Page 105 of Song of the Abyss

Even in death, he knew she would be the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. An otherworldly creature who had come from the sky to give him a moment of bright light.

How was he supposed to go back into the darkness without her to guide him?

“Brother.” The word sliced through him, because he knew that voice. These weren’t People of Water, not like he knew at least.

Turning his head as he sped through the currents toward the city, he realized it was Fortis beside him. The dark purple coloring lit up the moment he glanced over at the man who had once been a friend.

“Fortis?” he asked, feeling as though perhaps he slurred the word. “What are you doing here?”

“We knew it would happen. We are here to help.”

“Since when do the depthstriders help anyone but themselves?” He shook his head, trying to clear himself out of the fog of rage and heartbreak. “What could you possibly help with?”

“You won’t make it in time.” Fortis pointed toward the city, and that was when Daios’s mind cleared enough to see what was happening in front of him.

She’d blasted a hole in the side of the city. Not a huge hole, but enough that water was rushing in through that area. It was so small that only three of his kind could have moved through it, a surprisingly small amount of damage for the destruction it had caused.

But then his eyes moved up the glass casing that protected the city. Fractures were creaking through it, fissures moving all the way up the glass dome until he could see there were thousands of them.

Cracks in not just the first layer, but the second as well. Cracks that were getting worse and worse with the pressure of the ocean.

“She did it,” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “She brought the city down.”

“That she did.” Fortis cleared his throat before placing a hand on his back and shoving him forward even faster. “We perhaps saw the future wrong when it came to her. I feared she would fold under the weight of her father’s disappointment. But she is an impressive woman, brother. Impressive enough to win the favor of the depthstriders.”

That numbness crept back into his soul. Because how was he supposed to say yes she was, when he knew that was in past tense? She had to be dead. That hole was big enough to drown her, even if she had survived the blast.

She was gone.

Two figures appeared in the murky darkness surrounding the city and, for a moment, his heart leapt once more. Perhaps she had made it out. The People of Water she had saved. Surely they had taken her with them. They had to have...

But it was a depthstrider with one of his own people in his arms. The two males were worse for wear, too thin to be healthy and barely making it through the water.

Fortis moved faster than he did toward them. He grabbed the limp one from the other’s arms, passing the body off to another of their kind before he gathered the depthstrider up in a hug. They coiled around each other for a moment, their tails looping and twisting before they broke apart.

“You are well?” Fortis asked, his voice croaking.

“I am alive,” the younger depthstrider said.

And Daios realized they were the spitting image of each other. The younger one looked almost identical to Fortis, even down to the spots on his tail and the yellow tips of his tentacles.

“You have a son?” he asked.

“I have a son. And her people took him from me.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?” he spat. Anger rose again, and some of his lights flickered back to life with the force of it. “Instead, you spun this story of a dead creature you ripped the memories from, when you could have just told me that your son was in danger!”

“I didn’t know if we could trust you.” Fortis never let go of his son’s shoulder. “You were so entangled with her, I did not know if you would tell her and she would get a message to her father to kill him. I could not take the risk.”

“And yet she took the risk for you and your people.” Again that burning in his chest, that ache that he could not rub away. He turned his face from his friend, not able to look at either of them. “I have to go inside and get her.”

“Daios, it is too risky. We need to return to the others and help the achromos with their escape pods. We will guide them to Gamma, where it is safe. That is the plan, is it not?”

He didn’t want to know how Fortis knew even that much. It was all pressing down on him until he felt like he couldn’t breathe again.

Fortis’s son cleared his gills of dust before saying, “She saved our lives. I could see the danger she was in, and I could smell how terrified she was. But she still did it. If a woman exists who could survive that blast, it is her.”

The words should have made him feel better, but they didn’t. Instead, all they reminded him of was that no one could have survived the blast. No one. And he had tried so hard to do everything possible to keep her safe.

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