Page 55 of Voice of the Ocean

How unfortunate that all of them happened to her within a week.

Her body still felt the echoes of waves crashing and rolling against her from earlier in the day. Sleep remained fickle, evading her. So she lay in the dark, letting the minutes pass with only her thoughts for company. A part of her wished she had stayed with Raiden in his room. A part of her wished she had stabbed him. And a part of her wished she had never gone into his room at all. It took a night like tonight for Celeste to wish she had a hammock with everyone else. At least there she could be listening to Oakes’s snores that the others loved to complain about, instead of her thoughts swimming around. They circled like predators, ready to devour her whole.

Every night as a human felt like this. She’d get in bed, bone-tired, and then spend her night slipping between torturous thoughts and horrible nightmares. Sometimes she avoided sleep, as if she were afraid of it. And every time she closed her eyes and began to drift off, she’d remember her mother’s face, or the fight with the Chorus, and her mind was off again, racing down familiar paths.

She missed home.

The tears came quickly, overwhelming her until she was shaking with them. She was trapped in a body that wasn’t her own, upon a ship that was sailing toward its doom, surrounded by the very creatures her kingdom feared most. She couldn’t even protect herself! At least in the water she was a competent fighter, if not the best. Now she was voiceless. Hopeless. It was a miracle she survived the fight today given how many times that sword fell from her hands.

It was a miracle Raiden survived.

He shouldn’t have.

It would have been so easy. To let him drown. She wished she knew why she had done it. Why she continued to stay her hand. She only had tolet him die. And even at this she managed to fail. They had been aboard this vessel for days, and she had very little to show for it. There wasn’t anything more to find. She knew this in her gut. These were pirates working for a king who desired untold riches found on a remote island. This feigned investigation was a ruse. A flimsy attempt to delay the inevitable. She didn’t want to kill him. Not really. But if she refused, she’d never be able to return home. Could never return to the sea for fear of being tracked down and killed for her crimes.

A sob escaped her throat. She missed her family. She missed being a siren and knowing with certainty what her future held. She missed following orders she understood and trusting someone else to tell her what to do. She missed Maeve. She even missed Shye.But what she missed most was herself. In Staria, she was a princess. A siren. A daughter. A sister. A soldier. She had a future. But her stars were no longer aligned. And it was all her fault.

If she had been more like Kiyami, she’d never be in this situation. Kiyami was every bit the hero in those stories Celeste had been told her entire life. Strong, but not only in the physical sense. A girl who was straightforward and knew why she was here, what she wanted. A girl who would do anything for her family. Everything Celeste was not. And Kiyami being thoughtful enough to ask if Celeste was okay was salt in the wound. As if Celeste needed the reminder of what she was.Betrayer... weakling... Her sobs grew louder. She shoved her face into her pillow to muffle the noise. The life she had was gone. Nothing remained of the siren she once was.

A scratching sound came from the bottom of the door, near Celeste’s head. It was late, well past midnight. No one would be up except the night crew. The scratch came again, more insistent this time. Celeste rubbed her eyes with her fists, a half-hearted attempt to hide all evidence of her emotional state. She stretched her arm above her head, cracking open the door without getting up. A wet nose pressed its way into her room.

“Hello,” Celeste whispered in common with a watery smile. The very act of speaking felt like a soothing balm. Even if it was to an animal. Her voice cracked from lack of use, but she felt herself beaming. The first word she had ever spoken in the human tongue.

The Admiral wagged his tail.

“Inside?” she whispered, cracking the door open wider.

The dog’s tail beat back and forth as it trotted into the room, which felt smaller with the added presence. Even so, it found a place between Celeste’s hip and the wall to curl up. Its head rested once more against her thigh. She closed the door with a soft click and rested her hand on its back, stroking down its curling fur. It was funny to think that last week she watched this dog yip and dance around the deck of a different ship. The creature looked so strange to her then. Now it pressed against her, belly rising and falling in even breaths.

“You did not find me on your own, did you?” she asked.

The dog’s back leg twitched.

Celeste remembered shutting the door behind her as she left. And Raiden always locked his door. The Admiral was a clever boy, but he couldn’t work a doorknob. Raiden clearly hadn’t believed she didn’t want company. But she wasn’t annoyed. Her hand found the wall between their rooms, her fingers brushing the grooved wood. She considered knocking on the wall. A little signal to let him know she knew what he had done. But instead she let it rest there.

After a moment, she took her hand away. She laid her head back onto the pillow. The Admiral adjusted to fit the curve of her hip. And for the first time since she had become human, Celeste fell into an easy sleep.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Celeste awoke to the Admiral staring down at her, wet tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“Good morning,” she whispered with a sleepy smile.

The Admiral bounced up and down. Light poured over everything in the room. She wondered why Bastian had not come to knock on her door and tell her to get up as he normally did. But she guessed he had let her sleep in after the events of yesterday.Great, she thought. Growing up as a princess in the palace, everyone treated her as this fragile little thing. Being on this ship was the first time she was simply Celeste and nothing more. But apparently, after her performance the night before, that had ended.

She cracked open the door for the Admiral. He bounded out, barking to let everyone on the ship know he was coming. She got ready quickly. Today she chose black pants, a white blouse with a black corset, and boots that rose over her knees. Across her hips, she wore the belt that Torben had given her, the sword tapping at her side. He had yet to ask for it back, and she had a feeling he wouldn’t. Torben had plenty of new toys from their raid of the cargo ship to occupy himself with. Next, she braided her hair away from her face, as her sister Sephone had taught her when she was young.

The sun was not as high as she had expected, but it was clear the rest of the crew had been up for an hour or two. Their captain was nowhere to be seen. The fact came as a surprise, although she knew full well he’d be resting. It was as if she’d grown accustomed to seeing him each day, and his absence felt like taking an extra step when there wasn’t a stair.

Kiyami waved from her place at the wheel.

“Good morning, Celeste! You look well,” she said with a warm smile. Kiyami wore her long, dark hair slicked back and secured at the base of her neck. She, too, wore pants, although hers were made of black fabric with a subtle floral pattern on it. Her top was dark blue, with one side wrapped over the other and secured at her hip. It was trimmed in gray, and it, too, bore a subtle but intricate pattern. The golden hilt of her shining cutlass bobbed against her hip.

Celeste returned the wave and strode up the stairs to meet her. When they were close, she pointed toward the sword at her own hip and to Kiyami.

“Your sword and me?”

She tried again, pointing to Kiyami’s sword, then to Kiyami, and then to her own sword and herself.

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