opened, letting the cold water pour down my throat.
The rope. It was still tied around my waist. Anchored to the reef below.
I screamed, panicked. The last of my air rippled up in strands of bubbles as my hands raced to the knot, pulling weakly at the tight fibers. When it wouldn’t budge, I reached around my back for my knife. But it was gone. My belt was at the foot of the ridge.
Inky darkness flooded my mind as my chest caved in, my stomach turning. I tried to shift the rope over my hips, but it was no use. Below, a dark head of hair peeked up over the reef, and Koy’s black eyes looked up at me.
Blood trailed up before me in ribbons, floating like threads of smoke, and I suddenly felt lighter. Empty. The ache in my chest disappeared, leaving my insides hollow.
There was only the heartbeat pounding in my ears as I looked down at my leg, cut in a single bloody stripe. The shadow wrapped itself around me, folding my mind within it, and when it came, I let it swallow me whole.
EIGHT
“Breathe!”
The roaring voice tore me from the deep. A sting lit on my cheek and a sound rattled in my throat.
“Breathe!”
My eyes cracked open just enough to see a man’s face before me, darkened in the shadow of the ship’s hull beside us. A face that only pulled the faintest recognition. A deckhand. His gray eyes ran over me, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t draw a breath.
His hand rose up out of the water, lifting into the air, and came down again. He slapped me across the face and my chest exploded in pain as I gasped, swallowing the air and choking on the warm seawater in my mouth. The blurry edges of my vision came together, and the world around me focused, filling me with panic. I leapt for the rope beside me, hooking my arm around it to keep me above the water.
“Get her up!” The deckhand’s voice rang painfully in my ears.
And then I was moving. The crank on the deck of the Luna screeched and clicked, pulling me up with it, and the weight of my body made me slip down the wet rope until I wrapped my legs around its length.
When I looked up, Clove was watching from the quarterdeck, and I blinked when he wavered, the world turning on its side. I coughed until my lungs ached and he came down the steps two at a time, landing on the deck beside me.
“What happened?”
But I couldn’t speak. I fell to my knees, retching the saltwater from my belly until there was nothing left. A pool of warm red crept over the wood slats, touching my hand, and I looked down to my leg, remembering the blood in the water. The gash from the coral was still bleeding.
I sat back heavily, opening the torn skin with my fingers to inspect it. It wasn’t deep enough to see bone, but it needed to be closed. Another wave of nausea washed over me and I fell back onto the hot deck, running my hands through my hair and trying to remember what had just happened.
The crew of the Luna stood around me, staring, but Ryland was nowhere to be seen, probably still cowering on the reef and waiting to find out if I was going to snitch.
Koy came over the railing a moment later, landing with two heavy feet beside the foremast.
“What happened?” Clove said again, taking a step toward him.
But Koy was looking at me, and I put together the question in his eyes. He was playing by the rules of Jeval, waiting to see what I’d say first before he answered.
“I ran out of air,” I said hoarsely. My throat was on fire. “Lost my belt and couldn’t cut myself from the line I anchored to the reef.” I glanced back to Koy.
Clove followed my gaze to him, his mustache twitching. “Who saw it?” He turned in a circle, watching the faces of the other dredgers on the deck. But no one answered.
“What do you care?” I snapped, getting back to my feet. I steadied myself against the mizzen, breathing through the urge to retch again.
The knotted rope was still heavy on my hips, the length of it trailing over the side and disappearing into the water. I pulled, winding it up until the end fell onto the deck, and I crouched to pick it up. The fibers