Page 71 of Song of the Abyss

It was a heady sensation. And an addictive one at that.

He knew that he’d lost himself to it for a while, but he had never let it make decisions for him. Or at the very least, that’s what he told himself.

Maketes watched him a little too closely, and he wondered how far gone he’d been in those days of drifting.

“I just...” Maketes swallowed. “I just want to make sure you don’t wander off too far.”

“I won’t.”

But he probably would. If he was being honest with himself, the depthstriders felt more like family than his own people did. Perhaps that was because they were creatures of few words. Or perhaps it was that he’d always thought they buried themselves in the darkness for reasons that were too close to his own problems.

With a quick nod to his brother, he flexed his tail and off he went. Sinking deeper and deeper until there was no light left. Only the faint red glow from his body as he searched the murk.

He lost himself in his thoughts. They rioted in his mind. The up and down of emotion as he thought about telling her how he felt, and what she meant to him. He wanted to let her know that he felt more free with her than he had in a very long time. She didn’t judge him. There was no fear of rejection between the two of them because she didn’t know how bloodthirsty he was, and all the mistakes he’d made.

But he didn’t know how to say any of that.

Daios lifted a hunk of rusted metal out of the ground, then let it fall back to the sea floor with a puff of silt. He was wasting his time down here. He knew it. Mira knew it. And still, she had sent him on this mission to keep him out of trouble.

She’d almost succeeded in doing so, if he hadn’t come down alone to the depths.

Daios only had a second to realize there was a current rushing toward him. He curled his tail tightly into his body as a solid wall of muscle and rage slammed into him and dragged him even deeper into the abyss.

26

Anya

Anya laid her cheek down on the table and watched the two droids as they interacted with each other. Bitsy couldn’t speak out loud, which she’d been informed Byte could do. So the two droids ended up talking in projections.

It appeared they were telling each other the story of what had happened since the last time they’d seen each other. Just the highlights. A lot of what Byte projected onto the wall were images from underneath the sea. Giant whales swam above their head, squid tangled around his little metal body, and how he’d been dragged even deeper into the water.

In contrast, Bitsy projected Alpha. She showed them all around the city, and Anya had tried to read the lips of both Mira and Arges for a while before she’d given up. Mira wasn’t looking at her. She was walking through the projected city of gold with rapture in her eyes. Arges wasn’t even speaking the same language she could read the lips of, so it didn’t matter what she thought he was saying.

Instead, she laid her head down on the desk and tried her best to not feel... off.

She’d felt like it for a while now, and it didn’t make any sense. She’d gotten out of the city. Now she was here, with these people, who wanted the same thing she wanted. They intended to bring her father down and rebuild Alpha in a new image.

Sure, it was dangerous. They wanted the undines to go completely unbothered, and Anya didn’t know if she could convince anyone of that. But at least there was hope now that she was here.

Unfortunately, that meant... nothing at all. Ace wasn’t talking to her. No one cared to hear what her thoughts were, because she had always been intended to be nothing more than a pawn. They knew what they wanted to do already.

Where did that leave her? Staring off into the distance while her only means of communication talked to a long lost... What did she even call Byte? Did droids have lovers?

Sighing, she tilted her head away from them a bit and looked up through the glass. At least she got a glimpse of Daios every day. He swam by the glass dome often. Whenever she caught his eye, he would nod at her and angle his body away from her sight. Just like he used to.

All that forward momentum was lost. She worried maybe he didn’t even want to see her. He’d delivered her like a package he’d wanted to get rid of. Then he’d disappeared into the ocean.

How was she supposed to feel? After that kiss, the way he’d touched her, and how she’d come apart in his arms… He’d dumped her and left, like he hadn’t wanted to be around her anymore. After everything they’d talked about and everything...

Well, maybe she’d just been entertainment while they laid low so her father’s ships couldn’t find them. Maybe she was the only weird one who saw a man who had needed someone to see him.

Just like she’d wanted someone to see her.

Blowing out a breath, she realized the barely there murmur of talking had stopped. She’d gotten so lost in her thoughts that she’d forgotten to stay aware of the rest of the room.

Sitting up and shoving her hair out of her face, she tried to look like she’d been involved. At the very least, she could assume what they were saying. Bitsy had been showing them Alpha, which meant that they were probably asking about the city of her home. No need to ask her, though. They could just ask the droid.

Anya was a little harder to understand than Bitsy or Byte, anyway. Her words were maybe said a little differently, just enough for people to get uncomfortable. They had to focus on facing her, at least while Bitsy wasn’t on her head. And then, of course, there was the ever present knowledge that she couldn’t hear them.

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