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“Uhm, no,” I drawl. “I think you likely have something a little more adept to fire, whether the element itself or the trait, I can’t be sure.”
She scrunches up her face. “And the queen’s get these?”
“Yes,” I answer.
“Where do they come from?”
“I don’t know.”
She frowns at me. “How long has it—Indigo been here?”
I stare at the sky, cycling through weeks and weeks of information I’ve stored away for later. “Isolde told me she appeared shortly before we got here. I think.”
“I bet she knows exactly when the kraken showed up.” Madi snorts to herself. “How could you miss something that big moving into your territory?”
“She wasn’t this big,” I absently comment. “She was actually rather small when I first met her.”
“Ada,” she pleads, pointing at Indigo once more. “Make this make sense. What does rather small mean?”
“I wish I could, but I can’t.” I grimace and shrug. “Indigo was tiny when I first saw her. She scared me much like she just did to you, except I was in the garden, and she was in the stream beneath my feet.”
Madigan’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “The little stream in Isolde’s garden?”
“Yep,” is all I can say.
“How the fuck did that—” she jabs her finger toward Indigo and the ocean. “—fit in there?”
“I could hold her in my arms, Mad,” I try to explain. “She’s only grown this big over the last month or so.”
“Holy shit,” she mumbles. “Talk about growing pains.”
Indigo looses a string of low and slow clicks, making me smile at her incoherent grumbles.
“She agrees with you,” I mention, hooking my thumb over my shoulder.
“You can talk to her?” she inquires, stuck somewhere between shock and excitement. “And how do you know it’s a her? And why did you name her after her color?”
I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. “Yes. She told me. And she told me.”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Madi scolds. “You’re telling me—”
“I’m not fucking with you,” I promise. “I believe Isolde and Jade have a deeper connection, but of course they would. They’ve been together for a thousand years. Indigo speaks to me in clicks and bubbles and emotions. I can hear them in my mind, feel them in my heart. It’s difficult to understand, much less explain.”
“Uh-huh…” my Shade friend drawls, disbelieving. “And what do you do with Indigo?”
I throw my hands in the air. “Play. Swim. Collect shells. What the hell would you do with an adolescent kraken?”
Madigan turns to the forest, brows knitting together as she loses interest in our conversation. “Did you hear that?”
“No.” As I answer, Indigo releases a steady stream of clicks in my mind. “I can’t understand you when you talk so fast.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Madi remarks.
“Not you. Indigo,” I tell her. “We’re not connected enough for me to understand everything she’s trying to say. I get the simple stuff.”
“Something is out there, Ada,” she whispers.
“In the forest? Are you sure it isn’t Connak and Thinik?” I inquire. “They said they would keep their distance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if your scream of terror brought them running.”
