Eliphus hovered in front of her. His stubby fingers twirled with the lace along her neckline, a swollen smile across his lips. His other hand landed on her cheek, sticky and clammy, and his lips pressed upon hers. She turned her head away, but he caught her chin and pressed his mouth to hers again. She bit his lip.
His face separated from hers. His eyebrows formed shaggy swaths, and a vein throbbed in his temple. The back of his hand landed hard across her jaw. Her neck turned so sharply, it creaked. Her head reeled; the room spun. But, trying to focus, she continued to flick her tailfin against the desk. Her tempo was weakening, though, as she herself was.
“I’ll teach you a lesson,” Sparus hissed into her ear from behind. He squeezed her wrists so hard, a small scream escaped her lips. Her wrist bones were close to splintering in his grasp.
Where was Izar? Could he not hear her? Or could he hear her but didn’t care?
Eliphus thrust his dagger forward. Coralline drew her ribs inward; the point of the dagger landed on her navel, just a hair’s breadth away from drawing blood. It split into two—Coralline blinked hard, and it became one again. A wave of dizziness was sweeping over her, clouding her vision. Her shoulders sagged, and her vertebrae went limp. She no longer had the strength to continue to flick her tailfin against the desk.
Eliphus clasped the hem of her bodice with his thumb and forefinger and started cutting upward. The cloud-white strings gave way one after another, as he undressed her stitch by stitch. When he was halfway up, his hand landed on her belly from underneath her loosened bodice. His fingers toyed with her navel, then traced each of her lower ribs.
The door flew open.
Izar entered the room, his gaze flying from Eliphus to Sparus to Coralline. “You can take your turn with her after us,” Eliphus said, turning toward him, dagger in hand.
Coralline’s lips were the crimson color of bitten apples, Izar saw, and her eyes were drowsy and staring, their expression shell-shocked. Tears sprawled thickly over her lashes, making him think of raindrops over window panes. When her hair had been up in a bun yesterday, she’d been pretty; now, with her hair falling to her waist like a blanket of darkest night, she was striking.
The merman behind her, the carrot, sneered at Izar as he placed a hand on her belly and tugged her against him.
Blood pounded into Izar’s eyes, turning them bloodshot, and streamed into his hands, which folded into fists. He would kill both brothers, even if it killed him.
He focused his attention on the cantaloupe, whose sideways smirk made his mouth look like a centipede. Izar darted to him, his fists extended before him. The plump arm thrust forth with the dagger, flesh swaying like a loose rope. Izar leaned back at the waist—the dagger slashed through the waters where his neck had just been.
Izar punched in the direction of the cantaloupe’s face. The merman skirted out of the way. His dagger flashed forward again, toward Izar’s chest—it tore off one of the baby’s-ear shells. The dagger approached Izar’s face. Izar knocked the cantaloupe’s hand with an elbow, and the dagger slipped out of his grasp. On land, it would have clattered to the floor, but in the water, it floated between their faces. The cantaloupe’s hand shot out for it, as did Izar’s. Izar’s reached first. Clasping the hilt of the dagger, he faced the cantaloupe. The cantaloupe started to retreat cautiously through the room, but Izar put the dagger aside, on a corner of the dresser. He was still planning to kill the cantaloupe, but not yet—he would punish him first.
The carrot flung Coralline aside. She would have hit her head on the desk had she not placed her hands in front of her. Her wrists were pale blue from their constriction, Izar saw, and her eyes formed large, frantic coins in her face.
Turning back to the cantaloupe, Izar punched him in the gut. The big belly wobbled, and the merman slid aside, gasping. The carrot took his brother’s place. He jabbed at Izar, first with his right fist, then his left. Izar retreated slightly. Appearing emboldened by Izar’s withdrawal, the carrot advanced and gave Izar the opportunity he’d been waiting for: Just as the carrot was about to level his next punch, Izar grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and slammed his head on the dresser. A crack sounded, whether of his head or the dresser, Izar didn’t know.
Izar slammed the carrot’s head on the dresser again, harder.
“We’ll go!” said the cantaloupe, putting his hands up. “We’re sorry. But don’t kill my brother!”
“Don’t kill him, Izar!” Coralline cried.
Izar looked down at the carrot, whom he continued to clutch by the back of the neck. The lanky merman was now unconscious, his body horizontal. Izar slammed his head against the dresser again.
Suddenly, the cantaloupe flew at Izar and shoved him against a wall. He pummeled his shoulder—once, twice, thrice. Streaks of pain radiated through Izar, as though an iron rod were branding his bone, sinews, and muscles together. Trying to ignore the pain, Izar extended his hand to the dresser. His fingers found the dagger, grasped its hilt. He slashed it toward the cantaloupe’s face.
The cantaloupe leapt off Izar, started to retreat again. Izar lunged toward him, but Coralline caught Izar’s arm. “Don’t kill them!” she pleaded.
Her grasp on his arm was like a parrot’s claws on a branch. The grasp did not loosen easily, but, managing to shake it off, Izar cornered the cantaloupe against a wall. He jabbed the dagger toward the fleshy neck. But a pair of hands stayed him again. This time, their grip on his arm was not a parrot’s but an eagle’s. The eagle compelled the tip of the dagger to stop at a vein in the cantaloupe’s neck, just a hair’s breadth away from slicing the neck open. “Let’s not stoop to their level,” she implored.
Izar flung himself off the cantaloupe. The merman sidled away, clutching his throat. He grabbed his still-unconscious brother by the elbow and hurried out the door.
Coralline’s hands fumbled to close the folds of her corset over herself. Appearing to concede defeat, for the strings were in tatters, she bolted to the bed. Izar was aware of her crying not through any sound but because, with her loosened corset, much of her back was visible, and he could see her individual vertebrae shifting like waves. “Constables are here, looking for me,” she told him in a muffled voice from over her shoulder. “They think I killed Tang. We have to leave.”
“I’ll be back with my bag,” Izar said. With a hand on his throbbing shoulder, he left for his room.
There seemed a gap between Coralline’s mind and body: Her mind realized Eliphus and Sparus’s violation was over, but her body didn’t seem to quite believe it. Her teeth chattered, and tremors vibrated through her ribs.
She heard a dual thump. The sound came from the window in the corridor outside her door. It would be Pavonis—he must have located a back door. Coralline longed to snuggle under the blanket, to fall into a long sleep, but his tail continued to clobber the wall, insistent, impossible to ignore. Dragging her tailfin over the side of the bed, she sat up, but her back continued to slouch like a snail’s, and her shoulders formed listless triangles.