Chapter 23

Twenty-Three

Mira

She hadn’t expected it to go that way. Of all the things he could have growled in her ear, all the threats that her people likely deserved. Instead he told her how beautiful she was. How much he wanted to touch her and then he... had. His fingers lingering on her ribcage, his thumbs just barely brushing the underside of her breasts... It had taken her breath away.

Even now, as they headed back to the cave from the hot springs that had finally warmed her to the very bones, she couldn’t get her mind to stop whirling. He wanted her. He had proven that there was some kind of link between the two of them, even though that was likely the strangest thing that had happened in centuries.

They were... What? She didn’t know.

Her mind whirled as he carried her back toward the cavern, and she felt the shift in both of them as the icy waters sank into the small hole in the back of her wetsuit. With that touch, her thoughts slowly changed from heated to cold as well.

What had they done?

They shouldn’t be interested in each other. It shouldn’t even be possible that they were interested in each other. They were too different. Barely fit together. They were puzzle pieces from two separate boxes and no matter how hard they tried to jam themselves together, it wouldn’t work.

He could breathe underwater. And her? Mira needed air.

Nothing they ever did would fix that. They would never be able to be anything other than two people who wished they could be together. And that would break them, eventually.

When the cavern came into view, the dark shadows swirling before her eyes, she wondered how long they could keep this up. He wouldn’t be able to hide her from his people forever. In fact, he would need to bring her to them if she never told him the secrets he thought she knew. And she would try to flee. Escape. Hide from whatever it was they wanted with her.

Byte had already alluded there was more that she did not know. The sudden stiffness in his arms suggested he might be considering the same thing. This was doomed from the start.

They had indulged themselves a bit. Forgotten that this wasn’t their world to mold and shape into what they desired or wanted. Once they returned to the cave, everything else would come crashing down around their ears.

They were too different.

Life did not want them together.

Neither did their people.

He released her from his arms a little too early, and she dragged herself back into the cave by touch alone. Water brushed against her sides, pushed by his tail as he moved into the opening as well. Only Byte’s dim light illuminated her path to the surface.

Once she broke through, she pulled off her rebreather and gently set it on the rocks. Holding onto the edge, she ripped off her goggles as well. “What if I hadn’t found the way back into the caves, Arges?”

His eyes seemed to darken. And for the first time in a long time, she saw the same undine who had threatened her people. The undine who had been locked in the tube with her, and wanted to kill as many of her kind as he could before he died.

This wasn’t the man who had kept her alive. This wasn’t the magical creature who had shown her so many wonders under the waves. She was a fool to have forgotten that he had taken her against her will, trapped her in a network of caves, and that he refused to let her go home.

She pulled herself away from him, narrowing her eyes on the sudden tension in his shoulders and how the colors along his body rioted with emotion. His hands flexed below the water, just barely illuminated by the tiny dots of blue that lit up and then died as he stared at her.

“What?” she snarled. “Are you mad at me for wanting to go into warmer waters? Is that it? Are you angry because I insisted that I be comfortable for once?”

He stayed absolutely silent.

The glare was starting to get to her, though. He watched her like there was something wrong with her, like she was the problem.

She wasn’t the problem here. She wasn’t the one who... who...

Lifting a dripping hand, she pointed at him. “Don’t look at me like that. You have no right to be angry with me. None at all. You’re the one who took me from my home, trapped me in caves all around the ocean, forced me to be wet and cold and shivering. You’re the one who did all of those things to me. So really, what the fuck could make you angry at me, Arges?”

She had to remind herself that he didn’t think she could understand him. That he only said the next words because he didn’t realize that she understood every single word, and the hatred in each and every one of them.

“Because your people have destroyed this ocean. Because you came here, so confident that this place belonged to you. You filled our waters with metal and rust. When we tried to fight against you, you shot at us with flames and weapons that were so beyond our understanding that we had no way to fight back.” He moved a little closer to her, his tail flicking underneath the surface. “You, who are so tempting and so new, forget that you have destroyed so much.”

Had her people destroyed the ocean? Hardly, although she knew they had destroyed a lot around the city. But she wasn’t the one making decisions. She was the worker who shut up and did what she was told or she’d be tossed out a pressurized tube.

Perhaps this was the time to tell him that she understood what he was saying. But something in her screamed to not let him know. She had lied. She had tricked him. Telling him now would only make this moment worse and she couldn’t afford for this to get any worse than it already was.

So instead, she gritted her teeth and muttered, “I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me. But clearly, you are being rude and I have nothing more to say to you.”

Planting her hands on the rocks, she yanked herself out of the water. The heat from their visit to the vents had already disappeared. Yet again, she was uncomfortable. Wet and sodden, tired and so fucking exhausted that she wanted to collapse into a ball on the rocks.

“I can’t stay here for much longer,” she hissed. “This ocean is killing me.”

His dark voice rumbled through the cavern. “Perhaps this is what the ocean wants. Your death would be reparation for all the deeds you and your people have wrought.”

That’s it. She refused to listen to him berate her like she was the one making all the decisions. And no, he had no idea she could understand what he was saying, but for fuck’s sake! His tone was pretty damn obvious.

Whirling around, already trying to yank one of her arms out of the damn wetsuit, she yelled, “I don’t care what you’re saying, Arges! You are still the person who kidnapped an innocent woman and brought her to her death! My people call that a murderer. I have no idea what your people call it. Probably a Friday night, but that doesn’t make it okay. Humans value life.”

“Humans value nothing,” he hissed. “I should be asking you about where your tunnels go. I should be forcing you to the ground with a knife to your throat so you will spill all the secrets about your castles under the sea so we can infiltrate your kind and destroy them. All of these things are what I was sent for, and I have done none of them. Why? Because you make me weak, kairos, and I should have killed you long ago to prevent that weakness from spreading.”

Don’t react, she told herself. Don’t react and reveal that you know exactly what he just said to you.

So that was the real reason why he’d taken her. Spinning around, she gave him her back as she peeled herself out of the wetsuit. They’d returned to the original cavern days ago, which meant there was a tiny blanket in the corner with mold worn holes, but enough to dry off. It was important for her to do so, and even then, it allowed her to hide for a few moments.

He hadn’t taken her because he was interested in who she was, or that she had captivated him in some way. Of course he hadn’t. She’d fooled herself into thinking this monster had feelings when he didn’t in the slightest.

She was just a job. Duty, honor, a creature he had to put up with while he was forced to understand her language.

Oh, he must have been laughing every time he returned to his home. The little achromo, locked away in the cave while she wasted away into nothing. This was some complicated form of torture and she’d readily walked right into it in the hopes that she might make a friend with someone who was so different from herself.

“Stupid,” she muttered, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders and bending to peel off the rest of her wetsuit.

When she’d gotten herself together, she finally turned to him and met his angry gaze. She had to talk to him. Had to make it seem like she wasn’t affected by any of what had just happened, or that she wasn’t getting whiplash from his rapidly changing emotions.

“I don’t know or care what you have to say,” she settled on saying. “Your words mean nothing to me, and I don’t think they would, even if I could understand you. Clearly, something has changed your mind about me and that is fine. I don’t need you to like me, Arges. I just need you to keep me alive.”

He wouldn’t do that after this argument. She’d already been difficult for him to put up with. If he only had her here because he wanted to know more about her people, then he would be sorely disappointed.

“If I could leave you, kairos, I would.” He lifted his chin, looking all the more like the untouchable undine who had attacked her people. “But I will learn how I can attack your kind. I will use all your words to my advantage and I will take down your city once and for all.”

She ground her teeth together, clutching the blanket so tightly in her hands that her nails bit into her palms. “I don’t know why you kidnapped me, but I have a good guess. Considering how much energy you’ve put into trying to speak with me, you think I hold some secrets. You think I know something about my people that would help you. Is that it? Byte already said it in not so many words.”

Mira had to hear it from him. She wanted him to admit it. She needed proof that she never should have trusted him.

He said nothing, but nodded.

It was enough. She bit out an ugly laugh that only made her feel even worse. This wasn’t the life she wanted to live. This wasn’t the hope she had for all the time they had spent together.

She’d fooled herself into thinking this was an adventure when it was just an elaborate prison.

“Sorry to disappoint,” she replied, her tone perhaps a little sullen. “But you picked someone who knows the least about anything. I’m not some high up leader who makes the decisions and knows every secret about Beta. I grew up in the base of the city, with barely enough food and water to survive. And then even less when I was orphaned and sent to live with all the other kids without families. Trust me. If you wanted secrets about Beta? You should have picked someone else. I’m a nobody, Arges. I know nothing useful.”

Perhaps her words shocked him. He stared at her with wide eyes, like she’d told him that the humans were planning on setting the entire ocean on fire. But it was the truth. She had no secrets to tell him, nothing that would help him in the slightest. She was just... Mira. An engineer with a big mouth and a superiority complex that often got her shuttled from boss to boss.

She wasn’t the person to pick if he wanted secret entrances into the city or codes that would allow them to open blast doors. She wasn’t even certain Beta had that.

The building was impossible to get into from the outside. She’d seen so many divers die trying to do just that, and he really believed she could help an undine do it?

No one wanted the undines in Beta, and they had taken every single measure necessary to be sure it didn’t happen.

She lifted her arms up and down in defeat. “We both just have to live with each other, Arges. It’s not like I can help you murder my people, and even if I could, why would I do that? All you’ve done is stick me in a cave and threaten to kill me. I’d rather be dead than have hundreds of lives gone because of my selfish decision.”

She’d rather not be dead at all, of course. But she didn’t think she could be the person to make this call. Her people deserved to live. Just as much as his did.

Still, he said nothing, glaring at her while his body practically vibrated. Until she couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t take the judgment in those eyes or the bullshit response of just hatred because she was a human.

“Fucking hell!” she shouted, yanking the blanket even tighter around her shoulders as she backed toward the console table. “I just told you I’m useless, Arges! So fuck off. Clearly, there is nothing I can do for you, and there’s nothing you can do for me, so just leave me to rot here! I’ll make it a couple of days, but that was the whole point of taking me, wasn’t it? I was never getting out of this alive. So stop toying with your food and let me fucking die.”

She hated it. She didn’t want to die, but she wanted him to look at her even less. He didn’t get to... stare. He didn’t. Every fiber of her being wanted to hit him, fight him, grab that stupid welder he’d given her, and melt off a couple of those damn scales.

Maybe she was just mad because her feelings were less real than they had been only moments before. He’d stolen that rare, wondrous feeling he’d caused in the hot springs. Now, she just felt used.

And she was so damned tired of it.

“There’s nothing we can do for each other, Arges,” she added, her breath ragged and her voice catching in her throat. “So just end it.”

Before she could take another breath, the undine before her was surging out of the water with his claws outstretched for her throat.