Chapter 16
Phoebe
First Shore—The Tidal Lands, Nightfall
The moment we stepped off the boat and I went ahead to greet the women of First Shore, I felt the distance between Kael and me like it was a living thing.
A ridiculous, ridiculous thing to feel when we’d only been separated by a few breaths and a few polite bows.
Still, when Kael slides back to my side, the crowd folding around us like a warm blanket, it feels like the world is being held together by his presence alone.
“Are you okay?” I ask before I know what’s coming out of my mouth.
He looks stunned, and really, I can’t blame him because the question surprises me too.
It comes out softer than I intend, because when was the last time I had someone in my life I actually cared about?
And I do care, I realize. Far too much.
Danger.
Warning bells are going off in my head, but it’s too late for that.
I’m watching him and I notice the second his face changes, reminding me of the way the tide does. Quick, inevitable.
For one split second he looks smaller. Vulnerable. And I wonder if anyone else ever sees him this way.
“Yes,” he replies too fast, then quieter. “Stay with me. The clan elders will bring the priestess and lay a blessing on us.”
He leaned closer, and his voice was pressed against my ear like a secret.
“And afterwards I’ll arrange the handlers. The whales will like you.”
Something inside me warms, and I nod.
I stay.
Truth is, I want to be anywhere he asks me to be. I want Kael to be happy. To approve.
And I have no idea what to do with these new and strange feelings.
When the priestess arrives, I’m stunned.
She looks magical, and she has seaweed braided in her hair.
I know she’s a Demon, like all the people here, but her skin isn’t gray. It’s pale like mine except maybe a little sunburnt and weathered.
Her voice is what gets me, though.
It’s like it holds the ocean in it.
She intones the old blessings, saltwater sprinkling like quick rain across our joined hands.
It felt holy and absurd all at once — a ritual for two strangers and a crowd, an old world threading itself through something that still smelled faintly of fluorescent lights and hospital coffee in my memory.
Then came the toast: a tiny, toasted sliver of sea-bread, spread with a sweet prawn paste that gleamed under the lantern light.
The priestess broke it gently between us and offered the halves like a pact.
I accepted without thinking, as naturally as breathing.
The first bite was strange—salty and bright and somehow buttery—but the second mouthful flattened confusion into delight.
It tasted like an upscale lobster roll—like something I’d never had.
Familiar in form, utterly new in the sea-sweetness that lingered on my tongue.
I chewed and, for a ridiculous second, thought of home and the aquarium and the absurd continuity of my life.
One minute boring monotony, the next, I was neck deep in myth.
Kael watches me eat like a man who fears he’ll break the moment by looking too long.
I should feel self-conscious, but I don’t.
Oh, but the way he looks at me—like he’s cataloguing the lines of my face, the small crinkle at my left eye when I smile—makes my stomach do a silly flip.
He is unbearably beautiful. The kind of smoking hot that never paid attention to me back in Jersey.
His features seem carved by tides themselves.
He’s all high cheekbones and eyes the color of deep water.
That he sometimes seems to fold into something impossibly sad, like a sky that keeps a bruise hidden in the clouds, stuns me.
I want in that hungering, utterly human way, to smooth whatever hurt lives behind that sadness.
I want to make him laugh so hard his sternness cracked and let him be small if he needed to be.
This strange, surreal Demon Lord who took me has a way of holding himself that speaks of centuries of seaside magic.
He tries to be so serious, but I see those tiny betrayals of tenderness in him.
The way he leans in when I speak.
The protective set of his shoulders when the crowd cheers.
The unbelievable spark of possessiveness when I smiled at that sailor.
And the almost-childlike relief in his eyes when I met him halfway on that toast.
Those things make me ache with a strange, new affection.
I wonder what he’s like without all that armor—not the literal kind, but the practiced distance he presents to the world—and the idea felt like sacrilege and mercy at once.
When the priestess finishes, Kael’s hand closes briefly over mine. The runes etched into his skin glow, and I feel heat radiating from them.
His hand tightens briefly.
It’s casual, but it anchors me in a way that makes the rest of the world blur.
Around us, drums and flutes fill the air with celebration, but under the music there is another sound I can nearly hear.
It’s the quiet, steady thrum that seems to bind him to me.
Amber says it’s like that between true mates. Something she calls the zareth.
I need to ask him about it, and I will. When it seems like the right time.
I mean, for all I know, it might only be my imagination.
We step off the path and onto the slick black rocks, the ones warmed by sun and pounded by spray, and the handlers are waiting—two elders with hands like driftwood and eyes the color of storm glass.
Below them, the water is a moving mirror, and where it trembles the surface breaks into slow, deliberate arcs.
The curved fin whales.
I gasp but feel my lips tilt into an inevitable smile.
Up close, their skins are the color of coins—silver with veins of gold—and when they rise, the whole inlet sings in a low, whale-deep note that makes my teeth hum.
“Lady Phoebe,” one of the handlers says, voice worn soft from years of shouting over surf and wind, and for a stupid, joyous second the title makes me dizzy.
He smiles as if he’s been waiting to see me try something brave.
“They’ll show you everything if you know how to listen.”
I edge closer, heart bumping, and Kael stays a half step back like he’s giving me room to be brave and, also, to make a spectacle of himself by being exactly the domineering Lord he is.
His hand brushes my elbow, and the electricity that shoots through me is embarrassingly loud in my head.
“Are they dangerous?” I ask first, seeing the handlers’ knives and ropes and the way they move with practiced caution.
The older woman—more seaweed braided hair, her sunburnt skin shiny like wet rocks—laughs.
“Only if you make them so. They are gentle in their need. They eat big fish, crusted prawns when the season calls, and the youngsters like the tender belly meat we throw them. You never throw into the blowhole—always beside the head, with a little bow. Show respect and they answer.”
“How do they sleep?”
I ask, suddenly curious about everything—the way they breathe, the way they tilt in the water.
“They rest in slow drift,” the man says, tilting his head to show me the eddies near the kelp beds.
“Not deep sleep like you think. They surface, hang in the current in pods, half-dreaming with one eye on the world. They sing to each other while they sleep. That song you feel in your ribs? That’s the sleep sung. It keeps the pod together.”
He points, and my gaze drops beneath the surface.
There—shadowed like a moving island—are two larger backs close together, and a smaller shape riding between them, flipping in a clumsy, joyful way.
A calf.
It rolls onto its side and splashes, sending a shower of glitter into the air.
My breath stops.
The handlers exchange a look that is all soft pride.
“They mate for life,” the older woman says, watching me watch the family.
“Pairs stay together. They guard their young with a patience that makes heroes of us all. Here—” she hands me a fish from the basket, wrapped in kelp to keep my hands from slipping. “When you feed, you do it like this. Toss gently, step back, bow. Never touch the mouth.”
My fingers tremble when I take the fish. It smells of sea and butter and something bright I don’t know the name for yet.
“I shouldn’t be so nervous, I mean I’ve done the Earth version of this for years,” I murmur.
“You can do it, Telya. Nice and slow,” Kael says from behind me.
His eyes narrow, careful, protective, but he doesn’t move to stop me or to take over.
He watches me as if I am the rare thing he has discovered—equal parts treasure and tentative miracle. And I can only hope I’m reading that right.
I kneel at the rock’s edge, more reverent than I have any right to be, and follow the handler’s slow, patient rhythm.
Toss. Step back. Bow.
The whale lifts like a cathedral, mouth opening in an almost-smile.
Its breath fogs the air, and when it takes the fish, the sound is a low, contented inhalation that makes tears prick the back of my eyes.
“Do they remember people?” I ask after wiping my palms on my skirt because my fingers feel ridiculous and sacred all at once.
“They remember kindness,” the man says. “And names tied to songs. You gave them a name today by your hands, Lady Phoebe.”
He bows to me with a little grin.
“They will follow you for a season, if you want them to.”
I look up at Kael and see something in his face I’ve been trying to name—fierceness threaded with awe, like a man who has kept storms in bottles and still discovers new kinds of wonder.
I realize, with a ridiculous, overwhelming joy, that the thing I want more than anything is to know how to belong here.
To the whales.
To the shore.
To the strange, tragic, beautiful Demon who stands with his hands folded and lets me learn.
When I slide my hand along the wet, leathery snout the whale nudges me gently, like a dog asking for a belly rub. Its skin is cool and absurdly soft.
The calf chirps beneath the surface as if cheering me on. Around us the tide holds—patient, approving—and for a beat I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I have to wonder, is Nightfall supposed to fit me this fast?
Like a coat I didn’t know I owned.
Part of me is giddy, like I’ve slipped into the best dream of my life. The other part sits cold and practical in my chest, ticking off reasons this could all be snatched away.
It feels unbearably right and impossibly fragile at the same time, and I keep waiting for the moment I’ll wake up back in Jersey under the fluorescent lights of the aquarium and realize it was only a beautiful mistake.
All I can do is beg whoever is listening, if this is a dream, then let me sleep.