship’s companion will see to the threat.”

A chill starts at the base of my spine and works its way up until I feel like my brain’s been plunged into ice water. Durga can’t fight. Not like this. I spin, running my hands through my hair as I scan the trainer deck for something, anything to end her suffering. But Reckoners were made to be nigh impossible to kill, and there’s no humane way of ending the life of a beast this size.

I’m suddenly acutely aware of the pill in the collar of my wetsuit.

When I turn back to Durga, they’re on the horizon.

The boat comes screaming in from the East, the rising sun at its back as it swings wide around the Nereid. It carves the water like a butcher’s knife and looks like it’s been cobbled together from bits of yachts and warships, the unholy bastard of some pirate colony junkyard. Its upper decks bristle with weaponry.

I’ve let everyone on this boat down. Without Durga, we’re dead in the water against this sort of artillery. We’ll be boarded, looted, and killed, and it’s all my fault.

Which is what I’m still stuck on when Durga wheels, swinging her snout toward the pirate ship. Her blowholes flare, her tail thrashes, and she launches herself toward the boat, the sea churning around her.

Shit.