Chapter 28

"Anya." The word flashed in front of her eyes and she didn't know if it was said by Bitsy or Mira. She didn't really care.

It had been days since anyone had seen Daios. Maketes had come back, his head hanging low, and he'd spoken with Arges, who appeared troubled. Mira hadn't even told her until right now that Daios had been off in the depths with Maketes. For whatever reason, Maketes had come home alone, and no one had thought to tell her that Daios was missing.

"Anya." The word again flashed, and this time Bitsy added an arrow so she knew that it was Mira speaking.

"You're not stopping me," she said, yanking on the wetsuit. She did so a little roughly, and she was already out of breath.

He was out there, somewhere, alone. And no one had thought that was a problem? Not a single person in this entire place had thought they should maybe send someone out to look for him?

"Maketes will find him," Mira said, moving in front of her with her hands held up. She approached her like she was a wild animal, trying her best to keep her calm. "They already have an idea of where he's gone off to, so it's okay. They're going to get him back and there's nothing you or I can do."

"There's nothing you can do," she replied with a glare. "But I'm going out there. Give me your rebreather."

"And if I don't?"

Anya had to take a deep, steadying breath. "Then I will take it from you."

Mira tilted her head to the side in a shrug. "I'm a lot bigger than you are. I'm stronger, too. No offense, but you've been living in Alpha while everyone waited on you hand and foot. I grew up an engineer, and I've kept those muscles since living here. If you want to fight me, I promise it's not going to end the way you think."

Maybe not. But she had to try. She could be scrappy if she wanted to be, and Anya wasn't above playing dirty.

Her eyes flicked over to the rebreather on the opposite side of Mira. If she hit the other woman over the head with something, she could definitely slip out before Mira got her feet back under her.

Bitsy put exclamations around Mira, which suggested the other woman might be laughing.

Mira shook her head. "If you're really going to attack me, then take the rebreather. There's nothing you or I can do right now, though. All you're going to do is get lost."

Sure. She might. But maybe if she got lost, he would find her again.

Glaring, she took the rebreather the moment the hood of her wetsuit covered her face. "I might get lost," she said, the words probably garbled as she dragged the rebreather on. "But at least I'm not sitting here doing nothing."

"Yeah, yeah." Mira waved her hand at her. "Go on, then. I'll come out with you. Just give me a second."

She didn't care if Mira came out with her. There was only one person she intended to see in that water, and that was the only person who might have an idea of what happened to Daios. She dove into the moon pool without even noticing how cold it was. The icy shivers running through her body had nothing to do with temperature, and everything to do with the fear.

Maketes wasn't too far. She could see the yellow flash of his scales as though he were waiting for her. As though he knew that she would come for him.

Anya hadn't swum on her own in a while, though. Daios had always carried her because he was much faster. But she hadn't realized she would get used to that speed so quickly. It felt like something was holding her back as she tried to reach Maketes's side.

At least the man took pity on her. With a flick of his tail and a graceful twirling motion that spun him in a circle, he was at her side in seconds.

"Anya," he said, the words rushing past her lens as he spoke almost too fast for her to read. "I'm so sorry. He was there one second and then he was gone the next. I have no idea what happened."

"Why were you somewhere dangerous to begin with?" Anger spiked, and she shoved at him. But he didn't even move, and that made her all the more angry. Hitting him again on the chest, she felt marginally better when he did at least flinch. "You've all lived here your entire life and you lose someone?"

"It happens more than you would think?—"

"I don't care if it happens to other people! Where is he?"

Maketes eyed her, his expression a little lost and obviously just as affected. "I don't know! All I saw was a flash of pale scales and then they were both plunging off the edge of a cliff. I have no idea where it took him."

Her breath caught in her lungs, and she knew it had nothing to do with the rebreather malfunctioning. "It?"

He hesitated, his eyes flicking above her head before he looked back at her. Of course, there was another undine behind her. They had an audience, because why wouldn't they? A little human like her shoving around an undine was sure to be a spectacle that everyone wanted to see.

Let them watch. She'd been watched her entire life by more people than she could count on all her fingers and toes. They could judge her, think ill of her, they could claim she'd lost her mind. None of it mattered.

"What do you mean, it took him?" she repeated.

"A..." Again he hesitated, his throat bobbing in a harsh swallow. "We call them depthstriders."

"What is a depthstrider?"

He looked like she asked him to pull his own teeth out. "They are still People of Water, but they are... different from us."

Bitsy threw up words in a different color. The blue that she used matched Arges's coloring so Anya turned to see the other undine swimming up to them as well. "They are a dangerous lot, who keep to the abyss where they belong. Daios has met with them before, but they are not like us. They see things that others do not. And they take those they believe can help them in their cause."

"So that's where he disappeared to? Into the hands of some fanatics?"

She wanted to rip the mask off her face just so they all could see how angry she was. She wanted to scream and yell and throw something at these people who were just floating here and doing absolutely nothing.

"All of you call him your brother," she said, feeling the ache in her throat as though the words were pinched. "And you're doing absolutely nothing to save him."

Bitsy threw up an image that was supposed to soothe her, a cup of hot tea with steam rising out of it, but she shook her head hard to clear the image. She wanted to look right at them while she scolded them. She wanted them to know just how much this angered her.

Arges didn't rise to her bait, though. "We do not know where they have taken him, and as I said, they are dangerous. Unpredictable. I could send a hundred of our people after him and none of them would be likely to find out where they've taken him. Daios has been there before, and he is the only one who knows where their homes are hidden. It's safest for all of us to wait until he returns."

"What if he doesn't?" No one seemed to know how to reply to that, and it made her even more enraged. "What if he doesn't make it back this time, Arges? What then? Do you go and try to find him when it's been a week? A month? How long until you decide it is time to search for the brother you have left on his own?"

Bitsy circled a little area behind Arges where Mira was swimming up to all of them. And she knew this was going to be even more of an argument. Because if she had seen someone yelling at Daios, and implying what Anya was implying, then she would have swum to his rescue as well.

The redhead hadn't even put on a wetsuit. She was in her regular brown trousers and a billowing white shirt that clung to her body while her hair created a cloud of red around her head. The rebreather on her face was the only thing that hid the anger radiating through her body.

"Careful what you say, Anya. We've taken you in and given you this much leeway, but don't think we cannot make you an unwilling captive."

"Where are you going to put me?" she practically shouted. "There's only one dome. What's next? Chain me to the wall? You can do that if you want, but we both know you were the one who sent a wounded soldier into a dangerous city to find someone who inevitably proved useless."

The words fell between them and plummeted like stones.

Therein lay the worst of her emotions. The worst of her heartache.

Anya had always wanted to be the solution for her people. Even if that was just a dream of a princess who had never faced what it might take to actually save them. But she still wanted to do it. She had still endured the looks, and the judgement. She'd gone into the middle of the sea with a creature who she should have thought was a monster because it might help someone someday.

She'd been the one on the outskirts for her entire life, the one who was different and maybe even a little wrong. Now she was here, and she was still the different one. She was one of two humans who were trying to justify their use. At any point, the undines could decide she wasn't worth the trouble.

And the only undine who had given a shit thus far was missing.

The rebreather wasn't getting enough oxygen into her lungs. She felt like she couldn't breathe. All she wanted was to reach up and rip the damn thing off because it was suffocating her, but she couldn't do that without drowning.

How did anyone live like this? How did Mira stay with them when this was how she had to feel all the time?

Fingers already scrabbling at the edges of the rebreather, she suddenly froze when Maketes grabbed onto her arms. "Anya, we're doing everything that we can. I hope you know that."

"No, you aren't," she replied, her voice breaking just slightly. "You're doing nothing."

Then, over Arges's shoulder and beyond Mira's billowing red hair, she swore she saw a red light. A glimmering beacon that might have made other people wary, but she knew that light.

She'd seen it in the darkness many times, and she'd always risen to the occasion of facing him without fear. Because how could she fear him? To her, he was not a monster. He never had been.

"There," she whispered, her eyes widening above the rebreather until the saltwater stung. "Isn't that..."

She couldn't even say the words, but she knew it was. The other two undines with her turned, and Arges wrapped one of his arms around Mira to anchor her at his side. They all waited there, frozen, as the red undine sluggishly approached them.

Even from here, she could see he was moving too slow. There was the faintest trail of black that followed him, like silk ribbons fluttering in a breeze. But he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

He was alive, and he'd come back to her.

Anya held her breath until she saw his face. Until she saw the missing arm that always made her so certain this red undine was hers, and she didn't have to struggle to look at his face or pretend that she knew his voice over all the others.

He looked up and their eyes locked. She could feel his exhaustion, the ache that spread through his body, but even more, she could feel the relief that coursed through him at the sight of her. Because it was the same emotion she felt.

With a sudden surge of his tail and a flash of fluke, he sped toward her at twice the speed. She barely had time to open her arms before he thudded into her. Hard enough that bubbles erupted from the seal around the rebreather, and her chest ached with the impact. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding on as he didn't slow down.

He just struck her with all the force of a hurricane and carried her away from the others without a word.

"Daios!" Arges shouted, and she knew that Maketes was trying to follow them. None of them could keep up with her undine, though. A burst of energy and power renewed his speed, and soon enough, the others were just specks in the distance.

He was shaking, she realized. Quaking against her chest until she felt as rattled as he was. Tears pricked her eyes, and she held onto him tightly, rubbing her palms up and down his back because she didn't know what else to do. What to say.

Instead, she just held him to her heart and let him hold her against his.

At one point in their mad dash, he reached up and ripped the rebreather off of her face. Before she could even protest, he'd connected that tentacle to her throat, and she felt him breathing for her. Perhaps a little too fast, and certainly ragged. But it was there.

"Just need to feel you," he growled against her ear, the tones so low that they practically vibrated through her.

She went limp in his arms. How could she do anything else? She'd been so worried, so frantic, that he might be harmed. Which he was. He'd arrived with banners of blood trailing after his body and yet still he carried her through the sea. Perhaps to somewhere he considered safe.

Anya didn't stop stroking his back for a second, not even when he dove into a tall kelp forest. Not even when the sticky tendrils brushed against her face and coiled around their arms. Not even when she felt like maybe she was a little trapped.

Because if she was trapped with him, she knew without a doubt that she was safe.

She felt his massive sigh radiate throughout both of their bodies. Daios tangled them in the kelp until they floated together without him needing to move a single muscle. He wrapped the kelp in an intricately woven pattern, almost like they were lying in a hammock, with her draped across his chest.

Only then did she hold his face in her hands and force him to look at her. Carefully signing her words, she spoke along with the movements so he could be certain what she was saying.

"What happened?"

He sighed again, and his warm hand cupped her thigh. He jerked her a little higher up his body and then slid his hand up her back. Slowly, almost reverently, he pressed his hand to the back of her head and drew her down to rest against his shoulder. "I am worn and ragged. My kalon, let me rest with you before I must face what I have seen."