Angie had slipped her bottoms back on and followed Kaden as they made their ascent back to the surface so she could prepare for tomorrow’s classes, pausing every few feet to exchange kisses.
They had made it three hundred feet, with no sign of moonlight or sunlight filtering through. Kaden kept his arm loosely wrapped over her waist, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go. If she had calculated right, they still had another hundred feet to go before they reached the light zone.
“Doing alright?” Kaden looked over to her.
“Yeah, I’m peachy.” Angie grinned at him. She yelped when something cold, solid, and sharp slapped to her bare thigh. “Shén me gui?” Looking down revealed a dead, nearly footlong, blue-gray fish with a dark horizontal line running along the length of its body.
Where did that come from?
Kaden reached for the fish and peeled it off her leg, inspecting it. “Looks like she was caught and released.” He examined it closer, brow furrowing.
Angie leaned in. A silver hook wedged through the fish’s mouth, and protruded from her gills. She grimaced. The tip of the hook had scratched her leg, but fortunately, not deep enough to break skin. “These fucking fishers. Couldn’t even be bothered to take the hook out of her mouth.”
Kaden shook his head in disdain, still holding the fish by her caudal fins.
Angie kept her gaze trained on the fish, its appearance striking a familiar chord. She racked the back of her mind.
“A queenfish.” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the words left her lips of their own volition. The scientific name came to her as if she’d never forgotten it. “Seriphus politus.”
A passing, inexplicable sense of dread filled her, and she locked eyes with Kaden. His lips were parted and eyes unblinking as he stared first at her, then at the fish.
In a flash, strong currents swept through, snatching the queenfish from Kaden’s grasp. She tumbled away into the blackness and out of their sight.
Kaden licked his lips, his shoulders dropping. “You okay?”
Angie gave him a firm nod. “Yeah. So um, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Of course.” Kaden took her face in his hands. “And the day after that, and the day after that, and after that. Until you’re sick of seeing my face.”
She looked toward where the dead queenfish had been swept away, thenrelaxed her pose, her mood brightening. “That would be never.”
“I feel the same about you. Until tomorrow, then.” Kaden kissed her forehead and took her hand, motioning his head upward. “But for now, let’s get you home.”
