Chapter 33
Claimed by the dark
JUDE
I wake in silence. It’s not the silence of the surface, where air moves, where wind stirs and trees whisper. This is a deeper silence. A silence so complete it hums, thick and smothering, pressing against my skull like a hand trying to force me down.
I do not know how long I have been unconscious.
But I know I am no longer in the battle.
The water here is different. Darker. Heavier. The pressure of it seeps into my bones, thick with something ancient, something that does not belong to me, but it is trying to be mine, nonetheless.
I shift, testing my body, expecting pain.
There is none.
But there is something else.
A pull, slow and insidious, winding through my limbs like a tide I cannot resist.
A voice stirs in the deep.
“You are awake.”
The words do not come from a mouth. They press into my mind, curling through my thoughts like fingers trailing along silk. I turn my head, too fast, too sudden. The weight of the water drags at me, and for a moment, I feel the world tilt, my senses shifting.
Then I see her.
The kelpie queen.
She hovers before me, her body moving with the slow, unnatural grace of the deep. Her form is sleek and dark, the lines of her shifting between something humanoid and something not, as if she is both and neither. Her black eyes gleam with something vast, something unreadable.
She is not beautiful.
She is terrible.
“You,” I manage, my voice rough, strange in my throat. “Where am I?”
“Home,” she says smoothly. “You are home, little one.”
I push myself upright, ignoring the sluggish pull of the water, the way my limbs feel heavier than they should. The chamber around me comes into focus. I stare at its ruined arches, broken columns, statues half-consumed by coral. An ancient place, long drowned, long forgotten.
But it is not my home.
I meet her gaze, refusing to let the pressure of it make me look away. “I am not yours.”
The queen smiles.
“You always were. Ever since your aunt gifted her magic to you.”
She takes a sharp breath. It’s cold, deep, curling like a fist inside my chest. She says it like it was inevitable. Like I was always meant to end up here, drowning in the dark, sinking under a weight I never asked to carry.
I should deny it. Should laugh in her face and tell her she’s wrong. But I can feel the truth of her words, sinking its claws into me.
Helena did this.
She gave me this power, and she never explained what it meant. Never told me that it would twist through my blood, that it would pull at me like something hungry, something waiting for me to give in.
I never agreed to this.
I never wanted it.
A hollow ache builds in my chest, tight and unbearable, because for the first time since I woke, I miss him.
Lorien.
His name is an open wound, bleeding and unhealed.
I ache for his touch, for the press of his fingers against my skin, to hear the sound of his voice as it curls through the darkness, always anchoring me, always holding me.
He was fury and devotion wrapped in the shape of a man, a force as relentless as the tides, and I had let myself be consumed by him.
Now, without him, I am adrift. Lost. The water presses in, cold and foreign, and I want the warmth of his arms, the fire of his breath against my throat, for the sharp, possessive way he said my name like it belonged to him alone.
But he is not here.
And I do not know if I will see him again.
Now, I am alone. Trapped in a place that whispers to me in a voice that sounds too much like my own.
She does not chain me.
She does not need to.
The deeper I am in this place, the harder it is to fight the pull of it, the whispering tide that coils through my thoughts, through my blood.
Helena’s magic stirs inside me, restless and unsteady. It does not belong here. It resists. But I feel the strain of it, the way it flickers, struggling to hold its shape.
“You are resisting what is already yours,” the queen says, circling me slowly. Her voice is patient, almost amused. “You have been fighting for so long. Is it not tiring?”
I grit my teeth, digging my nails into my palms. “I will not be one of you.”
Her laughter is soft, rolling through the water like a ripple.
“You do not have a choice.”
I glare at her. “Everyone has a choice.”
“Not you.”
The words settle in my bones like truth.
And that is the most dangerous part.
Because some part of me feels it.
Some part of me is already listening.
The silence in the chamber thickens, pressing at the edges of my mind, dragging me deeper into the weight of this place. I try to push back against it, but the water moves with me, through me, wrapping me in something heavy and unseen.
Something claiming.
The queen watches me, unblinking. Behind her, the kelpies shift in the gloom, their movements slow, deliberate. I do not need to ask what comes next.
I already know.
They will break me.
One way or another.
The ritual is not a request.
It is not gentle.
I’m at the heart of their domain, where the ruins open into something vast and yawning. The water here is dark, thick with power, with something old. It curls around my ankles, my wrists, moving like hands, like teeth.
The kelpies form a circle around me, their black eyes glinting, their sleek forms shifting with the current. They do not speak.
The queen steps forward, and in her hands, she holds a dagger made of something wrong. Not metal. Not bone. Something in between.
“You are the key,” she says. “You are what was broken. What must be mended.”
She presses the dagger into my palm.
Cold. Too heavy. As dark as the ocean before a storm, a void so deep it forgets the light ever existed. As endless as the trenches where things with no name wait in the dark, where the world ends and the sea begins.
I try to drop it, but my fingers do not obey.
“Accept what you are,” she whispers.
The circle tightens.
The pressure builds.
The whispers rise, a cacophony in my skull, twisting through my veins like a tide I cannot hold back.
A rush of voices. Not words, not truly, but something deeper, something old.
They do not demand. They do not beg. They call, like I am missing.
Like I have been lost, and they are welcoming me home.
Something pulses under my skin.
The dagger burns in my grip.
And in the depths of these accursed ruins, something shifts.
“Take the gift, little one. Become.”
I do not want to.
I cannot.
But the deep is calling.
And I do not know how much longer I can resist.
The queen steps closer.
She moves like the water itself, slow and seamless, as if she does not walk so much as she simply exists wherever she chooses to be. The glow of the ruins catches against her dark skin, illuminating the sharp angles of her face, the jagged black coral of her crown.
“You hesitate,” she murmurs.
I clench my jaw.
“Do you know why?”
I shake my head. Not because I do not know the answer, but because I do not want to.
“It is because you know the truth, little one. You have always known.”
The dagger in my palm is an anchor, pulling me down, down, down. I fight against it, but my limbs are sluggish, the pressure of the water thick and cloying. My pulse thrums against my ribs, unsteady and erratic.
“You were never meant for them,” the queen continues, voice smooth, curling through the water like silk. “You were always meant for the deep.”
A murmur ripples through the kelpies.
They believe her.
They are waiting.
I should throw the dagger away. Should let it sink into the silt and refuse this, whatever this is. I should fight my way back to Lorien, show the same defiance I showed him a thousand times over.
But my fingers do not obey.
The kelpie queen tilts her head, her black eyes gleaming. “Do you know what this is?”
I try to speak. The words tangle in my throat.
“It is a blade made from the bones of those who came before you,” she whispers. “The ones who carried the power you now hold. The ones who chose the land and lost themselves to it. The ones who denied their nature and perished in the shallows.”
A pause.
“Do not make their mistake.”
I want to tell her she is wrong. But something inside me knows.
It knows I am weakening, and the longer I stay in this place, the harder it is to fight.
It’s harder to breathe too, and the air curdles, pressing against my skin like unseen hands as the scent of salt and rot curls into my lungs.
My lungs burn and my core burns as power sparks inside it, sending ripples through my muscles and the earth beneath me.
This is Helena’s magic, and it’s responding to the threat around me, rising in the darkness, its dark and coiling tendrils of power slithering through me.
They brush against my edges like a warning and nothing is steady anymore, as if I might split open and be swallowed by the magic trying to hold back the kelpies.
But even her magic falters as it tries to resist the pull of the deep, and it is not enough.
I am losing.
And the queen knows it.
She steps closer. She is inches from me now, the water shifting between us, charged with all the things that have not been said.
Helena’s power flares weakly inside me, not in defiance, but in desperation.
It curls through my veins like silver fire, bright but fragile, resisting the pull of the deep.
It fights, but the ocean is older. Stronger.
Hers. And it is winning. The magic flickers against my ribs, frantic and faltering, trying to shield me, but every second I remain in these waters, it frays. It dims. It breaks.
“You are one of us.”
My vision sways.
The dagger pulses in my grip.
A sharp, sudden pain explodes through my chest, deep beneath my ribs, as if my body and soul are being torn apart.
Agony splits me. It is not a wound. Not an attack.
It is a breaking, a shattering from the inside.
My ribs feel like they are cracking, my skin stretching too tight over something vast and wrong.
My pulse staggers, my breath locking in my throat, and for a moment—just one precious moment—I swear the water inside my lungs is breathing for me.
My fingers twitch, spasming around the dagger, but I cannot let go. It will not let me go.
I gasp, and the water shifts subtly.
The kelpies stay still, watching. The ruins tremble.
The statues shift, their drowned faces tilting in eerie reverence.
The floor beneath me groans, a whisper of something long forgotten waking in the deep.
The bones of this place recognize me, and I feel their hunger, thick as water, pressing against my throat.
The queen’s expression does not change, but I see the flash of satisfaction in her gaze.
“The deep knows you,” she murmurs. “And you know it.”
My breathing is ragged. Too fast.
I should fight.
I try to cling to whatever remains as the last of me is pulled under.
I try to remember my name, my skin, my body as it was before the ocean claimed it.
I try to hold on to the sound of Lorien’s voice, the heat of his mouth, the desperation as he held me like I was worth keeping.
But the deep is patient. The deep is endless. And it waits as I unravel.
Her voice is a command, curling through the water like a net, dragging me under.
“Accept what you are.”
The pain in my chest spreads.
It is not an attack. It is not something inflicted upon me.
It is coming from within, and it splits me apart like I was always meant to be broken.
It unfolds in my veins, in my ribs, in the marrow of my bones, a tide that does not ask permission.
It is not the queen’s magic, not Helena’s. It is mine. It has always been mine.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force it back, but it is like holding back the tide. The water presses against my skin, against my mind, pulling, pulling, pulling—
“Take our gift, little one.”
My hands tremble. The dagger glows.
Not with light.
With hunger.
The kelpies press forward, waiting.
I cannot breathe.
I cannot think.
I cannot endure.
All I can hear is the whisper of the deep, curling through my mind, my blood, my bones.
It speaks in pulses, in waves, in the unrelenting rhythm of something that was never alive but has always existed.
It does not beg. It does not demand. It welcomes.
It pulls me down like hands I cannot see, like a lover with no name, like a past I do not remember but have never truly forgotten.
“Come home,” it calls.
“Become,” she commands.
And the darkness takes me once again.