I hate that my broken shards have splintered too many times so there is no longer any part of me that I recognize.

I hate that his hands don’t hurt, because then it would make it easier to hate him.

“Plagues, humans, and krakens alike have tried killing me since the day I was born. You are my only purpose. I give you my word. No harm will reach you.” He nudges the bag against my hand. “Take it and bring what you want, or I will choose for you.”

I swipe the tears from my cheeks. “Stop telling me what to⁠—”

He cuts me off, gripping my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Cindi, listen to me. No one can reach you on the island. There is only you, me, and Vasz. Whoever it is you are running from will not reach you there. So take the bag and let me take care of you.”

My gaze lands on the black sack.

I mean, he’s right, isn’t he? How will anyone know to look on an island in the middle of nowhere? No one would find me in the caves.

My plan was always to lay low in the middle of nowhere or hide out on one of the islands in Thailand. This isn’t any different, is it?

No civilization. No cameras. Nothing to give away my location. Stowed away with a powerful creature intent on protecting me because he thinks I’m his divinely chosen soulmate.

There’s nowhere on Earth safer for me than Ordus’ island. It’s the one place the Gallaghers will never touch.

I hesitate before placing my hand on the bag. “Okay.”

OceanofPDF.com

18

Cindi

It took a total of seventeen hours to get from San Diego to Shanghai. I spent the thousand-and-twenty minutes shaking, thinking Tommy or his family would appear out of thin air and drag me back to the mansion.

I never saw a single Gallagher. Not when I found a place to stay, two cities over, or further north, when I was too scared to stay stagnant for another day. It wasn’t until I saw Matthew—one of Tommy’s friends—in the crowd while I was at the market.

Every day since the night I killed Tommy has felt much the same, paralyzed by fear and paranoia.

Except now.

For the first time in a year and half, I let myself simply be. I feel…safe, like I can finally take a breather from running and looking over my shoulder. Like there’s someone else in my corner looking out for me.

I could get addicted to this.

Three bags rustle against the currents, oscillating and pulling against Ordus’ powerful propulsions as air bubbles climb over the oxygen dome over my head. The nonperishables and food in wrappers are in the nylon bags strapped to his back. The waterproof one has the basic necessities.

My legs tremble around his waist from the hour we’ve already spent in the sea on the way back to the island. Pain lances my arm, from my shoulder all the way down to my fingers. My elbow throbs from the use, and the cold is making it even worse. The wetsuit isn’t helping nearly as much as I want, and I don’t want to admit how much I want Ordus’ suckers to do that thing it does that makes my arm hurt less. Being carried bridal style isn’t an option when he’s holding a gallon of mineral water in each hand.

To add insult to injury, it feels like someone lit a fire on my tattoo, then took a grater to it. At least I feel the best I have in days—it was probably the chicken essence. I can hear Dad’s “I told you so” from the grave.

Still, I feel sick to my stomach. What might have happened if Ordus never intervened? What would those guys have done to me the night of Nat’s birthday? What if I decided not to run that day, and some man showed up at my house? I could have found out firsthand what is worse than death.

Silver lining? I have a semblance of a plan when it comes to preventing death by lack of food and water.

I packed some plastic containers to collect rainwater. I managed to find my old, barely functioning tablet to access the internet. Reddit suggested filtering seawater with a T-shirt, and in my nonprofessional opinion, it sounded like bullshit. If I’m desperate, I’ll give a solar a go.

If all else fails, Ordus can swim to the mainland to get me another couple gallons of distilled water.

The crappy, lagging, jailbroken iPad also helped teach me how to start a fire so I can cook water and fish—shit, I forgot seasoning. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. This is one long episode of Survivor. I’m not about to fuss over the fact that I can’t have sambal with crab.

But chances of me successfully starting said fire? Closer to zero percent than a hundred. I’m crossing my fingers the matches and lighter I packed stay dry.

A cramp goes through my whole body, and I bite back a whimper. I untuck myself from his neck to glance at the surroundings. Sunlight streams through the waves. Silver beams of light illuminate the surrounding blue.

Minutes pass. I stare over his shoulder, waiting for pops of color or evidence of sea life, but…nothing? Just trash floating around like water bottles, cigarette buds, straws, plastic, the occasional wreckage of what I can only assume came from a boat.

No fish. No reef. No evidence to suggest we’re swimming though something other than a graveyard.

It continues for miles. It’s like a wasteland—rocks, sand, the corpses of animals long dead.

Are these the side effects of global warming scientists warned us about? Where are we on the map? Are we going north through the Java Sea, where we’d eventually hit Borneo or Sulawesi—or the Philippines, if we’re going through the Strait? Singapore if we’re heading northwest.

Or south toward the Indian Ocean. Or southeast to Australia.

All I know is, the scenery doesn’t change as we head further away from Bali, other than there being less and less trash the further away we get.

“What happened here?” I ask, more to myself than to Ordus. I can’t hear much of the other side of the bubble, so consider me unnerved when the dome expands, and suddenly, another person’s breathing fills the small space. I lurch back to put distance between our faces—as if I hadn’t spent the past few hours leaning my head on his shoulder.

“My kingdom is now known as the Dead Lands,” he says quietly, as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear.

I’m sorry. Did he say his kingdom? The proper noun or whatever would be our pronoun—as in us krakens’ kingdom, right? It’s a slip of the tongue.

“Now? Has it always been so…” Don’t say dead. “Barren?”

He shakes his head once, watching me closely from the corner of his eye. He’s on edge, stiffening every so often, darting his gaze all around. It’s putting me on edge.

What if Ordus isn’t the biggest creature out there? I tighten my grip on him.

“My territory was booming with life fifty years ago. Game was ripe. There was coral of every color each way you looked.”

My.

I swallow. “Global warming?”

His brows pinch in confusion. “A Curse,” he says, like he isn’t sure if they’re the same thing.

The air in the dome grows frigid, but the water’s temperature increases with the shifting landscape. It rises by at least ten degrees, rapidly ticking upward until it feels like I’m swimming through a hot pool in my wetsuit.

Worse is the scene below. The sand changes from grey to pitch-black, broken only by the protruding white bones.

The energy feels all sorts of wrong. The atmosphere is staticky, cloying, like stepping into an abandoned hospital, or standing alone in a forest when all the insects have got silent.

Ordus stops us before it reaches jacuzzi level. I slowly pry myself away from him. The reprieve of moving my aching limbs is instantaneous. One of his tentacles helps me turn to survey the area, still close enough to him that the air dome remains around us.