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“You have to do something!” she shouted, her voice carrying until all of his people stared at her. She turned to them, as though they would help her instead of him. “You can’t just let them take your home. Not this easily. There are so many of you and those are just machines! I’ve seen Imber rip glass off my submarine. Surely there is something we can do.”
He touched her shoulder, squeezing a little too hard. “Alys. We could fight until there are none of us left, but we have seen what your people are capable of. We know when we are outmatched.”
She turned red rings eyes to him. “I cannot stand by and just let them do this.”
“Breathe, little one. And let it go.”
“It’s my fight too,” she snarled. “It’s my fight because you are now my people. I can help. You have me now. It’s not just your people who cannot fathom what mine have created. Those are just droids. They rely on wires and technology, which means there are parts of them that cannot be exposed to salt water. I can figure this out, Imber.”
He wished it was that easy. He wished his people could return to a nest that had so much hardship but even now, looking at the destroyed landscape and all the black dust that already was at the edge of where they had lived and he knew... none of them would ever return to that haunted place.
“It’s too late, Alys.” He patted her shoulder a few times, trying to draw her back to this moment. “There are people here who need our help. We can help them. They are right in front of us, and we will not stop helping others simply because there is a fight that we may or may not win. Our home is lost. Now we look to the home we can build.”
She let out a choked little sob. “I can’t do that. I can’t live with myself if I don’t try, Imber.”
Sighing, he let her spin away from him and lunge back to where they had come from. He could feel his hearts breaking, and the way his stomach rolled as she disconnected from him. No longer breathing for both of them, he took a deep breath into his lungs for the first time in a full day.
She had to feel it. She must have realized that she’d ripped herself free, and still she swam as though she could cross that distance without him.
Virago swam to his side, an amused expression on her face. “She’s a feral little thing. What just happened?”
“She wants to go back and destroy her people’s creations,” he murmured. “She thinks she can stop them all.”
“Then she is delusional as well as fierce. Sounds like someone I know.” Virago slapped his back hard enough to rock himforward. “Go get your mate, brother. I’ll gather the others while we can.”
He swam after the short distance Alys had gone and then gathered her up in his arms. She slapped at him, even raked his skin with her tiny claws as she struggled to free herself. But by the time he’d connected them, forcing air through the tentacle and into her lungs, she’d lost all her fight.
Limp in his arms, he gathered her close to his hearts, pressed a kiss to her temple, and whispered into her hair, “It’s gone, Alys. It’s already gone.”
Chapter
Thirteen
Alys surveyed the devastation with a sense of detachment. It was almost like she wasn’t here at all. Looking over what had once been a home, and she’d only gotten a small glimpse of it.
Had it ever really been here? Had she made it up in her head?
All the machines had left. The droids that were made to landscape and terraform had completed their job. And now, she came back with Imber and his people to see the decimation of what had once been a beautiful coil of nests.
The little stone patterns were gone. Just dust in their place. They couldn’t even swim too close to the ground because all the dust left over from the machines was so fine that it would puff up and darken the water. So they stayed far above the home of the undines, even though she could see how badly they wanted to visit it. Even just to touch the ground with their hands, so they could feel connected to this place one last time.
Her heart broke for them. With them.
And when another undine appeared out of the foggy water, his face dirty and his hands shaking, she knew there was still more to grieve.
Imber held her tight to him as they sped through the water. They fairly flew to another group of undines who had somehow gotten injured. She wasn’t sure how or what had happened. It didn’t matter in the end. They were injured. She had two good hands. If she could help, she would.
So she spent hours doing whatever it was that the undines needed. Alys patched people up who had scrapes or cuts. She smeared foul feeling liquid onto their wounds and held their hands while others stitched them together. She did whatever was required of her, because it was the only thing she could do.
Her people were the ones who had caused this. She felt like she owed them so much, even if all she had right now was her time.
Imber sat behind her, doing the same thing. Their backs touched often. He would reach behind him and gently trail his fingers over her hip sometimes, just to let her know he was still there. Still with her.
But it didn’t help. Nothing she did helped.
No matter how many people she bandaged, patched, or just sat and held their hands, it didn’t change what had happened. Their homes were gone. Their hopes were drenched underneath years of fear that her people had breathed into them.
Though not all of them knew she could understand them, she could. She listened to their fears and their worries. How they still hadn’t found one of their dear friends who had fled. What if one of those metal creatures had gotten ahold of them? There was blood in the water. They could all smell it. Something had happened and now they couldn’t put themselves back together.
