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Chapter 5
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Three Days Until I Become Foam Chapter 9
They held the trial at Grayhaven's old dry dock, where I could come and go as I pleased. The survivors of White Reef waited in the channel, and the human captains sat along the bank beneath the harbor charter signed by the first pirates.Ronan had once told me that, under that charter, a captain couldn't treat his crew as cargo. This time, Evelyn had the clerk extend that protection to merfolk.Locke and his daughter were brought to the long table. The mortar containing broken tidehearts, the pigment records, the sale lists were laid before them one by one. Meg identified the names. Sailors rescued from the warehouse identified Locke's buyers. The doctor opened his medicine chest in front of everyone and produced the recipe Vivian had given him herself.She stared at Ronan. He sat among the accused, his left arm in a sling, old blood still on his clothes. After a long time, she began to cry. “You promised you'd protect me and our baby.”He looked up. “Our daughter will grow up safe. Th
Three Days Until I Become Foam Chapter 8
As I approached the Salt Crow, I heard a child crying. The sound was faint, coming from below the waterline. I followed the hull until I found the wooden plug. I'd barely eased it out when metal scraped my skin. Locke had added another layer of mesh behind the intake. Shed mermaid scales clung to the wire. Someone had already tried to escape this way.I put my face to the opening and told everyone inside to move back. A girl so thin I could count her bones swam up. She saw the silver light in my chest and covered her mouth. “Princess Lila,” she whispered, then turned to push the younger children away from the grate.I wedged the wooden plug under a rusted fastening at the edge of the mesh. It took several tries before it gave, tearing the skin over my wrist as the gap opened. The girl reached for my hand. I shook my head and gestured for her to send the children first.One small tail squeezed through, then a second, then a third. They drifted, then seemed to remember how to swim. The W
Three Days Until I Become Foam Chapter 7
The next day, I took Noah home to White Reef. All that remained of our home was coral sheared off by cannon fire. The survivors hid in crevices. When they recognized me, they drew their children behind them before coming any closer.One woman saw the tidehearts in my hands and swam toward me. Her husband was among the six. I'd expected them to ask why I'd brought back so few, but she only took his pearl, touched her forehead to mine, and asked if I was still in pain. I nearly lost my grip on Noah.We laid him in the reef hollow where our mother used to plant anemones. There was no tideheart for the current to wake. All I could do was close the entrance with stones so the little fish couldn't pick at his wounds. I'd never be able to take him to the candy shops now.I put the three pieces of sea glass beside him. He'd spent so long saving them. He should get to keep them.When I came out, I gave the six tidehearts to my people. The woman holding her husband took me to a warm current they
Three Days Until I Become Foam Chapter 6
There were three pieces of sea glass in Noah's pocket. As I straightened his clothes, they slipped through a tear in the fabric and rolled together with a soft clink. He'd always said he was saving treasure for my wedding.He must have handled them so often that their edges had worn smooth. I closed my fingers around them and kept my other hand against his forehead. For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to move it.Gareth told me they'd found Noah in Locke's warehouse, piled with the bodies left over from making paint. I pulled the sailcloth higher over my brother's chest. “Were any of them alive?”“Some. We've taken the survivors off the Black Sail.” He set an old sharkskin case in front of me. Six tidehearts remained inside. Their light was weak, but it hadn't gone out.I reached toward them. The pearl nearest the edge brightened a little at my touch. I remembered its owner. She'd taught Noah how to hold a sea urchin on his tail without pricking his hands. I bent over my brother a
Three Days Until I Become Foam Chapter 5
“Don't move.” Ronan's voice was beside my ear. He wrapped his coat around me, but his hand passed through my shoulder and struck the wall. I felt no pain. I only heard him suck in a breath before pulling the coat tighter. “Lila, look at me. Where's the medicine? Get the tide elixir!”A bottle touched my lips, and I flinched away on instinct. The medicine spilled down my neck, passed through the skin that was disappearing, and dripped into my clothes. Evelyn knocked the bottle out of his hand. “That isn't what she needs!” She caught my ankle and held the chain up in front of him, the iron worn deep into my flesh. “I asked you to take care of her. Is this how you did it?”Ronan kept saying my name. Gareth pushed him aside and knelt beside me. He fitted the key into the shackle and turned it. The clasp opened with a small click. I'd waited three years to hear that sound.My ankle felt so strangely light that I reached for the weight that wasn't there anymore. Gareth lifted me and carried
Three Days Until I Become Foam Chapter 4
She pulled back another tarpaulin. The boy in the glass tank lifted his head and pressed his small palms against the pane. “Lila!”It was my ten-year-old brother, Noah. When I'd left White Reef three years ago, he still hadn't learned to fold his tail into legs. I'd promised that when the next Blue Tide came, I'd take him to see the candy shops by the harbor. Now hunting hooks pinned his tail to the bottom of a tank, and his blood had turned the water pink. “Take me home, Lila.”I threw myself toward him, but someone stepped on my chain from behind. Vivian laughed. “Your brother? Well, that saves us looking any further.”Two sailors lifted him out. He was too little to put up much of a fight. When they pinned him to the table, his tail kept searching for water. I dropped to my knees in front of Vivian and caught her knife hand. “Take mine. I won't fight you. You can have all the blood and scales you want. Please, just leave him alone.”She looked down at me and stroked her belly. “But
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