He nodded once, approving, before stopping again beside one of the deeper systems where filtered light fell in long, shifting ribbons across the rock faces below.
“You must’ve spent a fortune on all of this,” he murmured.
I had, but the cost had been nothing more than a drop in a bucket for me.
“I spare no expense for the upkeep of my belongings,” I answered, almost adding that soon, that would apply to him as well.
He turned back toward me again then, and for the first time since accepting the position, there was something like uncertainty in his expression—not hesitation, but awareness.
“This is… a lot,” he said, biting the inside of his cheek. “How have you been maintaining everything?”
“I’ve hired different caretakers in the past. But as I mentioned, I dislike having strangers in my home, so when theywere let go for one reason or another, the work fell on Ben and me.”
Cove cocked his head. “Ben helps you with them?”
I nodded. “Yes, but he’s not very knowledgeable about aquariums. We do what we can, but it’s not enough. We’ve kept all of my collection alive, but they’re not thriving as they should be. You will make them flourish, Cove.”
He looked at me for a moment after I said that, his expression caught somewhere between pride and disbelief, as though he hadn’t yet decided whether he was allowed to accept that kind of confidence from someone else.
“I hope so,” he said quietly, the sincerity in that statement reaching me as he turned back toward the next-closest system and stepped closer to the glass.
He knelt forward, bracing one hand against the edge of the cabinet beneath the tank while his eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting inside the enclosure. Most people never noticed the movement in that system unless it chose to present itself.
Cove did.
“How..?” he breathed, startled in a way that was unmistakably delighted rather than alarmed. “This is a ghost shark, right? I’m not hallucinating?”
“Do you like her?”
He turned to give me a bewildered look before going back to follow the movement of the creature’s long, tapering tail.
“Iloveher. I didn’t even know private collectors could get one,” he murmured.
“They usually can’t,” I answered bluntly, deeply enjoying his excitement.
The chimaera, or ghost shark, as Cove called it, drifted once more through the dim enclosure, its ribboned tail trailing behind it like a slow-moving thought, and Cove followed the motionwith a focus so complete that he seemed briefly removed from the room altogether.
“You stabilized her pressure transition yourself?” he asked after a moment.
“Although I’d like to take credit for that—no. She’d already stabilized before she came into my care.”
“Still…”
He glanced back at me again—not politely impressed, not socially obligated to admire—but genuinely reassessing me, which I found most gratifying.
He rose slowly to his feet, still watching the tank as though reluctant to leave it behind.
“What else are you keeping in here?” he asked, voice near-dripping with anticipation.
I smiled and led him farther down the corridor.
The next enclosure occupied an entire recessed wall section, the lighting kept low and directional so that movement within the tank appeared only in fragments at first—curves slipping through shadow, disappearing behind rock structures designed to mimic submerged shelf terrain.
Cove stopped abruptly. “Sea snakes?”
One of them turned slowly in the water column, its body moving with a quiet elegance that made its lethality feel almost theoretical.
“They’re so calm,” he added softly, more to himself than to me. “But their venom is—”
