It had been weeks since the wreck. Weeks since blood had clouded the sea and the wind had howled like a god enraged. Time had softened the screaming edges, but the bruises remained—in skin, in memory.

  The cove was a cradle of stone, quiet except for the breathing of waves and the crackle of fire. Smoke rose in lazy spirals as Lark crouched near the flames, half-dozing with his bad leg stretched out in front of him. The bandages had been changed just hours earlier, sea-salve pressed into the cuts like balm and salt. Azalea’s work.

  She sat nearby, knees drawn to her chest, watching the horizon through a curtain of white hair. Her silver eyes flicked to him every now and then—checking his breathing, his fidgeting hands, the way he winced at the occasional cramps. She’d spent more time above water than below in the last weeks, enough that her hair thickened. She occasionally braided it into cascading rows down her back.

  “Still hurts?” she asked.

  He grunted in response. “Only when I breathe. Or move. Or think too hard.”

  Azalea gave a soft, sardonic huff. “So just always, then.”

  They lapsed into silence, the fire popping between them. Her hair shimmered in the firelight like sea glass, damp strands sticking to her cheeks. His eyes lingered longer than he meant them to.

  “You drag me from the mouth of death and then decide to glare at me for a month. I think I’ve earned at least one compliment,” he said, shifting his weight.

  Azalea snorted. “You were heavier than I thought. That’s all I’ll offer.”

  But her voice had softened. Not love—no, but the ache of something in-between.

  For a while, their days were stitched with quiet necessities. Azalea taught him how to wrap the seaweed bundles tight enough to stop bleeding but not suffocate the wound. Lark, stubborn and grumbling, insisted on using a driftwood crutch after only five days.

  Sometimes, at night, he’d wake gasping. Eyes wild, throat hoarse. Azalea never said anything, just moved closer to the fire. To him. One night, after dragging a bloated corpse out past the reef, she returned to find him curled in the shallows, knees to his chest, sobbing. She said nothing, just sat beside him until dawn.

  It was on one such morning—pale mist curling around the rocks—that Lark saw it.

  He’d wandered down the tide line, limping slightly, a half-rotten rope slung over one shoulder and an old belt from a drowned sailor’s waist looped twice around his wrist. The shipwreck had coughed up more than bodies over the last few days—crates of soaked spice, tangled nets, broken blades. He was scouring the beach for anything not covered in salt or fish guts when the water changed.

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  Still. Too still. And then, a ripple.

  The curve of something huge, just beneath the surface—slick, dark, and glinting. A fin. Then another. It circled once, sending seabirds into the air in a squawking frenzy, before vanishing beneath the foam.

  Lark didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. Azalea was behind him, eyes narrow, tension in her shoulders like pulled string.

  “You saw it?” she asked.

  “Big. Fast. That was no fish.”

  “It’s a Vireth’ilk,” she said. “What you might call a tidalrook. Young one, probably smelled the rot.”

  “Tidalrook,” he repeated. “Sea serpent?”

  “Yes. Finned, armored. The older ones sing like us to lure prey. The young ones—just teeth. They were once our counterparts.”

  He tilted his head, eyes scanning the surface.

  “Counterparts? like—mounts?.”

  Azalea blinked, she could see the lightbulb practically forming over his head. She shook her head. “No.”

  “Come on, Az. That could be my ticket out of here!”

  “You’re half-healed and can’t swim. That thing would bite you in half before you even got near it.”

  “I just need to gain it’s trust. Bond—right?”

  “Foolish human.” Azalea didn’t dignify him with a solid answer.

  And he grinned, which was probably the worst thing he could have done.

  That night, she caught him dragging fish guts in a rope-net to the far rocks.

  The night after, he was closer to the waterline, wrist deep in a puddle of bait.

  Azalea didn’t stop him. She just sat on the stone, arms crossed, scarred tail twitching irritably. She dragged him out twice—once by his belt, once by his ear—when the creature surfaced too fast and sent him skidding across the wet stone.

  “Your bones will be sea scrap,” she warned.

  “I’m earning its trust.”

  “You’re annoying it.”

  “Same difference.”

  It went on for days. Lark’s injuries slowly mended, and with each step he took, so did his determination. He watched the tidalrook from afar—how it rose, spiraled, dove. How it sniffed the fish but refused to eat from too close. He sang to it, low and wordless.

  Azalea never helped. But she never left, either.

  The breaking point came at dawn on the twelfth day, when he finally lured it close enough to touch its neck. Just once.

  Then, Lark scrambled onto the creature’s back as it thrashed in the shallow surf, cold saltwater stinging his eyes and soaking his clothes. He hooked one leg over the ridge of its spine and flung himself forward, sliding wetly along the slick, muscular length of its neck.

  His arms clamped around its head just behind the jawline, one forearm bracing beneath the gill-slit while the other wrapped over the top of its skull, fingers scrabbling for purchase in the velvety cartilage of its ears. The beast let out a furious, gurgling shriek, nearly unseating him.

  Gritting his teeth, Lark jammed his knee behind its pectoral fin for leverage, heart hammering. With trembling hands, he looped the salt-stiff rope over the snout, wedging it between the creature’s clamped jaws.

  He yanked the rope tight, pulled it up behind the ears like a makeshift halter, and tied a knot he’d learned from Gus’s tack—one-handed, fast, and brutal. The coarse rope bit into his palm as he cinched it, anchoring it behind the cranial ridge. The creature bucked again, sending him crashing beneath the waves, nearly crushing him.

  Later, him and Azalea sat side by side on the beach. Lark was soaked and scraped, coughing out saltwater and laughing like a madman. His hands burned with the stinging singe of rope burn. But their freedom had never been so close.

  The tidalrook writhed in the shallows, mouth clamped shut, body tethered by six knots of rope and a jury-rigged harness made of netting and luck. It shrieked in a way that wasn’t a scream, it was deep and guttural.

  “You are insane,” Azalea hissed.

  “I’m resourceful,” Lark countered, spitting blood.

  “You’re lucky I don’t let it eat you.”

  “You like me too much.”

  She didn’t answer. Just looked out at the sea, braided hair whipping behind her.

  The tidalrook flailed again, crashing against the sandy shallow.

  Lark leaned back with a groan. “You think he’ll like me eventually?”

  “No.”

  “Fair.”

  She didn’t leave his side. Not when the creature thrashed for hours. Not when Lark fell asleep with his hand still buried in the cool sand. She just sat there, silver-eyed and silent, until the morning sun bled over the waves.