The Sea Siren

Chapter Fifty-Five

Vivian

"Please."

I hear his voice. It calls me from the endless, utterly calm darkness.

"Please, baby."

He's begging.

But you're tired.

It's easier this way... You don't need to fight here.

"Please."

I hear him sob. A strangled, defeated sound.

But he's not here...

I feel my heart beat, once in a rush and then over and over again, my conscious easing from the blanket of darkness back into the light, back into his hands.

I hear my voice before I can see and it's calling his name. "Antony."

"I'm here... I'm here."

His voice is everything comforting... all at once.

So comforting I'm sure I never made it back.

"I'm dead?"

His answer is weary but I can almost hear a smile. "No."

Last I remember, I was drinking in water, unable to stop. My brain shut down before my body did. His hands, desperately drawing me to him against the panic, was my last memory. I felt death. I must have. "How?"

His chest is crashing down against my side, his breaths ragged and short. "I told you... I told you I wouldn't let you die."

I wanted to die.

I had reached a steady calmness at the thought of it... so why do I feel whole, complete warmth at those words? As the torrid of hastily spoken confessions we shared at the brink of death reacquaint my mind?

He told you he loved you.

My eyes flutter open finally. The harsh smoke I inhaled still burns as I blink, adjusting to the dim light. The world smells of war. Gunpowder. Burnt timber. The ashes rain down upon us like fresh snow, carried by the billowing wind.

I can also smell a storm. It brews beyond the mass of smoke.

His fingers violently shake against my cheek as he guides my face towards his. He was already pale when he set on me in that forest, but he's like a ghost now. His eyes bloodshot, teary... remorseful. The guilt I find in them makes me remember it all.

The horrifying truth of it.

With difficulty, I push onto my elbows.

"Careful," he whispers, his hand against my stomach. He's shifts as I do, so that I may stare out into the ocean... finding that my ship—my home—is truly gone. My crew inevitably captured by now.

Tears spring into my eyes, my chest constricting.

What have I done?

What have we done?

Shell-shocked, I shake my head, trying to reckon myself with the reality.

I am no longer a captain.

I was supposed to sink with her... and yet, here I am.

"Viv... Vivian."

My body doesn't move when I tell it to, frozen from the brink of death leaving me. I can only drop my head down, letting the defeat seep in deep—a cutting loss worse than death. I let him hear my sorrow as it comes upon me in a rush. As it caves in my chest, the horror that has been my life.