Page 65 of Echoes of the Tide

“I have long felt the same way.” His lips pressed to her hair. “Sleep, my achromo. I will guard your dreams for the rest of the night.”

“But who will guard yours?” she murmured, already falling back into that dreaming realm.

So she wasn’t sure if she dreamt up what he replied, or if he had actually said the words. But what she thought she heard was, “You, kefi. All my dreams are of you.”

CHAPTER 26

The toy tower was the last place she wanted to go. So many rumors tainted this place as a madhouse, and she didn’t want to find out why everyone said that. After all, everywhere in Gamma wasn’t “normal”. For so many people to fear this area of the city? There had to be a good reason.

Holding onto Maketes’s shoulder, she bit her lip as they approached the building. They couldn’t stay in the water for very long now that her suit was gone. And though they’d tried to find another one in the control tower, apparently those were hard to come by these days. They had to move fast and get her into another building, even if it was the toy tower.

Lights flickered around it. A rainbow of colors that lured any and all toward what was meant to be a fun and childlike area to be in. She knew this building used to be a store for children until it had flooded after the undine attack. Then it was just... taken over by gang members. Supposedly, the most insane ones were the only people who lived here.

The closer they got, the more her stomach twisted. All the windows were covered up. Every single one of them.

Whoever lived inside had plastered flyers and posters onto the windows, making it almost impossible to see inside. Therewas the faintest hint of shadows moving beyond, so the lights were still on, but that was all she could see.

“I don’t like this,” Maketes muttered, even as he looked for entrance.

“Neither do I.”

“We should find somewhere else to go.”

“There isn’t anywhere else to go. Everything I could find leads us here, and if this is where I find the key, then this is the only place we can go.” She rubbed her hand on his chest, trying to soothe the fears from him, even though she knew that there was no way for her to fully do that. “I have to do this, Maketes. You know that.”

She knew he did, but it broke her heart to realize that she was going to make him even more afraid. Everything she’d done so far made him worried, and that didn’t settle right with her. She wanted him to believe in her. To trust her. All the things that she’d always wanted from other people. But she didn’t want to put him in a position like this.

“There,” he said, and then they were darting through the water. Past all the plastered up windows. Beyond the looming shadows that looked like people holding knives with severely blighted bodies.

He swam with her past all those horrors and then tilted her head to his shoulder. He made her look away from the nightmarish shadows. At least until they got to their destination. There was a small crack at the base of the tower. Not much of one, but enough that she could slip through on her own.

Ace reached out and grabbed onto the shards of metal that were bent back into the ocean, pausing only when Maketes’s hands grabbed onto her waist. Gently, he turned her to face him. And then he framed her face with his webbed hands, making her look at him.

“Be careful,” he said, his deep voice echoing through the sea. “If they lay a finger on you, I will rip their arms off their bodies. I will tear them apart, kefi, and I will feel no mercy.”

She’d seen him do that exact thing already. It should have terrified her that he was capable of it, but instead, now all she felt was the warmth of reassurance.

Touching her hand to the side of his neck, she trailed her fingers through the pretty gills there. “When are you going to tell me what kefi means?”

“Soon. If you come back to me.”

If.

A burst of fear flooded through her. His gills flared even wider, and she could see in his eyes that he knew what she was feeling.

“Ace,” he said, his words belaying that he was ready to call this off. Soon, he would gather her back up in his arms and dart through the ocean. He would take her so far away from here that she would forget about her sister or all the terrible things she’d done to keep Laura alive.

So she propelled herself backward, into the small opening where he could not follow her. She pressed a kiss to her fingertips and sent it out into the ocean for him, before she turned and yanked herself through the twisted metal.

There weren’t a lot of floating objects here. It made a warning bell flash in her mind. Because if there wasn’t anything floating here, then that meant someone had been looking for items in the water. This exit wasn’t a secret one. People had been here.

And if people had been here, then that meant wherever she was going to exit wasn’t all that secret either.

She still had her scalpel. It was in her pocket, and Tera was there too. If she had to get herself out of a situation, she could. Even if that meant finding a way out that wasn’t the same as the one she’d exited.

Unlike the other humans in this tower, she had someone in the sea who would help her if she had to flood the place.

A twisted spike of metal caught on her shirt. She turned to yank it free, only to get caught up by her icy fingers. She couldn’t open and close her hands all that easily, and that made her clumsy. The twisted metal freed her shirt with the tug, but it also sliced through her hand. Blood plumed in the water, tendrils of it reaching out in the stillness that was odd to swim in.

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