Chapter 13

He raced away from that room and the confusing feelings that it had wrought. When those lights had turned on and the screaming started, he was certain he had delivered her into the mouth of a monster. She hadn't even reacted, and he realized she couldn't hear the sound.

She didn't know she was in danger. His little achromo had no idea that she was in so much danger that he had to save her. So he'd grabbed her, yanked her into the water with him so they could both flee. He'd make the journey more comfortable for her after he got her out of danger.

Until she'd kicked him between his webs so hard that he felt the shock of pain all the way up to his jaw. He'd turned on her, enraged that she would fight him on this, only to find that she was already glaring at him like he was the problem.

Him.

The one who was saving her.

Then she'd explained everything that was happening and he'd felt like an idiot. Of course, there were alarm systems in this facility. He'd seen the alarm systems in the other cities and had suffered through the loud noises and the red lights before. He knew exactly what to expect when the achromos realized there was an intruder in their home.

Then she'd touched him again. Again.

After everything she could see of his body, and what he was lacking, she had still touched him. She'd grabbed onto his claw and he'd been struck by how easy it would be to harm her. All it would take was a single twist of his wrist, a turn in the wrong direction, and she'd be... gone. He could cut through all that delicate flesh and rend it right to the bone. She would bleed out before anyone could stop her.

And those thoughts had terrified him. More than he had ever been terrified. Because with those thoughts came the knowledge that he had never been very good at not hurting people.

She was so small and delicate. So easy for him to hurt and he didn't want to hurt her. He shouldn't want to mate a weak creature. He should search for the strongest, the most powerful, the best. Someone he couldn't best or overcome in a fight. The People of Water valued strength, not delicacy.

So while she turned her attention to stopping the alarm and freeing them from that gods awful noise, he'd fled. He couldn't look at her when he feared what he might do if he stayed for even a moment longer.

What if, for the briefest of moments, he fell to weakness like he had before?

Daios had spent his entire life knowing that he was a weapon. He was proud of the danger that his body posed for almost anyone who was around him. That was his role.

Now, he knew exactly the loss that his body could bring as well. And it plagued him until the very end of the world.

Darting through the water, not toward the sharp coral, but out into the abyss beyond the ledge, he dove into the darkness. Trying to escape the madness, the horrors of his memories, and the fear that he would do it all again. But he'd learned a long time ago that he could not run from those thoughts. They chased him into the darkness.

Breathing hard, his chest moving up and down and his gills flaring wide as though there wasn't enough oxygen in the water around him, he reached the very bottom of the abyss.

There were deeper parts of the ocean that he'd been to before. But down here, even though it wasn't the deepest, there was still a silence in the pressure. It let him think. It let him breathe.

Slowly allowing his body to illuminate the water, he got his bearings. The silt down here had been disturbed by his mad dash into the depths, so it was hard to see much farther than a hand's distance. Everything was red, though. All the dust, all the particles, all the nothing that surrounded him.

Turning in a slow circle, he let his gaze float through the water. He was alone. Finally. He could be free of the worries because there was no one down here with him.

Until he turned in a full circle and came face to face with a rotting corpse.

The undine had been pretty, once. She had been one of the few that Daios had thought he might like to mate. He'd even fluttered for her before, although she had turned him down. Daios was too big. He'd make children that need larger purses, and therefore were harder to birth. And even then, what use would he be to them? The females of their kind were supposed to be bigger, and he'd never met one who was larger than him.

He knew she'd been in the group of fighters with him who had attacked Beta. He'd watched her rush to the forefront, the first of his kind to meet the weapons that the achromos had never shown them before.

And then he'd watched her die. He'd watched as the bright fire had burned through the sea, an impossible nightmare as it struck her in the chest. There were many who fell with her, but she was the one he remembered most.

"Hamartia," he whispered, lifting his hand to ghost it in front of her face. "I am so sorry."

She'd been so beautiful in life. But death had rotted her. One of her eyes was missing, and the pale blue of her coloring was nearly gone. Gray flesh sagged around wounds through her right cheek. She did not look like the beautiful visage he remembered. And the more he stared, the more he feared that he would never remember her powerful beauty.

That rotting mouth fell open, and to his horror, the gills along the sides of her neck flared in with a breath. "You killed me," she said, her voice little more than a death rattle. "You left me there to die."

"I would never have brought any of you there if I had thought for a second that I would lose you."

"You knew. You just didn't want to listen." The dust swirled around her body, and he could see the ragged hole in her chest where her life had leaked out. "And now you will kill another."

"I don't want to kill again," he desperately replied. "I know now the price of my hubris and I don't... cannot suffer this again."

"You have stolen yourself a mate," she said, her one remaining eye rolling in the socket. "You have taken her and tried to forget what you have done. You think you will find a haven in this creature who will see you as nothing more than a monster?"

A flash of light in the distance parted the dust. And then he saw them. Bodies raining down through the water, all limp and revealed only in the bright flashes of light. The achromos? Had they returned for him? Had they finally hunted him down as their greatest beast to destroy?

He was the monster who had attacked their city, and the monster who had failed. Fleeing from them as his brothers had dragged him into the depths while all the others fell.

A rotting hand grabbed onto his chin. He could feel the brittle tips of her claws, and the lack of webs that were the first to rot from her body. Daios couldn't breathe as she dragged his face closer to her, forcing him to look at the nightmarish features that remained. There was nothing left of her. Nothing of the woman he had found so intriguing.

"You wanted me," she hissed. "You would have taken me if I had given you the chance. I was the greatest of my clutch, the strongest and best hunter of our pod. And you think an achromo can replace me?"

"I don't want her."

"But you do. You've already fluttered for her. Your body has betrayed you, warrior, and it makes me sick." She tossed his head to the side so hard it felt as though she'd struck him.

Frozen with his head turned away from her, he squeezed his eyes shut. "This isn't real," he told himself. "This is all in your mind."

"I am not real?" her voice still cackled, and then he heard her snarl in his ear, "I promise you this, Daios the Destroyer, you will kill her just as you have killed all of us. You are a monster, and you are unworthy of anything but the depths of the sea."

Hand clenched into a fist, his entire body shaking, he felt a single word snap out of his mouth and thrust into the sea. "No!"

The word echoed as he finally opened his eyes again. Spinning right and left, he searched the dust for the corpse of the life he might have once had. But there was nothing and no one to be found in the red tinged light. Nothing at all.

He was alone. As he always was. And as he was cursed to always be.

But he couldn't get his breathing under control. He didn't know what this feeling was. Pressing a hand against his chest, he tried to rub at the uncomfortable ache beneath his ribs. Both of his hearts were racing and he couldn't get them to slow. No matter how hard he pressed his hand against them or how many breaths he took through just his lower gills. He was... Something was wrong.

Daios tried to take a deep, long, steadying breath. But it rattled as that wrong emotion made it hard to take a breath in without stuttering. His jaw shook, chattering as he stayed at the cold bottom of the sea where there was no one and nothing but him.

At some point, it felt as though the current had grabbed onto him. The sea herself shoved him away from the muck that was seeping underneath his scales and clogging his gills. She tossed him upward, toward something. And so he rode the current. He allowed her to carry him away from that place, even though he knew she had not forgiven him for what he had done.

The sea moved him higher into the water, much higher until he saw what it wanted. There was a small school of tuna. Already picked apart, it seemed. There were too few of them, or perhaps they had been sliced away from the rest of the group. He was high enough that light speared through the sea, and he could watch the silver flashes of their bodies as they spun and turned away from him.

It was beautiful. He thought, perhaps, the sea wished to remind him that no matter what, there was still life in the water. There was still a reason for him to keep fighting, even if it felt like there wasn't.

Bowing his head, he murmured, "I honor your reminder. The darkness and the depths do no favors for my state of mind. I should not seek out the shadows when there is so much to see in the light."

But then he felt the current nudge him again, closer to the tuna. Again and again she pushed until he realized she wanted him to take one of the creatures for himself.

Sighing, he shook his head. "I have no wish to cause more death. Not today."

Another nudge, another push.

The sea was insistent, it seemed. One of those tunas was for him, although he could not understand why she would wish for him to take prey that large. He certainly couldn't eat all of it himself. He couldn't...

The achromo.

The sea wished him to feed the achromo.

"No," he snarled, baring his teeth in denial of the order. "I've already stolen her. I will not and cannot feed her. These are mating games you wish me to play and I do not want to play them."

This time he was shoved so hard toward the tuna that they scattered. And then the current disappeared entirely, as though the sea was warning him that he had been out of her favor for a very long time. He'd fought against everything she'd thrown his way in punishment, and she was giving him a chance to get back in her good graces.

Darting forward, he looped through the currents and circled the tuna. They were large beasts and fought back harder than most. But it took little for a creature like him to cut one down. With a flick of his tail, he sliced through the water. He could change directions faster than they could, and the sharp claws at the end of his hand cut through their flesh too easily.

The tuna he caught up with flashed silver, then red. The ribbons of blood caught his eye. Daios forced himself to remain in the present, though. He felt the current that suddenly caressed down his sides, toying with his fluke as he caught the dead creature up in his arms. He was not alone, not right now. The sea was with him as he felt around for the nearest current.

Like magic, it caught him up in her arms and drew him down into the depths again.

He'd forgotten what this felt like. The sea always made him feel weightless, but this was effortless. With their goddess on his side, drawing him where she wished him to go, he was invincible.

He saw the facility right in front of him again. And he knew there was another within. A woman who waited for him. An achromo who made him feel things that he shouldn't feel and made him so afraid that he would do something wrong.

Every part of him was made to hurt every part of her. And here the sea was, pushing him to feed her. To care for her. To do whatever it took to keep her alive and tie them together even more than they already were.

He didn't even know how long he'd been gone. He wasn't sure if she wanted to see him or even if she would stop doing whatever it was she was doing. The water was suspiciously murky and all the dust had been stirred up around the building. Daios couldn't even see through the windows the particles were so thick.

He had to imagine that meant she was doing something. What she was doing? He had no idea. And he certainly didn't trust it.

Swimming into the room where he'd left her, he poked his head up to see that the door to the right was open, the hallway somehow drained. And though perhaps that was a good thing—she did need to spread out, most likely—he also feared what that meant.

Heaving the tuna out of the water, he let it flop onto the smooth floor while dragging himself halfway out of the water. Leaning to the side, he stared down the hall to see what his achromo was doing.

What he saw made all the air wheeze out of his lungs.

Skin. Smooth, unblemished skin. And all he could do was freeze in place as his gaze trailed down the shadow of her spine.