Chapter 51
Some rivers run forward. Some run back. And some run beneath us—their current carrying what was once lost.
—Waters of the Deep
Ican’t sleep.
Not after what just happened.
Not after what I saw in the pool.
Gavrail doesn’t ask. He just bundles me in soft blankets and locks the door.
“You’re staying here tonight.” No room for argument. Not with that look in his eyes—like he’d cover the whole world in darkness if it meant he could keep me safe.
He gives me the bed. I lie stiffly beneath the covers, staring at the ceiling while his restless breathing rises and falls from the floor beside me.
My thoughts loop, jagged and breathless.
Thorne killed my father.
The Thalriens were fusion masters.
Thorne killed my father.
I’m not just powerful. I’m some kind of weapon.
Thorne killed my father.
I have a brother who might still be alive.
Water remembers.
Water remembers me.
Somewhere between night and dawn, I must fall asleep, because my dream is waiting. I’m back in the Cavern, but this time, its walls glimmer faintly with crystals. The pool lies still at the center, black and endless, stars trembling across its surface in silver ripples.
My reflection looks back at me—small, wide-eyed. A child.
Figures hover at the water’s edge, hooded and faceless. Their shadows stretch long and silent in the dark.
And then the voice, soft and coaxing as a hand is held out toward me.
“Come here, Celeste.”
Only this time, it’s not a stranger. Not a nightmare.
My father.
He reaches for me, trembling. The pool shivers. The stars fracture. Cold silk slides over my skin—too real, too familiar—
I jolt upright with a strangled gasp.
The room spins. My hands fly to my throat. No air. No air—
“Celeste.”
Gavrail is there, his arms around me in an instant.
“Breathe, love,” he says at my ear.
I cling to him without meaning to.
His grip tightens—too tight—then he loosens it, as if he realizes what he’s doing. He starts to pull away.
I shake again, a small involuntary shudder, and he freezes—then swears under his breath like he’s losing a fight.
“Fuck,” he mutters, more to himself, and it’s not surrender. It’s a decision.
He gathers the blanket around both of us and moves fully onto the bed, keeping me pinned to his heat. Like if he lets go, the water might remember where to find me.
“Sleep,” he orders softly, moving my head to his chest, his arms wrapped tight around me. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
And he doesn’t let go.
His scent fills my lungs—amber-dark and dusk-deep, a bite of smoke and grounding leather—and the Cavern slips away.
Sleep takes me, soft and warm. And this time when I dream, it’s of shadowed woods, dark paths, and whispering leaves, the air thick with damp earth and night-blooming sap. Creatures watch from the trees, their silver eyes reflecting the starlight like pools of mercury.
I walk deeper. The forest shifts around me, subtle as breath. A path opening where there wasn’t one a heartbeat ago. Guiding. Guarding.
The dark gathers at my back. Not threatening. Claiming. It curls around my ankles like a vow, cool and steady, as if it’s always known the shape of me.
Then the sky splits.
Rain slams down in sudden sheets, cold and electric, thunder rolling so close it rattles my bones. Lightning zigzags across the canopy—once, twice—until one spear of white-blue fire strikes the ground at my feet.
Heat blooms. Violent. Alive.
Flames lick through the brush, racing up the trunks, devouring the world in a golden roar. The fire pulls—steady, bright, and full of hunger. And I know if I step forward, I’ll be consumed.
The darkness tightens behind me just as fire surges in front.
And I’m caught between them, trembling—not from fear, but from the terrible truth of wanting both.
Choose, the fire seems to say.
Stay, the dark pleads.
The flames suddenly soar, blindingly bright, and the shadows lunge to meet them.
I try to move—
A floorboard gives a soft complaint somewhere next to me and the dream rips apart.
The air changes—heat, spice, and something achingly familiar. I wake to warmth: a cup pressed gently into my hands, arms folding around me from behind, tucking me into cedar, clove, and mint.
Noa.
My breath catches, and for one disorienting, fractured second, I don’t understand.
I was—
I was just—
My gaze snaps across the room. Searching. Needing—
Gavrail’s eyes lock on mine.
He’s there, sitting in a chair in the corner of his room. Something unreadable flickers across his face—too fast to catch, too sharp to mistake.
Only then do I feel Noa’s arms around me.
I turn. His face is drawn, turquoise eyes hooded in shadow.
“Gavrail came and got me,” he murmurs. “Told me what happened. The pool. What you found.” His voice is soft but caught at the edges, like it can’t quite hold the weight of everything he’s thinking.
“You must have been terrified. If someone hadn’t been there to pull you out…
” His gaze flicks across the room before coming back to me.
“What you saw in the vision.” His jaw tenses. “Thorne… Cel, he’s the headmaster.”
I pull back and stare up at him. “You don’t believe me?” My voice slices too sharp, too fast. A blade I can’t sheathe, its edge cutting me and at the same time sharpening in preparation for others to bleed.
Noa flinches, guilt flashing in his eyes. “No—it’s not that. I believe you. I do.”
“Then why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself?”
The edge hasn’t dulled. I don’t want it to.
He exhales, visibly trying to steady himself.
“I’m trying to stay calm here. Because from the sounds of it, you nearly just drowned in your own magick.
Because if what you saw in that vision about Thorne is true…
everything changes.” His knuckles are clenched and his mouth is set.
Determined. “If Thorne really killed your father—if he’s behind all of it…
Cel, we can’t just storm in after him. He’s powerful.
Connected. If we charge in, he’ll destroy us before we even speak. ”
Gavrail leans back in the chair, one leg stretched out, posture loose—almost bored.
His eyes are anything but. They narrow, dark and cutting, as his head tilts with quiet, dangerous interest. “Then tell me, soldier,” he says, the words low and razor-edged.
“What do you suggest?” His knuckles drum against the desk in a slow, deliberate tap.
“What’s your plan—beg the system that bred monsters to rescue us from one? ”
Noa meets his gaze without flinching. “We be smart. Strategic. I’m in the Service now—I can reach out to General Vaylor. Tell him everything. He’ll want to help.”
“And how do you know he’s not part of this?” Gavrail’s eyes turn dark and lethal, piercing through Noa like a sword of shadow. “Men like Thorne don’t move in isolation.”
Noa stiffens. “He wouldn’t be. I cannot believe he would have anything to do with what happened to Celeste’s father.”
“You sound sure.” Gavrail’s tone cuts. “But you’re still new to war. Faith is a luxury it burns out of you.”
Noa’s eyes darken. “Not everyone’s a liar, Gavrail. Not everyone’s the enemy.” His eyes flash with fire. “Maybe you’ve walked in darkness so long, you’ve started to think everyone’s a shadow.”
Gavrail doesn’t blink, his silence colder than words.
Their stares clash like flint and steel. I can almost feel the spark catch. One still trying to believe in the system. The other already scorched by it.
I press the mug to my lips, the warmth of the tea a lie.
I rise. “Enough.” My voice lands like a stone in the silence—final. Cold. Measured. “We write to the general,” I say, meeting Noa’s eyes first—because strategy matters. Then I turn to Gavrail—because so does fear. “But we also watch the shadows.”
Water remembers.
And I’m ready to make the world remember too.
* * *
The rest of the week is excruciating—pretending nothing is wrong, going about our days like nothing has changed.
When the truth is—everything has.
Noa wrote to Vaylor. He didn’t claim discoveries.
He didn’t mention conversations. He positioned it as a routine review that raised flags: my father’s record didn’t align with the narrative Thorne was pushing.
He asked Vaylor for clarification the way soldiers do when they suspect rot in the chain of command—calm on paper, alarm underneath.
My name barely appeared, and only where it had to: next-of-kin.
Context. Nothing more. Noa didn’t make me the source of anything.
He made himself the witness. Just an officer watching the edges of a system fray, and choosing the one person dangerous enough to pull on that thread and snap it without the whole thing unraveling.
Thursday passes in a blur.
I visit Amelia in the infirmary—her wounds are healing faster now that all the glass has been removed. Her breathing is steadier. The cuts are clean.
Professor Ching and I brew a fresh batch of Eir’s Shadowbark, steeped with the frostbloom thistle Amelia and I gathered earlier this year in the grove. The potion dulls her pain, slows the bleeding, and lets her finally rest. Our Weldver Salt does its job too, mending the worst of the damage.
I feel like a ghost wearing skin. A shell going through the motions.
Friday brings Elemental Mastery with Professor Neris at the Lakehouse. After my display in the Garden Grove, she’s taken to working with me privately—teaching me the finer threads of water magick that Noa and Gavrail cannot.
Her pale eyes are too knowing.
She watches me as I shift water between its three states: solid, liquid, vapor.
Later, she shows me how to shape a ribbon of water into something separate, almost sentient, yet still tethered to its maker.
It weaves around her in a graceful dance, taking the shape of a sea otter—mesmerizing.
Enchanting. Like my water horses when they play.
I try to shape one to match hers, but something in me falters. My hand hovers above the surface of the lake, but a memory surges up: drowning in the dark, the way the water held me. I nearly pull back.
But then I feel it—her water. Calming, soft, intertwining with mine. Like an embrace.
She steps beside me as we watch our magick dance.
“The water knows you now. Truly. It doesn’t speak names lightly,” she says, her voice a quiet lilt.
“Do not be afraid of what you are. What you are capable of. Water gives, and water takes. But it doesn’t just sing.
” She eyes me thoughtfully now. “You can also make it listen.”
There’s a pause. Then carefully—
“The Thalrien line was once the current beneath the tides—the quiet force that shaped the shorelines of power. Now, it’s a name nearly washed from memory.” She catches my gaze. “Or deliberately drowned.”
A single tear slips down my cheek. I look away toward the lake.
“Why?” is all my broken heart can whisper.
“Because water remembers. And some fear what it refuses to forget. Remember, those who seek to rewrite the rules are never the ones written into them.”
I turn to her, startled. Realization dawns like sunlight hitting the back of a wave. “You knew him… My father?”
She smiles softly, her ribbon of water still twining with mine. “I knew of him. We may be different, you and I—but we’re still part of the same ocean.”
She begins to walk away, and I see it then: the small water lily inked beneath her upper arm. Her ribbon dissolves into the lake as she stands at its edge, eyes on the horizon.
“Celeste,” she says, not turning back, “you must learn to wield what you are without letting it wield you. Not just for yourself. There are those who would bind your power to their ends—call it duty, or loyalty, or the good of the realm.”
I nod, heart aching with understanding. With warning.
“Some currents run deep,” she says. “But not all waters are clean.”
And with that, she walks away—leaving me to face the lake. To face the truth.
Alone.