Chapter 248
“You might not remember that hunting trip, but I do,” Shoal says, voice low. “You changed. You went off for maybe thirty minutes and when you returned to the trip, I could tell immediately that something had changed. Gods, it must have been twenty years ago now, but I swear afterward you were never the same.”
“Is that so?” Wake asks, voice measured.
“You were more withdrawn. Still sharp, still focused. But... restless. Tense. Like you couldn’t sit still inside of your own skin.”
I nod slowly, my fingers clenched around the warm mug in my hands. If the math checks out, I know the moment he’s talking about, after all I’d been there.
At the time I’d been a kid and couldn’t have known the importance of the day—hell, I hadn’t even remembered it until fairly recently, but I remember it all now—falling off the side of a boat as a child, swallowing salt water and starting to sink before I could even begin to process the fact that I was in danger. And then hands had grabbed me, strong and cold, pulling me to the surface. Eyes like the deep. A man, I swear, who had a tail and disappeared before I could speak.
Wake.
He’d known even then what we would be to one another eventually. He’d waited for me, sought me out. Every year, he came back to the same spot, hoping fate would give him a second chance. Eventually, it was me who came to find him.
Shoal sighs. “I can guess now what prompted the change, but at the time, I didn’t understand what had happened. You wouldn’t talk about it, and then you started skipping our annual hunting trips to head off on your own.”
Wake snorts. “What, brother, were you feeling left out?”
“Yes. Up til that point it was the three of us,” Shoal says, impassioned. “No matter how much competition was put between us, we were a united front. Until we weren’t. And I can admit that I didn’t handle it well.” He glances at me, a ghost of shame in his eyes.
“You could have told me how you were feeling,” Wake says.
“And face the shame of admitting how weak I was? When public opinion of me was already so low?”
“I’m not the public, Shoal,” Wake says. “I would have understood.”
“Maybe, but we were young, and I took it as another challenge. I felt as if you’d drawn a line in the sand, and once the line was there, I leaned into it. If you had secrets, I’d have discoveries. If you forged yourself a path, I’d carve my own. I threw myself into my research and burned through every resource in the Abyss. Until one day, I realized... I didn’t need to keep digging deeper. Not when there was a wealth of untapped knowledge just above the surface.”
Despite myself, I lean in. “So what did you do?”
He gives her a crooked smile. “I let the current take me. Literally. I swam upward and just... let go. It was freeing, even if I didn’t make it very far from home. I ended up on a beach not far from a town, and I watched the people there for weeks. Listened. Learned. Their language, their culture… it was so different from anything I had ever seen in the Abyss.”
There’s something soft in his voice now, something reverent. “There was a couple who came to the beach every morning. Middle-aged, always bickering, always laughing. You could tell they adored each other. One day, I just... walked up. Naked, stumbling, and babbling a mess of broken English, Maori and French of all things. They thought I was a drunk who wandered out of the bush,” he says with a grin. “Took me in. Fed me. Gave me a job. A bed. They never pried when I would leave every few days, sometimes for weeks at a time. They treated me like family.”
“You were happy,” I say.
Shoal goes quiet. His smile lingers, but his eyes go distant. “Yes, I was. It was like... playing make-believe. Life moved slower there. Mornings were for chores, evenings for watching the sun set. I’d never felt peace like that.”
“So what went wrong?” I ask gently.
He tilts his head. “Why are you so sure something did?”
I shrug. “Because twenty years is a long time. And good things don’t usually last forever.”
Shoal’s face falls, and I hate how right I am. “They had a daughter. Elena,” he says. “She’d come home from university every few months. She was studying art history abroad. Gods, she was something—smart, open, braver than anyone I’d ever met. She talked about the world like it was infinite. We used to make plans to travel; she wanted to show me everything, and I would follow her anywhere.”
“Did you tell her what you were?” I ask, my heart already starting to ache.
“I was going to tell her the truth. Everything.”
“What stopped you?”
He draws in a slow breath. “She died. It was an accident, but I’ll never really know because I wasn’t there. I didn’t even know until days later. Her parents told me... said even if I’d been there, I couldn’t have done anything.” His voice cracks. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? Grief and grief don’t care about logic.”
I reach out and rest a hand on his. “I’m sorry, Shoal.”
He nods once. “So was I. And I always will be.”
A silence settles between us again, but it’s different now—deeper. I don’t want to be at this table anymore. I don’t feel like I’ve earned the right to hear this story, to experience this man’s pain, not when I’ve come under such false pretenses.
I look to Wake, whose gaze is hazily fixed on the Marble. Then, abruptly, his attention returns to his brother. “Was she your mate?”
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