Chapter 57
Nerina
Thalassia
I drifted through the hollow bones of the city until color found me again.
Maleia’s gardens. Even in winter, they were breathtaking—coral once blazing scarlet and jade now softened to opal and pearl, moon-pale blues shimmering through the fronds.
Blossoms drifted in silvery white and lavender, petals tumbling slow as snowflakes in the current.
Kelp curled in ribboned coils, edges kissed with frost-light, bowing with each lazy shift of water.
I set the shards carefully among the roots of a frost-bright kelp bloom, nestling them where pearl moss grew thick and luminous. Their glow dimmed, muted by the living magic of the garden, but I could still feel them—an echo beneath my skin. I couldn’t risk them falling into the wrong hands.
They pulsed faintly, warm against my palms, their fractured light reflecting softly off the pale coral beds. For a moment, I hesitated—every instinct screaming to keep them close—but the gardens felt… safe. Sheltered. Untouched.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered.
“Nerina?” Her voice was a whisper—fragile as a seashell pressed to the ear. I turned. Maleia hovered half-hidden in the pale kelp, rose-colored hair floating like tide-silk, jewel-bright scales shimmering in the garden’s glow.
Neither of us moved.
Then she flew at me, colliding so hard it knocked the current from my lungs. Her arms locked around me—fierce, unyielding—and suddenly I was laughing and sobbing all at once. “You’re alive,” she gasped into my shoulder. Her voice broke, half laugh, half cry. “Cods, you’re alive. I thought—”
“I’m here,” I whispered, clutching her just as tightly. My throat ached with it. “I thought I’d lost you too.”
She pulled back just enough to catch my face between her hands, thumbs brushing away the tears spilling free. “You idiot,” she choked, though her
smile trembled. “Running off like that. You always did have to be the dramatic one.”
A laugh cracked from me. “Says the girl who used to fake fainting in tide-reading lessons so you could get out of them.”
“Tide-reading is so boring,” she shot back, eyes gleaming through tears. “You were just jealous you couldn’t sell it.”
I pressed my forehead to hers, still shaking with laughter that hurt as much as it healed. “Stars, Maleia… I missed you.”
Her grip tightened. “I missed you too. It was so quiet without you. No one to sneak into the kitchens with. No one to dare me to eat sea urchin spines—”
“You dared me,” I sputtered, laughing through the ache.
She grinned, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. “And you actually did it.”
The current shifted—colder, heavier.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” she whispered, pulling me back into her arms. I held her like I could promise that.
The kelp bowed low, the garden itself were bracing, blossoms folding faintly. Beneath it—beneath the hush—there was something else. A pressure in the water, subtle as a hand at the back of my neck.
“Nerina?” Meris emerged from the shadows, crown gleaming, divine glow gilding the coral in false light.
Her voice swept through the gardens, commanding and terrible.
Before I could move, she surged forward and pulled me into her arms. I froze—then I shoved her back.
Hard. The water rippled outward from the force of it, petals scattering like startled birds.
Hurt flashed across her face before she masked it.
“You can’t be here,” she said. “It isn’t safe. ”
“I know,” I snapped, the words trembling with everything. “The poachers—”
“It isn’t the poachers I fear.” Her tone sharpened, urgency cracking through her composure. “If they find you, they will make certain you never leave again.”
Maleia’s hand tightened around mine, trembling. “Mother—”
“I know what they did to me." My voice cut through hers, jagged as broken coral. "What you let them do.”
My crescent mark seared—heat blooming beneath my skin. Threads of silver and violet bled from it, pulsing with my heartbeat, answering my fury, answering my grief.
“Nerina—”
“Don’t.” The word snapped like a whip. The water shuddered with it. “Don’t lie to me. I know about the Tidekeepers. I know about you.”
The glow beneath my skin flared brighter. My mark burned like fire underwater.
“You don’t understand—”
“No,” I hissed, tears turning hot in the current. “You don’t understand.”
Meris’s light surged—goddess rising in her like a wave. Maleia flinched at the clash of our glow. Maleia grabbed my wrist. Her eyes were wide with fear and pleading. “Nerina… please. Just hear her. Let her speak. Please—for me.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
The ache in my chest deepened. I wanted to keep screaming. To let the fury devour everything. But this was Maleia—my sister. My only tether left. Slowly, I forced the fire down. The mark still pulsed, restless beneath my skin, but my voice softened—only a fraction.
“Then she tells me everything,” I said. “No riddles. No half-truths. Everything.”
Meris wavered. The edges of her divine glow dimmed, like a lantern guttering in the deep. She exhaled. “Then listen, darling,” she said at last, and her voice trembled. “And I will tell you everything.”
She looked past me, toward the shimmering heart of Thalassia.
I listened. I didn’t lean in the way I used to.
“On the night of the Eclipscera Convergence,” Meris began, “a celestial alignment so rare it has occurred only twice since the ocean’s first stirring—stars and moons and suns drawn into one terrible line.
The bones of the cosmos locked into place.
A night of prophecy. A night of immense power. ”
A shiver slid down my spine. I had always known I was different—but hearing it spoken aloud, my existence reduced to a cosmic event, made me feel alien in my own skin.
She met my eyes, glassy with memory. “I found you. A newborn, alone—wrapped in seaweed and starlight. No mother. No pod. Only you, wailing with a voice that rippled through the depths.”
My stomach twisted. Found.
“I should have reported it,” she whispered. “Should have called on the other Gods. Instead, I made a choice. I took you into my arms and called you my daughter.”
My head shook once, hard—like refusal will scatter the truth.
“You were different from the beginning,” Meris continued. “Brilliant. Strange. Power crackled in your bones before you spoke your first word. I feared what it meant—for you, for the balance of our world. I sought the Tidekeepers’ counsel.”
Her voice tightened.
“They told me what I was too afraid to admit: that you were too powerful. Too unpredictable. A danger to yourself—and everyone around you.”
Meris pressed a hand to her chest, as if the weight still lived there. “They convinced me the only way to protect you—and the realm—was to dampen your magic… or end your life.”
My breath hitched.
“And so,” she whispered, “we removed the Crescent. The source of your magic. We couldn’t risk what you would become.”
The ache in my ribs worsened with every word.
“We tried to raise you like the others,” Meris said, softer now. “But, even without the crescent, every year you grew stronger. Louder. Brighter. The crescent magic was only a fraction of you. The Tidekeepers feared a surge.”
Her shoulders dipped slightly before she spoke. “So, they created the Celestial Choir,” she said. “A rite meant to dampen your power further.”
My chest burned. I remembered the amphitheater. The cold stone. The voices twining together in hollow reverence. The way I’d believed I belonged.
“They assured me you would never notice,” Meris whispered. “And if you did… that one day you would understand.”
“But I wasn’t the only one in the Choir,” I said, clinging to the last shred of hope. “There were others. We sang together.”
Meris’s expression crumpled. “No, darling. The others were for show. A performance. Their presence was to keep you from asking questions—to make you believe it was normal. That you were like everyone else.”
“The magic,” I said slowly, voice barely louder than tide against stone. “The power the Choir took from me—where did it go?”
Meris’s hands stilled. Just for a moment. Her shoulders slumped. “The Veil.”
My heart lurched. The water went still. No current. No hum. Even the reef-song beyond the gardens seemed to falter.
The Veil—the shimmering border that had haunted my dreams, the wall I’d pressed my palms against, the thing I’d been told protected us—
“It was never meant to keep others out,” Meris whispered. “It was meant to keep you in. It was forged and maintained using your magic. And when you left… the balance began to break.”
The world tipped. I couldn’t tell if I was sinking or rising.
The Veil wasn’t a shield. It was my prison.
My own power staring back at me all along.
Fury roared in my ears like a riptide—but beneath it was something worse.
Grief. Grief for the girl who had begged to belong while wearing chains she helped sing into place.
My hands were clenched. My mark blazed—light splitting out in jagged cracks like a heart unraveling.
Strands of my hair lifted, caught in an unseen current.
The garden bowed around me, blossoms trembling, kelp bending as the sea itself mourned with me.
“Do you know,” I asked, voice raw, “Where I’ve been these past months? What I have been through?”
She nodded once. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Nothing happens in this ocean without my knowing.”
She reached toward me—then stopped, as if touch might shatter what little was left. “The truth,” she whispered, “is that you were safer out there than you are here.”
She knew. While I clawed answers from shadows, I nearly lost myself to poachers and pirates and storms—she had known.
My throat burned. “Then tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me about him.”
Meris’s expression flickered—confusion, then sorrow.