There was nothing Ecklon had not done for her, nothing he would not do.
“All that matters to me now is: Do you love Izar still?”
Coralline’s teeth gritted, and she tried to prevent the words, but they spewed out through her lips of their own accord: “Yes, I love him still.”
She needed to remove the rose petal tellin shell at her throat—she felt as though the shell would choke her if she didn’t. There was no time to whirl around and ask him to unclasp the translucent string; curling her hand around the tellin, she wrenched it off in a single sweep.
Her muscles turned unbearably weak, as though she’d removed her own heart—for Ecklon had been her heart. Tears rolled hotly down her cheeks. Sobs racked through her, shuddering through her ribs, creeping down her vertebrae. She cried for the life she would have shared with Ecklon, for the love that she had shared with him. Their foreheads together, their tears merged, even though their lives would, from this day, diverge.
29
Man and Machine
Ecklon remained inside the kitchen, saying he needed a moment, so Coralline swam out the kitchen window alone. But she stopped in her tracks: Perching on the edge of their seats, two hundred people were staring at her, their eyes inquiring whether the wedding would continue. After all the tears she’d shed, Coralline found she could no longer speak, but she shook her head emphatically.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed to needle-thin slits; Coralline felt relieved at the distance between them. Epaulette clapped her hands to her mouth gleefully and hugged Rosette. The pretty, purple-tailed mermaid whom Coralline had overheard earlier, sat up straighter. Even plump Telia beamed, handing her baby to her mother, Sepia, as though she was single again.
Half the mermaids of Urchin Grove would soon be chasing Ecklon, Coralline felt certain. Her own prospects, meanwhile, were dismal.
“Let’s get out of this freak show,” Pavonis said from above her.
Coralline started to rise toward his white belly, when a thud sounded from the other side of the boundary of kelp. It reverberated through Coralline’s tendons and through the legs of the chairs, causing guests to jump off their seats. Was it an earthquake? Coralline wondered, staring in the direction of the thud. It was impossible to tell, because the fronds of kelp formed layers of curtains, blocking all view to the other side. And yet the earthquake seemed to be approaching, for the kelp started quivering, down to the holdfasts. Coralline keened her ear; it was not an earthquake, no—it sounded like stomping. And then the stalks of kelp started falling, one by one—the creature, whatever it was, was trampling everything in its path. . . . Unmoving, every muscle of her body trained toward it, Coralline watched as the final layer of kelp collapsed, and the creature entered Kelp Cove.
Towering to three times her height, he was a demon of metal, his chest stamped with the bronze-and-black insignia of Ocean Dominion, as well as a name, Castor. With his legs, Castor was crafted in the image of his creator, man, but not just man—one man, in particular: Izar, for a hook-shaped scar marked Castor’s jaw, matching Izar’s own.
Castor pounded his left arm, which was twice as thick as his right arm, into the ocean floor. Every grain of sand in Kelp Cove trembled, every drop of water rippled, and a mass exodus of fish occurred from the kelp forest. Castor then started spewing a series of bubbles, before crooking his right arm at the elbow. A blaze shot out of his arm, hot and golden, twice the length of Coralline herself. This must be fire, she thought, but she could not be certain, for fire, to her, was not a specific thing. It was not like a rock or a whale, which she could envision precisely. It was simply something associated with the sun, something that could not exist in the ocean. And yet she was looking at it, its flame reflected in her very eyes.
Coralline had not believed Izar when he’d claimed to have invented underwater fire, but she believed him now. Fire and water can never truly meet, her father had said, but Izar had somehow tricked fire to burn in water, just as he had somehow tricked her into falling in love with him.
Castor’s fire stopped abruptly, and his head swiveled on his shoulders—if he were sentient, Coralline would think he was looking for someone. The Ocean Dominion insignia rotated ten degrees over his chest, then a sharp click sounded, and a bullet flew out of his navel. The shot seemed experimental, but had the bullet struck someone, it would have killed like a dagger tearing through the flesh. People screamed and scrambled in all directions.
The blood rushed to the capillaries in Coralline’s skin. Her former self, prior to the elixir quest, would have cowered and sought shelter, but her new self surged toward Castor. She collected a rock and hurled it at his head. The path of the rock slowed with water resistance, and it bounced off his neck as haplessly as a pebble. Castor’s head rotated toward her, and his eyes seemed to register her. She had the sense there was someone there, behind the eyes, looking for her. It would be Izar, of course, controlling Castor from the surface.
Coralline spotted a tawny tail from the corner of her eye—Naiadum, approaching her. Bolting toward him, she pulled him aside—just in time, for a bullet tore past his shoulder. She tugged him into the kelp forest, such that they were both concealed among the green.
Altair and Kuda were there as well, glowing orange and red among the holdfasts of kelp but shaking so severely that Coralline could not fix her gaze on either one. And then a gargantuan shape arrived to the other side of the kelp, and her heart leapt in fear that it was Castor, but the shape was long rather than tall—Pavonis. Thank goodness for Pavonis, thank goodness for Kelp Cove itself—the ring of kelp acted as a cover.
“Pavonis, please take care of Naiadum, Kuda, and Altair,” Coralline directed. Turning to Naiadum, she wagged a finger at him and said, “Don’t you dare leave Pavonis’s side!”
He nodded, his amber-gold eyes terrified.
“Uh-oh!” Altair screeched. “It’s happening!”
“What is?” Coralline frowned.
“I spent all my life in a coral reef, hiding, meek and weak, and now here I am, in the most dangerous of circumstances—delivering my many children!”
Altair’s back arched, and his belly contracted. A minuscule seahorse, the size of a fingernail but fully formed, propelled head-first out of his belly, and flew upward. Altair’s belly contracted again, and a stream of little seahorses flew out like little beads, each one a miniature copy of either of its parents. With every contraction, a full cluster of seahorses erupted, dozens at a time. “They will all be killed by that monster!” Altair shrieked.
“Our babies will all die on the day of their birth!” Kuda wailed.
“Not if I have anything to do with it!” Pavonis growled.
He rotated, such that his snout pushed aside the layers of kelp and his face pointed diagonally downward above Altair. He opened his mouth wide, until it formed a dark, low tunnel. As the newborn seahorses flew up, they collided against the roof of his mouth, then bounced about within. His filtering pads, separating his mouth from his throat, meant that he would not be swallowing them, but keeping them safe in his capacious trove.