The Young Gods (The Young Gods #1) [NEW DRAFT]

•capítulo tres // chapter three•

There's something out in the water tonight.

The moon's reflection on the Emerald Sea makes it hard to see where it is, and while there's no movement but the rolling of the waves, a few glistening strings in the weave of the ocean shimmer and strum. A tan hand reaches forward, fingers calling to those strings, tugging on them ever so slightly.

A fin cuts through the waves. It moves in curving lines, slow and leisurely, until it reaches the boardwalk. Then, breaking the surface of the water, a fish with sparkling scales pokes its head up into the air.

"Hello," Malina murmurs. She bends down, fingers still holding loosely to the strings, balancing on the balls of her feet. "Aren't you a pretty thing?"

The fish treads water, mouth agape, gills flapping beneath the surface of the waves. Its scales shine brighter than jewels, a silver that outrivals the very stars in the sky. With her free hand, Malina caresses those scales, marvelling at how smooth they are, and how they leave no slime behind on her skin. Its eyes, so brown and dark, hold a strange sort of warmth.

This isn't a regular fish, she decides. This is something else.

The wood of the boardwalk creaks behind her. Reluctantly, Malina lets the fish's threads slip through her fingers. Her spell of command broken, the fish dips beneath the water, fin disappearing last, only the remnants of ripples left to suggest it was ever there.

"I was wondering when you'd find me," she admits.

"I see that you've finally learned that you can't hide from me."

Malina sighs and stands, throwing one last look at the ocean before turning.

"I wasn't trying to hide from you, uncle."

They're not so similar despite their relation. While he's dark and deft, with wide shoulders and a cleft chin, she's paler and fleeter, tall and willowy with hair the colour of old blood. Only the shape of their eyes are alike: wide, heavy-lidded, with an Eastern tilt- but while one of hers is a startling silver, both of his are black and crowded with shadows from every corner of the world.

"Are you sure?" her uncle Paolo inquires, voice deathly quiet.

Malina frowns, leaning up against the railing of the boardwalk. Behind her, the dozens of ships in the harbour creak in time with the waves. "Almost."

"The man we saw yesterday. The merchant. You used him."

"And what if I did?"

"Did you pity the Tondan man he killed?"

"Shouldn't I have?" It had all been so sudden, after all: the merchant's drunken stupor, the missteps of his Tondan aid, the flash of a gun, the spatter of blood. "He was like us- a Tondan in a land of conquerors."

"You could have used someone else," Paolo tells her. "Someone more skilled. Do you know that he's dead?"

"I know that he was shot and taken by Sentinels, yes."

"And that means nothing to you?"

"I'm trying not to bother myself over it."

"Malina." His sigh is heavy, like he's exhaling honey instead of air. In these rare moments, she thinks that he might actually be feeling something. "You killed him."

She sweeps past him, tugging her cloak about her shoulders. The streets are quiet this time of night, having been swept and emptied in preparation for tomorrow. She can think of no street in her home country of Tondo that looks nearly as immaculate, save for the ones in Muros- so named for the stone walls that separate the Edeirans from the natives. A Tondan in a land of conquerors. She feels the truth of those words within her, just as well as she feels the beating of her own heart.