Page 101 of Song of the Abyss

He didn’t care. He had to do something. The depthstrider in there was just as dangerous as the people that surrounded her. He had sent her into a pool of sharks to swim while she bled freely. What had he expected?

Maketes moved in front of him, his tail wrapping around Daios’s to stop him from moving. “Listen to us, Daios. Give me a moment to talk with Ace, and I will tell you where she is. We can find a way to get to her.”

He didn’t want to wait a single second more. The words ground out of him before he could stop them. “Every moment I am here lengthens my journey to her side. If she dies, I will blame all of you. I will boil the very sea that you live in. I will hunt every one of you down until your lineage is nothing more than chum in this sea.”

The heavy weight of their stares and silence pressed down upon him, but he would not bend. He would not bow to their expectations when his woman’s life was on the line.

Maketes nodded. “Noted. Let me talk with Ace first, and then we’ll figure out a faster way to get you there.”

“I can do that,” Mira said with a sudden snap of her fingers. “I’ve been working on a device to help me swim faster. It has a motor on it. With you swimming and the motor pulling you, you should move faster than without it. It’s not teleportation, but it might cut it down by an hour or so.”

An hour was half the time. He could do that fast enough. But it was still thirty minutes after the bomb went off, and time was ticking.

His muscles and tail twitched with the need for action. He did not move, though, when Arges approached him. His brother held the metal arm, retrieved from the bottom of the sea. “You will need this.”

He did not want to wear it. Anya hadn’t liked it, and in the end, neither did he. But he still threw it over his head as Mira came out of her back room, affixing the terrible sensation of needles digging into his skin and flexing the fingers of the metal arm.

Arges took the strange device out of Mira’s hands and approached him. “We are here for you, brother.” He handed it over and then pointed out the switch to turn it on. “We’ll be right behind you. But I need you to hear me when I say you are not alone.”

“I hear you, brother,” he replied. What he did not say was that he didn’t think they could help him now.

“Go get her.”

Maketes made a tsking noise and handed the strange rectangle over. “This is the city map. She’s somewhere in here. Ace thinks there’s a way to get into it through these tubes. Apparently, that’s what her father has been using to dump those bodies. As long as the blast doesn’t damage those, you should be able to get through.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as we can be in a few moments.” Maketes shrugged. “It’s the best chance you’ve got right now.”

“Then I’ll take it.”

He didn’t look at the others. He couldn’t. There wasn’t any time for reassurance or for any more words. He knew exactly where to go, and that was where he had to continue.

The device that Mira had built would help him swim faster. Already it was pulling him, and he could only hope that would jolt him through the water with all the speed of a sailfish. If he could manage that and maintain that speed, he could get to her. Hopefully. Sooner rather than later.

He darted through the water, feeling the currents running over his sides. The goddess was with him. As he darted away from their home, arcing up in a big circle and then plunging into the fastest current he could find, he knew this to be true. It had been a long time since he’d been so certain that the sea was on his side.

He could feel their goddess in the way the ocean moved with him. He could feel it the moment that the sea knew he was going to save the only woman who had ever meant anything to him. His mate. His heart. His soul.

The goddess was there with him as the first sparkle of Alpha appeared on the horizon. A tiny golden gemstone in the distance and it was still in one piece. He would make it. He could go a little faster now, because the adrenaline running through his body had yet to wear out. The currents pushed with him, sending him careening through the water. Soon he would be at her side. Soon.

The city was the size of his fist now. Not far at all. If only his fins worked a little faster. He could get there, he could...

The explosion rocked throughout the entire ocean. He saw it first. A bubble appeared around a large section of Alpha and then it popped. Debris and dust billowed around the gold. And for a moment, he couldn’t see anything at all there. It was the gray texture of muck that had been stirred up, then fell slowly to reveal the golden city of Alpha. Than it all compressed. Sucking back into the city like the hand of a goddess had pressed it back together. Forming a gemstone on the horizon that turned red as the city burst into flame.

Then he felt it. The explosion blasted through the entire sea, shoving him back a countless distance as debris and dust surrounded him. It filled his gills, shoving him into the dirt even as he struggled against it. Fighting for her.

And then it all stilled. Eerily calm again as the sound finally hit him. The strange sound of popping and the echoing thunder of ruin.

“No!” he screamed, the word raw and ragged.

His hearts exploded with that city. Because she was there. His woman had saved them all, but there had not been enough time for her to run.

A fissure opened up in his chest. All that madness that she’d locked away streamed out of it, choking him with the finality that everything he loved, everything he touched, died. And it was his fault.

All the ghosts trailed their hands along his face, but this time, it didn’t feel like they were trying to dig into his skin. Instead, they were wiping away tears he couldn’t feel.

“Go get her,” they whispered in his ears. These voices were no longer full of rage, but of sadness and heartbreak along with him. “Go bring her home, Daios. Lay her down to rest with us. We will care for her.”

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