Warm lips press against mine, but I have no air to give. Warm water rushes into my mouth, my throat, my lungs. It tingles with pinpricks of pain, like muscles waking after they’ve gone numb. The pain spreads through my chest to my legs and neck. From the crown of my head to my toes and fingers. Everything tingles and hurts.
Warmth spreads from the pricks, and a sharp pain in my lungs makes my back arch. It feels like Clair’s ripped fresh wounds in my skin. The hairs on my arms and legs thicken. My legs seal together from the groin down, restricting my thrashing. I press my palms into my eyes—they feel like they’re popping out of their sockets.
Scratches on my throat rip open.
Every muscle strains against my form and the pressure of the water around me. The sounds of the ocean have become one loud, high-pitched hum, and as my muscles give out, I realize that it’s not the ocean I hear. I’m screaming.
I collapse in on myself all at once as the pain fades, and fall through the thick water until I tap the ocean floor and sediment plumes around me. I lay where I landed, unmoving.
A shadow swims closer, tentative, until it speaks in a soft voice that electrifies every piece of me. “Finn?”
I blink slowly as Erie comes into focus. More focus than I’ve ever seen her. Even in the dim light this far down, colors I can’t describe flow across her body, like bioluminescence in every color of the rainbow, pulsing with her heartbeat. I try to touch the colors, but I’m distracted by the translucent webbing between my fingers. All of my tiny hairs have turned to scales, as alive with the dancing colors as Erie’s own. I glance at my hand, then flip it over and wiggle my webbed fingers.
The scales extend up my arms, across my chest, and down my sides to my . . . tail. Everything below my waist has disappeared into a large tail, like hers, tipped in iridescent black. There’s a slight divot between my legs, but other than that, it’s Mer. I’m Mer.
I breathe out, but nothing leaves my mouth except the sound of my sigh. Water flows through my neck. I try to touch my gills, but Erie grabs my hands. “Be careful.”
Her voice has so much depth now—it sounds like a song. Like a brook trickling over pebbles on its way to the crashing ocean. If she screamed at me, it would be a storm pounding the rocks on the shore.
I run my fingertips from the top of my neck to my shoulders, wincing at the pain in my newly ripped flesh. I have gills. Like a fish.
Erie gently takes my hands in hers, and now she’s the one with human fingers. I gaze into her eyes—I thought they were endless before, but now I know the true meaning of infinity. I can see every bit of her. The flush of worry and excitement across her shoulders, the depth of concern in her eyes, even the way she holds her fins, closing me off from the world. Protecting me. I’ve only ever glimpsed the surface of her emotions before.
“Are you okay?” she breathes.
I run my fingers over her lips. They feel soft now, not like shark-skin at all. She’s always been the most beautiful creature, but now, I no longer see her as a creature—a fish. How could a human ever compare to this? How did Erie ever see anything in me?
“You . . .” I pull her close and kiss her. A proper kiss, no water or air in the way. I kiss her long and deep, and she melts into me. When she wraps her tail around mine, it feels natural, though my legs could never have bent in such a way.
I understand now why my father went out in the storm, desperate to find the Mer. Why he was so enamored—obsessed enough to give his life for just one more glimpse. Like him, I’ve always felt like I belonged to the ocean, and now, with Erie’s help, I do.
Corporate said the mermaids weren’t dangerous, but it only took one of them to bring Oceanica down. And to give me a new life.