Chapter 37
Master of the deep
JUDE
Even I can tell that the sea is different here. It’s deeper. Darker. It presses in from all sides, ancient and all knowing. I feel it in the marrow of my bones, in the sinew-deep pull of the darkness I don’t want to name.
We’ve been swimming for two days now, our journey carrying us farther from the light, deeper into the cold abyss.
The currents have grown treacherous, turning in on themselves like living things, dragging at us with unseen hands.
The deeper we go, the harder it is to breathe.
Not because the magic is failing, and not because I am drowning. At least, not yet.
It's because this place contains the ghosts of things I cannot shake.
This place feels like my beginning and my end.
It feels inevitable. Eternal.
It is a song of ancient loss, the silent hymn of the drowned.
The water presses closer, thick with memory, with voices that never learned how to stop screaming.
They thread through the current like whispers in a forgotten language, syllables that gnaw at the edges of understanding.
Here, time is not a river but a vast, unmoving depth, heavy with the weight of everything that has ever been lost.
This ocean knows me.
It should not.
But it does.
I try to focus on the movement of my limbs, the steady rhythm of my strokes through the water. But my thoughts tangle. My vision blurs. Helena’s magic coils through my veins, restless, hungry.
I see things that are not there.
A flicker of movement ahead, too fast to be real. A shadow that stretches long and twisting before vanishing in the dark. A figure watching from the ruins of a long-dead reef, its face half-hidden by the sway of black kelp.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Shake my head. Force myself to keep going.
Lorien swims just ahead of me, his golden eyes burning even in the deep, casting faint light over the shifting darkness.
There are others with us—four guards, hand-picked from the royal court, as well as Varyon.
They move like wraiths, silent and watchful, their weapons drawn.
I know why they are here. I know they are meant to protect me.
And Lorien, too, should I turn on him.
“Almost there,” Lorien murmurs, his voice carrying through the water.
I nod, but I don’t speak. The words won’t come.
Because I can feel it now. The temple. The weight of its presence, pressing into the ocean floor, pressing into me.
And I can feel something else, too.
Memories that aren’t mine.
The echoes of a past that I don’t know and yet it’s intruding on my present.
These waters tried to swallow Lorien when he came here last, and now, they’re consuming me in a different way.
It curls around me like a lover’s hand at my throat, tasting, testing, remembering.
It drags fingers of current over my skin like it once knew my shape, like it still owns some part of me I have yet to name.
It should feel foreign. It should feel unknown.
But the way it sighs against my skin, the way the salt leaches into my bones. It is not the touch of a stranger.
It is recognition.
The water does not resist me. It yields and tightens in turns, shifting like a living thing.
I see the unseen gazes, know the pull of the vast and unsleeping night beneath us.
This place is not abandoned. It never was.
The ocean knows my shape, the rhythm of my pulse, my very being.
It has known me longer than I have known myself.
And I understand, quite suddenly, why the visions do not feel like echoes of another life, another time. They are not memories I have stolen.
They are memories that have been waiting.
For me.
Now, the ocean is still. Too still.
The ruins loom before us, jagged and broken, the bones of a place lost to time. Crumbling archways, half-buried statues, doorways leading into blackness. The carvings are older than any I have seen; older than even the stories tell. This place is a tomb, a monument to something forgotten.
And yet it hums with power.
The sentinels are waiting.
They rise from the ruins like broken gods, statues that have outlived their worshippers. They are carved from something darker than stone, something the ocean has not claimed with rot and time. Their hollow eyes watch us approach, their faces long worn smooth by the restless caress of the deep.
There is no breath in their bodies, no hearts beating beneath their shadowed forms. But they move as if summoned by the pulse of something older than the tides.
The first one lunges.
Lorien meets it with a blade of dark steel, his movements effortless.
The clash of magic against magic ripples through the water, sending currents spiraling outward.
The other guards move with lethal precision, their weapons cutting through the shifting forms of the sentinels. They do not bleed. They do not falter.
I tighten my grip on the dagger at my belt, but I do not join them.
I can’t.
The temple is pulling at me, its presence pressing into my skull with relentless force. The visions are stronger now, slipping past my defenses like water through cupped hands. They are not glimpses. Not fragments.
I am not seeing them.
I am living them.
Salt burns my tongue. The water around me is thick with something darker than blood.
The ruins are not ruins. They are whole, gleaming with magic that hums beneath my hands.
Figures move around me, their voices distorted, their faces just out of reach.
I know them. I do not know them. They speak in a language I do not recognize, but their grief is a living thing, curling through the current like smoke.
And then I see them.
The kelpies.
But they are not beasts. Not monsters.
They are—
Pain lances through my skull. I gasp, the sound swallowed by the water, and the vision shatters like glass.
My chest burns as the vision claws at me, the pressure of the water compressing my ribs, but I fight to steady myself.
My lungs scream for air, and I push against the current, forcing myself to focus.
Lorien is still fighting.
The guards are still fighting with him.
The sentinels do not waver, but neither does Lorien, and the water glows with the burn of his magic, his trident cutting through the shifting dark.
I see them now, in the ruins beneath the sea, the bodies of those who called to them long ago lying forgotten in the sand.
The kelpies had once been guardians, protectors bound to the ocean, but something twisted their purpose, something that came from the depths of the world, where even light dare not tread.
The water around me darkens, and I lose myself in it, even though Lorien screams for me. The shadows curl around me, wrapping me in their shroud and I see the kelpies for what they are. What they were. And what they might become if they are not saved.
They are lost souls.
Their forms are half-shrouded in the murk, glowing faintly, flickering like the last remnants of a dying star. They remember what they once were, and they long for something that was taken from them. And now, they see me. They see through me.
The ocean churns.
And a kelpie who isn’t here lunges toward me, but its eyes are not hostile.
They are pleading. And then it whispers, a sound not in words but in the language of the tides.
It speaks of bargains made and souls bound to the sea, of promises broken and debts yet unpaid.
The vision pulls me deeper, its weight unbearable, as if the kelpies are dragging me into their despair.
I fight against it, my hand gripping the dagger at my side, but the weight of the water, of the temple, of the ancient sorrow pressing against me, makes it impossible to breathe. I feel the pulse of the kelpies’ call inside me, inside my very bones, and I am drowning in it.
The water shatters again, and I gasp for breath, my lungs burning, my heart racing.
The vision snaps back to the present, the kelpies disappearing as quickly as they came, leaving only the echo of their grief in the currents.
Lorien's voice reaches me, but it feels distant, like a dream I can't quite touch.
I look up, and he is still fighting. The sentinels still stand, unmoved.
But my vision, my soul, feels fractured, and I know that the past is not done with me yet.
The kelpies were never meant to be killed.
The realization grips me with a force that steals the breath from my lungs. They were meant to be transformed. Something went wrong. The magic twisted. Warped. The curse was never supposed to bind these souls like this.
They’re as trapped as I am, bound to a world that is not their own, their torment endless, stretching across centuries like a taut string pulled too tight.
I know their agony as it pulses through me, as if the water is alive with their pain.
It is a wound carved into the depths of the oceans, one that will never heal unless I force it to close.
I push myself forward, my pulse a drumbeat in my ears.
Lorien glances at me, his expression sharp with concern, but he does not ask.
He cannot.
He doesn’t know what I see. What I feel.
Before I can make sense of it, the sentinels swarm again.
They move like a wave crashing against the shore, relentless and unforgiving.
The first one slams into Lorien, forcing him back, his trident sparking against its form as the water grows darker, thick with the pressure of ancient magic.
The battle rages with brutal ferocity, the sentinels seeming to multiply with every strike, their movements unnervingly precise. They do not hesitate. They do not fear.
The water becomes a blur of magic and steel as Lorien and the guards fight back, their weapons slashing through the shifting figures of the sentinels.
The sentinels are everywhere, surrounding us, pressing in from all sides.
The currents twist with their movements, pulling me deeper, making it harder to breathe.
The visions tear through me again, unbidden, crashing like waves over my mind.
I see the kelpies once more, their bodies writhing in the deep, their eyes locked on me with that same pleading sorrow.
They call to me in the language of the ocean, but it is not words.
It is feeling. It is pain. It is the bitter echo of something lost.
The kelpies were once part of a great bargain, their fate bound to the ocean, but something twisted the magic, something dark and unforgiving that trapped them in this form.
I see the broken ritual, repeated time and time again. I experience the magic that should have set them free as it binds them in chains of saltwater and shadow.
And I stare into the abyss that Lorien described, and it stares back at me, refusing to rise. It isn’t because it lacks power, or because it’s decided not to fight. It’s because it recognizes itself in me, and it knows I hold the same dark, familiar oblivion it contains.
The void reaches for me, recognizing the shadow in my soul, the same shadow that twisted the kelpies’ fate.
It sees me. It knows me. I am not just an observer.
I am part of the curse, bound by it just as they are.
And for a moment, I feel that familiar pull—the urge to let the darkness swallow me whole, to give into the weight of it.
But then I remember Lorien. His fight, his burden, and the bargain Helena made. I feel the faintest trace of her presence with him. Her magic. Her part of the bargain and how Lorien cannot return without her. And it’s then that I understand.
It is not enough to simply be here.
To carry the darkness.
Lorien needs me. This is the final piece of the bargain, and I complete it. The abyss will not rise, not for me alone, but because I stand here, with him. With Lorien. And the debt that Helena has left behind is now mine to settle.
I follow him, my steps faltering, the weight of the magic threatening to drown me.
Pain sears through me again and my vision blurs, the dark edges of the water creeping in.
I am almost torn apart by the pressure of it all.
The kelpies’ agony claws at me, the curse wrapping its chains tighter and tighter.
My lungs burn. The cold of the ocean seeps into my bones.
But Lorien’s voice is a tether. It pulls me back, a lifeline in the storm. “We’re almost through.”
I stagger, my feet slipping beneath me, but I fight to stay on my feet. I will not fall. Not now. Not when everything hinges on this moment.
I fight against the darkness, but it pulls harder, suffocating me. My vision blurs, the cold of the ocean seeping deeper, dragging me down. The kelpies' cries claw at me, merging with my agony.
And I can’t breathe.
The abyss swarms around me, choking, drowning. I’m slipping away. I know it. I feel it. I accept it.
But then Lorien’s hand grabs my arm, yanking back from the depths of despair.
His magic surges, a pulse of power that burns through the water, and he’s the storm I cling to, unshakable and undeniable.
Inescapable too, and I surrender to his power and all he is.
His trident cleaves through the darkness with the force of a god’s wrath and I stare in awe of the man who could have been my ruin but has become my salvation.
“Stay with me, Jude.”
With one final, forceful pull, he drags me up, steadying me. The sentinels close in, but Lorien rises like a beacon, his trident blazing, pushing the darkness back.
And the ocean bends to him, as if it, too, knows that he is the only thing worth obeying. Their master has spoken, and the tides know nothing but obedience and the waters settle—and I realize that no force, no curse, no act of nature could ever stand against him.