Page 46 of Call of the Fathoms

Alexia couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to float through life without worrying about what she was doing or where she was going.

She felt Fortis long before she saw him. Even in the wetsuit, hairs raised on her arms, the same as they always did whensomeone was looking at her. No one else would be watching her in the ocean. It was a vast, endless place that was more empty than it was full. Until her mind reminded her that there were, actually, a lot of things for her to be worried about in the sea.

Turning toward the source of the gaze, she saw him just beyond all the jellyfish. He was staring at her. Just watching as she floated among the jellyfish, allowing them to bump into her body as they were buffeted by the sea.

Alexia wondered what she looked like. She hoped it was some ethereal moment for him. To see a human, significantly larger than any other of her kind, floating there with the flippers on her feet, making her look even taller. Her hair might be spread out above her, long and graceful, with the ends just barely curling. It was the image she hoped he saw.

In reality, she was certain she looked like some bedraggled horror with tangled hair that flipped in front of her face, a wetsuit that showed every single one of her flaws, and jellyfish that kept bumping her in the face.

With a sigh, she kicked her flippers and headed over to him.

“I take it my time in the ocean is over?” she asked. “You would only be coming back here if we needed to go back.”

“You’ve been out long enough,” he agreed. “We must return.”

Back to her prison. Back to the tight quarters, the darkness, the unending boredom that was slowly eating away at her mind. It almost made her beg. She wanted to plead with him not to bring her back there. Not now that she had a taste of freedom, and that frightened her.

His gills rippled. “Fear?”

She tried to make the emotion disappear, but couldn’t. “I don’t want to go back.”

“It is where you are safe.”

“I can’t...” She took a deep breath. “It’s so small, Fortis. Everything inside that ship is small. There is only darkness andnever ending silence. I sit for hours on end every single day, just watching the abyss. My mind is fracturing.”

And she was terrified. So fucking terrified to go back to that tiny room with all those limitations and she didn’t know what would happen to her. What if she couldn’t stop staring into the abyss? What if one day she just decided she’d had enough and leapt into the sea without her mask on?

She’d thought about it already. But being out here, with all this vast, unending space unfolded before her, she could breathe again.

Alexia was even afraid to get close to him now. Would he lose his mind again? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to deal with that again, at least not without understanding what had caused the madness on both their parts.

But at least she knew he thought of her as a person now, and not just a nuisance. So she floated before him, kicking her feet even though her thighs were getting tired. “I am afraid of going back there. I don’t like tight spaces.”

Something in his expression twisted. His brows drew down a little tighter, his eyes narrowed on her, and his lips tilted a bit to the side. And she thought for a moment that he would deny her this. He clearly didn’t want to give her what she wanted. He’d put her back in her cage, no matter what it might do to her mind.

“I do not wish for you to be frightened,” he ground out. “It is an unusual emotion from you, and I find I do not like the taste of it.”

“Then please, don’t bring me back to the ship.”

“There is nowhere else for me to bring you.”

She tried to think of something, anything, that would be in this area. Tau had many safe houses all throughout the entirety of the sea. But Alexia didn’t know where they were, and even then, going to a Tau safe house would alert many people to her whereabouts.

Right now, she didn’t want them to know where she was. She had decided that she was going to make the right choice for herself, and that choice was... this. She wanted to find out where this was going, what she wanted to do, and if she even wanted to continue having feelings and emotions and all the other complicated things that were happening to her.

Alexia decided she wanted to know what life was like if she was making the decisions. Not someone else.

Maybe that was foolish. Maybe there was a better plan, and yet... Right now, that was all she wanted.

She kicked her feet to swim even closer to Fortis. “I don’t care where you bring me, but I cannot go back to that ship.”

He was clearly warring with himself. She could see the thoughts flickering through his mind that if he didn’t take her back to the ship, she wasn’t contained anymore.

She could take a risk. One that might change the entire course of her life. And maybe, just maybe, that was what needed to happen.

“If I were to entertain helping you,” she started, then froze when his entire body reacted to the words.

Spines lifted up and down his arms. Sharp-edged and standing at attention, Alexia knew that if she even brushed her finger along the tip of one, they would make her bleed. As he shifted, she could see the rest of them down his back. Countless spines that had already parted her flesh.

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