Saltwater & Lies

KIRA POV

The water is the only place I don't feel like I'm dying.

I sink below the surface of the pool, five AM and dark enough that no one sees me through the windows. My lungs burn. Good. That's pain I understand, pain that makes sense. Hold your breath too long, your body screams for air. Simple. Logical. Not like the other pain—the one that lives under my skin, in my bones, behind my eyes.

I count in my head. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. The pressure in my chest builds, but I stay under. Sixty seconds. My vision starts to blur at the edges. This is the only time the screaming inside me goes quiet, when drowning becomes the bigger threat.

Seventy-three seconds. I break the surface gasping, chlorine burning my throat.

The pain comes back immediately. It always does.

I grip the pool edge, my fingers shaking hard enough that I have to concentrate to hold on. My bones ache like they're trying to break and reshape themselves into something else. My skin feels too tight, stretched over a frame that doesn't fit right anymore. My teeth hurt. Everything hurts.

Fifty-six days until the eclipse.

I pull myself out of the water and sit on the concrete, dripping, staring at my arms in the dim pool lights. New bruises have bloomed overnight—dark purple shadows that look like someone grabbed me hard enough to leave fingerprints. Except no one touched me. My body is just eating itself from the inside out, the same way it ate my mother.

The locker room is empty. I dress fast, pulling on a long-sleeved shirt even though it's September in Washington and still warm. The fabric sticks to my damp skin. I dig through my bag for the pill bottle, shake four into my palm. The label says take one every six hours. I stopped following the label three months ago.

I swallow them dry and close my eyes, waiting for the edge to dull. It doesn't.

My phone buzzes. Uncle Matthias checking in: You okay?

I type back: Fine. At school early. Swim practice.

The lie comes easy now. I've been lying about being fine since I was fourteen, since the first time I realized the ache in my chest wasn't growing pains or sadness about my mom leaving. It was something else. Something that's only gotten worse.

The phone buzzes again: Don't forget your herbs. And Kira—call me if you need anything.

I stare at the text. Matthias knows I'm not fine. He's known since Mom died six months ago, since he found me collapsed in the bathroom with blood under my fingernails where I'd clawed at my own arms trying to make the crawling sensation stop. He moved me into his house in Crescent Bay, started making these herbal teas that taste like dirt but help. A little. Not enough.

He also started being careful with me. Gentle. Like I'm something fragile that might shatter if he speaks too loud.

He's probably right.

I make it to chemistry by second period. Mr. Reeves is writing on the board, something about exothermic reactions that I should care about but can't focus on. I slide into my usual seat in the back corner, away from the windows where the morning sun is too bright, away from the other students who might accidentally brush against me.

Physical contact makes it worse. A handshake feels like an electric shock. A bump in the hallway sends pain spiking up my spine. So I keep distance. I've gotten good at it.

"Alright, everyone," Mr. Reeves says, turning from the board. "Before we start, we have a new student joining us."

I barely look up. New students aren't interesting. Nothing is interesting when your nerve endings feel like they're on fire.

"This is Declan Silvermaw. He's transferred from—where was it, Declan?"

"Inland," a voice says. Deep, controlled. "My father's work brought us to the coast."

Something in my chest goes still.

Not the pain. Something underneath it. Something I haven't felt in so long I almost don't recognize it—my body reacting to something other than its own destruction.

I look up.

He's standing at the front of the room, tall and broad-shouldered in a way that makes him look older than eighteen. Dark hair, sharp features, and eyes that are scanning the classroom with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. Not in pain. In awareness.

His gaze sweeps past me once. Twice. Then stops.

Our eyes meet.

The pain in my body shifts. Doesn't disappear, but changes direction—like instead of tearing me apart from the inside, it's being pulled toward something. Toward him.

I don't understand it. I don't like it.

"Mr. Silvermaw, why don't you take the empty seat next to Kira in the back," Mr. Reeves says. "Kira, raise your hand."

I don't want to. Every instinct I have says this is dangerous, that I should leave right now, that something about this boy is wrong. But I raise my hand anyway because not raising it would draw more attention.

Declan walks down the aisle. He moves like water, smooth and controlled, and I notice things I shouldn't—the way his shoulders are too tense, how his hands stay loose at his sides like he's ready for something, the way he breathes slowly and deliberately like he's concentrating.

He sits down next to me, and the sensation intensifies. The thing inside me that's been silent for seventeen years stirs. Not trying to break free. Just... awake. Aware of him.

"Hi," he says quietly.

I don't answer. Can't. My hands are shaking again, but this time it's not from pain.

Mr. Reeves starts the lesson. Something about chemical bonds and energy release. I should take notes. Instead, I'm hyperaware of Declan next to me—the space between us, the way he's sitting perfectly still, how he's not looking at me but I can feel his attention anyway.

Three minutes pass. Five. Ten.

"You're Kira Dunne," he says, so quiet only I can hear.

It's not a question. He already knows.

I turn my head slightly, just enough to see him in my peripheral vision. "How do you know my name?"

"Mr. Reeves just said it."

That's not what I mean, and he knows it. The way he said my name wasn't like someone who just heard it for the first time. It was like recognition. Like he came here looking for me.

"For tomorrow's lab," Mr. Reeves announces, making me jump, "you'll be working in pairs. The person you're sitting next to is your lab partner for the semester."

No.

Declan glances at me, and this time I see his eyes properly. They're brown, but there's something in them that catches the light wrong. Something that makes my breath catch in my throat.

"Looks like we're partners," he says.

The bell rings. I grab my bag and stand up too fast, the world tilting slightly. Declan stands too, and for a second we're too close. Close enough that I can smell him—something like cedar and rain and underneath it something wild that makes the thing in my chest pull harder.

I step back. He doesn't move.

"See you tomorrow," he says, and there's something in his voice I can't identify. Not threat. Not exactly. But not safe either.

I leave the classroom without answering.

In the hallway, I lean against the lockers and check my phone for the time. Four hours since my last pill. The pain is back to baseline, that constant scream under my skin. But there's something else now. Something new that I felt when Declan looked at me.

Recognition.

Like my body knows him even though I've never seen him before in my life.

I walk to the parking lot where Uncle Matthias is supposed to pick me up. The September sun is too bright, and my head is pounding. Fifty-six days until the eclipse. Fifty-six days until either the curse breaks or it kills me, whichever comes first.

I think about Declan Silvermaw and the way he said my name.

I think about how my body reacted to him—the pain shifting instead of stopping, something waking up inside me that I didn't know was still there.

Mostly I think about his eyes, and how they reminded me of something I've seen before.

In the mirror, in my own face, in the seconds before the pain gets bad enough that I can't see anything at all.

The look of something trapped.

Something that wants desperately to break free.