Page 33 of Song of the Abyss

“Perfect.” Staggering once more to her feet, Anya told herself she could do this without the help of a confusing, too handsome for his own good, undine.

And it was really messed up that she had to tell herself that he wasn’t handsome. He was a monster. An undine. Not even her own species.

A whisper in her mind said, “Yes, he is. But you still like him.”

13

Daios

He raced away from that room and the confusing feelings that it had wrought. When those lights had turned on and the screaming started, he was certain he had delivered her into the mouth of a monster. She hadn’t even reacted, and he realized she couldn’t hear the sound.

She didn’t know she was in danger. His little achromo had no idea that she was in so much danger that he had to save her. So he’d grabbed her, yanked her into the water with him so they could both flee. He’d make the journey more comfortable for her after he got her out of danger.

Until she’d kicked him between his webs so hard that he felt the shock of pain all the way up to his jaw. He’d turned on her, enraged that she would fight him on this, only to find that she was already glaring at him like he was the problem.

Him.

The one who was saving her.

Then she’d explained everything that was happening and he’d felt like an idiot. Of course, there were alarm systems in this facility. He’d seen the alarm systems in the other cities and had suffered through the loud noises and the red lights before. He knew exactly what to expect when the achromos realized there was an intruder in their home.

Then she’d touched him again. Again.

After everything she could see of his body, and what he was lacking, she had still touched him. She’d grabbed onto his claw and he’d been struck by how easy it would be to harm her. All it would take was a single twist of his wrist, a turn in the wrong direction, and she’d be... gone. He could cut through all that delicate flesh and rend it right to the bone. She would bleed out before anyone could stop her.

And those thoughts had terrified him. More than he had ever been terrified. Because with those thoughts came the knowledge that he had never been very good at not hurting people.

She was so small and delicate. So easy for him to hurt and he didn’t want to hurt her. He shouldn’t want to mate a weak creature. He should search for the strongest, the most powerful, the best. Someone he couldn’t best or overcome in a fight. The People of Water valued strength, not delicacy.

So while she turned her attention to stopping the alarm and freeing them from that gods awful noise, he’d fled. He couldn’t look at her when he feared what he might do if he stayed for even a moment longer.

What if, for the briefest of moments, he fell to weakness like he had before?

Daios had spent his entire life knowing that he was a weapon. He was proud of the danger that his body posed for almost anyone who was around him. That was his role.

Now, he knew exactly the loss that his body could bring as well. And it plagued him until the very end of the world.

Darting through the water, not toward the sharp coral, but out into the abyss beyond the ledge, he dove into the darkness. Trying to escape the madness, the horrors of his memories, and the fear that he would do it all again. But he’d learned a long time ago that he could not run from those thoughts. They chased him into the darkness.

Breathing hard, his chest moving up and down and his gills flaring wide as though there wasn’t enough oxygen in the water around him, he reached the very bottom of the abyss.

There were deeper parts of the ocean that he’d been to before. But down here, even though it wasn’t the deepest, there was still a silence in the pressure. It let him think. It let him breathe.

Slowly allowing his body to illuminate the water, he got his bearings. The silt down here had been disturbed by his mad dash into the depths, so it was hard to see much farther than a hand’s distance. Everything was red, though. All the dust, all the particles, all the nothing that surrounded him.

Turning in a slow circle, he let his gaze float through the water. He was alone. Finally. He could be free of the worries because there was no one down here with him.

Until he turned in a full circle and came face to face with a rotting corpse.

The undine had been pretty, once. She had been one of the few that Daios had thought he might like to mate. He’d even fluttered for her before, although she had turned him down. Daios was too big. He’d make children that need larger purses, and therefore were harder to birth. And even then, what use would he be to them? The females of their kind were supposed to be bigger, and he’d never met one who was larger than him.

He knew she’d been in the group of fighters with him who had attacked Beta. He’d watched her rush to the forefront, the first of his kind to meet the weapons that the achromos had never shown them before.

And then he’d watched her die. He’d watched as the bright fire had burned through the sea, an impossible nightmare as it struck her in the chest. There were many who fell with her, but she was the one he remembered most.

“Hamartia,” he whispered, lifting his hand to ghost it in front of her face. “I am so sorry.”

She’d been so beautiful in life. But death had rotted her. One of her eyes was missing, and the pale blue of her coloring was nearly gone. Gray flesh sagged around wounds through her right cheek. She did not look like the beautiful visage he remembered. And the more he stared, the more he feared that he would never remember her powerful beauty.

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