Chapter 21
Vodyan
M y world and all my priorities pivoted in just a few days. I went from simply doing my job to planning multiple murders, and now, a rescue mission for a child I didn’t even know. And all that among half-baked visions of starting a family that were more fantasies than real plans, because I had no fucking idea what a happy family even looked like—I only knew I wanted Zoe, and having her would be enough.
My wounds barely throbbed, half-healed already, and I was excited. No matter how many times I reminded myself I shouldn’t get distracted, and that Zoe was my principal first and foremost, I was still giddy about showing her my home.
The feeling was unsettlingly foreign, and yet, it also felt light and happy.
“Are you asleep?” I murmured when the lights of Yeseera loomed ahead, pink, purple, and green. “You will want to see this.”
Zoe stirred, humming softly. “I was kind of drifting in my happy place, but I’m awake. What is it? Are we there? ”
“We are.”
I turned my torso to the side so she could look comfortably at the view stretching ahead. Zoe gasped with a shiver, and I grinned. Yeseera was a stunning city, a real gem in all the Great Lakes, and I never failed to be in awe when I saw it after a period of being away.
“What… But how…”
I laughed softly, looking at the tall, intricate structures of glittering stone that marked the borders of the city. A thin but extremely durable net stretched between them, banning entrance to anyone who didn’t have a pass. Yeseera was where all the shanta production happened, and we took our security seriously.
I swam over to a border check—a circular portal in the net, lit with blue lights. Two vodnik guards swam out to meet me.
“Halt. Is that a human? We need to ID both of you.”
I nodded, offering my palm for a scan. It was good to see they were already on high alert. Since Carver’s people were on Isle Royale just a few hours ago, it was very unlikely they would have managed to infiltrate the city before security tightened.
Zoe would be safe.
The guards managed to scan her iris through the goggles. While we waited for the system to load her data, she craned her neck around me, looking in through the portal with wide eyes.
I understood her awe. Yeseera shone brightly in the ubiquitous gloom of the lake, like a beacon of fantastic colors that glittered and mesmerized. Right beyond the net, the lake bottom was covered with luscious, gently swaying carpets of green and blue. Beyond the stretch of greenery, the apartment buildings started, each surrounded by a generous area of space with more plants.
The apartment towers were wide, cylindrical structures of dark stone, draped with lights, each building in a slightly different color scheme.
“All in order. Enjoy your stay,” the guard said, smiling to Zoe.
She thanked her distractedly and turned back to look at the city as we swam through the portal .
“Wow. This is… So unlike the rest of the lake.”
I smiled, ridiculously proud, as if I’d single-handedly raised the city from the bottom. Yeseera was an integral part of my identity. After I finally got here as a child, it became a sanctuary and a home. I embraced it with all I had as a form of rebellion against my grandfather, and Yeseera embraced me back. I got a place to live, a small income to support myself, and access to education. At ten, I was considered big enough to take care of myself, and no one had bothered finding me a guardian as long as I didn’t cause trouble and attended school regularly.
The vodnik society differed from most others in that regard.
“They are so tall,” Zoe whispered as we swam between two outermost apartment buildings, one lit bright pink, the other purple. “Oh, and each level has an entrance from the outside, right, because y’all can swim. So there’s no need for stairs or elevators.”
“That’s right. Now, this is a bit different from human hierarchy,” I explained, pointing at the higher levels of the closest apartment building.
A group of vodniks hovered by the entrance of the top-most apartment, talking loudly, their voice sacks glowing green and blue. A group of kids did cartwheels nearby, laughing like crazy, until the smallest one, who looked to be around three, got tangled in her own tentacles and began crying. A woman pulled away from the group of adults and caught the girl, helping her untangle herself while talking rapidly and pointing at the other children.
“The apartments at the top are the smallest. The towers grow slimmer with height, so the places at the top are the cheapest. The lower down a tower you live, the more expensive the place, until the very bottom. Those who live on the lowest level have access to dry space.”
“What do you mean?” Zoe asked without looking at me, her eyes glued to a colorful flower shop we passed, bright, luminescent blossoms spilling out through the shopping window on one of the middle levels.
I stopped, an outrageous thought making me smile. I’d never bought anyone flowers before .
“Like the safehouse,” I explained. “There are bunkers under every tower. Everyone who lives on the bottom floor has a whole another level to themselves. Hang on.”
I left her outside the flower shop, hanging onto a rail, while I bought a rich, purple and blue bioluminescent flower that could be worn as a bracelet. The blossom was huge, the petals thick and fleshy.
“For you,” I said, putting it around Zoe’s wrist.
She gaped at it for a few long moments, her lips parted, before she looked up at me with a huge smile.
“It’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever got,” she said seriously. “Thank you.”
My heart thudded with happiness. “I’ll get you a new one every day.”
But Zoe didn’t listen to me. Her eyes were wide and trained on the building opposite us. When I looked, I immediately knew why she was so shocked.
A mixed couple swam out of a middle-level apartment, a vodnik woman and a human man who wore a suit just like Zoe’s, except, without a mask. His face was bare, and he smiled at the woman, who I suspected was his wife. They held hands, and he swam using the slim, graceful flippers humans usually wore in Yeseera.
Zoe sidled up closer and whispered in my ear, “Did he also get some special juice to breathe underwater?”
I snorted, picking her up to swim away so I could explain. We got closer to the center, passing taller, brighter buildings. The passages between them were wide, but the city was busy. It was evening on a Friday night, and people swarmed the all-night cafes and dry space nightclubs that played human music and served cigarettes. Lots of vodniks were smokers, many smoking shanta as a recreational drug. Apart from its medical properties, shanta tasted good and helped us relax.
“Yes, he got a special juice, most likely from his vodnik partner,” I said.
“Uh. She’s most likely a woman. I saw her tits, and they are very pretty, by the way. ”
I nodded, grinning. “Yours are the prettiest. But it’s funny you should mention that. Vodnik females produce the mate adaptation cocktail in their mammary glands. Though, I don’t think he has to drink it anymore. After a prolonged exposure, the effects stick long-term. I think it takes up to three months for a full adaptation to occur.”
Zoe was silent, her lips moving behind the mask as her eyes wandered, sliding over a bright commercial building that housed mostly restaurants and shops, and then moving over to the nearest shanta tower.
“I didn’t understand anything from what you just said,” she said slowly. “Apart from the fact that guy… drank something from her breasts? Like breastmilk? Vodyan, what’s going on?”
She pointed at a group of people, three vodniks and two humans, also without masks. Mixed couples were a relative rarity, but we got here at a time when most people were out. Vodnik culture was very outdoorsy, regulated by the rhythms of city life. After all, we weren’t servants to the weather.
I glanced at the shanta tower, a narrow spire whose entire length was covered with faint-pink plants that glittered delicately, and stopped in place, checking my watch.
“I’ll tell you everything. But let’s wait here, because shanta brushing will start in about five minutes, and I want you to see it.”
Zoe rubbed the side of her head, like she was trying to physically rearrange all the information I gave her so it would fit in her brain.
“Okay, I won’t ask you what shanta brushing is since I’ll see it in five minutes. But please, for the love of all that’s holy, explain the tit sucking.”
An elderly vodnik shot us an outraged look as she passed by, her eyes glinting blue. I grinned, and she swam off with an offended grunt.
“Remember how I said all vodniks are actually human-vodnik hybrids?” I asked.
“I… Maybe? It was at a kind of intense moment. But yeah. You did mention that. ”
I nodded, wrapping a tentacle around her middle to keep her close as we waited a distance away from the shanta tower, another mixed group passing a bit overhead with a laugh.
“Well, vodnik scientists agree that tens of thousands of years ago, the vodnik race was on the brink of extinction. They speculate about the possible causes, but that’s not important. What matters is, a huge evolutionary shift happened, equipping vodniks with something that’s called the mate adaptation process.”
She nodded slowly. “Let me guess. The special cock juice is part of that.”
Someone above us laughed, a male vodnik shooting us a grin before he swam away.
“Are you doing it on purpose?” I asked her, and she smiled innocently.
“You should know by now that I have no filter. Unless there are kids around. You’d never hear me say ‘cock’ around children. I did say ‘fuck’ a few times, though. But not many.”
I leaned in to kiss the top of her head. “Of course, sweet thing. And yes, special cock juice is an essential part of that, but not the only one. For example, remember how I kept you warm?”
She nodded, but then her eyes flitted away.
“Oh. Is it… moving?”
I looked at the shanta tower, a shiver sliding down my back. No matter how many times I saw it, I still felt the same awe as when I witnessed it the first time.
All along the tower, twenty-foot long elements gently pulled away from the base, opening slowly like umbrellas. The thin membranes on which shanta was cultivated stretched open, wider and wider, glittering and half-translucent. Around us, people stopped to admire it.
“It’s called brushing,” I explained softly, gazing at Zoe’s face filled with childlike wonder. “Twice a day, the sheets have to open so all debris and waste are washed away. These structures are incredibly intricate and fragile, and it’s forbidden to touch them when they are open. ”
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, gasping when the spire opened fully, a line of glittering, light purple umbrellas all along the base.
I smiled and nodded, tipping her face to me. “Yes, you are.”
She blinked then smiled playfully. “I didn’t have you pegged for a romantic, but I love it.”
“I watched a lot of movies and TV focused on relationships and family life,” I admitted with a self-conscious shrug. “Sort of… Tried to learn. When I was older, I realized a lot of that was idealized and filled with cliches.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and brought her mouth to my ear. “Give me all the cliches you’ve got. I love romantic gestures and love stories. And just for the record, what you said made me incredibly horny.”
That startled a laugh out of me. “It was supposed to make your heart melt.”
“My heart and pussy beat as one,” she said with a mischievous smile, making me swallow with difficulty. “But you were saying about how you made me warm.”
“Yes.” I welcomed the change in topic, because a strange, hot unease pulsed in my stomach, and I had no idea where it came from. “It’s another part of the mate adaptation process. Now, you have your fancy suit to keep you warm, but thousands of years ago, it was impossible. Vodniks needed to develop a way to keep a human mate warm under water so they wouldn’t die of hypothermia.
“The goal of these two traits, so my ability to make you breathe underwater and changing my body temperature to keep you warm, is to help you survive and thrive in the lake. The evolutionary goal was to produce offspring, and of course, baby vodniks can’t go to the surface. That’s why we have to keep our mates down here.”
“And you can just turn it on?” she asked, curious and impressed.
The shanta umbrellas closed, and Zoe looked at the spire, smiling faintly.
“No,” I said at length. “It’s all based on hormonal reactions. I mean, sex is easy, it sort of releases the hormones naturally, so every time I come, it potentially has that effect. But changing my temperature… it took a bit more. ”
“More what?” She turned back to me, her brows pulled into a slight frown.
“Affection, I think. Devotion. A need to comfort and protect. A… a desire to commit.”
The unease inside me grew, and I bit back the urge to growl at myself, because what the fuck was wrong with me? Here she was, safe and happy by my side, and there was no reason to feel this sense of foreboding.
Zoe smiled, asking softly, “You mean love?”
And there it was.
I turned my face away so she wouldn’t see my expression as cold currents rose inside me, suffocating and slimy. I didn’t understand that dread and loathing in myself, didn’t comprehend where the terror had come from.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, but I wouldn’t look at her. I knew she’d be hurt if she saw my face right now. “It was dumb of me. Please, forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” I said stiffly.
“Okay. Let’s just forget it then.”
I turned back to her, relieved to find her smiling with infinite understanding, as if she knew exactly how much pain that single word produced. I wasn’t cured, then, even though I’d felt like it ever since the island house.
But my current wellbeing, all that warmth I felt, was deceptive. My issues ran deep, on the very cell level, and it had been stupid to expect I’d just be normal now because I fell in… feelings with a human.
Ridiculous , I snarled at myself. You want to fuck her till she pops out a brood of kids, you want to keep her forever and spoil her as long as you both live, but you won’t tell her the L word?
But that was the crux of it. How was I supposed to know if what I felt was love if I’d never experienced it myself? How could I know I was even capable of it?
A hormonal reaction was one thing. Lust, another. Even friendship and devotion—I could wrap my mind around those.
But not love.
“Let’s go home, Zoe,” I said woodenly, feeling defeated and foolish.
Feeling broken.