Page 78 of Song of the Abyss

The rebreather wasn’t getting enough oxygen into her lungs. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. All she wanted was to reach up and rip the damn thing off because it was suffocating her, but she couldn’t do that without drowning.

How did anyone live like this? How did Mira stay with them when this was how she had to feel all the time?

Fingers already scrabbling at the edges of the rebreather, she suddenly froze when Maketes grabbed onto her arms. “Anya, we’re doing everything that we can. I hope you know that.”

“No, you aren’t,” she replied, her voice breaking just slightly. “You’re doing nothing.”

Then, over Arges’s shoulder and beyond Mira’s billowing red hair, she swore she saw a red light. A glimmering beacon that might have made other people wary, but she knew that light.

She’d seen it in the darkness many times, and she’d always risen to the occasion of facing him without fear. Because how could she fear him? To her, he was not a monster. He never had been.

“There,” she whispered, her eyes widening above the rebreather until the saltwater stung. “Isn’t that...”

She couldn’t even say the words, but she knew it was. The other two undines with her turned, and Arges wrapped one of his arms around Mira to anchor her at his side. They all waited there, frozen, as the red undine sluggishly approached them.

Even from here, she could see he was moving too slow. There was the faintest trail of black that followed him, like silk ribbons fluttering in a breeze. But he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

He was alive, and he’d come back to her.

Anya held her breath until she saw his face. Until she saw the missing arm that always made her so certain this red undine was hers, and she didn’t have to struggle to look at his face or pretend that she knew his voice over all the others.

He looked up and their eyes locked. She could feel his exhaustion, the ache that spread through his body, but even more, she could feel the relief that coursed through him at the sight of her. Because it was the same emotion she felt.

With a sudden surge of his tail and a flash of fluke, he sped toward her at twice the speed. She barely had time to open her arms before he thudded into her. Hard enough that bubbles erupted from the seal around the rebreather, and her chest ached with the impact. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding on as he didn’t slow down.

He just struck her with all the force of a hurricane and carried her away from the others without a word.

“Daios!” Arges shouted, and she knew that Maketes was trying to follow them. None of them could keep up with her undine, though. A burst of energy and power renewed his speed, and soon enough, the others were just specks in the distance.

He was shaking, she realized. Quaking against her chest until she felt as rattled as he was. Tears pricked her eyes, and she held onto him tightly, rubbing her palms up and down his back because she didn’t know what else to do. What to say.

Instead, she just held him to her heart and let him hold her against his.

At one point in their mad dash, he reached up and ripped the rebreather off of her face. Before she could even protest, he’d connected that tentacle to her throat, and she felt him breathing for her. Perhaps a little too fast, and certainly ragged. But it was there.

“Just need to feel you,” he growled against her ear, the tones so low that they practically vibrated through her.

She went limp in his arms. How could she do anything else? She’d been so worried, so frantic, that he might be harmed. Which he was. He’d arrived with banners of blood trailing after his body and yet still he carried her through the sea. Perhaps to somewhere he considered safe.

Anya didn’t stop stroking his back for a second, not even when he dove into a tall kelp forest. Not even when the sticky tendrils brushed against her face and coiled around their arms. Not even when she felt like maybe she was a little trapped.

Because if she was trapped with him, she knew without a doubt that she was safe.

She felt his massive sigh radiate throughout both of their bodies. Daios tangled them in the kelp until they floated together without him needing to move a single muscle. He wrapped the kelp in an intricately woven pattern, almost like they were lying in a hammock, with her draped across his chest.

Only then did she hold his face in her hands and force him to look at her. Carefully signing her words, she spoke along with the movements so he could be certain what she was saying.

“What happened?”

He sighed again, and his warm hand cupped her thigh. He jerked her a little higher up his body and then slid his hand up her back. Slowly, almost reverently, he pressed his hand to the back of her head and drew her down to rest against his shoulder. “I am worn and ragged. My kalon, let me rest with you before I must face what I have seen.”

29

Daios

It was remarkable how the voices suddenly silenced the moment he wrapped his arms around her. And that was insanity. He’d kidnapped her from her home, stolen her away into the ocean where she was constantly in danger. He’d made her rely on him for everything—warmth, breath, and food. She should hate him. She should want to see him rotting at the bottom of the ocean and revel in the sight of his dying writhe.

But she didn’t. Anya wrapped her arms around him and held onto him as though she’d missed him just as much as he’d missed her.

---