Page 20 of Call of the Fathoms

Fortis breathed her into his gills, coating them with the exquisite taste of her fear as much as he could before darting forward. She yanked a gun out just as fast, and he wasn’t surprised to feel the pulse of pressure as her gun fired right through his side. Black blood bloomed in the water like ink, but he was already upon her. There was nothing she could do to stop it.

Perhaps she thought she could take him with her. If she was going to die, then at least she could kill a depthstrider on her way out of this realm.

He had no plans to kill her, though. The sea had given her to him. He was going to rip through her memories and use them all to his advantage. He would tear her apart, memory by memory, until she was nothing but a drowning mess.

As he wrapped his arm around her waist, he couldn’t help but notice how tight the muscles were there. Yes, the metal skeleton wrapping around her was bitterly hot and searingly distracting, but he could feel her beneath all of it. Strong, wiry muscles, a body made from years of fighting. Her abs flexed against his palm as he reeled her back against his chest, pinning her there.

Leaning down, he pressed his lips against her throat just to feel her swallow against his teeth. “If I wanted to kill you,virago, I would have done it the first time I had you trapped in these waters.”

Her ship floated just below her feet. She kicked them, clearly trying to get purchase so she could shove back against him. As it was, he had her tangled up in him. She couldn’t kick. Couldn’t fight back. She had to stay in his arms, struggling in slow motion as he coiled his tail around her.

“You bastard,” she hissed, hitting a button that made her suit even hotter. It singed his scales, but he’d suffered worse pain.

Fortis turned her in his arms, feeling his gaze turning from the usual black to swirling colors that would allow him to peer through her resistance and straight into her soul. She struggled, those strong arms coming down on his tail and trying to thrust him away from her. She wanted to flee, to run, to get away from her own past that soon he would walk through without her permission.

Some part of him felt like a god when he did this. Fortis was one of the few depthstriders who could. Most of them only saw the future, but he could see the past as well. All he had to do was reach for it.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice already sounding drugged.

“Seeking the truth.” And then he dove into her memories.

Nine

Alexia

What the fuck was he doing? He should be killing her. All he had to do was squeeze the vice of his tail and soon enough, she would be dead. She could feel the power in his muscles as he tightened that tail around her. The fins on the sides of his hips kept them from falling, so they just hovered where they were.

And what was going on with his eyes? She had looked into them enough now. They were pitch black, without a hint of white in them. But now they were an oil slick. Black water covered by a thin film of beautiful colors that shimmered the more she looked into them.

Her gut rolled with the knowledge that she shouldn’t be looking into his eyes. Some inner part of her screamed to look away, and that she was losing her chance to do so. But she couldn’t tear her gaze from his. Those colors had caught her in their grasp.

“What are you doing to me?” she tried to say, but the words came out slurred.

She plummeted. She wasn’t sure if they were falling through the ocean or what was happening, but all of a sudden she wasn’t floating in the dead center of the sea with a monster holding her in his tail. She was standing in Harlow’s room.

Alexia shook her head in confusion. Was she losing her mind?

Looking around the room, she tried to ground herself. Everything was the same as she’d always seen it. Opulent, beautiful, maybe a little different from normal, with the drapes the wrong shade of pink and the bed was more rumpled than usual. She couldn’t feel her feet on the floor, either. Or even react when she looked right up at the bulbs of light. Her eyes didn’t water, and she didn’t get the burned orbs in her retinas.

What was happening?

The doors opened and in walked Harlow and... herself. Alexia stared at her younger version, back when she had first been gifted to Harlow. Not a single ounce of nerves showed on her features, and she remembered how numb she was then.

She’d been just out of training when she’d been given to her Original. Everything had felt so new and wonderful and she’d eaten up all the attention without an ounce of shame. She had been one of the first in her class to get her own Original.

How magical it had seemed. How honorable it had been.

“You are going to live in the room beside mine. I hope you will be satisfied with the size.” Harlow chuckled. “The last one wasn’t happy with how small it was. You behemoths never seem to be comfortable, though.”

“I will be fine,” her younger self said, with zero emotion in her voice at all. “Thank you for the honor, Original.”

“Please, call me Harlow. I don’t like all that Original nonsense. It makes me feel old.”

And then a voice whispered in her ear. A deep, echoing voice that sounded like the rumble of a sea, “So you serve one of the Originals.”

Alexia spun toward the voice, but there was no one behind her. She was alone in this memory. But it didn’t feel like she was alone.

Furrowing her brows, she searched for where the voice had come from. While the other two women in the room continued to talk about expectations and how Alexia would be essentially a slave to the Original, she looked for that voice.

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