Chapter 1 Nerina
Nerina
Thalassia
I’ve always been restless—but lately, the restlessness feels more like a warning.
The ocean had always been my answer to that feeling—my first lullaby, the place where the restless edge inside me finally went still—but tonight, even its steady pulse couldn’t soothe the unease curling beneath my skin.
It stretched endlessly around me, ancient and aware, moonlight spilling through the surface in pale ribbons that brushed the sand in silver and shadow.
The reefs hummed with the same low thrum beneath my skin.
I floated in the shallows, letting the current tug idly at my hair as I tried to focus on the only thing that mattered tonight: the Celestial Choir. One of the most sacred rituals among merfolk—and one of the few times I felt I belonged.
It was a ritual of balance—of easing magic back into its proper rhythm, not reshaping it.
A way to return magic to the sea before it could grow restless or dangerous.
The Tidekeepers called it necessary, a means of smoothing the currents and welcoming new life into each pod.
It was an honor to be chosen to sing. Refusing would be unthinkable. To question it—ungrateful.
All the pods gathered beneath the twin moons, each carrying their season’s essence.
All except me.
I hadn’t been born under a solstice or equinox, wrapped in songs and certainty.
I’d come into the world during the Eclipscera Convergence—when the moons eclipsed, the stars aligned in unnatural patterns, and the sea went still, as though it were listening to something it didn’t understand.
No pod had claimed me. No ancestral melody rose to greet me.
The Tidekeepers said my magic did not move like the others’.
They said they had never heard silence ring that loud.
I grew up inside that silence. Inside the stares. Inside the whispers people thought the water would swallow whole. I learned what it meant to be an equation no one could solve—too strange to ignore, too rare to discard.
I let the water settle inside my chest, the cool pressure spreading through me. Above me, the surface shimmered, reflecting a sky I couldn’t see but somehow… remembered.
Something tugged inside me whenever I looked up too long, like there was another ocean above this one. Colder. Darker.
I hummed, letting my voice slip into the current. The note thrummed through my bones, brushing the strange tension coiled behind my ribs.
The sea answered.
Tonight, everything felt too aware. Too focused. A quiet tension gathered beneath my skin, my body bracing for something it couldn’t name.
Autumn crept through the water—not in leaves or wind, but in sensation. Currents cooled. Dusk-bloom coral unfurled, glowing faint and inky. Amber plankton drifted in lazy spirals. The seasons were changing. Maybe that was why my attention kept wandering to the horizon. Toward the Veil.
A pale seam of light cut across the sea, separating Thalassia from whatever lay beyond. The Tidekeepers said Meris had raised it to protect us from humans after the Sanctuary massacre centuries ago.
Long before the Veil, merfolk swam freely between oceans and the surface.
Migration between courts. Diplomacy. Even worship.
Humans built altars of coral and bone to honor us—until they realized what we were worth.
Our tears strengthened talismans. Our blood prolonged youth.
Our scales could mend even the most repulsive injuries.
Some of us fell into the hands of captors. Stripped. Sold.
Humans: predators of the supernatural. Harvesters of magic.
The Tidekeepers claimed the Veil saved us from them.
But every time I looked at it, my crescent mark throbbed—metallic, starlit, wrong. Thin currents of power stirred beneath my skin.
Dangerous. Forbidden. Fatal to cross.
I turned away from the horizon and swam toward the only place that still felt soft—Maleia’s garden.
The water cooled as I entered her territory, scented with kelp blossoms and autumn growth. Pale fronds rustled like distant whispers, and bioluminescent flowers painted the reef in violet and blue dream-light.
“Daydreaming again?” Maleia called, jest dancing in her voice.
She drifted between curling strands of kelp, sea-flowers clustering wherever she lingered.
Her hair floated in rose-gold waves, shimmering like the inside of a pearl.
Her scales spilled lavender, turquoise, and soft green—spring and dawn, gentle and sure.
If the ocean could choose a favorite, it would choose her.
“Always,” I said, managing a small smile. “It’s my best quality.”
“You have others,” she said, nudging my shoulder. “You’re stubborn and reckless, for one.”
“You flatter me.”
She rolled her eyes, smiling. “And you’re the best voice in Thalassia. They don’t ask you to lead The Choir every season because of your charming personality.”
“Rude,” I muttered—but the compliment lodged somewhere hopeful, anyway.
Maleia had always seen past the mark. Past the whispers. To her, I wasn’t a prophecy or a problem. I was just her younger sister—the one she smuggled sea grapes for just to see me smile. The one whose hair she braided, telling terrible jokes to keep my hands from shaking before The Choir.
She made Thalassia almost feel like home. Almost.
Maleia fit here. Perfectly. Engaged to an Abyssal Sentinel—our mother’s choice, but one she claimed to welcome. The court adored her. The pods loved her—even the Mabonyn, and they disliked nearly everyone. She knew who she was. Where she belonged. Who would stand beside her.
I did not. No one wanted to tether themselves to a question the Tidekeepers couldn’t answer.
Suitors had approached once or twice—curious about the girl born beneath a cursed sky, the strange light behind her eyes.
But curiosity curdled quickly under pressure.
Under warnings. Under the weight of what I might become.
My heart wanted something different anyway.
Something wilder than duty. More dangerous.
Not a polite partnership. Not a carefully brokered bond meant to keep pods politically balanced.
I wanted a love that felt like a storm. Like fire underwater.
Something that would see the parts of me that frightened everyone else—and stay.
I didn’t know whether such love existed.
“Are you ready for tonight?” Maleia asked softly.
No. I never felt whole afterward. Restoring the balance of the ocean is exhausting.
“Yes,” I lied.
She cupped my face, and for a moment, the restless ache quieted.
Then the current shifted. A cold ripple swept through the water—the subtle tug of the Court calling.
Maleia’s fingers slipped from mine as duty tightened between us like a net.
We swam toward the coral towers. Thalassia’s Court rose from the seafloor in spirals of opalescent stone, mosaics catching the glow of drifting jellyfish and refracting it into a thousand fractured colors.
To an outsider, it might have looked like something out of legend—a radiant palace carved from the sea.
The water grew still as we crossed into the main chamber. Conversations tapered off. Eyes turned. Light fractured across the marble floor in precise patterns.
At the chamber’s heart stood the throne—massive, carved from pearl, faintly pulsing with cerulean light.
And upon it sat Meris. Sea Goddess. Queen of Thalassia.
Her hair moved like deep water, dark and endless.
A crown of coral and gold curved over her brow.
Her skin shone like a polished shell—flawless.
Cold. She did not need to speak to quiet a room.
The sea itself seemed to hush around her.
Her gaze slid to me—cool, measuring. Once, when I was young, I had imagined warmth in it. Now I know better.
Around her, the Tidekeepers clustered in their kelp-robes, coral staffs gleaming. Calder, the eldest among them, watched me openly. His eyes were pale—sunlight striking ice.
“She doesn’t belong among us,” he had said more than once, his voice heavy with disdain.
The Court laughed.
I felt it now—the sensation of being counted. Measured. Not by the sea, but by eyes that lingered a moment too long. The feeling passed as quickly as it came. I shook it off, heart thudding at nothing, and turned my focus back to the altar.
Conversation dimmed as I passed, voices lowering just enough that I noticed. When I glanced back, smiles returned—carefully arranged, their masks slipped neatly into place.
The Choir began.
The pods arranged themselves in sweeping arcs facing the throne, their leaders at the fore. I took my place where I always did—slightly apart. Not aligned with any of them. Close enough to be watched.
An expectant silence fell.
I inhaled.
The first three notes left me, and then—
The scents hit—ozone, copper, crushed violets. My senses flooded, overwhelmed. The sensation tore through me too fast, too deep, leaving my limbs slow to respond when I tried to move.
A ring of glowing water spiraled around me, forming a rotating halo.
Violet-white light ripped across my skin, burning through the chamber in a violent pulse. For one impossible heartbeat, I felt weightless—like something had split open inside my ribcage.
A shockwave tore outward, cracking a marble tile beneath Meris’s throne.
The seafloor shuddered. Merfolk staggered back. Gasps shattered the harmony. Voices faltered.
Someone screamed.
Maleia lunged for me, her fingers inches from my wrist—
The water snapped back. Lashed at her hand. Forced her away. The hum deepened—too rhythmic, too precise to be accidental.
Constellations flared across my vision. Patterns I didn’t recognize. Stars arranged wrong.
The Tidekeepers did not react like the others—not in fear, not in surprise, but with the precision of those executing a familiar protocol.
No cries.
No scrambling.