Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
CASSIA
The afternoon passed in a blur of data and calculations and the quiet hum of Aero working three feet away.
Cassia threw herself into the analysis with desperate focus. Anything to avoid thinking about Nerissa’s words. Anything to avoid noticing the way Aero’s presence made her magic settle and spark in equal measure.
She cross-referenced historical storm data from the archives with current anomaly readings. Mapped surge intensity against wave patterns. Tried to find the thread connecting the chaos.
It was there. She could feel it. Some underlying pattern that would make sense of everything if she could just—
“You need to eat.”
She blinked, surfacing from her focus to find Aero standing beside her desk. The windows had gone dark. Night had fallen without her noticing.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly eight. You’ve been staring at that screen for six hours.”
“I’m close to something. The patterns—”
“Will still be there after you eat.” He held up a paper bag—the kind from Maggie’s Diner down on the main dock. “I brought dinner.”
Cassia stared at the bag, then at him. “You brought me dinner.”
“You weren’t going to feed yourself. Someone had to.”
“But—” She tried to process this. The ancient dragon elder, who’d probably eaten dinner with kings and witnessed the fall of empires, had walked to a harborside diner to buy her takeout. “Why?”
His expression flickered—that crack in his composure she’d learned to watch for. “Because I wanted to.”
Four words. Simple. Devastating.
Neither of them flinched.
“Thank you,” she managed.
“It’s only sandwiches.”
“It’s not only sandwiches, and you know it.”
He held her gaze, and the air between them hummed with unspoken things.
Then he cleared his throat and pulled a chair beside hers. “Show me what you’ve found.”
They ate in comfortable conversation while she walked him through the data.
The sandwiches were thick-sliced bread, fresh catch, the kind of food that fueled fishermen through pre-dawn hours.
Aero ate methodically, precisely, the way he did everything.
But his shoulder stayed pressed against hers as they bent over the same screen—warm and solid and grounding.
She was hyperaware of every point of contact. The brush of his arm when he reached for his coffee. The press of his thigh against hers beneath the desk. The way his fingers sometimes paused over the keyboard, as if he’d lost track of what he was typing.
She didn’t move away. Neither did he.
“Here.” She pointed to a series of readings on the monitor. “The surge intensity spikes correlate with the rogue wave events. See how they cluster?”
Aero leaned forward, studying the pattern. “The timing is too precise to be coincidental.”
“That’s what I thought. And look at this—” She pulled up another dataset. “The temperature drops. The pressure fluctuations. They all follow the same sequence. Build, spike, release. Build, spike, release.”
“Like breathing,” His voice had gone flat. Analytical. “Or like casting.”
“Exactly.” She turned to face him, and the proximity made her breath catch. His eyes were inches away, sharp, focused, and intent. “Someone is doing this deliberately. Amplifying the systems and then releasing them in controlled bursts.”
“The energy signature.” He reached past her to scroll through the data, his arm brushing hers. “Can you isolate it?”
“I’ve been working on the isolation all afternoon.
” She pulled up the baseline comparison she’d been building.
“It confirms what you flagged in the initial harbor readings—it’s not atmospheric at all.
The magic is ocean-based. Controlled.” She tapped the screen.
“My grandmother’s journals mention something like this.
The Deepwater Courts used to run weather interference off this coastline centuries ago.
She called it tidal weaving—manipulating ocean energy to create surface weather effects.
Disrupting fishing routes. Discouraging settlement. ”
“Siren magic,” Aero said. Not a question. A confirmation.
“Whoever it is, they’ve been at this for months. Look at the baseline deviation—it starts long before the recent wave events.”
They looked at each other. The same conclusion written on both their faces.
“Nerissa,” Cassia said.
Aero’s expression darkened. “Possibly. Probably. But we need proof before—”
The alarm shrieked.
Cassia jolted, her chair scraping back as she lunged for the emergency monitor. The screen blazed red—wave height warnings, pressure collapse alerts, the entire coastal sensor array screaming danger.
“What the hell—” She pulled up the live feed from the offshore buoys. And went cold.
A wave was building. Not a natural wave—not even a surge-amplified wave. This was a wall of water rising from the depths, twenty feet high and climbing. Thirty feet. Forty. Moving toward the harbor with impossible speed.
“That’s going to hit the docks in four minutes,” Cassia breathed. “Maybe three.”
Aero was already moving. “Can you redirect it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never—” She shook her head. No time for doubt. “I can try. But I need to be closer.”
“The seawall.”
“The seawall.”
They ran.