Song of the Abyss (Deep Waters, #2)

by Emma Hamm

It was stupid. It was risky. It was taking her own life in her hands and thrusting it at this monster who had just showed up in her pool one day. But she suddenly launched herself into the pool.

“But I do not find you ugly.” “Do you not?” “How could I? When your hair is the color of the sun on a cloudless day? When your smile warms the entire ocean around me? When I touch you, your soul is so familiar to me. It is like I have known you in a hundred lifetimes before this, and some part of me that I’ve forgotten wishes to bury itself inside you. It tells me to cling to the curve of your waist, to clutch at the feeling in my chest that lingers when you are near. My soul wishes to keep you and never let you go.”

If someone had offered her a tool to get her hearing back after all these years, she wasn’t even sure that she would take it. There were risks to using any new tool. And she was fine the way she was. Sure, she had Bitsy to translate for her, but that wasn’t the same thing as something to “fix” what had made her… better.

“My lack of arm has nothing to do with feeling whole. A metal device or not, I was never whole before you. You were the first person to look at me and see a man after my injury. Not a mistake, not a failure. You were the one to see me. My kalon, if you wished me to shed my skin, I would. If the arm makes you uncomfortable, then I will drop it into the deepest pits of the sea.”

“I don’t want you to not be whole again because of me.” “I am only whole because of you.”

“I wish I could tell you how much I love you. How your light has brought more wonder and joy to my life than I have ever felt in it. I have been a warrior my entire life, and before you, that was all I was. You make me want to put my weapons down and find out what it really means to live.”