I backed out of the carriage and closed the door carefully, and then leaped back into the driver’s seat and snapped the reins. The horses whinnied and got trotting, going as fast as they dared in the inky night. My eyes could see further than theirs, and I gazed down the road, checking for oncoming dangers. Our path was clear, for the moment at least.

The wind whistled in my ears and played in my close cropped hair, chilling my body due to the dampness of my clothes. I ignored the secondary symptoms, refusing to let myself shiver. I had more pressing matters to concern myself with.

Trees whizzed by on both sides like skeletons in the night, becoming a shadowy blur which bled into my memory and shaped into the scene from the previous night. I had gone to the club to foster a business relationship between the manager and a Fallieni spice trader, and Jasper himself had convinced me to sample one of Ayaka’s “love potions”. I couldn’t explain the effects it had on me, beyond the fact that it had shattered my inhibitions. I’d become a creature of almost pure instinct, a primal animal.

It turned out, that was pretty much Ayaka’s type.

I bore the responsibility for the nekojin’s life. If I hadn’t attended the club that night, she never would have wound up getting poisoned by her rat of an employer. She had… submitted to me, which was a new experience, but it felt as though she should be under my protection. She was under my protection, and I would not let her die.

There were limits to medicine, to antidotes and antivenoms… but there was no limit to the divinity of my lady.

Ayaka had spent parts of the night trying to guess what I was. Her soul sight had made it clear I was no ordinary human. Eventually I had told her. I was a demigod, the champion and strong right hand of the ocean deity Am’aleh. My goddess could shift the tides with as much effort as I drew breath. She would be able to heal Ayaka. She would.

The coach’s wheels bounced and spun over hills and through valleys, following the hardpack road. It was fortunate that the club, just a few miles west of the outskirts of Radasanth, sat so close to the ocean. By the time the sun peeked its red eye over the horizon, the dust-covered carriage and driver came to a stop on the side of the road. Nearby, through a stand of trees, the ocean called out tenderly.

I leaped down and opened the carriage door. Ayaka lay limply on the floor, her tail drooping out as the door opened. Her ears seemed slack, her skin yellowish and clammy. I slid an arm beneath her shoulders and pulled her out, carrying her into the trees without giving the carriage a second thought. She was under my protection. She could not die.

“These trees are hers,” she said blearily, not making any sense. I maneuvered us carefully through the little spit of woods and then raced over the pebble beach and into the foamy green shallows. I waded in up to my waist and then crouched, sinking Ayaka slowly into the salt water.

“S’cold,” she mumbled. “Why?”

“To save you,” I whispered. “Pray with me now.”

Am’aleh, I thought, I know you are here. We sit in your embrace even now. Please do not allow this young one to die. Her state is my fault. Take it out on me. I am already devoted to you… but grant me this boon, and I will forever remember the favor. Please, my goddess… sap the poison from Ayaka’s veins.