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But could she count on them to protect her as well?

Or would they tear her apart?

There was no postponing this. Gryshen took in a deep gulp, and turned, closing her eyes again as she grabbed her braid and pulled it over her shoulder to reveal the cursed mark.

Gasps of horror would have been better. The stunned silence was oppressive, and offered her no answers to her questions. She let herself open her eyes. She saw Apocay where he had remained as he’d swum behind her to the cave. His eyes wore a kind of resignation.

She asked in return with her own. What do I do? What do I say to them? How do I explain this?

He stared back at her, and his expression did not tell her much of anything, so again she placed her own words in their reflection.

Just go forward. It was a comfort to imagine he had told her this. It allowed her to pretend that the one who knew so much knew something for her, too.

Gryshen held herself up, and, like pulling off a salt wrap, faced them all.

Her eyes swept the group, and it felt as though she were silent for some time, moving her gaze to the bewildered babes heaped around a cluster of rocks inside the cavern mouth, the light of the torches casting a blue glow on the wideness in their eyes. The same glow illuminated the crowd. She couldn’t bear to look at Jode.

Do it.

No one was more shocked. “You’re joking. This is some kind of joke, right?” He leaned in, as if to suggest he’d basically been in on the prank.

“No joke.” She lay the signal out in a low tone.

The pod, with their glittering blue circles of shock, had faded into the background while she and Jode spoke. Only now, a shift in the crowd startled her back to them.

It was ever so slight. The little lights had been going out, one by one, as the stunned expressions of her ilorays began to change. Their wide eyes slid into glares. A handful kept innocent curiosity. Add that to the still startled young, and Gryshen could convince herself that only half of her pod saw her through a new lens of suspicion.

You’ve only begun, Rone, she said to herself, and forward she went.

The crowd moved away, and guards swam in dutifully, holding lanterns in a jagged formation as she made her way toward her chamber, Jode and Apocay close on her tail. Two guards flanked them several spaces before the entrance to her room, where she would part the shell-beaded curtain as she had a thousand times, but this time, as something she could no longer identify.

Jode just stared from the shaman to her, from her to the shaman, waiting for some explanation. But none came. Apocay pressed his bony fingers together in what appeared to be a prayer, and then folded them against his hands. A small crushing sound followed. Apparently, he had been keeping crab legs in his net, and was waiting for the right time to begin gnawing them. And apparently this was his idea of a right time.

Gryshen rolled her eyes. Proceeding to ignore his open-mouthed chews, she turned to her brother.

“We need to prepare for battle. Where’s Bravis?” She suddenly felt strange. How was he not there to greet her? Bravis was always there. He just wouldn’t go away.

“Calming the mob.” Apocay picked flesh out of his teeth with the sharp point of a claw, while he craned one of his ridiculous, ragged ears to listen to murmurs of signal down the hall. “He was in the back when you swam up.”

His words send a little shriek through Gryshen, but she only let it escape as a clearing of the throat.

“Bring him in,” she commanded to no one in particular. As if by power of her words, the waving shells were pulled aside by a long arm.

“I am here.” Suddenly she felt a sense of calm unlike anything she had been living with. It was as if those words were a steadying shoulder to lean against.

“Good.” It sounded like a whooshing note, the beginning or end of a song, and Gryshen was taken aback by her own signal. Go forward, she pressed herself again. “Now, Jode, I need you to redirect that mob’s suspicion into battle-ready discipline . . . where’s Hena? Where is everybody?”

“Hena is on her way back. She was out connecting with a messenger from her tribe so they would be ready for her signal.”

“Signal?” Gryshen asked.

“Are we going to war or what?” Hena swam in, sounding just like Jode, who couldn’t resist a grin.

“We got this, leen,” he said.

“You’re cute, little one.”

“Do you think so?”

His words made her raise her thick brows. Gryshen could have sworn she detected a hint of blush between them, but it was difficult to tell by dark torchlight, with blood and forbidden secrets on the brain.

Gryshen broke through. “Jode, did you hear what I said? I need you to—”

“Grysh, please. What is happening? What is . . . happening to you?” He swam closer to her, moving hesitantly toward the mark, as if it could be contagious.

Hena, briefly distracted by Apocay curling his long tongue to eke out the remaining claw meat from his disgusting food artifact, bulleted over to take a look. “That’s right, Gree! Your function. As if I need to look. We’ll match, of course. I—” Her words cut off like a blade through the water, and she sucked the dark sea into her teeth while she floated stiff as a pillar.

“So . . . that’s what he gave me.” The shaman raised an eyebrow at Gryshen’s weak attempt to somehow pass the blame to him for her cursed X. She looked away from him, and turned to Bravis, still floating quietly at the edge of the room. His face was difficult to make out in the dim light, not that he was particularly expressive any other time. But now, there was something like fresh snow on the island, keeping it soft and silent.

Meanwhile, Hena circled Gryshen, arms folded, once, twice, a third time.

“Well,” she stopped in front of her friend to speak. “Are we really that surprised?”

“What?” asked Jode.

“What?” asked Gryshen.

Apocay snorted. They had all forgotten he was still here. He had finally discarded his treat, and was watching the rest of them with a vague sense of interest.

“No, really, are we?” Hena asked of them.

“Yes,” said Jode.

“Think about it. Not to be harsh, Gree—”

“No, you wouldn’t dare.”

Hena ignored this. “Not to be harsh, but it’s not as if you’ve been dying for the position of chieftainess.”

“Probably because my father had to die to give it to me.”

Hena gave her a warning look. She should listen. After all, Hena was right. Everyone with eyes could see she didn’t want this, and anyone with ears might have heard her complain of her fate long before she knew how soon she would have to take the throne. And now, Hena wasn’t swimming away. It looked as if she was still ready to treat her like a peer, even possibly still a friend. Gryshen waited.

“Furthermore, it’s not as if you’ve shown a real leaning toward any function, in a traditional sense.”

Jode protested. “She’s great with the beasts. Always has been. Her pet responds to her like another animal. She could have been a beastkeeper, like Sodaren.”

“Oh, Jode.” Hena’s tone was more than a little condescending. “When has a chieftain’s child ever worked with the stables?”

Jode mumbled out his signal.

“What was that?” Hena asked.

Jode coughed, whirling water. “When has a chieftain’s child been cursed with X?”

There was nothing anyone could say to this. Gryshen being crossed was, well, unknown territory. It had only been convicts and the supremely insane.