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We could get married and spend our days walking hand in hand on the beach. I could help her with her duties to free up more time for sailing.
It would be so nice to have a real life with her instead of a handful of stolen moments, waking up in her arms every morning after long nights of exploring each other’s bodies.
Cosette taps her nails on the bottle, calling me back from my fantasy.
That’s all this is, I remind myself as I watch bubbles burst in the liquid. A fantasy the sea witch is trying to sell to me.
She must have a reason for it. Otherwise she wouldn’t have a potion ready.
“Your sailor doesn’t have too much time for you to make up your mind,” she says. “What do you think?”
A damp tendril streaks moisture across my scales. I try not to look at the tentacle wrapped around Cosette’s exposed ankle as it creeps past her hem to wriggle against my fin. “No, thank you.”
She tilts her head. “Oh?”
I set my jaw.
I’m the one who heard the song that beckoned me into the Sunken City. There’s a reason I was chosen to revive the Order of the Undine. That is my responsibility. “Bringing her back would be enough for me.”
“If you say so,” she says and presses her hand to the sailor’s forehead, murmuring a low incantation under her breath. I don’t notice how hard I’m pressing my fingers into the sediment until my love’s ribs rise again.
“That should do it.” Cosette pushes to her feet, her tentacle retreating up her leg as her dress falls past her ankles. “She should be waking up at any moment. I expect she’ll have a terrible headache.”
Shaking shell fragments from my hand, I prop myself up on a forearm and touch my sailor’s face to memorize the shape of her lips and the thin scar on her right cheek.
“I hope you find a woman who loves the sea as much as you do. I hope you get to go on so many adventures,” I whisper and kiss her eyelids.
“Ring the bells and fetch the healer,” a woman shouts from the bank. “Someone’s washed up on the beach.”
The stretch of land above is empty. There’s no sign of the sea witch or her horse. They’ve both vanished.
Lanterns cast yellow stripes of light on the cove as men run through the thick patch of shrubs above, their boots crushing small purple flowers to keep up with the woman racing toward us. She lifts her pale green skirts to move faster, pushing coils of red hair away from her face. A patch is strapped over her left eye, but her right one is uncovered. It lands on me as she turns her head.
“I have to go now,” I tell my sailor. “Please be happy.”
She cracks her blue eyes open. “Huh?”
She groans, pure confusion contorting her face as she looks up at me. But there’s no time to explain anything, and it wouldn’t help anyway.
It’s clear that she doesn’t recognize me.
Maybe it’s better this way. I can take comfort in knowing she won’t feel the pain of our separation, even if my mind doesn’t want to accept that there’ll be a blank space where I used to be.
“She’s ok,” Zephyr says as the commotion grows louder on the beach. “Get out of here now.”
Gathering my strength, I heave myself back into the sea and swim down to the Sunken City. I welcome the weight of the water pressing in on me.
I finally make it back to the temple and slide down into the curve of a bench below the altar, the events of the evening flooding my head as I sit in the dark silence.
Tomorrow will be better. I’ll throw myself into my work once I complete the Full Moon ritual.
I know I made the right decision, but for now, I’ll let myself grieve what might’ve been if I’d taken Cosette up on her bargain. A mournful song pours through me, and I press my mouth into the stone to muffle the sound waves wracking my body.
Zephyr’s energy glows around me and spreads down from the crook of my neck like a hand on my upper back. “Cordelia.”
I lift my head, embarrassed. This feeling is awful enough without a witness. “Please just let me be.”
I flip onto my back and wait for them to make a quip or start humming a song they picked up in some tavern, but they don’t say anything.
