He moves first, his heavy gray body angling to create a barrier against the residual currents. He displaces instead of swimming, his movement so deliberate and powerful it carves a path through the chaos.
I follow, my long crimson fins feeling like liabilities, catching on every rough edge of stone that he so easily avoids.
The moment we slip free, the sea presses in around us again. It's cooler, heavier, alive with aftershocks. Broken stone litters the water, traveling slowly as the water rearranges itself. I keepmy eyes on his back, matching his pace, adjusting when he does, stopping when he stops.
He moves like he speaks. Without ornament.
I'm used to the dance of the reef. I am used to the flourishes of fins, the polite signaling of intentions. This creature does not dance. He occupies space. Every shift of his body has a brutal, efficient purpose. When my long, trailing fin brushes a jagged outcrop I hadn't noticed, his hand shoots out. He grips my forearm, tugging me back enough to keep the silk from tearing.
The contact is brief. Rough.
It sends a jolt through me that has nothing to do with safety.
"Watch the eddies," he murmurs, not looking back. "They pull sideways here."
I nod, even though he can't see it. He's right. The water twists, coiling around broken stone, doubling back on itself in ways that would catch me off guard if I were alone.
A sinking realization settles over me.
I'm trusting a shark-mer with my life. The thought should terrify me. Instead, it feels inevitable.
The path he chooses angles downward, away from the city's faint glow and into water that swallows light greedily. I hesitate at the edge of that descent, instinct flaring sharp.
Vael are not meant for the deep.
Our cities are built where the reef rises, where stone and structure soften the sea's moods. The trench beyond is where the rules blur.
He notices my pause. He turns, hovering in the gray water, studying my face with an intensity that makes my pulse jump.
"We can't stay here," he says, his voice rough but low. "The current is chewing at the edge. It's going to break."
"I shouldn't even be here," I say.
He looks up, toward the swirling silt above us where the city lights are a faint, dying glow.
"I can push you into the surge. It's flowing back toward the patrol lines now. If you ride it, you'll be home in minutes."
The offer hangs between us. Go back.
"And you?" I ask.
His mouth curves, humorless. "I wait here. The deep is where I belong."
I glance upward, toward the city I can no longer see. Toward patrols and elders and the choreography of a life that suddenly feels very far away. If I take the surge now, I can pretend this is over. A near miss. A story I will not repeat because I wouldn't know how to shape it into something others would believe.
If I follow him...
I meet his eyes again. There is no gold here, no shimmering reflection of the surface. The color of his eyes are the matte black of a predator, deep wells of midnight that do not reflect the light so much as devour it.
"If I go up, you will not follow me," I say.
The statement hangs in the water, a question masquerading as a fact.
"No. I wait for the surge to break. Then I return to the dark."
The certainty in his voice is a physical thing, as solid as the stone behind me. It unnerves me more than his teeth did, this brutal indifference to my world, my choices.
"And if I stay to wait it out?"
