Chapter 26

Anya laid her cheek down on the table and watched the two droids as they interacted with each other. Bitsy couldn't speak out loud, which she'd been informed Byte could do. So the two droids ended up talking in projections.

It appeared they were telling each other the story of what had happened since the last time they'd seen each other. Just the highlights. A lot of what Byte projected onto the wall were images from underneath the sea. Giant whales swam above their head, squid tangled around his little metal body, and how he'd been dragged even deeper into the water.

In contrast, Bitsy projected Alpha. She showed them all around the city, and Anya had tried to read the lips of both Mira and Arges for a while before she'd given up. Mira wasn't looking at her. She was walking through the projected city of gold with rapture in her eyes. Arges wasn't even speaking the same language she could read the lips of, so it didn't matter what she thought he was saying.

Instead, she laid her head down on the desk and tried her best to not feel... off.

She'd felt like it for a while now, and it didn't make any sense. She'd gotten out of the city. Now she was here, with these people, who wanted the same thing she wanted. They intended to bring her father down and rebuild Alpha in a new image.

Sure, it was dangerous. They wanted the undines to go completely unbothered, and Anya didn't know if she could convince anyone of that. But at least there was hope now that she was here.

Unfortunately, that meant... nothing at all. Ace wasn't talking to her. No one cared to hear what her thoughts were, because she had always been intended to be nothing more than a pawn. They knew what they wanted to do already.

Where did that leave her? Staring off into the distance while her only means of communication talked to a long lost... What did she even call Byte? Did droids have lovers?

Sighing, she tilted her head away from them a bit and looked up through the glass. At least she got a glimpse of Daios every day. He swam by the glass dome often. Whenever she caught his eye, he would nod at her and angle his body away from her sight. Just like he used to.

All that forward momentum was lost. She worried maybe he didn't even want to see her. He'd delivered her like a package he'd wanted to get rid of. Then he'd disappeared into the ocean.

How was she supposed to feel? After that kiss, the way he'd touched her, and how she'd come apart in his arms… He'd dumped her and left, like he hadn't wanted to be around her anymore. After everything they'd talked about and everything...

Well, maybe she'd just been entertainment while they laid low so her father's ships couldn't find them. Maybe she was the only weird one who saw a man who had needed someone to see him.

Just like she'd wanted someone to see her.

Blowing out a breath, she realized the barely there murmur of talking had stopped. She'd gotten so lost in her thoughts that she'd forgotten to stay aware of the rest of the room.

Sitting up and shoving her hair out of her face, she tried to look like she'd been involved. At the very least, she could assume what they were saying. Bitsy had been showing them Alpha, which meant that they were probably asking about the city of her home. No need to ask her, though. They could just ask the droid.

Anya was a little harder to understand than Bitsy or Byte, anyway. Her words were maybe said a little differently, just enough for people to get uncomfortable. They had to focus on facing her, at least while Bitsy wasn't on her head. And then, of course, there was the ever present knowledge that she couldn't hear them.

Maybe she was too tired. She normally didn't care this much.

"Oh, right," she read from Mira's lips. "Bitsy —" and then some words that didn't really make a ton of sense because Mira had tilted to look at the droids on the table and her mouth wasn't facing Anya any longer.

Considering Bitsy charged toward her and climbed up her arm, she could assume Mira had ordered the little droid up so they could talk.

The lens came down over her eye and Anya tried a smile that felt fake on her face. "Sorry, I didn't think it was necessary for me to be part of the conversation."

Mira winced. "That's not how we want you to feel at all, and I apologize if that was how it seemed. Bitsy was showing us the inside of your home. It's very different from where I grew up."

"Beta?"

Mira shrugged. "I just assumed we were all living in tin cans that were falling the fuck apart."

Right. Of course, that's what Alpha wanted everyone to think. The last thing they needed was for the other cities to realize there was one in particular that was green and full of life.

"My father didn't want people to know just how much we had." She twisted her hands in her lap, trying to keep them from shaking. "He wanted to keep Alpha a utopia where only the rich and the better off could go. That way, when he needed someone talented like a doctor or an artist, they were being given a gift that no one else was often given. It makes controlling people very easy."

A shadow of doubt crossed through Mira's expression. She flicked her gaze over to the undine half in the water and half on the landing area of the moon pool.

Perhaps they didn't think she understood their facial expressions, but Anya had spent the better part of her life observing others. She had to know how to read faces as much as she had to know how to read lips. What she'd just said worried them, as it should.

Coughing into her hand for attention, she adjusted Bitsy, so it was easier to read a lot of words very quickly. "Is there a problem?"

Mira bit her lip, that worrying movement already telling Anya what she was going to say. "We're not sure what to do at this point. You say your contact is incapable of doing any more than what they already have. There is no easy way into the city. We cannot use your propaganda idea without your friend. And if what you say is true, your father has very little interest in getting you back."

"I would suggest that me being missing is only helping him spread the idea that the undines are dangerous," she said with a slow nod. "Look at the reality of all this. He has footage of Daios kidnapping me. The people of the city have already been told that undines are dangerous monsters who would feast upon their children's flesh if they could. They have seen footage of attacks on other cities. And now I've gone missing."

"So our only other choice is to bring you back." Mira frowned, though. As if even she heard the flaw in that plan.

"We can't get me back in," Anya replied, even as Bitsy sent warning signals all over the lens. "I don't think he would let me return to the city, to be honest. It's easier for him now to say I'm dead."

There was the worst part of all this. It was easier to claim the death of his daughter. It was easier for him to play the martyr, the father who had lost a dear daughter and who couldn't possibly ever recover from it without the help of his loyal city.

They'd fallen right into his greatest dreams, and now they had to suffer through the consequences.

Arges's gills flared and then flattened. "I will seek my brothers. Perhaps they will have some idea."

Mira gave him a kiss before he left. It made Anya's cheeks flare bright red, and she wasn't sure why. But then again, yes, she did. Jealousy burned in her heart every time she looked at them. It was so easy for them, and far too painful to watch their interactions when she wished it was herself and another undine who had forgotten she existed.

Bitsy fidgeted on her head while Anya stood and wandered into the small garden area. This needed to be expanded greatly. Two humans went through a lot more food than one human did. If she was going to stay for a while, then they needed more plants. More space.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem like that was going to be very easy.

Bitsy put an arrow in front of her face, pointing behind her. Of course, Mira would follow her. Of course, she would also want to talk about... whatever it was Mira talked about.

Sighing, she turned and pasted that fake smile on her face. "Hi. I assume he's gone?"

She still hadn't figured out how to say ‘Arges'. The undines used their lips in such a strange way, and it was hard to guess what that might sound like. She'd said it a few times, but considering the way his eyes had pinched in, she knew she'd said it wrong.

"He's headed out." Mira leaned against the wall, her arms looped over her chest and her ankles crossed as well. "So you're here. I can only imagine it's a relief to be with us instead of wherever Daios was keeping you."

She'd brought this up a few times, and it always made Anya strangely defensive. "It wasn't so bad."

"The facility you talked about? I looked it up. You barely had power enough for heat, let alone for whatever else you were doing. So I can't imagine it was easy. Especially with..."

That's when Mira always stopped talking, as though she were fishing for information about Daios. Anya knew people like this in Alpha. They were always interested in the gossip, although they never said anything themselves. They hoarded information, likely because they felt like it gave them power.

Unfortunately, it gave Mira power. And she didn't want to tell anyone about anything but also...

She wanted a friend.

Bitsy drew a large circle around Mira with the words, "You can trust her."

Taking a deep breath, she looked up at the glass dome and wished there was a familiar red scaled undine floating above her head. "He makes me feel safe."

Bitsy had to highlight a few exclamation points, and the animated figure of a person shaking with laughter. She could see the image of Mira laughing in the reflection of the glass above her head.

Let her laugh. She didn't need the other woman to understand how she felt.

But then Bitsy got more insistent, and she looked back to Mira.

The redhead was suddenly quiet, staring at her with an expression that said she was shocked, horrified, and maybe a little bit ill. "Wait, you're not kidding?"

Anya shook her head. "No, I'm not. He made me feel very safe the whole time I was there."

"He's huge, though. You must have been terrified of him when you first saw him."

Anya tried to remember whether or not she was. It was hard to think back on those moments when she'd first seen him and thought of him as a monster, now that she knew Daios a little better. But she didn't think she had ever been terrified.

"Not really." She shrugged. "He was my best option at escape. I grew up with the real monsters, Mira. I have seen what they do and how terrible they are. An undine never seemed so bad when I knew just how powerful they could be. I was looking for a protector, I suppose, and he fit into that role all too well."

The ghost of his lips against hers pressed to her skin. She could still feel the strength of that powerful arm as he'd dragged her closer. The press of his claws against her flesh. But it wasn't just those memories that made her feel so soft around him. It was also waking up to him brushing his claws through her hair so there weren't any tangles when she woke up. It was the low murmur of his voice that she could actually hear, and the way he softened when he looked at her.

"I've never felt so cherished," she said, not even certain that her voice was loud enough to be heard. "I know that's insanity. He's someone I don't know, not really. I haven't talked to him much about his life or where he came from. I don't know his struggles or his family or what it was like for him growing up. All I know is that the core of him..." She thumped her fist against her chest. "It's the same as what is in here."

Mira watched her with wide eyes, and she thought maybe the other woman wouldn't believe her. Maybe all those words would feel like a lie.

But then Mira nodded, slowly, but still a nod. "When Arges first kidnapped me, he took me to a facility underwater as well. He hid me away from the others to see if he could convince me to turn on our kind. But then, something happened. The more I saw his resilience, the stoic ferocity that made him who he was, it called out to me. I know what you mean when you say something in here feels the same as what lives in them."

Anya watched Mira press a hand to her heart as well, and she felt something inside herself unravel. "It should not exist."

"Perhaps not. Your father would call us abominations for feeling it." Mira shrugged. "But I have never followed the rules, and I'm not going to start now. I still can't believe you feel that way about Daios, though. He sucks."

A little giggle slipped out, and then another. Then, soon enough, Anya had lost all control over her mirth. Laughter bubbled up and out of her mouth, boiling over in hysterics. She'd almost gotten herself under control when she saw Mira was also laughing, and then that set her off all over again.

Finally, they stopped laughing after her stomach muscles screamed in protest. Mira had slid down the wall to sit on her butt, and Anya was braced against a box of growing basil. Her nose was filled with the scent of green things growing, of earth and loam and the calming smell of herbs.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Anya finally managed to say, "He doesn't suck."

"He does! He tried to kill me multiple times when I first came here. Even after he'd decided that he wouldn't do that, he's always been a gruff bastard."

"Not to me," she replied, laughter probably making her words almost impossible to understand. "He's always been so sweet to me."

"That's so hard to imagine."

She couldn't imagine why. He always seemed aware of his own strength around her. And he was kinder than any of the people in her city, because he was kind without an ulterior motive. He didn't want something from her. He just wanted her to smile.

Sighing, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor as well. Leaning her head back against the worn wood, she replied, "He brushed my hair."

"He what?" Mira even leaned forward with the force of the word. "When?"

"All the time." She shrugged. "He likes my hair."

"That's..." Mira shook her head. "Tell me everything. All I know is the grumbly asshole who tried to kill me. Clearly, I do not know this version of the man."

And for the first time since she'd been abducted, Anya just relaxed. She told her new friend everything, well, other than the more physical aspects they'd indulged in. She told her all the stories and all the kindness and all the strangeness she'd been feeling.

Mira never judged her, not even once. All she saw was another woman who had fallen in love with an undine, and Anya knew she would be accepted here.

It was a good feeling, even if it was a little terrifying.