The fronds of kelp parted, but it was not Castor who burst through. It was a figure with indigo eyes and tail. She must be imagining it; she had to be hallucinating, but then he spoke: “You must be her husband,” Izar said to Ecklon.
“She did not marry me,” Ecklon said quietly. “You must be Izar.”
Ecklon slipped aside without a further word, and Izar replaced him, such that Coralline’s head came to lie on his lap. Tears sparkled in Izar’s eyes. The expression on his face resembled that from Mintaka’s cavern in the deep sea, Coralline saw—it was truth, in all its harshness, in all its beauty.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Coralline’s anger from earlier streamed out of her as seamlessly as her blood.
The eyes Izar had thirsted all this time to see were not the eyes he recognized—their expression was dull, dying. Her eyes were his home, but the doors to the home closed—the lids shuttered, her lashes casting long, limpid shadows over her cheeks. The celebration will be a funeral, Mintaka had told him. He wished it were his own funeral instead of hers.
“What are you waiting for?” cried a shrill voice, startling him. He recognized the voice as belonging to Nacre, but it took him a moment to locate her: She was emerging from his satchel, tentacles waggling furiously. She must have crept off Coralline’s shoulder and slipped into his bag through the partially open zip. “Give her the damn elixir! Do I have to do everything myself?”
“But I don’t have the elixir.”
“You do. I just saw it!”
His hands moving as fast as flying knives, Izar rummaged through his satchel. His hands slipped into an under-compartment, and there it was, the silver sphere of starlight.
Zaurak had not taken the elixir, this meant. He must have slipped it back into Izar’s satchel without Izar’s noticing. That was why Zaurak’s leg had not healed. And that was what he’d been trying to tell Izar before he died. Zaurak had wanted Izar to save the elixir for himself, were he to require it. And he required it now. His heart bursting with gratitude for his friend, Izar placed the elixir in Coralline’s mouth.
Her body, previously sagging, immediately stiffened. Her face glowed, then the glow spread throughout, becoming most prominent in the scales of her tail—which shimmered silver. She became a source of light herself, a shard of a star. Then her muscles clenched, her face scrunched, and the bullet flew out. Izar caught it in his hand, incredulous. The tear along her ribs started to close; through the gap in her bodice, Izar could see the skin joining. It joined entirely—not even a dot remained where the bullet had entered. If not for the scarlet stain of her bodice, he would not have believed she’d been shot. And then her glow faded, her scales darkened to a beautiful bronze, and her eyes flew open.
Pavonis’s thirty-foot-long body rocked up and down so hard that wave-sized ripples formed, and the stalks of kelp swayed as wildly as grasses in a thunderstorm.
Placing her hands to either side of her, Coralline sat up and turned to face Izar. With her turquoise eyes and peach-pink cheeks, she looked like a fairy, he thought, his breath catching in his gills. He leaned toward her, and she leaned toward him, but just before their lips could meet, a thud sounded to his left.
Castor. He had found them among the kelp.
“Scatter!” Izar yelled.
Everyone bolted, spreading outward like confetti. Izar grabbed Coralline’s hand and dashed away, just as bullets wrenched through the spot in the kelp forest where they’d been.
“There is a way to stop him,” Izar told Coralline hurriedly, “a way that’s both simple and dangerous. There’s a battery in his skull—”
“Battery?”
The sound of her voice almost made Izar smile, but there was no time to smile: Both of their lives, and everyone else’s, depended on his disabling Castor as soon as possible. “The battery is an object that powers him, like a brain. Its removal will paralyze him.”
“All right,” Coralline said. “I’ll try to distract him while you remove his battery.”
Izar nodded, his face set and tight. There was no other way, but he did not like this way. If Castor shot Coralline again, there would be nothing to save her this time.
They swam out of the kelp forest hand in hand. Castor stood directly before them, fire blazing out of his dragon arm. Izar could not help but look upon the golden flame with shocked admiration—how smoothly it flowed, like liquid lava. But he had only a moment to admire the fire, for Castor pointed his arm in their direction. Coralline and Izar flew apart. Castor’s head swiveled as he looked between them, his confusion a manifestation of Saiph’s confusion, but then he seemed to make up his mind: He turned toward Coralline. It was what Izar had predicted, for Saiph had promised to kill Coralline today, but a muscle jumped in his cheek nonetheless and his jaw clenched. He could not let anything happen to Coralline.
She swam a few feet above Castor, as a fly buzzes overhead, and she swam in circles. Castor’s head started turning on his shoulders to follow her movements. But even had she been still, her upward angle would have been a difficult one for Castor—she was essentially in his blind spot, a fly who could not be swatted.
Izar approached Castor’s skull stealthily, from one side, so the robot would not detect the movement. Quickly, he came to hover behind Castor’s head. He recalled the moment he’d knelt above Castor in his Invention Chamber and inserted the battery in his skull. At that time, Izar would have sneered at the notion that he would ever be disabling Castor instead of enabling him. But now, Izar pressed the top of the robot’s skull lightly. The pane opened on touch, but Izar drew his hand back sharply—the zinc-galvanized steel skull was as scorching as a poker. The waters directly surrounding Castor were also hot and bubbling; that was how Castor created fire, by heating water and evaporating it until the oxygen in it turned from liquid to gas. The heat was also a manner of shield for Castor; had Castor been creating fire for just a few minutes longer, the waters would have been hotter still, and Izar’s skin would have blistered.
With slow, shuffling steps, Castor started to turn around, but Izar reached a hand into his skull and plucked out the battery. It was searing as an electric plate, and he dropped it immediately.
The battery floated down slowly to the ocean floor, lilting like a textbook-sized feather. Meanwhile, Castor stood perfectly still, like a man turned to stone. Then he started to fall backward, arms swinging, like he was fainting. It was a striking phenomenon to observe, and a tragic one, like a dinosaur collapsing. Castor hit the seabed flat on his back, a torrent of sands rising all around him. Izar’s insides churned—Castor was an extension of him, albeit past, and now he lay dead, killed by none other than Izar himself.
From the other side of the sands, Coralline swam up to Izar, her hair framing her face in dark, loose tendrils. Izar had lost Castor, but he had gained Coralline. He wrapped his arms around her, and their lips met in a long, languorous kiss.