Chapter 40
The depths between us
LORIEN
“I do not care,” I roar.
Soren shudders and even he takes a step back, terrified by the threat of violence in my voice. I imagine my posture isn’t helping, as every muscle of me strains with fury as my advisor tries to calm me while the healers avoid my gaze.
“Majesty,” Orlith continues. Carefully. “The court is waiting. You have responsibilities…”
I arch an eyebrow and for the first time since we returned to my palace, I leave Jude’s side to stalk towards the man who dares to question me.
“I could slit your throat, Orlith.” My jaw ticks. “It would be so easy. Too easy, perhaps. Don’t question my responsibilities. Ever.”
Varyon coughs, and it’s forced.
“Did you have something to say, General?” I snarl.
His eyes meet mine, and he doesn’t flinch. It appears I underestimated the man, or at least, his insistence on speaking his mind.
“Jude is fine, Majesty.”
I grind my teeth and flick back to the sleeping man lying in my bed.
“You know he will wake. We all know he will. He needs longer to recover, and then—”
“And then what?” I cut him off, voice sharp as a blade. “Do you imagine he will open his eyes, stretch his limbs, and simply go back to being what he was?”
Varyon does not answer. He knows better than to answer.
Because Jude is not what he was.
He will never be what he was.
I turn away from them both, from their expectations and their attempts at reason, and move back to the only thing that matters.
Jude.
He lies still, the rise and fall of his chest painfully slow, his pulse a whisper against his throat.
His body is different—something in the shape of him, the weight of his presence, has shifted.
His magic, once fragile and fractured, hums beneath his skin with a song that will not be silenced. It is deeper. It is other.
It would be fine if he accepted it.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, pressing my fingers to the sheets beside him, as if the nearness alone could will him back to me.
The ocean beyond the palace walls is silent.
For the first time in centuries, the waves do not roar their anguish. The tides do not scream.
The sea, like Jude, is waiting.
“Majesty, we are never as we were,” Soren says. “We are always changing, always in flux. You know this, more than any of us. And yet we endure. Not despite the change, but because of it. We love harder for it, Lorien, and love cannot be all that it was meant to be without the test of change.”
I do not look at him. My eyes remain fixed on Jude, on the steady rise and fall of his breath, on the unfamiliar stillness of the sea. I know Soren is right. Of course he is. Change is the way of the world. The tide never returns in the same shape it left, nor the beach upon which it breaks.
But this is different.
Jude was remade. Not by time, not by choice, but by magic that did not ask permission.
And yet, perhaps this will not take him from me.
I exhale slowly, my fingers brushing the back of his hand, light as the whisper of a wave against the shore.
“We are never as we were,” I murmur, more to myself than to Varyon. “But some things remain.”
Love, I pray, is one of them.
I press my palm over Jude’s, hoping he will return to me.
For a moment, there is only silence. The ocean does not stir. The palace is breathless.
Then Jude inhales sharply.
His fingers twitch beneath mine.
His pulse thrums, steady and strong, against his throat.
I sit bolt upright as his eyelids flutter, his breath coming quicker, his body adjusting to itself, to whatever he has become.
His eyes open, and they’re still blue, still the color of the ocean, but no longer simply a reflection of it.
Now they hold the ocean within them. The deep, fathomless trenches.
The shifting tides. The storm and the calm both.
Magic pools in their depths, in their vast and endless sapphire, moving with tides that have not yet settled. He is more than he was.
And yet—he is still Jude.
He is not human. He is not mortal.
He is something else entirely.
And I do not care.
His gaze finds mine, distant at first, as if he has been lost in some deep current, as if he has spent lifetimes beneath the waves before washing back to shore.
Then he blinks. And he sees me.
His lips part, his voice raw, unfamiliar, and new.
“Lorien?”
He hesitates when he says my name, questioning it, as if he’s unsure whether he is still allowed to say it, and it sounds like a dagger piercing my heart.
I do not hesitate. I reach for him, my hand cupping his cheek, my thumb brushing against skin that is warmer than before, thrumming with a new kind of life.
He leans into my touch. And Gods, I almost break.
“You’re awake,” I whisper. It is a foolish thing to say, but it is all I can manage.
Jude swallows hard, his throat bobbing. “I—”
His voice falters, his brows knitting together. His fingers curl in the sheets as if he is only now realizing he can move, as if he is only now feeling the weight of his own body.
Soren exhales sharply behind me. “Majesty, we should—”
I do not turn. “Leave.”
A beat of hesitation.
“Majesty—”
“Leave.” My voice is steel, final.
There is a rustling of movement behind me, a sharp exchange of glances between the healers and my advisors. I hear the quiet murmur of Soren’s voice as he signals them to obey. I hear the shift of boots against the floor as they withdraw.
I do not look at them.
I do not look anywhere but at Jude.
His smile is the only thing I see. The curve of his lips, and the warmth behind his eyes that always makes my pulse quicken. It’s a strange thing, this smile, because I know all that it means and everything it doesn’t. He’s still fragile, yet somehow stronger than I’ve ever seen him.
I run my fingers down my face, a fleeting touch meant to steady myself. The feel of the stubble against my palm grounds me in this moment.
“Majesty, the court is afraid. They fear the change he has brought and the longer they wait for their questions to be answered, the harder it will be for him.” Soren pauses. “What would you have me tell them, Lorien?”
My gaze remains on Jude, my heart in my throat. There’s no other thought, no other desire. The rest of the world can wait.
“Tell them that the man who almost died to save the oceans—who defied death itself—needs my undivided attention. And I think, Soren,” I add with a soft, unshakable certainty, “he’s earned it. For all eternity.”
Jude’s smile widens, and the warmth of it ignites a defiance in me that I can’t quite explain. It’s not just affection; it’s the recognition of our connection; of whatever bond we have that is brave enough to defy the rest of the world’s demands.
When the doors shut behind them, silence swells between us. The kind that is heavy with the weight of things unspoken.
Jude stares at me, his breath uneven. “What happened?”
I inhale slowly, measuring my words. “The curse broke.”
His brows draw together, something flickering in his gaze. “I remember some of it.” He swallows. “I remember the pain. The weight of it. Like drowning.”
His fingers twitch on the sheets. Then, as if testing his own strength, he lifts a hand and presses his palm over mine.
His skin is warm, his touch steady. But something about him has changed.
It is changed. There is power beneath the surface.
A magic humming through his veins, raw and untamed, waiting to be shaped.
“What am I?” His voice is quiet.
I hesitate. “You are still Jude.”
He huffs a breath, something like a laugh but without humor. “That isn’t what I asked.”
I drag my thumb along the edge of his jaw, unwilling to lose contact. “You were remade.”
Jude’s gaze flickers, his lips parting as if he wants to say something, but he does not. I see the moment he begins to understand. The moment he realizes there is no going back.
“Whatever cursed the kelpies was born from imbalance. A dreadful, agonizing, perpetuating unevenness that rippled through the world, and no matter how hard they or we tried, we could not find our equilibrium. The blessed and the cursed tore themselves and each other apart, and Helena found a way to force the Gods to mend what was broken. We found balance, Jude. You and me. My light, your dark, my nights with your days. When the water and the land could finally coexist, when we could accept each other and ourselves for all we were, everything changed.”
I pause, watching his expression shift with each word, each revelation.
“The magic that the kelpies possessed and forced on Helena was never meant to be contained. The Gods remade it when you broke the curse. And it didn’t stop with them.
” I meet his eyes, my voice soft but firm.
“The magic that flowed through the kelpies flows through you now. Just as it’s in the land itself.
The ocean, the rivers are alive in a way they weren’t before. ”
He swallows, and his eyes flick up to the ceiling.
I imagine we will revisit this conversation.
Over and over, as many times as necessary. For him to understand. For me to understand, too. For there is so much that I do not understand about what happened, or what it will mean.
“The kelpies are free, but they are not the only ones changed, Jude. We changed. Because you changed, and I am bound to you.”
He stares at me, the full scope of it sinking in. “So, I’m not just Jude anymore?”
I shake my head slowly, my hand finding his again, grounding us both. “You’re more than that now. You always were. But now you have the power to shape the world in ways you never could before.”
“Because you’re bound to me?” he asks.
I wish it were this simple.
I wish his power came from the ability to bend me.
I wish I could lie to him and spare him the burden of leadership, the consequences of his choices, and the fearsome terror of knowing you wield a power that creates and destroys in equal measure.