Page 107 of Song of the Abyss

Another moan, and then he felt something shift in her body. A tension that came to life as she woke.

“Daios?” she said, even though her eyes were barely open.

He leaned back, trying to give her enough space to breathe but also not wanting to stop touching her. “My kalon,” he said again, breathless with relief. “That’s it. There you are.”

“Daios?” she repeated, that tension coiling ever tighter. “I can’t hear… Where is Bitsy?”

He didn’t feel right pulling any of the shards of glass out of her cheek. He was no healer, nor had he ever been talented at helping others through pain. The mere thought of her in more pain, caused by his own hand, made his stomach roll.

So instead, he lifted both of his hands so she could see what he said. “Broken.”

“Broken?” she whispered, and then her fingers fluttered up to touch the wounds on her face. She made a terrible sound as her fingers skittered over the shards of what remained. “What happened?”

Cupping her neck, he turned her attention toward the rubble and then signed, “You did it.”

“I did it.” She repeated the words one more time before nodding. She seemed a little... shell shocked. “I destroyed Alpha.”

He would have held her in his arms for hours longer, but another part of the wreckage shifted and moved. A large portion of the ceiling had fallen in the back corner, and he had assumed that was immovable. But something did move underneath it. Something that groaned and started swearing.

Wrapping his arms a little tighter around her, he moved toward the water before whatever else was in the room saw them. He needed to get her to safety. The water was safe. It was...

“Wait,” she said, her voice a little too loud. “Wait, Daios.”

That moment of hesitation, where he would have done anything she asked, was the moment the rubble finally cleared. A man stood, covered in dust and black soot and blood of his own.

A man that looked surprisingly familiar.

Every fin flared on his body, and he bared his teeth as that familiar rage swelled yet again. For the first time in his life, he stared at the living version of the General.

And oh, he had never wanted to kill someone more.

39

Anya

She couldn’t touch her face. Anya wasn’t sure what had happened, but she had a feeling her mind wasn’t entirely with her yet. There had felt like shards of glass in her cheek, and she wasn’t sure how they’d gotten there.

All she knew was that she had woken up a little too warm with arms around her that were sturdy and safe. She’d known who was holding her. How could she not?

Daios was always the dream. She wanted to feel his arms around her, so of course she had dreamt of them. Snuggled into the muscles of his body and the steady thuds of his hearts, nothing could hurt her.

In some part of her mind, she had known she was hurting. She had felt it. And when she’d woken enough to realize maybe this wasn’t a dream, she’d felt the glass in her face. She could also feel the strange feeling of pressure in her skull. No, on her skull.

That panicky feeling started rising in her chest again. She didn’t want to think that the feeling was Bitsy, but... What would she do if her droid was destroyed? She couldn’t hear anything at all. Not Daios. Not the groan of the building around her. The explosion right beside her had only made everything all that much harder. It was just a pressing silence that weighed down on her.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stay in his arms either because there was something else she was supposed to remember, but her mind was so scattered.

Anya couldn’t sit still like this. She couldn’t stay in his arms when she needed some air. Some space to process that everything she had relied on was just stripped away from her. Struggling, she ignored his frustrated sounds until she could stand up beside him and just... breathe.

But the damn air was full of smoke because she’d just destroyed her entire home and she was bleeding.

Drips of warm blood trailed down her arms. She couldn’t stop staring at them as they raced down her skin. For the first time since she’d woken, she wondered if there was something seriously wrong with her. Anya couldn’t put any weight on her leg, but she remembered getting stabbed there when she’d been trying to set the undines free and then...

A cold sensation traveled down her spine as she remembered the other important part of all this. The most important part, she realized, considering he was now standing on the opposite side of the room.

Somehow, impossibly so, the General was still alive. He stood on shaky legs, just like her. Two pillars on either side of the room that was crumbling, but somehow they were holding all of this up with their mutual hatred of the other.

She could see the gun on the floor right in front of him. He saw it the same time she did and cocked his head to the side as he looked at her and the undine beside her.

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