Chapter 63

chapter 63

ELLE

I got into the spare suit, and Ceph reached through the water to help me pull on all the pieces. Then I went into the crane-nest and turned everything that seemed reasonably cable-related on, knowing that no matter what I did, the power was going out.

"And you're sure," Cepharius asked when I was on the cusp of crossing over.

"With you?" I told him. "Always."

I stepped across.

He'd gone up to get the lifeboat while I'd been flipping switches, and so now he was carrying both of us across the barren ocean floor, the lifeboat beneath one of his arms, with Snout and the battery inside and in fine form, and me beneath the other, with his tentacles metering out my cable behind us.

We weren't talking, but I thought that was because we could already read each other's minds. He was radiating a deep sorrow, and I was sorry too, to be hurting him.

But I was also filled with love, because I was proud of us and what we had accomplished and because there was no place else I'd rather be than at his side .

"I love you," I told him, and he rumbled in response.

"I know," he said, before looking down at me. "It is your only flaw."

I grinned at him. "You'd better be joking, Cepharius."

"I am. You have many flaws," he said, with a tease, and I playfully pushed against him, right before his arm tucked me in harder to his chest. "I love you too, my pearl. I just hate that you are leaving. I am not ready to give you up yet."

I reached up to put a hand on his chin. "Too bad I never made you a carving of my breeding hole to remember me by," I said, and he laughed, hard.

"I am the luckiest kraken there ever was," he said, setting me to my feet right front of the gantry, so that he could carefully float in the lifeboat with its precious cargo.