Chapter 34

Thirty-Four

Arges

His whole life unraveled the moment she touched him. Fuck, that was a lie. The moment he laid eyes on her was the moment he should have known that he would never be the same again.

This woman, this achromo who fought with an undine even knowing what terrible things he could do to her, had captured his heart. He had admired her bravery back then, but he had no way of knowing that bravery would turn into an admiration that eased into love. True, blissful love. He felt better when he was with her. Like his mind stilled and his soul eased. Like he had been searching his entire life for someone who could see him. Just him.

Not the warrior. Not the man who could save his people and who was good at attacking the achromos. Not the tactician with the brain who could see through what the achromos built.

All she saw was Arges. The monster who had kidnapped her and the creature she had forgiven. They’d fought. They’d argued and drawn blood both ways. And still she found it in her heart to forgive him.

How did he deserve a woman like this? How had he found someone who was so fierce and yet so soft at the same time?

He was a fool for her.

Gathering her limp body in his arms, he swam up toward the moon pool. The longer they were in the water, the more chances there were for his people to hunt her down.

His brother knew where they were. Daios had all but given him an ultimatum. Bring her back to her people, send her home where they would fight against each other for the rest of their lives, or the People of Water would kill her. Because if Daios didn’t, someone else would.

Arges couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t watch her die because he had been incapable of keeping her safe. He just didn’t know if there was anywhere else for him to take her. This dome had clearly been created with one intent in mind. To keep an achromo safe. To keep someone like her alive underneath the waves with a way for them still to be close.

He wished he had thought of it himself. He wished he had provided her with a safe place to rest her head, built with his own two hands.

Drawing her up to the surface, he reached to put her back on the edge of the metal dome. But something tugged at the back of his head when he did it.

Wincing, he reached for the aching spot, only to see her do the same thing at the side of her neck. What was plaguing them? He hadn’t hurt her; he was certain of that. He’d been so careful with his spines or any of the dangerous parts of his body. And she would have let him know if she was harmed. There hadn’t been the scent of blood in the water, so what...

He watched with horror as she pushed her hair away from her neck and he saw one of the tendrils from the mess of his hair impaled in the side of her neck.

“Don’t move,” he said, reaching out to her with a shaking hand. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize...”

“It’s all right.” She seemed strangely fine with the thought that something was sticking inside her. “I felt it when it happened, but I didn’t think it was actually in me. Just let me pull it out.”

“I don’t know if you should.” Arges moved a little closer, brushing her hand away so he could see what was happening.

It appeared that one of his tendrils had speared into her neck, right through the soft flesh. There was a strange goo around it, one he had never seen come out of a tendril. He didn’t know what his body was doing. This wasn’t natural in the slightest. He had mated before. His body had never reacted like this, and certainly never without his permission to do so.

Byte’s box opened in his peripheral, but Arges was far too nervous to look away from the wound and the strange sight of a tendril of his hair moving underneath her skin.

“Would you like me to scan you, Miss Mira?” the robot asked.

“Sure, Byte. Go ahead.”

“Perhaps you should get the medkit while I do so.”

He swore the robot said all this with judgment. There was a tone to its tinny voice that said it thought he had tried to kill her, and now they were all going to have to fix the issue.

Glaring at the box, Arges reached for the medkit and handed it to her. His arms were longer, and he didn’t want her yanking out the strange appendage with no way to heal her. What if this ripped her throat open? What if she bled out in front of him?

“Scanning now.”

He froze as that green ray of light moved over him as well. It was inevitable that it would need to do so. He’d seen the creature scan Mira before and had thought it looked painful. So he waited for the bite of the light to burn through his skin, to sear through his flesh as it tried to seek out what was wrong with him. But the light did... nothing. It was just a light. He couldn’t even feel where it was touching his body if he stopped looking at it, but still every gill flattened hard to his sides as if he could hide from the robot.

“Scan complete,” Byte finally said. “This is interesting.”

“Interesting?” Mira said with a laugh, but he could see the faint way her eyes crinkled when she said it. She was nervous, too. “What is in my neck, Byte?”

“It appears the undines have an unusual way of mating with your kind. I do believe that is what you were doing outside.”

He watched Mira’s cheeks turn a pretty shade of dark red. “It was.”

“It appears your undine’s body has made changes of its own to connect with you more. In a way, to keep you safe. That tube in your throat, I believe, would allow him to breathe for you. If you were to take your rebreather off, as long as you were connected, portions of the oxygen he is receiving through filtering the water in his gills would go to you. He would, of course, have to breathe a little faster to make up for the oxygen you breathe, but as long as you weren’t doing anything too strenuous, you could actually breathe underwater with him.”

Arges wasn’t quite following all that. What did the creature mean they could breathe underwater together? That he was breathing for her?

“No wonder I was a little lightheaded,” she muttered, tapping her fingers on her knees. “So what you’re saying is I shouldn’t need the rebreather as long as we’re connected?”

“I imagine it will be an uncomfortable experience to get used to. It’s very similar to having a machine breathing for you. You would not need to breathe at all, because air is being directly sent to your lungs through your neck. It is... fascinating. It shouldn’t work, but it very well might.”

Arges held up his hand for the two of them to stop talking, and also so he could just breathe for a second. His hearts were racing a little too fast, and he suddenly felt a bit like he needed to float for a little while and get his thoughts under control. “Wait. Both of you stop talking for a second. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

Mira grabbed his hand in the air and held it close to her chest. “We’re both saying that this tube in my throat might be a way for me to be in the water without the rebreather. The undine body apparently makes concessions for the person it’s mating with. If we can figure out how to do this whenever you want to do it, then I could breathe underwater with you indefinitely. No more grabbing the rebreather. Nothing on my face.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Apparently it is.”

He couldn’t... do that. No undine could take an achromo and put them in the water for good. Her people didn’t live underneath the waves like his did. They couldn’t breathe. They drowned. This was the way of things and he hadn’t just created a way for her to... to...

Ghosting his fingers over the place where the tendril connected to her neck, he touched his fingers to the goo that clearly was keeping the air inside of her. “What does this connect to?”

“We sometimes call it a windpipe,” she said with a slight laugh. “But I think it’s a similar tube that goes right to my lungs.”

“This is wrong,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t be able to do this to you. No one should be able to do this to achromos.”

“But what if this is a way for our people to live together?” She cupped his hand in hers, holding it against her neck. “What if this means that you can return to your people with a better option? I know you’ve been saying your mission has always been to kill me, Arges. But what if you were sent to me for a bigger reason? What if we were thrown together to prove that our kinds can actually be together? For good?”

That couldn’t be the reasoning. The ancients would have shown him that future, but it was just him and her. It was just their life, their future, their child growing in her belly. There hadn’t been anyone else in that vision.

And in this moment, he knew what he had to do.

The future the ancients had shown him was a future with him and Mira alone. There was no room for either of their people in it, so he had to do the right thing here. If he wanted to keep her, and the future that had given him new breath in his lungs, he had to tell his people that he would leave them. He had to give it all up. For her.

He had never made an easier decision in his life.

Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to hers, lingering for a few moments before he wrenched the tendril free from her neck. Mira hissed out a long breath, wheezing through the pain even as the strange substance his tendrils had emitted closed the wound for her. There was no blood, no mess. She didn’t even have a hole in her neck where her own air leaked out.

But there was a strange new dot there. Almost as though his body had permanently changed hers.

“I have to go,” he said against her lips. “I have to tell my people that I am leaving. With you. We are going to make a life together, away from all of this.”

“Arges, wait⁠—”

He couldn’t stay to listen to her attempt to change his mind. Instead, he plunged into the water and speared through it. Leaving her back in the dome where he knew she could not follow him, even as he sank into the depths that would have stolen all the light from her eyes. His entire body lit up, brighter than it had ever been, as he made his way toward his future. His people would be fine without him. They had Daios, who hopefully would get his head on straight after his arm fully healed and his brother had lost him. Maybe all the People of Water would turn their attentions toward themselves.

He mourned that he couldn’t be there with them to celebrate those successes. He wished he hadn’t been put in this place where he had made a choice between his future and his past. But right now, there was no choice to be made.

He wanted to be with her. The future he had seen was the one thing he’d always wanted, and he would not give it up for anything.

But in the hours that it took for him to swim to his home, his mind second guessed itself. He saw the people lingering outside their homes, waiting for him. He saw the mistrust in their eyes, and perhaps the fear that he would judge them. And he knew.

He knew.

Something had happened.

Swimming slower, he reached up for one of the coral arches and pulled himself through what had once been his home. The glowing coral illuminated the grip of his hands as he swam past homes filled with far more people than he had expected to see here. There were usually so few of them, and yet, right now, there appeared to be everyone in the town.

Waiting for him.

Frowning, he swam through the crowds to the center where the council already gathered. He had never seen them all look so worried. All of their eyes were on Mitéra, who only had eyes for him.

Every light in his body flared even brighter with anger. They thought they could stop him. Mitéra had already guessed what he planned on doing, and she would argue.

He refused to believe for even a second that they truly thought they could stop him. He would be with Mira for the rest of his life. The ancients had given him that vision for a reason, and if he had seen it, then so had Mitéra. She wanted to steal all of this from him.

She wanted to take his future and mold it into the one she desired. But she didn’t get to do that.

Swimming toward her, he paused in the center where the swirling colors stilled. Arges met her gaze and waited for her to speak. Even the sand seemed to settle faster from his movement to hear her words.

“Arges,” she said, her voice booming through the clearing. “Your brother has told me of the poison the achromo has injected into your veins. She has pierced through the shield of your soul and sickened your heart.”

“No one has harmed me in any way.” His tail flicked the sand, drawing up a dust that swirled around him before settling. “I went to the ancients, as you told me to do. They showed me two futures, and I chose her. I will choose her in every instance. I know this means I must leave this place, my home, my family. I do not make this decision lightly.”

“Your people need you to lead the pod that keeps them safe.”

“There are others.” He turned his attention to the crowd. Each one of them watched him, and he knew them all. Beloved faces, people he had protected for years now. But no longer. There was only one person he wanted to protect. “It saddens my heart greatly to leave you. I have never once wanted to lose you all. But this is a choice I must make for myself.”

He didn’t tell them that his body had changed for her. That he had found a way to live with his kairos and combine their worlds.

Sure, it would be difficult. It would be hard to sleep separately from her, or to have to wait days until her fragile skin could get wet again. But maybe his body would change even more. Maybe hers would as well. The more time they spent together and the more his body adapted to hers. The People of Water were a hardy bunch.

He couldn’t wait to see what their future would bring. Even if that meant he had to lose his own people as well.

“We cannot lose you, Arges.” Mitéra almost seemed... sad as she said it. “I have spoken with the ancients. We all agree the future you have chosen for yourself affects the rest of us too much. You have left us no choice.”

He heard it before he realized they were going to attack him. Spinning, he flicked his tail and shot forward, but the net still caught his fluke. Struggling, he had to slice through the cords before another reached around him. Then another. Then there were hands, ripping and tearing and pulling until there were ropes around his neck, around his arms, up and over his tail. All of them binding him to the ground. To anchors he had not seen before.

Straining against his chains, he could feel the muscles of his neck bulging as his gills flared to suck in more air. Mitéra floated above him, giving directions to what had once been his pod.

His brother was with them. His red brother, full of so much rage since the day he was born. But this time, Daios looked down at him with sadness and pity. As if to say it didn’t have to be this way. We could have stopped this together.

“Not him,” he snarled. “Mitéra, if there was ever a time you respected me, you will not send him.”

His hearts raced, thundering in his chest with anxiety because he knew if Daios was sent to her, that Mira would be dead the moment she laid eyes on him. His brother would destroy everything that he held so dear.

“Not him?” Mitéra’s bell hair undulated, pulling her a little closer to his bound body. “Then you may choose, son of my soul. Choose who ends the achromo.”

So they were going to kill her. No matter what, Mitéra wanted her dead, and this wasn’t... It wasn’t right. She didn’t deserve to die because he had chosen life with his kairos.

Frantically, he searched the gazes of everyone in his pod. Someone who would know there was a mercy to pity.

Gaze locking with Maketes, he knew his brother would do the right thing. He trusted this light-hearted brother of his to know what he was saying.

“Maketes,” he said. “He has always known that there is beauty in forgiveness.”

His yellow finned brother seemed to hesitate before nodding. “I will show her swift mercy, Arges.”

It wasn’t enough for him to feel any sense of reassurance, but he could only pray to the ancients that they sent Maketes to her with kindness. Otherwise, he had already lost the best gift the sea had ever given him.

He had failed his people. He had failed his mate.

This rotting future reeked of despair, and he had no idea how to fix it.