All of the air words flee my mind at the sight of the ocean, the blue water shining in the sunlight as far as I can see. It’s so close. So close I can almost jump to it.
“It’s the ocean, Neek!” I pound on the glass. Maybe if I can break through, the resulting wave would carry us to the water. “It’s so close. Help me break this.”
“Princess,” Niku says, voice even. “It’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not!” I slam my fists on the glass. “You didn’t see it. The water’s right there. We just have to break through.”
I slam my shoulder into the glass, then grab it as pain shoots through the joint. “Neek! Help me!”
A loud splash makes me spin. I find a curtain of bubbles that reveal . . . Finn? He’s changed his skin, so he’s almost all black, but I’m positive it’s Finn. What’s he doing in the water?
“Perfect,” Niku says, and Finn snaps his head around, like he doesn’t know where the voice came from. “Now we can kill him.”
“Niku, no!” I’m closer, but he’s faster, and he’s about to slam into Finn like he would a shark. Finn won’t survive that.
I won’t reach him in time, so I swim at Niku, shoving his nose with my hands. He has too much momentum to stop, though, and we barrel into Finn sideways. He explodes into bubbles.
“Erie,” Niku’s voice snaps with anger. I’ve never heard him that angry—not at me, at least.
Finn reaches the surface, and Niku lunges past me, grabs his ankle and yanks him under. Finn tries to kick his face, but Niku shakes him hard, snapping his body from one side to the other.
“Neek, stop!”
“This is our chance to kill him.”
“I don’t want to kill him!”
“You did a few days ago.”
Finn struggles to get to the surface, and Niku yanks him further into the water. Above the surface, Jen’s muffled voice screams. If we kill Finn, what will she do to us? She certainly won’t help free us.
“Finn and Jen are our only chance out of here,” I say.
“We’ll find another way.”
“Let him go.” I puff out my chest to look as regal as possible. “That’s an order.”
Niku pauses. “You heard your sister—you’re not a princess here.”
I swallow hard. “But I’m still your princess, and you will release Finn right now, guard.”
Hurt and anger flash through Niku’s eyes as he opens his mouth. Before Finn can kick away, I grab him and pull him to the surface. He gasps as he crests, and Jen yells, “Are you okay? Should I get the shocker?”
“No,” he gasps. “God, no.”
“But . . . I saw blood,” Jen says.
“Yeah”—Finn gulps air—“which means my wetsuit is broken, so don’t you dare electrocute me again.”
I don’t know what most of those words mean, but I can taste the tang of blood in the water. I dip below the surface to survey Finn’s leg. Several puncture wounds wrap around his ankle, and when I touch them, he jerks away.
When I surface, Finn stares at me in disbelief. “You saved me.” His voice is soft, like the tiniest puff of air across the waves. “Why would you do that?”
With my mouth and gills underwater, I say, “Why you jump in?”
“You were going to hurt yourself, and I promised not to shock you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
I study him for a moment, not sure if I want to tell him why I freaked out. He must know the ocean is right there. He must know I want to get out. And still, he keeps me here. Maybe I should let Niku kill him, but Finn and Jen are our only chance of getting out of here alive.
I sink under the water and glance at Niku, but he paces the opposite end of the giant tank, ignoring me. There’s a splash, and Finn puts something over his face. Something clear covers his eyes and nose when he sinks below the surface. It makes his eyes appear even smaller than normal, and I swim closer.
I touch the new skin on his arm. It doesn’t feel like his hand did when he tricked me into jumping—it’s stiff and cold. Finn sticks his hand up like when we played tag, and I do the same, touching my palm to his warm one. The corners of his mouth pull up as I wiggle the tips of my fingers through his web-less ones, and he runs his fingers over my scaled arm to my elbow.
I suck in a breath, then brush the tip of my tail against him. I swim a quick circle around him and run my hands through his hair. It feels like normal hair, but it’s completely black, devoid of the bright colors I’m used to. He runs his fingers through my hair, too, and I flush.
Finn surfaces for a breath, then sinks below the water. When I study his legs, he wiggles his toes. When he speaks, his air words come out in bubbles. I try to catch them, wanting to keep his words with me, but they slip through my fingertips. He chuckles and rises again. I follow him, squinting my eyes against the air.
“Jen, throw me the Scuba. I want to try something.”
Jen’s scowl dives deeper. “What are you doing? Get out of the water, Finnegan. You’re bleeding!”
“Just throw me the Scuba. I’ll be fine.”
She purses her lips, but grabs something from the wall and tosses it to him. Two black, arm-like things join to the sides of a box that Finn sticks in his mouth. When he lowers into the water, he takes a breath. Finn can breathe underwater, just like me. I suck in my own breath at the shock. “We swim?”
He nods and dives deeper, but he’s awkward and slow. I giggle and hold out my hand. When he takes it, I kick hard, my tail brushing against him, and propel us through the water. It isn’t as fast as I can swim, because of his dead weight, but it’s faster than he was swimming. I twist and grab his other hand, too, then spin with him.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Niku says, but I don’t care. I’m having fun, and from the sound Finn makes, so is he. Maybe if I keep swimming with him, he’ll help me get back to the ocean.