Page 72 of Echoes of the Tide

Maketes cupped the back of her head, drawing her face in toward his neck. “Lower your voice, Fortis.”

“The achromo is in our world.”

“And you are too loud. Lower your voice.”

Ace pressed her lips against Maketes neck, mouthing the word “Thank you,” so that only he would know she had said anything.

His fingers carded through her tangled hair before he drew his hand away. “The blood has washed free, Fortis. If you and your people wish to hunt in that tower, it is a feeding ground.”

“I have already told them to destroy it. You did a good portion of that, ripping through the foundation. You have the strength of a much larger male.”

Maketes’s gills brushed against her thighs, as though they were standing up in pride for a moment before he flattened them again. “I’m taking her away. We need to figure out what to do with this key before we return to the ocean.”

“Figure it out soon. I do not think you have as much time as you believe.” Fortis turned, and she got to see the entirety of him as they swam past.

That was a massive creature. A male undine that was so beyond her reckoning. She had known they were big, but she hadn’t realized they were... monstrous.

Nerves churned in her belly as she watched him just floating there, watching them as they moved away from him. As though he saw straight into her soul and saw something far more than she did.

The farther they got, the more she realized she’d seen him before. This was the undine who had broken through the glass, an impossible feat he should not have been able to do.

Swallowing hard, she held onto Maketes a little tighter and tried to keep easing her mind. Anxiety had no place here in the deep, where there was no up and down. Maketes could let her go and then what? She would be floating in nothing, not knowing that she was only sinking farther and farther away from the sun.

So she held onto him harder. Clinging to the cool softness of his flesh, as she prayed that someday she would see the sun again.

CHAPTER 29

He could feel the tiny tremors going through her body. She’s terrified of what she saw in that tower, and frankly, so was he. He didn’t need more of a reason to hate her kind, but if he had seen that before he’d ever met her or Mira or Anya? He would never have been able to see them as anything other than animals.

There were varying degrees of every person. He knew that. Even his own people had those who grew too mad with power or all the other issues that he had seen in his own kind. Some people were born wrong. The only difference was that the People of Water took care of those with fractured minds.

The achromos clearly did not. They put all those people together, only compounding the issues, and giving them free rein to get even worse.

He hugged her closer to his chest, his hearts bleeding for her. She’d seen too much. Ace was strong. Stronger than most people he had met, but he understood that there was something rotten in that building. Something that could easily bleed into a soul and make it hard to focus on anything else. He was still thinking about it, too.

He’d seen them eating each other. He’d seen the bodies that were still on the floor, half chewed and half cooked. Even worse, on their way out, he had seen the countless bones with teeth marks on them. No creature was meant to eat its own kind, no matter the opportunity that arose.

So he took her to the only place that he knew would distract her. The only place that would give them both a bit of peace after the awful things that had happened.

He would bring her above.

The journey to the place he was thinking of was rather short. But the entire time he prayed to every god of the sea that he could name that there would be no storm above them. He wanted her to see the sun again. He wanted her to tilt her head up to the sky, watching the shadows of the clouds play across her features as she finally relaxed again. Just as she had the first time.

She deserved to feel the heat of the sun melt into her very bones so that maybe, just maybe, she could forget what they had just seen. Even just for a few moments. He wanted her to find peace.

So when he popped his head above the waves and saw the sun was shining, he felt every muscle in him sag with relief. Thank all the gods that they had listened to him. Because they both needed this.

Rotating his body, he tilted until he was on his back and she was stretched out across his belly. She could feel the sun on her back while he drew them ever closer to shore.

“Where are we going?” she asked sleepily.

“Once, a long time ago, the achromos moved to the very edge of the sea. The storms had drawn them here. It was where they would make their last stand against all the world that moved against them. For a while, they thought their new homes could withstand the power of the ocean and the storms that threatenedtheir lives.” He felt his second set of lungs expand, holding themselves full of air so he remained buoyant as she braced herself on his chest and watched where they were headed. “But they were wrong. The homes were safe enough, but they still flooded. It was not a place where they could live forever. But it was here that the dream of living in the sea was built.”

He knew what she was seeing. He’d come here many times in his life. There were small buildings that were crumbling after the storms had ripped off their roofs. About twelve of them all clustered near the ocean. What she might not notice is there were at least twelve more under the water as well. The sea levels had risen so high that the houses had been swallowed whole. But that wasn’t what he wanted her to see, anyway.

This achromo settlement had a dock system that had somehow survived. It was a floating dock, and he wasn’t sure what they used it for, but there was a suggestion that many boats had once surrounded it. And as they approached, he was pleased to see it was still in use.

Breathing out a small sigh of relief, he headed in that direction.

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