Chapter 36 Nerina #2
They pressed against my forehead. Light flared violently, heat spiking so fast it stole the air from my lungs.
My tiny body arched. My cry ripped out of me, raw and desperate.
Pain exploded—white, endless, consuming.
There was no word for it, no thought—only the sensation of being split open at the center of myself.
I screamed until my throat burned, until my voice broke into hoarse, gasping sobs.
The light didn’t spill. Something tore from my brow. A small gem.
The space it left behind ached—raw and hollow and wrong. My cries thinned, turning weak and broken as the glow at my brow dimmed to nothing. The wound sealed. The pain lingered.
I tried to move. Tried to claw. Tried to tear their fingers from my face.
I couldn’t. I could only feel.
A sound tore out of me—half scream, half sob—as the vision crushed back into my chest.
“The Tidekeepers,” I whispered.
The name tasted like iron. My knees buckled. Ice flooded my veins.
Not protectors.
Grief and rage collided so violently in my chest I thought my heart would rupture. My hands shook uncontrollably. My throat burned. Heat flared at my brow—phantom pain, phantom pressure.
And—
My mother.
Meris.
Her arms wrapped around my tiny, shaking body. Her hands cradled my head—right where it hurt most. Her voice hummed low and steady, a lullaby meant to soothe, meant to quiet.
“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
She rocked me as I screamed. She whispered comfort—while they ripped the crescent from my skin. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t stop them. She held me still.
The realization hit harder than the pain ever had.
“She let them do this to me,” I whispered.
The words barely made it past my throat. I pressed a shaking hand to my mouth, trying to hold back the sob clawing up my throat.
My fingers slid beneath the folds of my gown and closed around the cold, jagged edges hidden there.
The quartz shards.
The moment I drew them free, the chamber changed—currents tightening, light warping, the water along the walls pulling inward as if the sea itself had gone still.
I didn’t speak.
I opened my palm, where the two quartz pieces lay.
She did not ask where I found them.
She did not ask how many.
Her eyes lifted—to my brow.
She reached out, hesitated, then took the shards from my hand.
The fragments flared at her touch—fractured light bleeding between her fingers, pulsing in time with my heart. She closed her eyes. “This is what was taken from you,” she said quietly.
The chamber tilted.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
“They,” she continued, voice heavy, “decided your power was too dangerous to remain whole.”
My hand rose, trembling, to the crescent-shaped mark etched into my skin.
A birthmark.
A lie.
Tears blurred my vision. My chest ached like my heart had shattered into pieces.
I had thought the Tidekeepers were cruel.
I never imagined they were thieves. But Meris—my mother—had stood beside them and sung me to sleep while they did it.
All those years—her lullabies, her warnings, her careful hand—Not protection.
Control. Fear. Greed.
I turned to the Elders, voice raw, shaking. “What am I?” I asked. And then, softer—like it might hurt less. “Who am I?”
The silence that followed was heavier than any before. Not a pause. A weight.
They glanced at one another, and for one terrible heartbeat I hoped—prayed—that they had more.
They didn’t.
“We do not know,” said the second elder.
The words broke me. Not because they were cruel. Because they were honest.
I swallowed hard against the knot in my throat. My eyes burned. My voice trembled, but I forced the words out anyway.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For what you’ve given me.”
None of them knew what I was. Then who could?
A hush fell over the chamber.
My gaze lifted to the life tree towering behind them—eternal, unmoved, its silver leaves shimmering.
Then—a rustle.
A single leaf tore free, pale as moonlight veined in silver. It spiraled down slowly—not drifting on air, but pulled by unseen threads.
It landed at my feet. The Elders stirred.
“The tree responds only to great shifts,” The last elder whispered, eyes wide. “To the tremble of threads not yet woven.”
I stared at the fragile thing, my chest twisting painfully. Small.
Weightless. Vast. A sign.
A burden.
Another truth I didn’t understand.
Tears slid hot down my cheeks before I could stop them. Answers. That’s what I’d come for.
But all I had now were more questions—heavier, cutting deeper than before.
My mark burned, my breath shallow, my thoughts splintering. Then—warmth.
Veyrion’s hand brushed mine.
I startled—but didn’t pull away. His touch was steady. Grounding. The kind you offered someone about to collapse. His expression gave nothing away—calm, unreadable—but his presence wrapped around me like the lull before a storm.
I didn’t understand him. He had tricked me, threatened me, tried to bind me. And yet he stood beside me now as if he’d expected this crack to form. As if he’d been waiting to see what spilled out.
I pressed a hand to my chest, to the hollow ache inside me. The absence felt physical—like a missing note in a song, a story torn in half.
Something had been taken from me.
And now I could feel the shape of the wound. I had answers. And yet I had nothing. Nothing but loss. Nothing but a truth I could no longer unlearn: The people I trusted most had taken the very essence of me. And I didn’t know if I could forgive them.
Veyrion’s hand lingered a moment longer before he withdrew. His silence was more unnerving than words—like he was deciding what to say, or what to keep.
That was when I heard it.
A whisper—low and hushed—slipping through the cavern like snow through stone.
The Elders’ voices, not to me, but to him. I could only make out one word over the pounding in my chest. “Verjah,” they whispered in unison.
The words slid cold down my spine—unfamiliar, yet heavy.
Veyrion stilled. Then bowed his head.
His reply was soft. Certain. Spoken in a tongue I did not know. “Jafnan.”
And when he straightened, the mask was firmly back in place—as if nothing had happened at all.