Cerulean Cape salt tracing

crowell had killed pepper.
crowell had torn him, stained sapphique red with the blood of another man who might have fathered chani's children. she was not certain of love, but she had begun to adore him in words too strong for sentiment's description.
water loomed;
land narrowed.
babes stirred in her belly.
seacliff strength lit every artery.
chani meant to be free. her time as a captive of murkwood had only intensified that need, the desire for open salt air and the white sand of siren's bay, the tangle where her cousins had been born, the beachhead of corsair where the children of her lineage gathered.
to slow here was to be collected, trashed, dragged;
to be indentured to the desire of a man who thought he was able to own a granddaughter of rosalyn and erzulie.
there was no hesitation;
there could not be.
claws hooked to capehead, pushing off;
chani was a dizzying arc of sandstone and oxide.
mother and aunt had given their all, and her new cousins had even borne that, drawing their first air here instead of home.
there would be no surrender.
crimson-caped girl landed among the large cerulean waves rearing overhead; her final sight before they crashed down upon her was crowell's expression, his shadow there over the peninsula.