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Salt.
I forced myself to remember the name, because it had to belong to the other fae who had survived the Aboa with us. Lya and Salt.
“Ibumped intohim, actually. I was testing to see if you were possessive or not. You got me out of there too fast for me to develop an opinion,” I corrected him.
“Salt is one of the guards I trust the most. I got you out of there that fast so I wouldn’t end him,” Zoran signed. “And because of what you were wearing. If the question is about my possessiveness, the answer is yes.”
“Well at least I looked good,” I said, flashing him a smirk.
“Too good,” he agreed.
“Take me to your dungeon,” I said dramatically, catching his arm and squeezing his bicep.
Damn, it was a good bicep.
He chuckled, tugging me out of the library and back down the hallway. We headed down an elegant staircase, and I slid my hand down the railing as we walked, studying the paintings someone had done on the ceiling above our heads. They were all of the ocean.
An image of stylized waves melted into a depiction of the water crashing against rocks, which transformed into another masterpiece that outlined the long, thick body of a sea serpent just below the surface of the water.
“Who painted that?” I asked in fascination, watching as one image flowed into another, the change smooth and beautiful.
Zoran signed two simple words. “My mother.”
Ohh.
I lifted my gaze back to the images. “Well, they’re beautiful.”
He lightly squeezed my wrist twice.
Yes.
His mother was a hard subject, and I didn’t want to get into that again, so we kept moving.
There was an assload of stairs.
I was too busy looking at the paintings to question how far down we had gone, but my attention snapped to the wall in front of me when we reached the bottom of the staircase.
My lips parted as I stared at a massive wall of glass—looking directly into the ocean.
Some fish swam by it lazily while others darted past. Off in the distance, I could see the long, slim bodies of a few small sea serpents. I guessed maybe they had those in Bluhm instead of sharks or whales?
My feet carried me right up to the glass, and I stayed silent as I watched the fish and serpents.
It wasn’t like an aquarium, where someone had created a small ecosystem and trained some of the sea creatures. This was a pure glimpse at the actual ocean, entirely untouched.
Suddenly, I wished I’d learned how to scuba dive, back on Earth.
I wished I’d found opportunities to see the world I’d been born into.
Though it was too late for that, Bluhm was a hell of a lot better than a consolation prize.
“Does it look like this when you swim in the ocean?” I asked Zoran, glancing at him. He could breathe underwater, so I knew he could swim as much as he wanted without needing to come up for air or anything.
He signed, “No. It’s even better.” His lips curved upward. “Would you like to go? I can help you breathe.”
“Yes. Definitely.” I paused, looking back at the small sea serpents. “Unless something will try to eat me?”
He chuckled. “The last of the monsters were dragged into the Aboa a few decades ago. Everything that remains in our waters knows that fae are the apex predators.”
