Chapter 54 Nerina #2
Sails snapped softly overhead as the ship cut through open water, the horizon a clean blade of steel and sky. Charts lay spread across a barrel, weighted with a compass and a salt-stained dagger. Voices stayed low—measured, controlled—as they mapped patrol routes, defensive lines,
The fragile ways Thalassia might still be protected if the tides turned against them.
“If they come through the eastern trench, we can funnel them here,” one voice said, tapping the parchment. “Force proximity. Buy time.”
Time. That was all any of them were trying to steal. A cry split the air.
A raven burst from the clouds, wings beating hard as it veered toward the ship. It circled once—twice—then dove, landing awkwardly on the railing. A strip of crimson ribbon was tied to its leg.
No one spoke as the message was freed.
“The Veil,” one of the Covenant men rasped. “The Veil—”
A beat.
Then, softly—devastatingly—“The Veil has fallen.”
The words struck harder than shackles. Harder than salt-burn.
Thalassia. I had never truly belonged there—not beneath the Veil, not under Meris’s watch, not in the halls of the Tidekeepers where whispers clung to me like seaweed.
But it was the closest thing to home I had ever known.
Its reefs had cradled my first breath. Its currents carried my childhood songs.
Its people—though they had never fully claimed me—were still my people.
And now it lay bare. A hollow ache opened in my chest, deep and restless. I had fled Thalassia searching for answers, for freedom, for something beyond the cage it offered. But I would not let it fall to poachers and carrion-hunters.
“I won’t let them—or anyone—die in nets and chains,” I said, my voice carrying.
Alaric shook his head. “Poachers will keep coming, wave after wave. We can’t fight them all. There are too many.”
The fire inside me surged, cutting through the tremor in my chest. “Then we get the Crescent pieces back first.”
Veyrion’s eyes narrowed, watchful. Alaric frowned, suspicion flickering across his face.
“It’s part of me,” I pressed, the words raw in my mouth. “My power—torn from me, trapped in those shards. Every piece scattered leaves me weaker than I should be. If I find them—if I put them back together—I can fight. I can protect them.”
“My sister is there,” I whispered, the words cutting. “If the poachers breach the reefs, if they reach the kingdom… she won’t stand a chance. None of them will.”
I forced myself to keep speaking, though my throat burned. “There aren’t enough Abyssal Sentinels to hold them back. A handful of guardians against hundreds of poachers with nets, with Silver Salt, with gods know what else.” I shook my head. “They won’t be ready. They could never be ready.”
I looked between them, fire warring with ache. “That’s why we need the Crescent Artifact. With it, I can stand where they can’t. I can fight where the Sentinels will fall. Without it…” My voice broke, but I didn’t stop. “Without it, Thalassia doesn’t stand a chance.”
Silence pressed down, thick as the deep.
Alaric’s storm-gray eyes burned, his jaw set, fury trembling at the edges of his control. I could feel his refusal forming—inevitable—
But Veyrion moved first.
He stepped from the rail with the slow certainty of a rising tide; eyes locked on mine. “She is right,” he said, his voice carrying across the deck like a war-drum. “Thalassia cannot stand against this storm alone.”
Firelight caught the scars inked across his skin, making them glow like runes.
His gaze never wavered. “The Crescent Artifact is no trinket. No prize. If her power is trapped within it, then it was never meant for vaults or myths.” His mouth curved, fierce and reverent all at once.
“It was meant to be returned. To her. We will help her reclaim it.”
The words rang out like prophecy, loosening something deep inside me.
“I don’t need the Artifact whole,” I said, forcing the tremor from my voice.
Both men turned to me, storm and sun colliding in their eyes.
“The two shards I carried might be enough.
" I swallowed, the memory bitter. “But when they captured me, one of the poachers took the satchel. They laughed at the shards—called them worthless—and tossed them overboard.” My hands curled into fists, nails biting into the burns at my wrists.
“Somewhere near the Veil—where it used to be.”
The weight of it settled heavy and merciless. The Veil was gone. The water would be swarming. And the only pieces of myself that might save Thalassia lay lost in the deep. “We need to go back for them,” I said.
“If we get close enough to where the Veil stood,” I continued, voice rough but steady. “ I can go into the ocean and search.”
Alaric’s head snapped toward me, storm-gray eyes blazing. “No. Absolutely not.”
Veyrion shifted, eyes narrowing as he cut across Alaric’s fury. “If she says she can, she can.”
Alaric rounded on him, anger crackling across his face. “And you’d throw her straight into the jaws of death. Do you care for her—or just the power she carries?”
Veyrion didn’t flinch. His frigid stare burned, steady as a glacier. “I could ask you the same.”
The words struck harder than steel. Alaric stiffened, jaw flexing, the storm in his eyes darkening.
I pushed myself to my feet, desperate to stand between them—to prove I wasn’t fragile, wasn’t something to be argued over. That I could choose.
My knees buckled. The world tilted. Black crept in at the edges of my vision, and I hit the deck hard. Pain flared at my wrists. Hunger hollowed me out. Thirst scraped my throat raw. I hated it—hated that weakness had stolen my legs, hated that it handed them proof I never wanted to give.
Alaric was on me instantly, crouched low, a storm blazing in his eyes. “Look at you,” he growled. “You can’t even stand. And you’d dive back into waters crawling with poachers? One round wasn’t enough?”
The words cut because they weren’t wrong.
But it wasn’t truth he was pressing into me.
It was fear. His fury didn’t frighten me—it lit something hotter.
Every order, every attempt to cage me in the name of protection, only made me want to push harder.
To prove him wrong. I had always resented him for that. For thinking safety meant smallness.
Before I could snap back, Veyrion’s voice cracked across the deck. “Water. Food. A healer’s kit.”
His men moved at once.
He knelt beside me, calm and steady. He didn’t look away from the burns.
Didn’t soften his eyes at the hollow carved into me.
“Strength will return,” he said quietly.
“Pain is a passing tide. But the fire that would face death for the helpless—that is what they tried to break. Hold to it. Take back what they stole. Take yourself back.”
When the healer’s kit arrived, I finally looked—really looked—at my wrists.
The sight hollowed me. The skin was blackened, split, eaten through in places.
Raw flesh glowed red against charred edges.
The burns crawled up my forearms like rust through iron—too deep, too jagged to ever be mistaken for anything else.
Every movement sent a sick pulse of fire through me.
And it wasn’t just my wrists. Bruises mapped my ribs. My legs bore the mottled marks of boots and fists. My back stung where nets had bitten in. Even my face throbbed—cheekbone swollen, lip split. I hated that my body had become evidence. That it spoke before I could.
Veyrion glanced up, eyes unreadable. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
Shadeau rose unbidden—the fear, the fury, the silver salt burns screaming at my wrists.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I still don’t.”
“And yet,” he said mildly. Then, quieter, “You don’t pull away like you used to.”
His hand steadied my arm. The bruises throbbed—not from his touch, but from the memory of theirs. The poachers.
He looked at me steadily. “You must care for yourself first, Neri,” he said, certainty steady as the tide. “Only then can you protect others.”
Part of me wanted to rest. Let someone else carry the fight. Another part—darker, angrier—hated that I was this broken. That he saw someone who needed tending instead of someone who could save.
As his hand lingered at my wrist, I caught the flicker in Alaric’s expression. Discomfort. Anger. The sight of me like this undid him—jaw locked, fists clenched, shoulders trembling with restraint.
I couldn’t tell if he hated seeing me weak—
Or if he hated that it was Veyrion’s hands, not his.