Chapter 56
Nerina
At Sea, Somewhere near the Veil
The sea was not the same. Where the Veil had once shimmered—bright as dawn, impenetrable as law—there was only open water now. No glow. No hum. No invisible wall of protection. Just endless waves. And the black shapes of ships. Hundreds of them.
Poachers of every breed crowded the horizon like carrion birds over a carcass—sleek cutters with crimson sails, fat-bellied slavers patched with rust, fishing boats rigged with nets lined in silver. All drawn to the same promise:
Thalassia laid bare. Prey.
Stars, we were hopelessly outnumbered. My stomach twisted. This was what I’d feared—not as a distant possibility whispered in councils, but as a living thing. A swarm. A hunger.
I had left Thalassia to find myself. I had never truly pictured what returning would look like.
It wasn't this.
I pressed a hand to the bandages at my wrists.
The burns still pulsed beneath—tender, raw in places, angry with every movement—but the worst of the Silver Salt’s silence had faded.
The air no longer scraped like a broken shell through my lungs.
The throb had dulled to something I could bear.
I was still weak. Too weak for what I was about to do. But there was no time to wait.
The Covenant ships and the Black Marrow dropped anchors, hulls rocking steady in the swell. Beneath us lay the place where the Veil had once shimmered. Somewhere in the dark water below—The shards of the Crescent waited.
I slipped my fingers beneath the seams of the torn clothing scavenged from one of the ships. A hush fell over the deck. Some of the crew shifted and looked away in rough respect. Others didn’t.
Alaric stepped forward—he’d been braced for this moment, waiting for the smallest excuse to put himself between me and the world.
Without a word, he shrugged off his long coat and wrapped it around my shoulders, blocking the weight of a hundred eyes.
Heavy leather. Salt and iron. Him. His storm-gray gaze swept the deck, daring anyone to keep looking.
“You’re not ready,” he said, low and edged. “You’ll barely last a breath down there, let alone long enough to find the shards.”
I lifted my chin and met his eyes. “I don’t have a choice,” I said, steadier than I felt. “If I don’t dive, they’re lost—and with them, any chance of saving Thalassia.”
His jaw clenched. “Then let someone else go. My men. His men. Anyone but you—”
“What makes their lives any less valuable than mine?” I cut in, heat flaring in my chest. “The shards are part of me. I have to be the one to find them.”
He stared at me—storm and fire colliding—and for a heartbeat I truly thought he might drag me back by force.
I would fight him. With whatever strength I had left. I think he knew that.
I stepped onto the rail. Alaric’s coat slid from my shoulders as the wind bit down to the bone. Below, the water churned—dark and endless.
“What’s the plan?” someone called behind me. I couldn’t tell if it was Alaric or Veyrion.
A raw laugh bubbled out of my throat. “I don’t know.”
And before either of them could stop me, I tipped forward—
—and plunged into the sea.
Cold hit like a thousand knives, driving the air from my lungs. Then the ocean rushed to meet me.
Cradling. Collecting. The salt burned—yes—but beneath it was something older and familiar, a recognition that ran deeper than pain.
Above, muffled and distant, voices erupted.
Boots pounded. Shapes leaned over the rails.
I imagined them: Alaric’s storm gone wide with fury and fear, Veyrion’s icy focus narrowing.
Watching as the change began. My body pulled taut.
Bones shifting, skin rippling. The last residue of Silver Salt’s wrongness seemed to bleed from me as light took its place—shimmering beneath my skin like starlight trapped under glass.
Scales unfurled down my legs: silver, streaked with a faint celestial sheen.
The crescent mark on my forehead flared brighter, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
Then my tail snapped into being with a force that sent a shockwave through the water.
My hair streamed around me like liquid silver, catching sparks of color that shouldn’t exist this deep—fractured light, impossible and alive.
Almost instantly, my center shifted. Like the sea itself had taken hold. It tugged me deeper—into the dark where the Veil had once shimmered, into waters I’d known all my life, but never like this. The deeper I went, the stronger the pull became.
A call only I could hear—steady, relentless, promising wholeness. But the dark held other shapes.
Shadows moved in the depths. Glints of silver flashed. Nets and hooks lowered like teeth. Poachers. Already here.
They weren’t fools—not entirely. Cruel, yes.
Driven, yes. They learned fast when coin was on the line.
There is no way they would not let me slip away twice.
I caught the gleam of silver sinking through the water—nets weighted with stone, their cords lined in Silver Salt.
They drifted like phantom webs, nearly invisible until the light struck just right.
One wrong flick of my tail and I’d be tangled again.
I angled lower, slipping between two ropes that brushed too close. The sting of poison bit deep even through the water, and my scales prickled with memory—nets tightening, shackles sparking, silence flooding my blood.
The shards pulled harder. Close now. I could almost taste them on the current—bitter and sweet, familiar and fierce. A missing part of me crying out to be whole.
The nets were everywhere. More dropped from above as shadows shifted at the surface. Voices rumbled faintly through the water—laughter carried down with creaking wood and iron.
I forced myself to move slowly—precise, deliberate, every stroke controlled. If they saw me, if I panicked, if I surged—I would lose everything.
And then—I saw them. Two shards lay scattered in the silt where the Veil had once shimmered, half-buried yet burning like drowned stars.
Their light pulsed weakly, stubbornly, refusing to go dark.
The pull in my blood surged so fiercely it hurt—each beat of my heart aching toward them.
Threads of power strained inside me, tugging at the hollow places, begging to be filled.
I drifted lower, breath tight, and my tail sweeping carefully against the current.
A net slid across the water above—the cords lined in silver, glowing faintly like frost-veins.
Its shadow crawled over the seafloor until it touched the edge of the shards.
I froze. The shards pulsed below, syncing with my heartbeat, my mark, urging me forward.
One wrong move and I’d be dragged upward before my fingers ever closed.
The current shifted. The ropes pulled outward, hooks swaying wider.
I counted the tide, measured the slack in their arcs.
I darted forward—one clean slice through the water. The net hissed past. Hooks grazed just behind me, close enough that I felt Silver Salt sting on the edge of my scales.
I slipped through.
My fingers closed around the quartz. And the sea shivered. Light blazed in my hands—fractured beams of silver and starlight spilling across my skin. The hum in my chest deepened, no longer a hollow ache but a steady rhythm—strong, sure, mine.
Not relics. Not worthless stone. Me. Fragments of myself, torn away and drowned, now returned. Warmth flooded the emptiness inside me—like surfacing after drowning.
These shards were my chance. Eira’s voice surfaced in my memory.
Magic responds to intention. Power bends to will.
What if I could pull it back? Not just carry the shards—but reclaim what they held. If intention shaped power… could I will these pieces to return to me? To stop being stone and become blood and flame?
I tightened my grip, pressing the jagged edges to my palms. Mine, I whispered into the current. Come back to me.
Nothing happened. Only the weight of the deep. Only my heartbeat. Only the distant rattle of nets above.
After a moment, heat flared through my hands—searing and bright—racing up my arms. The shards vibrated violently, their light spilling in wild arcs that painted the water silver.
They wanted to answer. The question was whether my body could bear it.
The hum rose to a roar inside my chest, syncing with my heartbeat, begging—
I braced, ready for pain, for fire, for wholeness—
Before I could finish, the sea split with a scream.
Muffled by depth, distant, but raw enough to slice through bone.
Terror. A body dragged under where it did not belong.
It snapped my focus away. The light in my hands stuttered—guttering like a candle in the wind.
I gasped, clutching the fragments to my chest. Their glow burned against my skin, their power clawing to be let in—
If I didn’t move, that scream would be silenced forever.
I shoved the shards tight against my chest, the glow bleeding through my arms, and kicked hard—water surging past me in a furious rush.
The scream came again, closer now, frantic and choked with salt.
Shapes cut through the water ahead—nets dragging heavy, cords lined in silver, hooks flashing like teeth.
And tangled in their grip, thrashing wildly, was a body.
The scream cracked through the water like shattered glass.
I spun toward it, heart lurching, and saw him.
A boy—barely more than a child—caught in a poacher’s net. The cords were thick and cruel, woven with flecks of Silver Salt that burned even from a distance. His small body twisted in panicked jerks, tail thrashing, scales scraped raw where the mesh bit deep.
Too close to another moment I couldn’t take back. “No—” The word tore from me as I surged forward.
His eyes found mine. Wide. Glassy. Rimmed red with terror.
His fingers clawed at the net—slipping, slowing, panic collapsing into exhaustion.
I seized the net with both hands. Agony detonated up my arms. Silver Salt hissed against my skin, searing white-hot.
The scent of scorched brine flooded the water—metallic, like blood turned to ash. I nearly screamed—but I didn’t let go.
“Hold on,” I begged, voice shaking. “Be still. Please—be still.”
The ocean drew inward around us, currents tightening like a coiled spring. Heat surged through my chest—not the gentle tide-magic I’d been taught, but something deeper. Something that lit my veins from within. It burned behind my eyes, along my spine.
I shaped it carefully. Contained it. Kept it tight to my hands, my will—anywhere but outward.
The net shuddered. Not snapped. Not blasted apart by fear. Undone. Thread by thread. Blackened fibers crumbled beneath my grip, dissolving into ash the water eagerly carried away. Silver Salt screamed as it burned out, its grip weakening until the mesh fell slack.
The boy surged forward. His body trembled violently, sobs hitching in ragged bursts as I pulled him close—one arm around his shoulders, the other steadying his tail. Angry burns marked his skin where the salt had kissed it, red and blistered. But he was alive.
I pressed my forehead to his, eyes squeezing shut as relief crashed over me so hard it hurt. The glow beneath my skin faded slowly, reluctantly. “You’re safe,” I whispered, though my hands still shook. “I’ve got you.”
His fingers dug into my arm with surprising strength, as if he feared I might vanish. Fury bloomed beneath the relief. Poachers. I lifted my head and scanned the dark water beyond the drifting remnants of the net. The sea murmured low around us, uneasy.
I couldn’t send him alone. He was too small, too shaken, his tail trembling with exhaustion. If he faltered in open water, they would sweep him up again before he ever saw the coral gates.
“It’s okay,” I murmured, tightening my hold. “I’ll get you home.”
The shards pulsed against my chest, their light bleeding faintly into the water as I kicked hard, propelling us forward. Ahead, the spires loomed—faint glimmers of coral and pearl catching what little light reached this deep.
We slipped beneath drifting nets, wove past hooks that flashed like fangs. My scales sparked with faint starlight, just enough to guide us through the labyrinth of ropes and shadow. The city walls rose before us.
Thalassia.
The gates came first—arched spires of coral and rune-carved stone, dusted with kelp and barnacle, faintly aglow with old magic.
Shoals of fish scattered through the arches, flashes of gold and red like sparks in the blue.
The city unfurled. Towers bloomed upward in tiers, lit by shells and pearls.
Lantern-jellies drifted between coral balconies.
Bridges threaded the spires, gardens swaying in the current—until the whole city glittered like an impossible jewel cradled in the deep.
My chest ached at the sight. I guided the boy through the gates.
His grip loosened, tail twitching with the first stirrings of strength.
I slowed. “Can you make it from here?”
His wide, sea-bright eyes flicked toward the streets ahead—arched bridges, darting schools of fish, the promise of safety. He nodded quickly.
I brushed his hair back and forced a smile, even as something tight twisted in my chest. “Go. Find your family. Stay hidden—and don’t stop swimming until you’re safe.”
He nodded once more, then darted off through the coral arches, tail flashing green and orange until he vanished into Thalassia’s glow. I watched him go. Relief flickered—small, stubborn—as the storm inside me shifted.
One life saved.