“I know that you don’t want to hear this, but Tavras is actually important to me. I’ve been training with him for months now, and he has been the first person that I could turn to in trying to figure out this crazy thing of being a demigoddess.”

More than just a random demigoddess, Val was the traitorous daughter to the previous God Supreme who she would have never even known about if not for Arius telling her.

“You know how you told me my dad is dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry about being the bearer of bad news, by the way.”

“It’s fine. I really appreciate knowing the truth, actually.” Val paused as she gathered the next piece of explaining away what felt like her soul to Arius.

“Well, before I figured that my dad was some random demigod that didn’t care about my mom, my brother, or me. I kind of hated the thought of my father for that reason, but I made a bad assumption,” she murmured. “When Tavras tried to act as a father figure in my life, I was really opposed to that. Over these past couple of days after meeting you and learning the truth about my father…. I don’t know. It just sort of clicked. I think Tavras has been trying to be there for me like my father would have wanted.”

Arius blinked a few times to let that sink in. Based on the disillusioned expression on his face, he did not understand at all. “Are you saying that you think of Tavras as your father?”

“Yes, in a way.”

Rather than accepting the new nuance of her relationship with him, Arius snapped. “Don’t try telling me that. I could already feel the intentions of that desperate crush that you had on him, and I didn’t think this was possible, but you just made this even weirder.”

“Arius,” she breathed with a wince. “I’m trying to open up to you about how I feel. If you’re going to be judgmental, I’ll just shut up. If you have a genuine question that will help you understand me better, try asking without the attitude.”

“Sorry,” he stammered.

For a while, they both fell silent.

“You’re eighteen years old?” Arius asked, not so much an actual question, but Val nodded along.

“Yeah.”

“You never had a father figure in your childhood?”

“Nope.”

His eyes darted off to the side. The hand that cupped her cheek became more gentle as he stroked her jaw. Arius dipped his head so that their foreheads could touch together. “I suppose this makes a lot of sense, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“What do you mean?” Val asked, unsure if Arius was accepting her or rejecting her as she was. She started to feel as if she trembled but not from the cold.

“A psychologist could have a field day analyzing you and the impact that your absent father had on your personality.”

Val did not know if she particularly wanted to be analyzed in that respect. “Is that a bad thing? Please don’t hold that against me.”

“No,” Arius said gently. “As a matter of fact, it does help me understand you. Thanks for telling me all of this, actually.”

A warmth tinged her cheeks as he looked on at her with sympathy pinched in his brow. As nice as if felt for Arius to accept her, Val did not like the way that he looked at her. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

“I mean, I do, but not in a bad way,” Arius rushed to say. “I-I think I understand to an extent. We had different experiences, also given that I’m a man and you’re a woman, we probably dealt with our parental issues in different ways….” He trailed off before starting again, this time talking about himself.

“I grew up without my father for the first half of my childhood. Then, when I did have Suvier enter my life, it obviously was not as expected. I lost my mother for the second half of my childhood. My sob story doesn’t matter, but what I’m trying to say is that I think I understand.”

Her lips pinched with consideration, listening to Arius say these things. “It’s not a sob story, and it does matter,” Val said firmly. She reached out to place her hand against Arius’s face and caress his cheek in kind.

They held each other’s faces, a hand on the cheek of the opposite side. Close together as their faces were, foreheads pressed together, Val could sense a residual amount of his exhalation on her lips. The taste was just enough to entice rather than repel. She wanted more of his lips.

She suddenly became more cognizant of the proximity they had to each other. The smallest tilt of her head upward could bring their lips together. Without even having to kiss him, the notion felt familiar to her somehow. “Um, Arius, did you kiss me before?

“Uh,” he drawled out for a long while. “I figured that you gave implied consent! I could have bitten you to the same end but didn’t want to risk a break in your skin down here.”

Why did Arius become so jumpy all of a sudden? He literally flinched in her arms.

Val was just thinking back to the sensation of that kiss. When her body had nearly frozen, the soul slipping from her body, it had been Arius’s touch that brought warmth back to her life. His lips had been passionate and gentle, instantiating his presence over her body in that way.

She wanted to experience that again.

“So, we were talking about what we’re going to do when we’re out of Leviathan’s Cradle,” he said instead.

Given how flighty Arius became and how swiftly he changed the topic, Val could only assume that he did not want to kiss her for real. She sighed in discontentment but did not let that bother her at the moment.

As part of a shift in conversation, they also launched themselves back into the water and descended for Leviathan. Val and Arius waited for their fourth bubble of residual oxygen to consume.

This time, when Val gazed out at the scales of Leviathan, she swore that she saw one detach from the placement on its body and float away.

When she blinked next, the scale had disappeared, leaving Val to think that she had imagined the thing.

The bubble expanded around their feet and soon encompassed them over their heads. Val and Arius lay in their bubble of seclusion once more, ready to resume their discussion as they drifted upwards once again.

Val started them off with renewed hope.

“I was hoping that we could all go back to the Summit; I could have both Tavras as my father figure and you as my… soulmate. Do you really think that I’m asking for too much?” Hopefully that question would make Arius more amenable to her request.

“Seriously, Val, you need to reconsider your relationship with Tavras, especially if you want to associate with me. You do know about Urru, right?”

She nodded along grimly.

“Urru was my best friend. Tavras had absolutely no reason to kill him other than to spite me. He will do the same to you if he finds out about us—”

“Actually,” Val interrupted sheepishly, “I already told him.”

Arius gaped at her. “You did what?”

“I already told Tavras that you think we’re soulmates.”

“But why?” he asked, sincere in his confusion. “I told you not to.” His saddened reaction was almost worse than if he had flown into a rage.

She shrunk back as much as possible, but all the while Val felt guilty in his arms. “I explained this to you already. Tavras has always been supportive of me. I wanted to be honest with him, especially when I… wasn’t so sure about us.”

“This really was a plot to kill me, wasn’t it?” Arius said, even more disheartened though he did not exactly sound surprised.

“The plan was to send you to Leviathan’s Cradle, so that Tavras could talk to you,” she amended.

“Like nether he was just going to talk to me!”

“Yes, he was,” Val snapped.

With a ridiculous smile on his face, Arius shook his head again and again. “This is so funny.”

“Do you really find this funny?”

“Oh yes!” Arius exclaimed. “Just look around us. Everything is absolutely wonderful, just like our chances of dying!”

Her face felt as though it went pale all at once. By the newfound distress in Arius’s voice, she worried that they really might perish in Leviathan’s Cradle. Nevertheless, she kept hope in Tavras, unwilling to wonder what was taking him so long for Val and Arius to have such extensive conversations.

He would show up because Val had placed her trust in him.