Chapter 38
Within our grasp
LORIEN
Jude stirs in my arms as we break through the current, his body still too limp, his breathing too shallow.
The temple looms ahead, a skeletal ruin of what it once was, carved from stone darker than the abyss itself.
The water presses heavy around us, thick with ancient magic, and when we cross into its grounds, a pulse reverberates through my bones.
It is a pulse of finality, and its inevitability.
The reckoning has come.
I should have ended this long ago.
But I chose to spare a witch whose life should have ended by my hand. I had her at my mercy the last time we were here. She was helpless, broken, bleeding into the tide. I could have let the ocean take her, swallowed her screams, and silenced her defiance forever.
But I did not.
I stayed my hand, let the storm of my vengeance calm for just a moment, and in that moment, I made the mistake of believing I could make a deal with someone who would never bow, never surrender.
I thought I could bind her without her binding me.
I thought I could tame a force that would rather burn than yield.
I thought I was stronger than her.
Now I am here, with Jude dying in my arms, caught in the web of her making.
Jude gasps awake, eyes wide and shining with something I have not seen before. Not fear. Not confusion. Understanding.
“I know what must be done,” he whispers, voice steady despite the tremors racking his body.
His certainty shakes me more than anything ever has.
I have known fear.
I have known pain, suffering, fury that burned the little goodness in my soul to ash, but I have never known this terror.
Not like this.
Not the kind that turns my stomach hollow and my thoughts to ice. The kind that makes my grip tighten around Jude, my body moving instinctively to shield him from whatever force has settled here, waiting for us to arrive.
The currents stir.
The water shifts, slow and deliberate, thick as breath in a vast, unseen chest. A figure coalesces from the gloom, light where there should be none.
Helena.
Her presence is unchanged from when I saw her last. She’s serene, sharp-edged, more force than form. But her eyes burn with a deeper anger now. A reckoning not just for the past, but for what is to come.
Her arrival is inevitable.
I knew the ghost of her would appear here.
And yet, fury rises in me like a tide, black and wild, because this is her doing.
Her curse.
Her manipulation.
She bound her magic into Jude without his permission, without explaining what it would mean. She has made him part of this, forced him to be part of a world he never agreed to, and that has put him in unimaginable danger.
And for that, I will never forgive her.
The magic thrums between us, power bleeding from the ruins of the temple, gathering in the space between us like a storm waiting to break.
Jude tenses beside me. I feel it, the shift in him, sense the way his presence sharpens, the way he squares his shoulders. He steps forward, not behind me, not beside me, but between us.
Helena tilts her head, her translucent form flickering with the ebb and flow of the water. She is more than a ghost, less than a god. She is that which lingers, tethered to unfinished business. And we are her unfinished business.
“You always had a talent for survival, Lorien,” she says, her voice cold as the deep. “Even when you should have died. Even when you should have accepted the fate you were owed.”
The words hit their mark. My teeth bare in a snarl.
“I am owed nothing, Helena,” I spit. “And I take what I wish.”
She smiles, a sharp thing that does not reach her eyes. “Exactly.”
I bare my teeth in something that isn’t quite a snarl. “You dare to speak of consequences when you have spent your existence weaving the fates of others into your own twisted design?”
Helena’s gaze sharpens.
“And you dare to act as if you are anything but the same?”
Her words slice deep. Deeper than they should. Because she is wrong—she must be wrong—and yet, the honest part of my soul recoils, burying itself in the shame of my rage and ruin and regret.
“You always thought yourself beyond consequence,” she says, voice threading through the current. “That you could shape the world to your will and leave the wreckage for others to bear.”
“You dare to blame me for this?” I roar. “You cursed your own bloodline, witch. You risked his life. For what, Helena? To defy me in death? To claim your last victory, the consequences be damned? To gloat and soothe your pride?”
Jude shifts before me, silent, watchful.
This moment is his as much as mine, and Helena knows it.
And I will not let her threaten him any longer.
The waters churn, thick with our fury, with the weight of everything unsaid. The temple hums beneath us, the stone drinking in our magic, the whispers of the past bleeding into the present.
Helena smiles, slow and knowing.
“I did not risk his life,” she says. “I saved it.”
Rage cracks through me like a storm against the tide.
“By binding him to a fate he never chose?” I snap. “By chaining him to this curse, to you?”
Her expression does not change, but the darkness in the depths of her gaze sharpens, a flicker of something old, something close to regret. Her expression wraps around my ribs like a vice and yet she does not flinch at my rage.
If anything, she seems pleased.
“This was always the plan, foolish king,” she says, her voice calm despite the storm of power rising between us. “I knew this would come to pass when we struck our bargain, as I knew the tide could not be turned.”
I go still.
Jude inhales sharply beside me, his fingers twitching at his sides, as if resisting the urge to reach for me.
“What?” I say, the word edged with warning.
Helena’s ghostly form flickers as the magic swells, swirling through the ruins like a tide.
“I bound my magic to Jude because I knew he would come,” she says. “Because I knew you, or the kelpies, or something far worse would try to claim him.”
The words are a strike to the chest; a wound reopened.
“You had no right—”
“I had every right,” she snaps, her composure finally cracking.
“Because no matter what you tell yourself, Lorien, your kind does not change. You do not learn, not even when the truth spits at you from the depths of the deep. You would have destroyed the ocean without him. Or tried to change it into something it was never meant to be.”
A growl curls in my throat. “And you think this is better? You think binding him to your curse, making him a pawn in your endless game, is any less cruel?”
“I think it was the only way to end this,” she says. “One way or another.”
Jude shifts, his voice quiet but steady. “End what?”
Helena’s gaze flickers to him, and for the first time, her expression softens.
Her form shifts, the sharp edges of her presence blurring, the light within her dimming.
The rage, the endless fury, falters just slightly.
In this moment, she looks less like a vengeful spirit and more like a lost spirit, adrift in an uncertain tide of her own making.
“This cycle started long ago, Jude,” she says.
“This conflict between the mer and the kelpies, between the dark and the light, the living and the dead. The suffering. The hunger. The curse that should have been broken if only the Mer King had not been too proud to deny the truth of what his people did.”
I feel Jude tense before me.
My hands clench into fists.
“If you and Lorien find a way to balance each other, to co-exist, then the magic will settle. It would have become a new thing, a force that does not destroy. Together, you can undo what was done in error and free the kelpies from their purgatory of eternal pain.”
“And if we don’t?” Jude asks.
Helena exhales, and the water around us seems to darken.
“Then the magic will spill into the ocean and consume everything.”
Jude’s heartbeat thrums like a drum beneath his skin. I can hear it. Feel it.
“You knew this would happen,” I say, low and lethal.
“I suspected,” Helena corrects.
“You gambled?” I hiss.
“I made an educated guess.”
“You bet the whole damn world on a stupid hunch of yours?”
“I bet the world on love, Lorien. What could be less foolish? What could be more dangerous? Or certain?”
She smiles and it’s wicked.
Love.
I have used love as a weapon. I have used it as a blade honed to a perfect edge. I have wielded it, felt its sting, let it cut into the soft places I once thought invulnerable. But I have never used it like this. I have never been this carefree with it, nor ever been so rash.
And I have never known its salvation.
Not for me.
Not for Jude.
Not for a world that has only known war and destruction.
Helena stands before me, offering no absolution, no mercy, only truth as sharp as the currents that pull us toward ruin. And, so help me, I want to be carried away in them, by him. By Jude. By the storm he brings and the possibilities of all his darkness.
And in the vast and endless dark, I begin to wonder if the witch was right all along.
“I hoped you would make the right choice.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “And what is the right choice, Helena?”
She watches me. And then her gaze shifts to Jude.
“That,” she says, “is up to him.”
The ocean presses in around us, thick with the weight of what has been left unsaid. The storm of magic roars in the silence. The ruins of the temple groan as if they, too, are alive, their fallen columns thrumming with a power beyond their control.
The currents stir.
The shadows deepen.
The water glows with the light of a power neither wholly hers nor mine.
Jude stands between us, shoulders taut, jaw clenched. I see the war in his eyes. The understanding.
The choice.
He is the one who must decide.
And the ocean waits.
It sings a song I thought was lost in the mists of time, a vast and mournful sonnet, its requiem pressing against my ribs like a second heartbeat.
The currents carry whispers of what was and what could be, promises tangled in salt and sorrow, oaths sworn in blood and brine.
The burden of this choice is more consequential than any time, and heavier than the centuries of blood and vengeance that led us here.
Yet, in this moment, with Jude standing between us, the impossible feels like it’s within our grasp.
I do not know what he will choose.
I do not know if I will let him.
“Jude—”
He lifts a hand, silencing me. “I understand now.”
Helena tilts her head. “Do you?”
Jude nods, slow, deliberate. “This was never about stopping the curse. It was about transforming it. Taking something broken and making it whole. You didn’t just bind your magic to me to protect me. You bound it to change me. To bring you and the kelpies together with him.”
Helena’s expression flickers. “Yes.”
The temple shudders. A crack splinters through the ruins, stone groaning beneath the pressure of the power that pulses between us.
Jude turns to me, and the light of the ocean catches in his eyes, turning them into something otherworldly, an infinite and endless oblivion I want to lose myself in.
“If we do this,” he says, “we do it together.”
A muscle tenses in my jaw. “And if I refuse?”
He doesn’t flinch. “Then everything we’ve fought for, everything we’ve done, will have been for nothing.”
I look at him, truly look at him, and the truth crashes over me like the tide.
I have known hunger that could never be sated.
I have known vengeance so sharp it carved through my soul, leaving nothing but jagged edges.
But I have never known this aching, endless pull, this reckless, maddening devotion.
I would tear the ocean apart for him. I would drown the world before I let it take him from me.
So if love is the storm that will break me, then it can come and bear down on me like the waves driven onto the rocks that line the shore.
It can take everything I have. Everything I’ve ever known.
So long as he is beside me when it does.
This is not just my battle.
Not just his choice.
It never was.
I exhale, slow, and the storm inside me settles.
“Together,” I say.
Jude reaches for my hand.
And I take it.
The ocean surges. The temple shatters.
And the world begins to change.