We are two impossible anomalies in a field of poison, and somewhere above us, the summer feast is ending.
"Right," I say, straightening my spine and pulling my shoulders back. The bitter cold rushes in to fill the space where his hand rested, a sudden, hollow ache in its place. "The current."
My fingers feel clumsy as I gather the mirror and the comb, stuffing them back into the satchel at my hip. They feel heavier now, weighted down with the memory of his hand in my hair, the heat of his palm against my throat.
The ascent is a silent ascent. It's a silence charged with unspoken things. We move in perfect, awful sync, my body anticipating his every movement even as I force myself to keep a careful distance.
When we finally reach the gap in the kelp line, Kael stops.
He remains firmly in the shadow of the deep, as he always does, a creature of the pressure and the gloom.
"Tomorrow?" I ask, hovering right on the threshold of the city's faint, sickly-sweet glow.
Kael shakes his head slowly. "Basalt-Kin patrols are doubling for the end of the feast. Wait two days."
"Two days," I repeat. The words feel like a stone in my throat, an eternity of surface noise and pearl dust.
I turn to leave, the water feeling thin around me.
"Vaelis," he says.
I stop, looking back over my shoulder at the shadow he casts, a piece of the trench itself given form.
"Leave the pearl dust at the reef," he says, his voice low and possessive. "Next time."
A wave of warmth blooms violently in the center of my chest, fierce and bright enough to rival the vents below, a signal just for him.
"Okay," I whisper. "No dust."
I slip through the gap in the kelp and back into the territory of the Vael Reef.
The physical transition is jarring. The water here is thin, tasteless, and entirely too warm, like breathing in another mer's stale exhalation. The bioluminescent lights of the city are painfully bright, stinging my eyes after the honest gloom of the trench. I swim fast, keeping my body low to the coral structures, hugging the shadows as I dodge the last few drunken revelers return home from the central plaza.
I am halfway to my residential spire when she appears.
Mira.
She's waiting perfectly still near the entrance to our quarters, a blue predator. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest, and her cerulean tail is twitching with a sharp, rhythmic agitation. She's not looking toward the plaza where the last of the crowd is dissipating. She's looking directly at the dark path leading to the outer wall.
The path I am currently swimming up.
I freeze for a microsecond, then violently force my body to keep moving forward. Casual. You are Vaelis. Vaelis the exemplary.
"You missed the closing ceremony," she says as I draw near. Her voice is deceptively light, but her eyes are hard as flint.
"I had a headache," I lie smoothly, offering a tired, apologetic smile. "The pressure changes from the warming water. You know how I get."
Mira stares at me. She doesn't buy a word of it. She comes closer, invading my personal space in a way she hasn't since we were hatchlings. She doesn't look at my face. She looks at my hair.
My heart skips a painful beat.
"I took the large feast ornaments out. They were heavy, likely the reason I had a headache—"
"No," she says. "It's not that."
She leans in. She inhales sharply, sniffing the water directly around my shoulders.
"Absolutely foul," Her nose wrinkles in disgust. "You smell like sulfur."
