Page 102 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
“Science? Magic? Some of both?” Rake picked up a seashell and hurled it into the surf. Flay noticed the faint shimmer of the scars on his chest as he did it.
“What we’ve been through in the past several years, eh, Goldfish?” he said quietly. “And now look at us—here, in the cities we’re rebuilding. Kiken Island freed and becoming a healthy port of call, a place for trade and rest. Your kind, replenishing their numbers in a healthier way, at peace with humans and caring for the ocean life instead of destroying it. And it all started with you. You, climbing that sea-wall, meeting Kestra.”
But Rake shook his head. He glanced up at Flay, and despite the keen edges of his face and the incisive glitter of his teeth, his expression was soft. “No, it didn’t start with me. It started with you caring enough to reject your father’s business and forge your own path. It started with you caring about the villagers of Kiken Island, braving the hordes of teeth to help them—and don’t say you only did it for theasthore, because we both know that isn’t true. It started with you giving Mai hope, offering to catch her a mermaid to study. And it started with you loving Kestra so much you were willing to give everything up for her people.”
Rake rose from the sand with the fluid grace of a man at home on land or sea. “It started with you, sailing past me on theWind’s Favorwhile I watched from the waves and longed for the kind of freedom I now enjoy.” He clamped a hand on Flay’s shoulder. “It all started with you.”
He picked up a coat from a nearby rock—a high-collared, spacious coat of fine dark leather, one Flay and Kestra had brought to him a few years ago. Rake slung the coat around his body, and it billowed in the breeze as he walked away.
Flay sat alone on the rock, while the salt-fresh wind tossed his hair. He heard voices, distant, approaching across the strip of beach—beloved voices. Family. Friends.
The last splinter of old pain in his heart dissolved.
He took a handful of broken shells from the sand, and he stood up, and he flung them across the darkening water. Under his breath he spoke words he had heard on Kiken Island—words of farewell to the old family who had rejected him. Words of devotion to the new family who embraced all that he was, and everything he would be.
“Eyes be salt and body be sand, but soul be the breeze that flies to the land.”
