Chapter 9 Nerina #2
Alaric surged through the smoke, sword drawn, cutting down a siren that had cornered one of his men. Blood sprayed. Wind caught his coat, snapping it hard.
His eyes met mine across the battlefield—brief, hard, assessing—then he turned, already moving to block the next strike.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind: these things had been sent by my mother to bring me back. I felt it in the way the sea twisted around them—violent, unnatural.
They were here for me.
I would not go back to Thalassia. Not now.
Not without a fight.
I had no training in defensive magic. I didn’t know how to fight. Standing there, barely keeping myself upright, I felt useless.
Powerless.
My heart climbed into my throat.
And beneath that fear, something worse stirred: a hollow absence where something vital should have been. A song I used to know but couldn’t recall.
My magic was there—should be there—but it wouldn’t answer. Maybe I had never possessed anything special at all.
The thought was a knife that the Tidekeepers—especially Calder—would have been delighted to hand it to me.
Even as it lodged in my chest, something in me rebelled. A slow, smoldering ache in my core.
Not power. Defiance.
I ran for a reason. I crossed the Veil for a reason. I cast myself into the unknown because I had to know who I truly was.
If they took me now—before I found those answers—then everything would be for nothing.
Something inside me snapped. The tide broke.
Power surged up from beneath my skin—vast, unrelenting. Not gentle. Not gradual.
It tore through me.
The moment my bare feet touched the deck, the ship shuddered. Wind rose from nowhere, twisting into a sudden cyclone that yanked at sails, hair, screams. My heart pounded like a war drum, each beat sending heat through my veins.
Magic bloomed beneath my skin—not the soft pull of ocean current, but the jagged flare of something forged in flame.
Light erupted—silver and violet—arcing across the deck. It seared the air with a sound that belonged to the sky. Ozone and crushed violets filled my lungs.
The sirens shrieked, writhing as the light tore through them, splitting shadow from body. A shockwave burst outward, flinging forms across the deck—wood splintering, ropes snapping, barrels rolling.
The sea recoiled. Waves flattened under the force. Steam hissed up in thick plumes, cloaking the ship in ethereal fog.
My vision flickered—gold and silver stars at the edges. I could barely stay upright, but the storm inside me didn’t ease. My skin glowed with veins of starlight, constellations crawling over my arms. My crescent mark burned white-hot, a beacon etched into flesh.
The power poured out. Beautiful. Terrifying.
It was the scream of someone who was silenced her entire life. Fire buried under water.
It wasn’t perfect. Not even close.
The magic answered too fast.
Not like something rising from me—but like something rushing back, crowding into places it no longer quite fit.
It knew my shape. I didn’t know its.
The power was real, but it didn’t obey. It stuttered, lashed in every direction. Bolts struck the mast. Others ricocheted into the sea. The same pulse that hurled sirens back also sent ropes and barrels skidding across the deck, nearly taking crew members down with them.
I couldn’t direct it. I could only unleash it. It answered fear and fury, not control.
I raised a hand, willing the light to form again. It sparked against my palm and sputtered out. Another wave came when I screamed—not deliberate. Reactive.
I was a conduit, not a wielder.
And whatever this was, it wasn’t the whole of it. It felt like a door blown open.
It was enough.
As the last of the sirens fell shrieking into the sea—smoking, shattered—I dropped to my knees, the power ripping out of me in one final, uncontrolled burst.
The magic didn’t fade.
It rebounded.
Heat flashed behind my eyes, hot and blinding. My vision tunneled, the edges of the world darkening as my heartbeat slammed too fast, too hard, like it was trying to outrun my ribs. A wet warmth spilled from my nose, dripping onto the deck before I could stop it.
Blood.
My stomach lurched violently. I barely had time to twist aside before I retched, bile and saltwater splattering the planks. The smell of it turned my stomach again, my body folding in on itself as if it were trying to purge the power along with everything else.
This wasn’t exhaustion.
This was my body rejecting what I’d forced through it.
Every nerve screamed. My hands shook so badly I couldn’t curl my fingers, muscles locking and unlocking in painful spasms. The world tilted, pitching me sideways until my palms slapped the deck, slick with blood that wasn’t all mine.
It had never felt like this before.
My magic had always been distant—a flicker, a whisper I chased and never quite caught. This had been a flood. Fear and adrenaline had torn something open inside me, and the power had surged through a body that wasn’t built to hold it.
The energy burned out, leaving something colder behind. Not fear. Not relief.
The silence came first.
Not fear. Not relief—distance.
I felt it even before I saw it. The space the crew gave me as I tried to breathe through the nausea, through the shaking.
They weren’t staring in awe. They were measuring.
Calculating how dangerous I might be if it happened again.
I could feel it—the weight of an unseen presence pressing against my skin, heavy and oppressive, the way air changes before a storm.
Familiar in a way I couldn’t place. A whisper at the edge of memory, something that had watched me before.
Power doesn’t always make people feel safe.
Alaric stood at the edge of the quarterdeck, blood dark on his blade, smoke clinging to his skin. For once, his face held no sarcasm, no calculation, no infuriating grin.
It was stripped bare.
He had seen everything.
The look he gave me held awe… and something I couldn’t read.
Someone whispered, “What the hell was that?”
Heat still lingered on my skin. The scent of scorched salt and ozone clung to every breath. My fingertips tingled; lightning hadn’t fully left me.
Then nausea hit again.
It climbed my throat thick and suffocating. My limbs trembled—not from fear, not from magic, but from the cost of channeling something I’d never been trained to hold.
I staggered to the rail, knees buckling, and vomited over the side.
The world spun. My grip locked onto the wood as bile burned its way free, remnants of power curling in my throat like smoke.
Alaric’s voice cut through the fog. “Check the starboard hull! Get those fires out—move!”
I turned toward him.
He was there—commanding, alive, scorched but whole.
Behind him, damage sprawled across the deck: splintered rails, scorch marks, ropes cut or charred. One mast leaned precariously, its base cracked where a siren had struck.
A few crew members lay bloodied and unmoving. Others crouched beside them, shouting for help, tearing cloth into makeshift bandages. One man clutched his side, red leaking between his fingers. Another had burns down the length of his arm.
And still they moved with grim efficiency—the steadiness of people who had met death before and learned how to keep breathing anyway.
They were alive. Barely.
And then there were the ones who hadn’t made it—dragged into the sea mid-scream, pulled down by clawed hands and honeyed lies.
Somehow, we survived the sirens. Somehow, I survived.