Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
KAELAN
The ocean had never felt so vast.
I cut through the water beside Riven, our tails propelling us deeper and deeper into the black.
The bioluminescence faded behind us, the familiar blues and greens giving way to absolute darkness—the kind of dark that pressed against your eyes like a physical weight, that made you question whether you'd ever seen light at all.
I didn't need light. I'd swum these depths for centuries.
I knew every current, every trench, every cold pocket of water that marked the boundaries between the shallow world and the deep places where only ancient things dared to go.
What I didn't know—what I couldn't seem to understand no matter how many times I turned it over in my mind—was how a single human woman had become the center of my entire existence.
She was supposed to be a curiosity.
The thought surfaced unbidden as we descended, the pressure building around us in a way that would have crushed a human's bones to powder.
Riven swam beside me in silence, his scarred face set in grim determination, his golden eyes fixed on the darkness ahead.
He hadn't spoken since we left the garden.
He didn't need to. I could feel his rage through the pack bond—a constant, thrumming fury that vibrated between us like a plucked string.
A human who could swim. A mystery to be solved and then forgotten.
I remembered the first time I saw her. Floating in the water like she belonged there, her hair spreading around her face like kelp in the current, her eyes wide with wonder instead of fear.
She'd looked at me—at all of us—and she hadn't screamed.
Hadn't tried to flee. She'd just... looked.
Like she was seeing something beautiful instead of something monstrous.
Now she's the center of everything. The axis around which my entire existence turns.
I'd lived for centuries. I'd watched empires rise from nothing and crumble back to dust. I'd seen the ocean change—warming, cooling, filling with strange new creatures and losing old ones to the endless march of time.
I'd watched everything I knew shift and transform and fade away, and through it all, I'd remained. Constant. Unchanging. Ancient.
None of it mattered. None of it had ever mattered, I realized now. I'd been existing, not living. Swimming through the centuries like a ghost, going through the motions of survival without ever truly feeling alive.
Until her.
Until Lily, with her haunted eyes and her brave heart and her body that still flinched sometimes when we reached for her too quickly.
Until Lily, who had been sold like property and treated like less than nothing and still—still—found it in herself to trust us.
To let us braid her hair and scent her skin and kiss her like she was the most precious thing in the entire ocean.
I've lived for centuries. I've seen empires rise and fall. I've watched the ocean change, watched species come and go, watched everything I knew crumble to dust.
None of it matters. Only her.
"You're thinking too loud." Riven's voice cut through the darkness, rough and impatient. His golden eyes glowed faintly in the black—the only light for miles in any direction.
"I'm thinking the appropriate amount." I kept my voice even, controlled. The pack alpha couldn't afford to show weakness, not even to his packmate. Especially not now, when everything felt like it was balanced on a knife's edge.
"You're thinking about her." Riven said it like an accusation, his scarred lips pulling back from his teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile. "About what she said. About the fact that she needs more time."
"Yes." There was no point in denying it. Riven could feel my emotions through the bond as clearly as I could feel his.
"It's not a rejection." His voice softened slightly, some of the sharp edges smoothing out. "She's scared. She's been running for so long she doesn't know how to stop. But she wants us, Kaelan. I can smell it on her. I can taste it in her kiss. She wants us so badly it's tearing her apart."
"I know." The words came out rougher than I intended, scraped raw with an emotion I couldn't quite name. "That's what makes it worse. Knowing she wants to stay, knowing she wants us, and still watching her hesitate. Still watching her pull back."
"She'll come around." Riven's tail lashed through the water, propelling him forward with a burst of speed that I matched easily. "She has to. I can't—" His voice cracked, splintered. "I can't lose her, Kaelan. Not now. Not when I've finally found something worth keeping."
"You won't." I reached out through the bond, sending a pulse of reassurance even as my own heart ached with the same fear. "None of us will. That's why we're doing this. That's why we're going to the witch."
The word hung between us, heavy and dark.
The witch. Even Riven, who feared nothing and no one, went quiet at the mention of her.
We'd dealt with her before. Vale and I had gone just weeks ago, desperate for the swimming potion that would let Lily breathe underwater.
The price had been Vale's voice for two days—and the witch had used it well, luring a merchant vessel onto the rocks and feasting on the sailors who followed his stolen song into the deep.
Centuries before that, Riven had gone alone, seeking something to ease the pain of his wounds.
Thane had never dealt with her—he was too gentle, too soft, and we'd always shielded him from the witch's prices.
But those of us who had paid... we'd each learned that dealing with the witch always cost more than you expected, hurt more than you anticipated, left scars that never quite healed.
Now we were going back. Willingly. Eagerly. Because the alternative—losing Lily—was unthinkable. The trench opened before us like a wound in the ocean floor. I felt it before I saw it, a sudden drop in temperature, a shift in the current that made my scales prickle with instinctive unease.
"I hate this." Riven muttered, his voice barely audible above the strange, thrumming pressure that seemed to pulse from the trench itself. "I hate her. I hate that we have to come here, that we have to beg for scraps from that—"
"Careful." I warned, my voice sharp. "She hears everything that happens in these waters.
Everything." Riven's jaw clenched, but he fell silent.
His claws extended and retracted in a nervous rhythm, gouging small furrows in the water that healed almost instantly behind him.
I could feel his fear through the bond, not of the witch herself, but of what she might ask. What she might take.
We descended into the trench. The pressure was immense, even for us. Then, at the bottom of the trench, we found the witch.
"Come in, little sirens." The voice drifted out of the darkness, ancient and amused and hungry. "I've been expecting you."
I exchanged a glance with Riven. His golden eyes were hard, his jaw set. But beneath the bravado, I could feel his fear—the same fear that was coiling in my own chest, cold and tight and impossible to ignore.
We swam into the cave.
She was waiting for us.
The witch looked different every time I saw her.
Sometimes she appeared as a beautiful woman, ageless and alluring.
Sometimes she was a crone, bent and withered, her skin hanging from her bones like seaweed from a rock.
Sometimes she wasn't human at all—just eyes in the darkness, teeth in the void, a presence that filled the cave like smoke.
Today, she was something in between. Her body was humanoid but wrong—too long, too thin, her limbs bending in places where limbs shouldn't bend.
Her hair floated around her head like a living thing, dark tendrils that seemed to reach toward us even as she remained perfectly still.
Her eyes were the worst part. They had no color, no whites, no pupils—just endless black pits that seemed to swallow the light from the bioluminescent creatures around her.
"Kaelan." She said my name like she was tasting it, rolling it around on a tongue I couldn't see. "And Riven. How delightful. Back so soon? It's only been... what? A few weeks since you and the silver-haired one came begging for that swimming potion?"
"You know why we're here." I kept my voice steady, refusing to show the fear that was crawling up my spine like ice water.
"Ah, yes. The human girl again." Her smile revealed teeth like needles, rows upon rows of them disappearing into the darkness of her throat.
"I do so enjoy her making it so you come to me.
I told you that you'd be back, perhaps to give her a tail to replace those pretty feet.
" Her bottomless eyes slid to Riven. "And you, scarred one.
I haven't seen you in centuries. Not since you came to me alone, desperate for something to ease the pain of those wounds.
I took something... precious from you then. "
Riven's growl vibrated through the water, low and dangerous. "You know what you took."
"I do." Her smile widened, and I counted at least four rows of teeth before the darkness swallowed the rest. "The memory of your mother's face.
The sound of her voice singing you to sleep.
Such a lovely price for such a simple request." She tilted her head, her hair writhing around her like serpents.
"Now you're back. Both of you. Together.
" Her black eyes gleamed with something that might have been delight. "This must be about the human girl."
I felt Riven tense beside me, felt his rage spike through the bond like a physical blow. But I held up my hand, stopping him before he could do something foolish.
"Yes." I said simply, because there was no point in lying. The witch knew everything that happened in her waters. She'd known we were coming before we'd even decided to make the journey. "We need more time."