Page 17 of Heart of the Deep

She stared at him in silence for a long while; Dracchus felt her gaze lingering even after he tipped his head back and shut his eyes.

“Did you tell the Commander where the rangers are?” she asked.

“Why do you assume we know?” Dracchus replied.

“We received a report about your kind from one of our own, Cyrus Taylor. He dispatched another ranger to our base of operations right before he and his group left The Watch in search of kraken. They never came back.”

“They’re dead,” Neo said.

Dracchus opened his eyes and met Neo’s gaze; all their people knew what had happened in the Broken Cavern, when Jax, Arkon, and Dracchus battled the rangers. They knew that only one of the rangers had left that place alive.

Neo looked up at the female, who had turned to face him. “And you will join them soon.”

“Are they dead?” she demanded. “All of them?”

With a malicious, blood-stained smile, Neo looked away from her.

She grasped the bars of Neo’s cell, posture tense. “Answer me!”

The kraken’s only answer was to widen his grin.

She turned back to Dracchus’s cage and banged a hand on it. He finally looked up at her; she stood with her forehead against the metal, face downturned, one hand grasping a bar above her head. She remained that way for a while, silent and unmoving. Her breaths stirred the small strands of hair that had fallen from her braid.

“What is your name?” she asked.

Dracchus studied her features. Delicate red brows, a shade darker than her hair, were furrowed above her closed eyes. Long, black lashes rested on her pale cheeks, and now that she was closer to him and he was no longer consumed by his anger, he realized that her skin was dusted with tiny, light brown specks, most prominent across her nose and cheeks.

None of the humans he’d seen up close were like this one. Her hair was vibrant, her skin unique, and he found himself strangely drawn to her. What did she look like in full light? How would it change her coloring; would it make her hair shine?

Though he was intrigued by her, he offered no answer to her question.

She sighed. “My name is Larkin. Elle to my friends and family. Not that I have many.” Her eyes opened and met his.

The clear, piercing blue of her gaze was familiar to him. They were the same as the commander’s. The same as Randall’s.

Elle.

This was Randall’s sister.

Dracchus’s mind was empty for an instant. He opened his mouth to say something, but could not find words.

“Do you have family?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied, though he was only distantly aware of his response.

She searched his face and frowned. “Sometimes you will do anything to protect the ones you love. Go to any extreme. But that doesn’t always make it right.”

Dracchus had the sense that she was speaking as much to herself as to him.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“About what?” Dracchus couldn’t read her expression, and it made her seemingly simple question difficult to unravel.

“You can free us, you filthy human slit!” Neo snarled.

She was unfazed by Neo’s outburst. “I can’t do that.”

“Water,” Vasil said.

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