Page 96 of Song of the Abyss

“But she is so small. Her shoulders barely fit in my grip if I wished to hold her. She gets cold in the warmest of waters. She doesn’t like raw fish or oysters, and she doesn’t know how to gather her own food. If someone tries to attack her, she does not know how to fight. My woman is soft.”

He loved that about her. He loved how she was a soft place for his tormented heart to rest, but he did not know what it would mean for her while she was not safe in his arms.

“Just because she is soft does not mean she is easily broken,” Arges said as his arms dropped away. “The most you can do right now is trust her. Come back with me, Daios. Together, we will watch over your little kalon.”

He nodded, slowly. But it took a long time for him to pull his gaze away from the city of light that glowed on the horizon. If only he could capture it in his palms, perhaps he could hold her against his heart a little longer.

Eventually, he turned. He joined his brother on the many hour journey back to their own home. The dome was still lit up, and even from the outside, he could see the projection that Byte had cast up on the wall. It was a familiar room. A familiar place.

Perhaps he had taken a bit of Anya into himself. Because he could feel her softness in his chest as he looked at the same vision where he had seen her for the second time. Where he had taken her into his arms and he had never let her go. Until now.

Maketes saw him first, slipping into the water through the moon pool and darting toward them. All of his fins and gills were flared wide, and his eyes were a little mad with glee. “It works. Daios, Arges, it works.”

“What does?” he asked.

“The connection between the droids. As long as Bitsy is on her head, we can see everything she can see. We can guide her too, because Byte can connect with Bitsy.” Maketes stopped in front of them, his fluke still twitching with excitement and jerking him left and right. “We can see everything.”

“She’s alive?” he asked, even though it made his stomach rebel to ask.

“Of course she’s alive,” Maketes said. “And she’s already convinced her father to let her keep Bitsy. They’re all very confused because she’s lied through her teeth so well. It almost seemed like maybe her father believed her and that she was just visiting a friend.”

He didn’t think that was possible. The old man was more wily than that, but for now, it seemed like his mate would see another sunrise.

Arges wrapped an arm around his shoulders again, this time keeping him from sagging with relief in front of the others. Leaning down, he murmured in Daios’s ear, “Breathe, my brother. I believe you can do this. Yes?”

“Yes,” he replied, dazed and a little shocked.

She was alive. And he had to make sure she stayed that way.

35

Anya

Two weeks.

That’s how long it took for her father to make a mistake.

Two weeks of constant surveillance and someone even standing in her room while she slept. Two weeks of distrust and everyone looking at her like she had somehow turned into a witch in the short amount of time since they had last seen her.

In the first week, she had gone to her father’s office multiple times a day. Just to check in on him. To pretend to beg for his forgiveness while she fake cried and told him how much she had missed him and that she really had just been having a wonderful time.

Anya spun a story about where she was. She’d stayed with a friend named Jessica who had invited her to go to Beta because she’d never seen it. She swore up and down that she’d talked to him about it, even made mention of the story to her maids, who apparently had forgotten as well. Her father did not believe her in the slightest. Not a single detail, even though she was meticulous about remembering everything she’d told him.

Because he asked. Every day he asked different questions, each one meant to trip her up. But Anya had lived with this man her entire life. She knew exactly what he was going to ask and why he was going to ask it. He had his own opinions about where she was.

And he had the footage.

But he didn’t want anyone to know that he had the footage of her leaving with an undine. So she continued to mock him. To tell him this story that she knew he would never believe, but maybe those who had seen the footage would start to question their own sanity.

A woman dragged into the depths of the sea by an undine? How could she possibly survive? She even dropped in a few conversations about how Beta was so cold compared to here, and she couldn’t stand the cold.

Little details that she had thought would win people in her favor. That was always the game with her father.

Who was more popular? He was the old man who ruled them all. The General who kept them safe.

But she was the golden daughter who sat on the pillar he had built her.

At the end of the first week, she stole a keycard from her father’s desk. She’d purposefully made him so angry that he grabbed the back of her neck and slammed her face down on the table. Even though she knew the sight of this treatment would make Daios fly into a rage, she needed it to happen. He always kept the keycards in the same hidden place underneath his desk, where his legs fit into the slots of the massive amount of wood that should have been used for anything other than a desk.

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