The Merman Who Wouldn't Sing, The Tears He Saved For Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Iron Fever

The fever started at dusk.

I noticed because he didn't hum.

I checked my watch, and ten minutes had gone by, then twenty.

"Lachlan?"

He was floating near the pilings with his eyes half shut, and the water around him was warmer than it should have been.

I knelt and put my hand against his forehead.

It was burning hot.

"Hey," I said. "Talk to me."

"Iron," he said, slowly. "The hook."

"The gaff?"

"Iron in the cuts. Sea blood does not like it." His teeth chattered. "It will pass. It passes in two days. I only have to wait."

His head dipped under the water.

I grabbed his shoulders and hauled him up.

"Don't you dare."

"The water is too cold," he mumbled, and he didn't sound like himself at all. "It is making it worse. Marnie. I am cold."

"You're burning."

"I am cold."

I did the thing I would have done for anyone, and I didn't think about it.

I braced my boots against the dock edge and said, "Come out."

"I cannot. Rule one."

"Break it."

He stared at me.

Then he got his arms on the planks and pulled himself up, and the water streamed off him, and I saw his tail, copper-veined and shaking, lie out across the boards.

I ran for towels.

By the time I came back, the green had gone pale along his hips and begun to split, scales lifting and folding away, and where the tail had been there were legs.

Long, pale, scarred ones.

He lay on his side on my dock, breathing hard, with nothing on at all.

I threw every towel I owned over him and then dragged him by the armpits across the boards to the loft stairs, which are not made for it.

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