She means to take my voice.
Mira sees a monster singing from the dark, a predator enchanting her precious charge. She believes herself a hero, breaking a spell, snatching Vaelis from my jaws.
My knife slides home. The leather sheath groans as the serrated blade settles. My hands tremble, a violent, uncontrollable shudder. Not fear. A fury so cold it bleeds the light from my vision, leaving only jagged edges of black.
The Reef is no garden of light and silk. It is a viper's nest. Their poison is hidden behind polite smiles and the soft glow of bioluminescence. They speak of safety, of order, of purity. But the moment their illusion of control shatters, they crawl in the dark. They lie. They poison.
And Vaelis is at the heart of the nest.
He calls Mira his protector. His greatest friend. He does not know. He has no idea she plans to use his own gentle hands to deliver the death sentence to the only creature in this abyss who sees past the pearl dust to the mer beneath.
I push off the rock wall. The water parts for me. I rise to the flat plane of the Anvil, hovering over the spot where she will drop her offering. I stare at the empty basalt, my mind a storm of violence.
I could refuse the gift. Let the fruit fall into the abyss. I could tear the truth from my throat and show him what his beloved guard does in the dark.
But truth would shatter him. I see it in my mind's eye—the fragments of his world scattering through the dark like broken pearls. It would strip away his last illusion of safety, leave him bare and bleeding as he realizes those who claim to protect him are the ones who chain him. It would break him.
The realization strikes like a rockslide in my chest. Vaelis is not mine. He belongs to the light, to the Reef. My obsession has led a sun-kissed mer to believe he can breathe my freezing water. How long did I honestly think I could claim him from the world that birthed him?
My gaze lifts to the distant shimmer above. The beautiful, poisonous city.
"Two days," I rumble to the empty water. The sound is gravel and pressure, unfit for such delicate words.
Vaelis promised to return in two days. He will descend into this darkness, his face clean of pearl dust as I asked. He will come smiling, his bright eyes unaware that he carries a poisoned weapon disguised as a gift of affection.
I will let him come.
I will not flee the trap. I will not shy from the venom. I will meet it head-on.
I am a Basalt-Kin. I am the monster they fear in the dark.
Chapter 8
The Taste of Silence
Kael
Thedeependures;itdoes not wait.
I hover near the Anvil's jagged lip, holding my position. Two days have passed since the thermal vents—two days of suffocating anticipation.
A sudden displacement of water presses against my lateral line.
I go completely still. My dark eyes pierce the twilight zone's heavy gloom toward the boundary wall.
He's coming.
Vaelis descends through the gray water like a falling star. He swims with a powerful, eager grace, cutting through the crushing pressure with newfound confidence.
He kept his promise.
His skin is bare of the ridiculous pearl dust. In the muted light of the deep, his scales burn with a breathtaking, violent intensity. He is not hiding. He is a brilliant, blazing signal in the dark, every beat of his tail drawing him closer.
He clears the final drop-off and glides smoothly onto the Anvil's flat stone.
"I made it," he says. His voice, slightly breathless from the rapid descent, rings clear and sweet in the crushing dark.
I look at him. The exact angle of his jaw is stark. The bright, golden warmth in his eyes burns into me. The vibrant, impossible red of his hair sears into my memory's deepest part. I need to gather enough light from this single moment to last me a lifetime in the dark.
