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I, who was her height and half again, who had eight lower-arms instead of two legs, and who bore the scars of enemies they’d killed in battle? “Pretty?”
I sensed her anxiety and frustration. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she said as she averted her eyes, taking the beams from her helmet with them.
I wanted to tease apart her thoughts more thoroughly, but I knew if she felt my mind move against hers, I would lose all her trust and never regain it.
“Perhaps I can be,” I said, letting myself flush a soothing green and creeping back into the periphery of her vision. “What is your favorite color, Elle of the Air?”
She’d regathered herself—and had some conversation with the humans she’d left back at the station. I waited patiently until she was finished.
“Royal blue,” she told me, daring to look slightly up.
“Think on that color. Hard. And let me see,” I told her, and she did, showing me an array of times she’d seen it—on items of clothing, feathers from birds, the paint on a favorite wall, and in the memory of that other woman’s eyes. I caught a name from Elle this time: Lena.
I changed my skin to reflect that exact shade back at her, and she smiled.
“My people agree with you,” I told her. “We like this color.”
“Do you speak with your colors?” she asked, now fully distracted from her prior pain. I could tell she enjoyed this kind of topic, and made a mental note to revisit it again.
“Not fully—but we use them to share moods. The color you have chosen we consider sociable and calming. It is the type of color you would flash when seeing a close friend. So now you are right, I am indeed pretty,” I said, retaking my place out of the light and at her side. “And as you are safe—we can continue.”
chapter 15
ELLE
The first embarrassing thing I’d noticed about Cepharius was his forearms.
The man—I mean, kraken!—was dragging up cables like he was working out to audition for the lead in a Marvel franchise. His shoulders and arms were layered with muscle, his chest was wide, and it drifted down to an exceptionally chiseled stomach, below which his hips were wrapped with a belt that had pockets, and beneath that, instead of legs, he had a kilt of muscle, leading down into eight long, strong separate tentacles.
And watching him drag arm over armful of cable up did importune things to body parts I’d forgotten I even had.
Then I remembered that I was a human boobless wonder, I’d never touch him again, and Marcus chimed in with, “Diver heart rate rising,” at the same time I realized Cepharius could be reading my thoughts right-the-fuck now. I was chilled with so much embarrassment the only reason I knew the integrity of my suit wasn’t compromised was because I hadn’t died.
And then I’d told him he was pretty?
Small white dogs, Elle!
We traveled together after that in silence, me mostly marveling at our surroundings, as the helmet’s map showed the structure nearing.
“I believe what you are looking for is just ahead,” Cepharius told me.
I latched onto the safety of that conversation. “What do you know about the site?”
“It tastes weird.”
I blinked. “Why would you?—”
“Twenty feet to screen black,” Marcus said, and I came to an abrupt stop.
“What do you mean?” I asked Marcus, as Cepharius spoke inside my head with concern.
“Elle? Are you all right?”
I held up a finger to tell Cepharius to cool it.
“Past that point, the only people who can see the information you’re about to visually acquire are you and Mr. Marlow,” Marcus explained.
“And the kraken!” Donna added.
