The submarine's rocking is gentle, almost hypnotic. You lie back on the bunk, though you can't rest. The metal and the water around you should make you feel at home, but now all they evoke is the invisible chain you drag.

Tharion is there, sitting on the edge of the opposite bed, his damp hair falling over his forehead and his hands clasped together. He doesn't speak. He barely moves. His back, normally straight and proud, bends under a weight he can't let go.

"Not even the sea loves me anymore." He murmurs, more to himself than to you. The sentence hangs in the air, bitter.

Your first impulse is to answer, to remind him that he's saved lives, that he's been there when they needed him most. But the expression on his face stops you: the eyes that always shone with mischief are dull, unlit. He doesn't believe it himself.

The shadow of the River Queen follows him, her threat turned into a sentence. The Viper Queen has marked him with a game he never wanted to play. And now, after the rescue of Hunt, Ruhn, and Baxian, the entire ocean seems to have turned against him. His name is no longer a captain's title, but a bargaining chip. A price.

"Do you know what it's like to live, counting every breath as if it were borrowed?" He breaks the silence again. "Because that's what I am now: a loan anyone can call in."

He brings his hands to his face, and for a moment you think he's going to break completely. But he doesn't. Tharion never does. He holds on, as if willpower is the only thing that still keeps him together.

He finally looks at you, his lips curled into a hollow smile, the one he uses to hide it, the one you've already learned to read as a scream. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't... let this out on you. You didn't ask to be saddled with a foolish fish."