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“Oh, Ceph,” I whispered quietly.
“I did not ask for this to happen,” he said, taking my hand in his own and bringing it to his chest.
“I know.”
He’d shown me his horror at the moment of it occurring—but also its inevitability.
And how now for him, it was too late.
“That is why I cannot let you go in there, little pearl—Doctor Pearl,” he said, moving my hand to his cheek, where all the strong small tendrils that lined his jaw clasped it. “Because even if you deny it, I feel you in my soul—I cannot let anything happen to you.”
How many times when I was a teenager had I wished something like a mating would happen to me?
All of us humans were aware of what the monsters had, that we lacked—some innate ability to find the person you were meant to be with for life, if you were lucky.
And it seemed like those monsters who did got to be happy—truly happy—while my kind was left just scrabbling around in the dark.
I didn’t want that for myself anymore.
I wanted to be found.
And if I didn’t know we were going to have to be separated eventually, I would’ve let myself love him back in a heartbeat.
But as it was...I put my other hand on his jaw as well, so that he was looking at me fully. “Cepharius—I like you. I do.” There was no point in denying it, when our minds were so close to overlapping. “But I will not be mated to any man or kraken who gets in the way of my work.”
I felt his beak grind as his thoughts churned, but he finally nodded. “You cut off your very breasts to defeat death. There is nothing that can stop you.” He said, then took a breath so big when he released it all the silt burst up around us in a cloud. “When we go back will you at least try to be safe?”
“Very,” I promised, taking my hands away from him, and giving him a smile. “And you said it yourself—I don’t want to die.”
chapter 31
CEPHARIUS
“You only think lights are good because that is your air-part, thinking,” I told her, carrying her back to the spaceship slowly. “Down here, lights are dangerous.”
“Lures. I know,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”
“I will make you be,” I muttered, and heard her laugh in response. She’d heard my thought, I’d forgotten we were close. “I am sorry—I will leave.”
Her panic was instantaneous. “No—don’t,” she said. “You’re already in my mind. Might as well make yourself at home. And maybe I could use your help helping me think on things? You indexed the whole Predator thing last night pretty fast.”
All I wanted to think about right now was leaving. But if I could not—this was second best. “As long as I am not hurting you anymore.”
“You’re not. I promise. And I’d let you know.” Her hand grabbed mine and squeezed it as we came upon the structure.
I lifted both of us up a safe distance away from the entrance that’d appeared in the ships side, without going near it, so that she could see what I had seen—four people in suits just like hers, clearly dead, floating around inside—and when I put her back down, I made sure to stay between her and the stairway’s first step.
“Did they all come from the station?” she asked, and then looked around. “Where are their umbilical cables?”
“The other humans back there are not telling you everything,” I warned her.
“Yeah. I’d noticed.”
She was pacing in one of her thoughtful circles again, and all that was in me wanted to whisk her away.
“Okay, so,” she said, coming to a quick decision. “I want to see inside again.” I moved to pick her up, and she said “Nuh-uh” and moved around me to take a step up the stairs.
I gasped. “Elle of the Air, what are you doing?”
