Chapter 12
Brave
Kael
The House of Drift has no gentle dawn. The sun is a forgotten myth this deep in the crushing dark. Time now revolves around Bolt, the electric eel who serves as our living engine.
When Bolt rests, the copper cage hums with a low, drowsy static that barely stirs the white sand floor. That is our night. When Bolt wakes and demands raw fuel, the cage flares with white-hot, arcing light. The iron gears fused to the ceiling grind. That is our morning.
The grinding begins again.
I am already awake. I have been awake for three solid days.
I hover outside the main entrance, hidden behind the kelp curtain.
My hands clench tight around a jagged piece of rusted metal and a net bag of wriggling slugs.
Sleep is a luxury I cannot afford. Every time I close my heavy eyelids, the Great White turns its dead black eyes toward Vaelis.
Its jaws snap shut. The horrifying, brilliant cloud of crimson blood explodes in the freezing water.
The sheer panic forces my eyes open every time.
I peer through a tear in the fronds and study the beautiful mer sleeping on the nets inside from the shadow. Vaelis stirs as the loud mechanical reveille rattles the floor. He groans, the sound soft and low. He tries to roll over onto his side, but his own battered body stops him.
His left shoulder is packed with crushed numbing-weed and wrapped in clean white fabric. The sharp, tearing agony of the initial shark bite has likely receded, but the deep muscle tissue is trying to knit itself back together. It is a slow, agonizing process.
Vaelis pushes himself up on his good right arm. He winces as the simple movement pulls at my clumsy stitches.
The House of Drift moves. I hover in the freezing water beyond the kelp curtain, my body matching the grueling pace of the towering structure as it crawls across the ocean floor.
Each heavy lurch sends a violent displacement through the water.
The ancient conch resembles a beast dragging itself over broken gravel.
Bolt steers us deeper, skirting the edge of the true abyss where the ambient pressure grows heavy enough to crush.
The weight presses against my own body, but my only concern is the mer hidden inside.
The ancient shell groans, creaking in protest. The calcium walls sigh under the immense pressure of the dark water, but the House of Drift holds him warm and safe.
Vaelis scans the main room from his makeshift bed, blinking the heavy sleep from his golden eyes.
The space is a disaster.
To someone raised in the pristine, manicured order of the Reef, the interior of our shell must be an assault on the senses.
Piles of salvaged scrap metal lean precariously against the curved walls.
Large glass jars of collected sea-glass clutter every flat surface, their contents catching Bolt's light and throwing fractured rainbows across the floor.
Filthy drift-nets hang from the ceiling like giant cobwebs, swaying gently with each lurch of the shell.
It's a chaotic hoard. It's a filthy mess.
I study Vaelis from the shadows beyond the curtain. His fine nose wrinkles in mild distaste. The overwhelming, itching urge to organize the room radiates off his pale skin like a warm current.
"Stop judging my things," Bolt's voice crackles across the room.
Vaelis looks over at the copper cage in the center of the room. Bolt is wide awake. His long, serpentine body is coiled tight around the central iron piston. He glows with a grumpy, sickly yellow light. His long fin twitches with morning irritation.
"I'm not judging," Vaelis says defensively. His sweet voice is raspy and rough from days of total disuse. "I'm assessing my surroundings."
"You are judging me," Bolt corrects him. "Your royal judgment radiates off you like a heat vent. You are mentally rearranging my furniture. Do not do it. The extreme clutter is structural. It holds the calcium walls up."
Vaelis stares at a towering stack of rusted iron gears that looks ready to fall. "You expect me to believe that precarious pile of rusted gears is structural?"
"You royals are all the same," Bolt crackles from his copper cage, his blue light flaring with irritation. "You think history started the day you hatched. I have observed more about the fall of the Trench than your entire Council has ever recorded."
Vaelis gives him a look.
"Load-bearing trash, Red," Bolt snaps. "Leave it alone."
Vaelis tries to rise. My heart lurches into my throat.
His fine tail looks heavy and unresponsive, unused to the bizarre, shifting gravity of the moving shell.
He stumbles forward. He barely catches himself on a heavy wooden crate.
He swims over to the nearest pile of trash.
It's a tall stack of salvaged human plates, chipped and stained with dark green algae.
"Where is Kael?" Vaelis asks.
"He is out in the freezing cold," Bolt says, sparking a bright blue arc of electricity as he stretches his jaws.
"He is pacing the outer perimeter again.
He gets anxious when we stop moving. And he gets anxious when we start moving again.
He is an anxious shark. For a supposedly mindless, mute apex predator, he worries like a frantic grandmother. "
Vaelis touches the top plate on the stack. It's pale human porcelain, painted with faded blue flowers. It's broken, but it's beautiful. It's exactly like him.
"He saved my life," Vaelis says, his voice a quiet murmur. He is speaking more to the broken plate than to the giant eel.
"Yes, we established that dramatic fact," Bolt drawls.
"He brought you home. He patched you up.
And he spent the last three days hovering over you like a paranoid mother ray.
It was exhausting to watch. Do you have any idea how hard it is to sleep when a two-hundred-fifty-pound shark paces in tight circles right next to your head? My internal voltage is a mess today."
Vaelis smiles a faint, fragile smile. "I'm sorry."
"No you are not. Do not apologize to me," Bolt mutters, dimming his yellow light. "Apologize to the sand floor. He wore a deep trench in the dirt."
Down in the sand, Pip scurries through the rut. The tiny barnacle helmet sits crooked on his head. He scrubs a cracked porcelain plate, staging a silent protest against the mess.
I cannot hide outside any longer.
I push my broad shoulders through the heavy kelp curtain.
I bring the cold of the Wastes inside with me. A rush of freezing, high-pressure water swirls around my tail before dissipating into the warm water of the shell.
I freeze the second Vaelis forces his battered body upright. A sharp wince twists his striking features, his good hand coming up to cradle his ruined shoulder. My heart stalls in my chest. He is going to tear my clumsy stitches straight out of his skin.
My dark eyes go wide.
I drop the jagged metal and the net bag.
The metal clatters against the stone floor, the sharp vibration traveling through the water and into my bones. Bolt flares with blinding blue light, his coils tightening around the copper piston.
"Watch it!" the eel's voice crackles through my nerves. "This is not a junkyard, you clumsy shark!"
I ignore him. Two powerful strokes of my tail carry me across the shifting floor.
My body moves with a strange, heavy grace in the unstable gravity of the moving shell.
I stop inches from Vaelis, my hands hovering uselessly in the water above his shoulders.
The urge to grab him, to force him back into the makeshift bed, wars with the fear that my rough hands might shatter what remains of his fragile strength.
My eyes scan him with frantic energy. I search his skin for any sign of fresh blood seeping through the white fabric. I check the tightness of the bandages, the color of his gills, the tremor in his crimson fins. Each detail is catalogued, each potential failure noted.
The heat of my scrutiny brings a flush to his face.
Pink spreads across his pale cheeks, a delicate sunrise in the dim blue glow.
"I'm fine, Kael," Vaelis murmurs, his good hand rising to rest against my chest. The warmth of his touch is a shock against my cold skin. "I wanted to get up. I'm not dying today."
I frown, my brows furrowing. I point a finger back at the nets. Sit.
"I've been lying there for three days," he argues, his voice strained. "My tail is cramping. I need to move."
I shake my head. No compromise. I point to his bandaged shoulder, then slash my own chest with my index finger. Wound. Bad.
"It's healing," Vaelis insists, his chin lifting. "Look."
He moves his injured left arm.
The pain hits him instantly. A sharp, white-hot flash contorts his face. His golden eyes water, but he forces the movement through the agony, his stubborn pride overriding common sense.
My eyes narrow to dangerous slits. His foolish bravery does not impress me.
My hands settle on his uninjured shoulder and his waist. I push, steady and firm. He resists for a moment, then stumbles backward as his tail hits the edge of the nets. He sits down hard, his expression a mixture of pain and frustration.
I nod once. Good.
I turn my back on his annoyed sigh. I retrieve the rusted metal shard and cross to the curved wall, wedging it deep into a crack to seal the freezing draft I noticed earlier.
His golden eyes follow my every movement, a silent weight in the warm water.
I finish wedging the metal shard into the crack and turn back to face him. I retrieve the dropped net bag from the sand.
I hold it up in the dim blue glow of Bolt's cage. It is full of large sea-slugs. They are gray, bulbous, and writhing against the woven ropes.
"Lunch," Bolt supplies from the copper cage. "Kael found a productive slime-bed out in the cold flats. They are a delicacy, provided you enjoy chewing on rotting carriage tires."
I glare at the glowing eel, a sharp burst of static my only reply.