He shifts his attention to the broken engine, then to Bolt.
"Bolt," Kael commands.
The eel jumps, dropping the pebble used to teach Pip fetch. "What? I'm working!"
"Fix the gasket," Kael orders. "We leave in one hour."
"One hour?" Bolt protests. "I require three to calibrate the flow."
"One hour," Kael repeats, forging the words in iron. "I will hunt your squid. Prepare the shell."
He returns his focus to me. The energy in his dark eyes shifts. It is not the soft, comforting look of the caretaker. It is not the frantic, desperate heat of his healing.
It is the look of a shark finding open water.
"Swim," he says.
A command.
A hot, electric shiver runs down my spine.
"Swim where?" I ask, my pulse jumping.
He gestures to the open hatch. To the endless, empty blue void stretching beyond the rusted porch.
"Out," he says. "Deep."
His intent is clear.
The shell offers cramped quarters. Bolt provides constant noise. We spent the last month trapped in iron cages, in glowing caves, and in desperate war zones.
We possess our freedom. Kael intends to prove it.
I grin. I drop the map on the floorboards.
"Catch me," I whisper.
I turn and dive off the porch.
I hit the open water and kick with a force born of desperation, a raw power I didn't know I possessed. My long tail, no longer a thing of mere beauty but a weapon hardened by weeks of brutal survival, drives me forward.
I shoot away from the skeletal remains of the House of Drift, a crimson arrow aiming for the deep thermal currents that promise escape. I refuse to look over my shoulder. The water tells the truth. I feel the heavy displacement of the water, the sure sign of a solid body accelerating in my wake.
The predator closes in.
I laugh, the bright, unburdened sound bubbling from my chest, pure joy in the face of the inevitable.
Twisting my body, I dive deeper, spinning through a towering forest of giant kelp, their fronds a fleeting caress against myskin. He possesses superior speed, his body built for this hunt. A heavy shadow falls over me, and then a large hand wraps around my wrist. He pulls me backward. I spin, breathless, and crash flush into his solid chest.
He wraps his arms around my waist, trapping me against the unyielding wall of his body.
We float in the middle of nowhere. No ocean floor. No smog ceiling. Just a vast, empty void of crystalline blue that feels more like a sanctuary than any palace I've ever known.
"Caught," he rumbles, and the deep vibration of his voice travels through the clear water, a heavy, possessive thrum that settles deep in my bones.
"You cheated," I tease, breathless against the warmth of his throat. "You have more… mass."
He holds my eyes, and in the clear, filtered light, I watch as his dark pupils swallow the stormy grey of his irises, leaving only two pools of endless, feral intensity. He grins, a wild, sharp-toothed expression that turns my heart into a frantic, panicked drum against my ribs.
