Page 27 of Call of the Fathoms

She leaned closer to the glass again. “You want something from me.”

He sighed as if she was exhausting. “You only figured that out now? I could have killed you long before this. Why else would I keep you alive?”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know everything about your city. About Tau. I want to know what the Originals are planning to do and how they control the other cities. I want you to betray your people in retribution for all the damage they have caused in this sea.”

The speech was noble. But it was foolhardy. “No one can rise against the Originals. If I were to betray them, I would be signing my own death warrant.”

He swam close enough to touch the glass. Those webbed fingers spread wide, claws scraping in front of her face so hard they left tiny marks. “You are already dead, are you not? You are at the bottom of the sea where no one will find your body.”

“My beacon is still on,” she replied. “They will find me, undine.”

But it was a lie.

The beacon was one of the first things the AI had turned off. Apparently, it was protocol, but she knew that part of it was simply that the Originals hadn’t wanted to know if shewasn’t coming back. They liked to believe their soldiers got what needed to be done, done. And in reality, a single undine wasn’t a threat they considered worthwhile to pursue.

They’d sent her out here on a suicide mission all for their own pride. And they didn’t care if she came back.

He just smiled at her, that grin never shifting from his face.

“What?” she hissed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I removed your beacon four days ago. It wasn’t lighting up anymore, and I thought perhaps you did not need it.”

Fuck.

Fuck, of course he had. She’d never gotten the better of this creature. Why did she think she could today? Baring her teeth in a grimace, she leaned forward and asked, “How do you know so much about human ships?”

They were nearly nose to nose now. Her breath fogged the glass in front of her, but she could still see him so clearly. Every freckle that dotted his face and the strange lines that marked down his cheeks like tracks of tears.

“You are not the first achromo I’ve spoken with,” he replied. “But you are not as brave as them if you are unwilling to betray those who harm so many.”

Thoughts flickered in her mind. All the people she’d killed. All the reborn bodies that floated down into the nothingness of the sea because an Original had a fucking rash that needed to be fixed. So much death and destruction.

But these were not normal thoughts. Because if they were true... No. She wouldn’t even entertain it.

“If they are evil,” she muttered, “Then I am just as evil as they are. Why are you expecting me to be better than them?”

“They ordered you to do everything you have done. They drugged you to keep you quiet. You are a product of what they wanted you to be. Nothing more, nothing less. A weapon is not to blame for a death, it is the person who wields the weapon.”His eyes swirled with all those pretty colors. “Let me wield you, Alexia.”

A shiver trailed down her spine. Heat flushed from her stomach, to her chest, to her cheeks and burned with sudden desire. She thought, if there was a man out there who could wield her, it was this creature who had come from the depths.

These were unnatural thoughts. Unnatural desires and yet, she wanted to encourage them. She wanted to get a little closer to this monster. She wanted to know what it would be like to touch skin so smooth. Or perhaps to see if his lights were warm.

Wrenching herself away from the window, she turned the pilot’s chair to the shadows in the back of her ship. “What is your deal, then?”

There was more quiet from beyond the glass. She thought perhaps he had left.

But then he spoke in that deep, rumbling voice that was far too tempting. “Let me into your ship, virago. That is all my deal is. Let me into your ship and I will answer your questions about my kind.”

“That’s not enough.”

“Then I will deliver you food.”

She hissed out a long breath. “Why would you do that? You have no reason to care for me. You should let me die.”

“I do not wish to see you die. Not like this. You are the same as me, are you not? A warrior who has fought their entire life, trained for decades. You deserve to die fighting. Not in a cage where someone else put you.”

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