Alexandra Christo

“It’s you.”

My eyes shoot upward. The Prince of Midas stares down at us, horrified and awestricken. His lips tilt a little to the left.

“Look at you,” he whispers. “My monster, come to find me.”

I regard him with as much curiosity as he regards me.

To them, the sea is never the true danger. Even crawling with sirens and sharks and beasts that can devour them whole in seconds. The true danger is people. They are the unpredictable.

“That’s the thing about risks,” Kye says. “It’s impossible to know which ones are worth it until it’s too late.”

I have a plan; the least you can do is have faith.”

“Except that your plans always end in scars.”

“The ladies love them.”

“Not when they’re shaped like bite marks.”

When she turns to me, the first thing I notice are her freckles, shaped like stars. Constellations dotted across her face like the ones I name while the rest of my crew sleeps. Her hair sticks to her cheeks, a deep, dark red. Muted and so close to brown. She looks young – younger than me, maybe – and, inexplicably, when she reaches for me, I allow myself to be pulled into her.

She bites her lip, hard. It’s cracked and furiously pale, just like her skin. There’s something about the action and how wild it looks on her. Something about her ocean eyes and the way she strokes my collar softly. Something familiar and hypnotic.

Human pettiness knows no bounds.

“When the captain comes back up, you’ll get to see something wonderful,” Kye tells me.

“Monsters,” says Madrid, “are not wonderful.”

“Watching them die is pretty wonderful.”

“And why you left.”

“It wasn’t my choice.”

“Why were you out in the middle of the ocean without a ship?”

“I was abandoned.”

“By who?”

I don’t hesitate when I say, “Everyone.”

And the moment it happened was the moment I became the most monstrous of us all. The yearning to please her spread through me like a shadow, fighting against every urge I knew she’d perceive as weakness. Every flash of regret and sympathy that would lead her to believe I was impure.

Abnormal. Defective. And in a blink of an eye, the child I was became the creature I am.

Elian’s stance goes rigid. His knuckles whiten on his hips, and his head tilts ever so slightly back toward the ship. To me. As though he can sense my thoughts. When he turns, it’s slow and meaningful, and it takes a few moments for his eyes to find mine among his crew. He stares, unblinking, and just when I think he’s going to raise his hand and signal for Madrid to shoot me, or for Kye to throw me back into the crystal cave, he smirks. The left side of his mouth tugs upward, and the action, somehow, feels like a dare.