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“You...” It all hit him at once. “Did she give you to me to learn your language?”
“Yes.”
She was... she was trying to learn how to speak with him. Not a gift, but a tool.
His hearts thundered again, beating against his ribs at the mere thought of speaking with her. He could talk to Alys. Actually talk to her. Listen to what she had done and where she had come from. He could tell her about his own adventures and see her eyes shine with happiness when he told her stories that were so detailed, she would never question the truthfulness of where they came from.
“How?” he asked. “How do you learn my language?”
The blue light glowed a little brighter. “Speak.”
“All I have to do is speak to you?”
Another pulse of blue illuminated the water around them. “Speak,” it repeated.
If that’s all it took, then she had given the right person this box. He would speak until his throat went raw and his gills bled, if it meant he could converse with her.
Chapter
Five
The first conversation with her father about where she had been didn’t go so well. Alys had sat for a very long time, waiting for him to calm down. He had yelled, screamed, even threatened to take away her submarine because she refused to tell him where she had been going.
But she knew better. She would not tell him the secret she had with Imber. Her father wouldn’t understand the man who had found her in the sea. Nor would he care that they had a connection.
All he would see was that there was another person in the ocean. Another creature that would threaten his ability to build wherever he wanted. And though she loved his ability to see the future in a different way... she didn’t want to waste what she had, either.
Imber was a secret she would keep. If that meant she had to stay away from him for weeks on end because her father would surely follow her, then so be it.
She hated staying away from him, though. Life above the sea had already lost its luster long before she met the undine. She was the strange girl. The daughter who had so much responsibility and expectation on her shoulders. And eventhough she loved her father, more than he would ever know, she also was very aware of his flaws.
Especially lately. She didn’t know how to tell him that she was frightened for him. He’d gotten so lost in his work. Like he could see a future that no one else could, but also that he was fighting for something that might never exist.
He didn’t sleep. He barely ate. He just focused on the project of creating Alpha. The city that would sink beneath the sea and keep all of humanity safe for ages to come.
But that wasn’t entirely right, now was it? Alpha was going to be a beautiful city and humans would live in it for years on end. It was still a city under the sea. It wasn’t life up here. Living as humans were meant to do, in the air with the land underneath their feet.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She packed up her things, making sure there was enough air supply in her ship to get her to the places she needed to go, and enough fuel to get her there and back. She packed an extra set of clothing so no one would be able to ask where she had gone.
And then she wrote a letter, leaving it on her desk in case her father got curious about where his wayward daughter had gone off to. She was not going to get in trouble this time.
“Don’t feel too guilty about lying,” she told herself. “Your father wouldn’t let you go, and really, you are stopping by the dig site along the way, aren’t you?”
Sneaking through the halls, she found herself lingering outside her father’s office.
Alys did that sometimes. She just... stood there. Waiting. Maybe she liked hearing her father’s voice. Or maybe it was just knowing that he was there, on the other side of the door.
But this time, there was another voice as well.
“Listen to me, Fairweather.” The deep voice was almost familiar, although she couldn’t place where she had heard itbefore. “The city will be built whether we destroy the ecosystem or not. You said it yourself. It will be easier to build if it’s on flat land.”
Her father cleared his throat, and she could sense how uncomfortable he was with the conversation. “Yes, but there is the conversation with the architects we need to uphold. Aesthetic is considered to be one of the greatest things we can do for this build. And aesthetic means that we build it around what is currently there. Alpha is meant to be functionalandbeautiful. It is a showcase of what the human mind can conjure.”
“And it will be the most heavily fortified city underneath the sea. How are we meant to fortify it without having a clear view of everything around us?”
She knew who spoke this time.
The General.
