Page 41 of Echoes of the Tide

“Get to a corner now, Ace! And hold on to something!”

He could already feel Fortis coming back, this time even faster. All nineteen feet of bulk rushing through the waves. He would hit this building harder than any storm ever could. The movement of his purple tail became a blur, the undulation of his body spearing toward them, every inch of his form power and control and then...

Sound was muffled underwater. Maketes saw the glass crack and then shatter before he heard the painful crack that echoedthroughout the water. In one moment, he was next to the glass, and the next, he was sucked into the building.

Maketes hit the wall hard, feeling it crumble under his weight the moment he struck it. A giant thud soon reached his ears, but he thought that was he who had made that sound. Air bubbles obscured his vision, but he could taste her in the water. All he had to do was fight against the current that ripped at him.

“Brother!” a deep voice cried out, full of glee and insane happiness. “I found this one for you!”

Suddenly an arm parted the bubbling water, fins somehow flared against the pull of the water and holding Fortis in place. In his grip was the woman who had taunted Maketes. The same woman who had likely harmed his kefi.

“I need to find my own achromo,” he said, staring into the woman’s frightened eyes. “So I will make this quick when I wish for you to have a long and painful death.”

He didn’t have to do anything. Because at the sight of him reaching for her, the woman opened her mouth and screamed. A sharp inhalation came next, one that would surely drown her. But he still took her writhing body in his arms and squeezed. Hard. He squeezed until he felt her ribs break, until she became slippery in his grip and then her torso and the bottom half of her legs drifted free. They were sucked into the rest of the building, where many of her other men had likely disappeared.

Where her remains ended up didn’t matter. It only mattered that she died while he could still watch.

Maketes breathed in, trying hard to find Ace in all this mess. He’d told her to get to a corner, and she was smart enough to find one. If he could get there...

Fortis grabbed him by the back of the neck and tossed him out of the greatest current. There he found her. Huddled in the back corner, pressed there by the weight of the water.

Maketes immediately placed his hand between her breasts, seeking the sensation of her heartbeat. It was wrong, beating erratically, but it was there. So he didn’t think. He just... reacted.

He grabbed her, yanked her toward him, and plunged the tentacle into her neck. He would breathe for her. Even if he had promised that he would ask any achromo permission first, Maketes did it out of necessity.

Keeping her alive was all that mattered.

CHAPTER 17

Everything hurt, and she feared she was dying. Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but her body didn’t feel right as she woke. Ace felt like she’d been hit by all the weight of a falling building, or maybe just struck hard by the body of an undine.

First, she noticed the pounding in her skull. The aching thud right between her temples, radiating up from her jaw and into the back of her head. Every heartbeat echoed in her ears until she swore she was hearing things. Even her eyes hurt, although she had a feeling there were little shards of sand grinding underneath her lids. And then there were her shoulders.

They ached beyond any pain she’d ever felt, like she’d lifted her entire bodyweight too many times. All she could feel was the overwhelming stiffness of her entire spine. It wasn’t just her shoulders. It stretched down between her shoulder blades, all the way down to her hips.

A little groan escaped from her lips, making her feel foolish. Even in all this pain, she knew that staying quiet was important. She wasn’t cold. Which meant she wasn’t underwater and the last thing she remembered was... was...

Her eyes flew open. The burning pain of dry eyes got even worse, and they watered until she couldn’t see anything. But Ace was so lost in her memories, she didn’t care.

She’d been underwater. The last thing she remembered was a massive undine darting toward the windows and shattering them. She hadn’t even known they could do that. They couldn’t. That was always the benefit of being in one of the cities. Humans knew the undine couldn’t crash through the windows like that.

She remembered the rush of icy water that had slammed her against the wall. That was why her entire body hurt. She had been struck with all the force of the sea. She’d been pinned there, unable to move because of the rushing water that was impossible to fight against. Ace remembered the terror. She’d been forced to struggle to even keep the air in her lungs because the sea had tried to crush her.

And then hands. Clawed hands that had grasped at her and a sharp sting at the side of her neck that had hurt so much she’d been shocked into... passing out? No, that had been the ocean itself. Because there’d been that ache in her throat and then she’d been dragged out into the open ocean without her suit.

She sat straight up, ignoring the way the entire world shifted to the side as she did so. The dizziness wouldn’t stop no matter what she did, so she endured it. Instead, she stared down at her hands until there stopped being four of them.

Her hands returned to normal and then, only then, did she feel like she was marginally okay. The open sea, a deep voice reassuring her...

“Fuck,” she muttered, closing her shaking hands into fists.

She was alive.

That’s all that mattered.

She didn’t have time to sit here and think about how dangerous that had been or how she had even breathed. She didn’t have to touch her neck, even though it made every part ofher scream to not do so. Nothing had actually happened if she just sat here and didn’t move.

Something shifted in her pocket, rolling around until she opened the pocket so Tera could tumble out. Her droid rolled across the rocks that surrounded them, drawing her attention to where they were. Because now that her panic was in full force, all she could see was that they weren’t, in fact, somewhere safe at all.

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