Chapter 37 The Black Tide Moon
Chapter thirty-seven
The Black Tide Moon
Rose
The Black Tide Moon paints the sea in ink, and in that ink, the monsters write.
— From The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
Morwenna slipped beneath the waves as if the sea had made her for this moment alone.
Moonlight—thin, trembling, silver-blue—struck her bare back as she waded deeper into the Atlantic. Her hair streamed behind her like black kelp, and for the first time since I had met her, she looked utterly at peace.
I followed because she said I must. Because there was no one else who knew how to do what I needed to do.
Cold water clasped my waist. My ribs. My throat.
The ocean breathed around me—a slow, indifferent exhale.
“Do not fight it,” Morwenna murmured, turning her sharp, ancient profile toward me. “A daughter of the sea never drowns. She is only ever reminded.”
For a second, I was reminded of the Gharaq clan, who we’d gone to for an elixir to brave the glass sea. Of a girl who looked like me, swallowed by the sea.
“That’s not comforting,” I choked.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
She pressed her palm to the surface; the sea sank under her touch like skin indenting under a thumb. The Black Tide Moon—new, starless, an ink-dark disc overhead—hung suspended above us as if waiting for permission to fall.
I didn’t know how she called it so quickly, only that it was not there, and then all I could see was.
Some in London whispered that there was such a thing as witches that danced naked under moons and called upon the devil. I didn’t know if they existed, but I did know that whatever Morwenna was, she was the same.
“Repeat after me,” Morwenna said.
An icy tendril of fear ran through me, and here, alone in the sea with a terrifying woman, I said what I’d been too afraid to say before.
“I’m scared,” I said.
Morwenna raised a single eyebrow. “Then you are not as stupid as you seem.”
As if that was all there was left to say, she ignored me and hung her head back, calling to a moon that was impossibly dark.
She whispered words that felt older than salt. Older than the moon. Words that were not spoken so much as remembered by something inside me.
My throat formed them before my mind understood them. Like everything she’d said about being the daughter of the sea and chosen by a Norse goddess was true.
The tide surged.
The moon shuddered.
And the ocean tore open.
Water swallowed me whole. I did not flail—Morwenna had been right. I was not drowning. I was being…claimed. Pulled through a seam in the world, through a pressure that felt like a heartbeat against my bones. Light expanded behind my eyelids in colors no surface-born eye should see.
When my feet touched solid ground, I gasped.
Atlantis.
It was not a city—it was a memory of one.
A cathedral built of light and pressure and silence.
Stained glass dressed the cathedral that was covered in stained glass, showing creatures I’d never heard of.
For a moment, I spared a thought for how much Dilly would have loved to see this.
If I were a better artist and if I were sure the ocean wouldn’t spit me back out any second, I would have rendered it for her.
Towering spires of coral-glass spiraled upward into a sky that was not sky at all, but a shimmering dome of black water curving above, held back by nothing except forgotten magic.
Schools of silver fish drifted through walls as though they were simply passing through light.
Statues taller than ships lined the bright pink pavement leading into the cathedral.
Merfolk, sea serpents, and the first humans who dared to worship the deep all stared at me as if passing judgment on whether or not I was worthy to be here.
Everything glowed faintly, like starbreath caught underwater.
I didn’t know if I deserved anything, but I did know that Edmonds and his fast spent many years trying to find someone like me to stand here. Now that I was here, I would not turn back.
So I stepped into the Cathedral that showed not one sign of aging. It was perfectly preserved, waiting. I followed the path into the open archway that was midnight black. It required a leap of faith to step into it, but more than that, I was desperate and too stubborn to turn back.
I took the next step, and it was like all the air was ripped from my lungs as my body hung suspended between time and space.
Just as quickly as it came, I was released onto a floor of sea shells and older, more ancient things.
Perhaps they were the ancestors of the shells we knew, but no longer existed.
The cathedral spanned higher than I could count and was entirely empty except for the stained glass and, what seemed unlikely, twenty feet in front of me.
At the center, a dark well opened into forever.
The Abyssal Conch rested at its edge.
A single shell, enormous, spiraling inward into shadow so deep it felt alive.
It hummed—not sound, not language, but whispers. Millions of them. The secrets of the drowned. The promises of the sea. The histories that had been stripped from the world.
I didn’t need to touch it to know that it was a power too great for any one person.
Giving it to Edmonds would be a mistake.
This knowledge, this thing–it was best left untouched.
Yet the serpent on my arm burned, and I knew it was not only my life that lay in jeopardy.
Bash would not survive my loss, and I wasn’t sure my family could either.
So I would be selfish, and I would choose me and mine once more.
My breath thinned.
There was a distant humming coming from the shell, and I knew if I listened too long, I would belong to it. A wiser woman would have walked away and left what should be forgotten be forgotten.
Still… I stepped closer.
The whispers tightened around my mind, threading themselves into my thoughts. A pulse radiated from the shell, brushing my fingertips. It felt alive. Like the knowledge within was a permanent and tangible thing. I wanted to hold it, to hear everything it had to say, to be infinite.
Something inside it moved.
I froze.
Another shift. A scraping. And then—slowly, majestically, with all the menace of a king disturbed from sleep—
A tiny crab crawled out of the conch’s mouth.
It paused. Turned. Fixed me with beady black eyes full of scorn and the unmistakable disdain of someone judging my life choices.
“Oh,” I whispered. “You are…unexpected.”
The crab clicked its claw at me. Twice. Offended.
“Well, aren’t you just Bash in miniature with your grumpiness,” I muttered. “Sebastian Junior, it is.”
Sebastian Jr. raised his claw as if to object, then reconsidered, scuttling into the conch’s rim like a sentry defending its home.
Whatever amusement the unlikely creature created in me was quickly lost beneath the weight of something heavy–something wrong.
I swallowed.
Because the whispers had changed.
They weren’t calling to me anymore.
They were warning.
The seabed trembled.
I realized that the reason I couldn’t guess how high the cathedral went was that it wasn’t a ceiling, but the dome. Water pressed harder against the dome above, as though some vast shape brushed against it from the outside.
A shadow passed over Atlantis—large enough to blot out everything.
Sebastian Jr. fled into the spiral of the conch, disappearing with a tiny, horrified squeak.
I knew what lurked above, and knowing that this peculiar creature that had no business existing in a legendary shell was terrified of it should have had me running back to the wraith and begging Edmonds for mercy.
Instead, I was a stubborn creature who didn’t know when to quit.
So I reached out, and my fingers closed around the Abyssal Conch.
The world cracked open.
A roar surged up from the abyss, so deep it rattled the bones of the drowned.
The Leviathan was awake.
And it was angry.