Vaelis scans the main room from his makeshift bed, blinking the heavy sleep from his golden eyes.
The space is a disaster.
To someone raised in the pristine, manicured order of the Reef, the interior of our shell must be an assault on the senses. Piles of salvaged scrap metal lean precariously against the curved walls. Large glass jars of collected sea-glass clutter every flat surface, their contents catching Bolt's light and throwing fractured rainbows across the floor. Filthy drift-nets hang from the ceiling like giant cobwebs, swaying gently with each lurch of the shell.
It's a chaotic hoard. It's a filthy mess.
I study Vaelis from the shadows beyond the curtain. His fine nose wrinkles in mild distaste. The overwhelming, itching urge to organize the room radiates off his pale skin like a warm current.
"Stop judging my things," Bolt's voice crackles across the room.
Vaelis looks over at the copper cage in the center of the room. Bolt is wide awake. His long, serpentine body is coiled tight around the central iron piston. He glows with a grumpy, sickly yellow light. His long fin twitches with morning irritation.
"I'm not judging," Vaelis says defensively. His sweet voice is raspy and rough from days of total disuse. "I'm assessing my surroundings."
"You are judging me," Bolt corrects him. "Your royal judgment radiates off you like a heat vent. You are mentally rearranging my furniture. Do not do it. The extreme clutter is structural. It holds the calcium walls up."
Vaelis stares at a towering stack of rusted iron gears that looks ready to fall. "You expect me to believe that precarious pile of rusted gears is structural?"
"You royals are all the same," Bolt crackles from his copper cage, his blue light flaring with irritation. "You think history started the day you hatched. I have observed more about the fall of the Trench than your entire Council has ever recorded."
Vaelis gives him a look.
"Load-bearing trash, Red," Bolt snaps. "Leave it alone."
Vaelis tries to rise. My heart lurches into my throat. His fine tail looks heavy and unresponsive, unused to the bizarre, shifting gravity of the moving shell. He stumbles forward. He barely catches himself on a heavy wooden crate. He swims over to the nearest pile of trash. It's a tall stack of salvaged human plates, chipped and stained with dark green algae.
"Where is Kael?" Vaelis asks.
"He is out in the freezing cold," Bolt says, sparking a bright blue arc of electricity as he stretches his jaws. "He is pacing the outer perimeter again. He gets anxious when we stop moving. And he gets anxious when we start moving again. He is ananxious shark. For a supposedly mindless, mute apex predator, he worries like a frantic grandmother."
Vaelis touches the top plate on the stack. It's pale human porcelain, painted with faded blue flowers. It's broken, but it's beautiful. It's exactly like him.
"He saved my life," Vaelis says, his voice a quiet murmur. He is speaking more to the broken plate than to the giant eel.
"Yes, we established that dramatic fact," Bolt drawls. "He brought you home. He patched you up. And he spent the last three days hovering over you like a paranoid mother ray. It was exhausting to watch. Do you have any idea how hard it is to sleep when a two-hundred-fifty-pound shark paces in tight circles right next to your head? My internal voltage is a mess today."
Vaelis smiles a faint, fragile smile. "I'm sorry."
"No you are not. Do not apologize to me," Bolt mutters, dimming his yellow light. "Apologize to the sand floor. He wore a deep trench in the dirt."
Down in the sand, Pip scurries through the rut. The tiny barnacle helmet sits crooked on his head. He scrubs a cracked porcelain plate, staging a silent protest against the mess.
I cannot hide outside any longer.
I push my broad shoulders through the heavy kelp curtain.
I bring the cold of the Wastes inside with me. A rush of freezing, high-pressure water swirls around my tail before dissipating into the warm water of the shell.
I freeze the second Vaelis forces his battered body upright. A sharp wince twists his striking features, his good hand coming up to cradle his ruined shoulder. My heart stalls in my chest. He is going to tear my clumsy stitches straight out of his skin.
My dark eyes go wide.
I drop the jagged metal and the net bag.
The metal clatters against the stone floor, the sharp vibration traveling through the water and into my bones. Bolt flareswith blinding blue light, his coils tightening around the copper piston.
"Watch it!" the eel's voice crackles through my nerves. "This is not a junkyard, you clumsy shark!"
