Page 95 of Whispers of the Deep

Arges couldn’t contain the glee. A feral grin spread across his lips and he said, “I always knew you were my favorite.”

“Shut up, Arges.”

“The one brother who can see the future better than all the others.”

Maketes lit up for a second before he forced his lights to disappear. “Shut up, Arges. You know there is little else I can do. All I can even attempt is to keep you in on the loop. Your brother will kill me otherwise.”

“Daios has one arm.”

“And he can do enough with the other. I swear, he’s gotten more aggressive to make up for the loss. He’s planning another attack against the achromos.”

Arges squeezed his eyes shut. “Another death swim, you mean? If he has his way, the achromos will shoot us with their weapons until there is nothing left of our kind.”

“Mitéra isn’t listening to him yet. She wants to see when the poison will leave your body before they do anything else.” Maketes dragged himself a little closer, pitching his voice even lower. “If you want to get out of these bindings, you’re going to have to convince her that you will lead the pod in another attack.”

“I have no wish to attack their kind any longer.”

“I understand that. And I know you are honor bound to not lie, because that is who you are. But a little lie to get out of these bonds, to go and find her... Wouldn’t it be worth the mark on your honor?”

He hesitated.

Could Arges lie convincingly? Could he pretend he wanted to kill Mira’s kind and that the fog had lifted from his mind?

Maketes lingered for a few more moments before he added, “I don’t think the achromos were happy to see her back. I returned to Beta only once, and it took a long time to find her. They were questioning her in a room that had no windows, but I saw them bring her in. She was tied up, and there were bruises on her face. I don’t think they are happy that she survived any more than Mitéra is happy she survived.”

They were hurting her? Her own people?

A low snarl erupted from his mouth, pressing against the back of his throat. “I will do it.”

“I figured you would.”

Maketes darted up into the water above him, making sure he was visible to all who looked. “Arges has returned to us! Our warrior is back!”

A few shouts echoed from the water, and it didn’t take long for Mitéra to appear. Her glowing bell hair undulated around her body as she stared down at him, suspicion in every line of her body. “Has he?”

He bared his teeth in a feral snarl. “The fog has lifted from my mind, Mitéra. the achromo has released her hold on me, and I am ready to attack their home again.”

“I don’t believe you, son of my soul.”

He slammed his tail hard into the sand, allowing a plume of it to rise around him before he did it again. “Give me leave to destroy them, Mitéra. I was able to converse with the achromo. She told me many of their secrets. I will bring the fight to them. Dismantle their city piece by piece until we can sneak into their underwater cities. We will ruin them from the inside out.”

“How?”

He didn’t have to think that hard. Arges had stored all the information away from when they had met. From the first moment he had laid eyes on her. “There are a few moon pools throughout the base, the same kind that were in the dome where I was keeping her. Those pools are going to be the best way to get into their city. She showed me the tools to seek out. There are many of them on the ocean floor where the achromos have discarded their garbage. We will melt our way into their city and come in through the bottom. They won’t even know we are there.”

Daios appeared out of the darkness and was the first to reply. His dark, demonic voice echoed through the crowd. “He wishes us to fight on land? You want us to go into the very city where the achromos live and fight them in the air?”

“Expel the water from your lungs, brother. Perhaps you will remember what it is like to breathe air rather than water. We will fight their people. Destroy them from the inside out. The city is a clam, sealed shut from the rest of the world and impossible to break open. We must become the rot that forces it to open.”

These were the words he never wanted to say. The words that meant he had truly betrayed the one person who meant so much to him.

But Mira would understand. She would fight him at first, maybe even strike him with those tiny fists. But she would know that he had done it to save her, and that was all he could do in this situation.

Her own people had hunted her. They were beating her, harming her, destroying her even now. And he would not wait until she was dead. He couldn’t.

So he would bring the fight to her. Even if that meant tearing down her entire city to get her back.

Mitéra narrowed her eyes at him, then turned her attention to Maketes. “Is this the truth?”

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