Page 30 of Song of the Abyss
His tail shifted in a current that he had never felt before. It was like someone placed a cool blanket over his shoulders, wrapping him a little tighter, and he had to wonder if this was a goddess of the sea. If she was telling him, this was... right. That after all this time of fighting, he had finally been given something soft.
But she needed to stay alive for him to keep her.
So as the ships turned to go in another direction, he swam with her in his arms. Underneath the sharp spines that bit into his back and shoulders and tail. He would bleed for as long as it took to get them out of here.
It was a long time. But he finally broke free from the coral to a rare sight of the sun above them, a blessing so he did not have to suffer more wounds. Carefully, he took her to the abandoned facility that Maketes had spoken of. Though there were no lights to be seen, it looked like it was intact.
As he swam by a window, he peered into the shadows beyond and could see there was air in there. Hopefully breathable air for her, but at the very least, something had to be working.
Now he just had to find a way in and to force himself to let her go. Which, he was finding, would be harder than he anticipated.
How to get in? He wasn’t sure. There weren’t a lot of openings in the achromos builds, and he could only imagine it would be complicated.
A soft tap had him looking down at the little creature in his arms.
“Lights?” she asked. “Can you make the lights?”
“Are you afraid again?” he asked, his voice a low rumble in his chest.
At her shiver, he sighed. Of course, he had to be thrown in the direction of a creature who was terrified of the dark. She feared so many things, likely, that he would have to spend the rest of his obsession catering to her every whim. She was weak.
But he still started with the rhythm of lights that went up and down his shoulder, trying his best to ignore the way her fingers tapped each one out of existence before he let the next light illuminate.
12
Anya
She’d underestimated just how dark the sea was. Anya had looked out at it through Alpha’s glass dome for her entire life, seeing only darkness beyond the artificial lights. She had known that it was pitch black out there. The city of Alpha was built so deep that no light could penetrate their city from Above. Not that there was any light to come through.
But she hadn’t expected the darkness to affect her so much. Apparently, she’d never seen true darkness.
It had pressed down upon her out here. The weight of the dark felt worse than being blind. She’d always thought losing her sight would be harder than losing her hearing, likely because she knew what it was like to lose one of her senses. But this was... heavy. So heavy.
Anya could feel her heart beating harder. She was more aware of her body and every ounce of blood that pumped through her veins. She could feel her breath coming in and out of her lungs, entirely reliant on a device that she’d never seen before.
All of it gave her mind time to turn and rumble and boil with the fear of what she had done. She’d been so desperate to be free that she hadn’t realized that it meant trusting her entire life in the hands of an undine. A creature who her people had fought against for years. It was a risk she had thought she was ready to take.
Until the cold depths of the sea swept her away in his arms.
But he had sensed it. Or perhaps he had known that she would be afraid. She wasn’t sure. One moment she was counting under her breath and the next, he’d lit up.
She didn’t know if he was aware that red was a warning sign to her people, and the red light wasn’t immediately helpful because it sent messages to her mind that she was in danger. But then she noticed the pattern. How he was lighting up specific parts of himself for her to count, in the same rhythm that she’d been counting.
This monstrous being who had crept out of the sea had wanted to keep her calm. He’d panicked when he’d thought she was hurt, and that was the only explanation she had for the way he’d acted after they’d gone through that sharp coral. Even though he had been the one to be nearly ripped to shreds.
Even now, her fingers touched the edge of a deep gash left behind on his back. There were plenty of them. She didn’t know where to hold on to him that wouldn’t hurt, but he didn’t seem to notice. He moved through the water like it wasn’t a problem that he was bleeding.
Swallowing hard, she told herself that he was a monster. It didn’t matter that he had spoken more to her in body language than anyone else had in her entire life. He cared that she was well. And he was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that she stayed safe.
Fuck. She liked him. He wasn’t just a monster; he was becoming a real being to her, and that was dangerous. He was the means to an end. An escape from her city and she was going to get away from him the first moment she could so she could reunite with Ace.
Her heart sank into her stomach when the light of his body caught on the edge of an abandoned research facility. She’d heard of this one before. It had failed in a few key wings of the building, and the flooding had made her father order everyone home. It should still be liveable, though.
Damn it. He was bringing her somewhere that he deemed safe enough for her to be in. Why did he have to be thoughtful? Why couldn’t he be the murderous creature that her father claimed all of his kind were?
They took a while to circle the entire building before he decided on a place to swim inside. There was water damage galore. She could see where the pressure had caused one of the walls to cave in. The puncture looked like a giant creature had plunged a talon into the side of the building, even though she knew that wasn’t... possible.
Was it?
