Page 41 of Call of the Fathoms

Fortis could sense she was close to helping them. She wanted to do something good in her life and if he was the one who convinced her what “good” meant, then all the better. Perhaps it was still manipulation, but at least it was manipulation for the better.

Swimming to her ship, he was pleased to see she was still conserving energy. She wasn’t about to waste what he had given her. The lights were still not on in her ship, and though she hadthe heat on, it did not appear that she had even tried to fix the function that would allow her to send messages back to Tau.

These were all good signs.

She was sitting in the pilot’s chair again, staring out into the sea. She did that a lot. At first, he thought it was in defiance of her own fear. He had smelled it the few times that she was in the water. His little virago wasn’t as good at hiding that as she thought.

He froze just outside of her range of sight. She wasn’this, he corrected himself. She had earned the name, but that did not mean he had any claim to her.

The damn sulfur fields hadn’t helped his unreasonable line of thinking. And he wasn’t all that certain taking her where he wanted to bring her would do so either.

“Fool,” he muttered, shaking his head. “This might be a bad idea.”

But he was compelled to get her to open up to him. He knew there was a chance that what he was going to do would bring them closer, but also, he wanted her to be closer to him. He needed her to see that there was a reason to help his people.

Fortis was so tired of forcing others to do what was right. For once, he just wanted someone to make the right choice because it was what they wanted to do. No prophecies. No peering into the future. Just people doing what they must for the betterment of the sea.

He lit up all the bioluminescent parts of him. Each one of them flickering from the tip of his tail all the way to his stomach where dots scattered across his ribcage in bright, vibrant yellow. Her eyes moved toward him, but that was the only part of her that moved.

Was that a good sign? Or not?

He knew achromo minds were very fragile. He worried that keeping her this deep alone for so long was going to break her.

“Alexia,” he said as he swam close to the window. “Put your wetsuit on.”

“Why?”

“Just do it without arguing.”

“You’re not bringing me home,” she replied with a snort. “So why not stay here for a little while longer and rot?”

So she’d been staring into the abyss too long. He’d seen this happen with others before. There was something about the abyss that lingered in people’s minds, like the barbs of some malicious fish. It was hard to crawl out of it.

“Wetsuit. Now, virago.”

She glared, but at least she stood up and went into the back of her ship. She’d opened the entire thing up, thankfully. So he wouldn’t watch her undress, although some part of him whispered that he should look. All it would take was for him to crawl over the top and he’d be at the right angle to see those long legs again, and those glutes that...

No. He had better control than this.

Fortis smoothed his hands down his sides, pushing the fins at his hips flat. They were not fluttering. They were keeping him still and if it was anything other than that, he would cut them off himself.

She made quick work of it, at least. Alexia appeared once more with the wetsuit on and her face mask in her hands. “I assume I will need this?”

“Yes.”

“Why do I feel like you’re taking me somewhere to kill me?” she muttered.

He wasn’t sure she wanted him to hear that part, but it inflated his pride. This was the first time the warrior woman before him had admitted he was stronger than her.

Damn, that shouldn’t feel so good.

He knew it was dangerous to be thinking these thoughts. But the spirit of his wife had told him to live. The only reason he could think for that was that she knew the end was close. He was with the person who was going to kill him, and for some strange reason, that did make him want to live.

Alexia stared at him through the glass, unknowing of what was going on in his head or the alarming thoughts bubbling in his mind. Though she gave him an odd look when he didn’t speak.

“Well?” she asked. “I assume you want me to get into the water?”

He cleared his gills with a quick expulsion of air. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’m bringing you somewhere to get away from the ship for a while.”

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