Page 77 of Song of the Abyss

Anya hadn’t swum on her own in a while, though. Daios had always carried her because he was much faster. But she hadn’t realized she would get used to that speed so quickly. It felt like something was holding her back as she tried to reach Maketes’s side.

At least the man took pity on her. With a flick of his tail and a graceful twirling motion that spun him in a circle, he was at her side in seconds.

“Anya,” he said, the words rushing past her lens as he spoke almost too fast for her to read. “I’m so sorry. He was there one second and then he was gone the next. I have no idea what happened.”

“Why were you somewhere dangerous to begin with?” Anger spiked, and she shoved at him. But he didn’t even move, and that made her all the more angry. Hitting him again on the chest, she felt marginally better when he did at least flinch. “You’ve all lived here your entire life and you lose someone?”

“It happens more than you would think?—”

“I don’t care if it happens to other people! Where is he?”

Maketes eyed her, his expression a little lost and obviously just as affected. “I don’t know! All I saw was a flash of pale scales and then they were both plunging off the edge of a cliff. I have no idea where it took him.”

Her breath caught in her lungs, and she knew it had nothing to do with the rebreather malfunctioning. “It?”

He hesitated, his eyes flicking above her head before he looked back at her. Of course, there was another undine behind her. They had an audience, because why wouldn’t they? A little human like her shoving around an undine was sure to be a spectacle that everyone wanted to see.

Let them watch. She’d been watched her entire life by more people than she could count on all her fingers and toes. They could judge her, think ill of her, they could claim she’d lost her mind. None of it mattered.

“What do you mean, it took him?” she repeated.

“A...” Again he hesitated, his throat bobbing in a harsh swallow. “We call them depthstriders.”

“What is a depthstrider?”

He looked like she asked him to pull his own teeth out. “They are still People of Water, but they are... different from us.”

Bitsy threw up words in a different color. The blue that she used matched Arges’s coloring so Anya turned to see the other undine swimming up to them as well. “They are a dangerous lot, who keep to the abyss where they belong. Daios has met with them before, but they are not like us. They see things that others do not. And they take those they believe can help them in their cause.”

“So that’s where he disappeared to? Into the hands of some fanatics?”

She wanted to rip the mask off her face just so they all could see how angry she was. She wanted to scream and yell and throw something at these people who were just floating here and doing absolutely nothing.

“All of you call him your brother,” she said, feeling the ache in her throat as though the words were pinched. “And you’re doing absolutely nothing to save him.”

Bitsy threw up an image that was supposed to soothe her, a cup of hot tea with steam rising out of it, but she shook her head hard to clear the image. She wanted to look right at them while she scolded them. She wanted them to know just how much this angered her.

Arges didn’t rise to her bait, though. “We do not know where they have taken him, and as I said, they are dangerous. Unpredictable. I could send a hundred of our people after him and none of them would be likely to find out where they’ve taken him. Daios has been there before, and he is the only one who knows where their homes are hidden. It’s safest for all of us to wait until he returns.”

“What if he doesn’t?” No one seemed to know how to reply to that, and it made her even more enraged. “What if he doesn’t make it back this time, Arges? What then? Do you go and try to find him when it’s been a week? A month? How long until you decide it is time to search for the brother you have left on his own?”

Bitsy circled a little area behind Arges where Mira was swimming up to all of them. And she knew this was going to be even more of an argument. Because if she had seen someone yelling at Daios, and implying what Anya was implying, then she would have swum to his rescue as well.

The redhead hadn’t even put on a wetsuit. She was in her regular brown trousers and a billowing white shirt that clung to her body while her hair created a cloud of red around her head. The rebreather on her face was the only thing that hid the anger radiating through her body.

“Careful what you say, Anya. We’ve taken you in and given you this much leeway, but don’t think we cannot make you an unwilling captive.”

“Where are you going to put me?” she practically shouted. “There’s only one dome. What’s next? Chain me to the wall? You can do that if you want, but we both know you were the one who sent a wounded soldier into a dangerous city to find someone who inevitably proved useless.”

The words fell between them and plummeted like stones.

Therein lay the worst of her emotions. The worst of her heartache.

Anya had always wanted to be the solution for her people. Even if that was just a dream of a princess who had never faced what it might take to actually save them. But she still wanted to do it. She had still endured the looks, and the judgement. She’d gone into the middle of the sea with a creature who she should have thought was a monster because it might help someone someday.

She’d been the one on the outskirts for her entire life, the one who was different and maybe even a little wrong. Now she was here, and she was still the different one. She was one of two humans who were trying to justify their use. At any point, the undines could decide she wasn’t worth the trouble.

And the only undine who had given a shit thus far was missing.

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