"Are you alright?" Kaelan asked, his voice strange and distorted underwater but still unmistakably his, still carrying that same rough tenderness that made my heart ache.
"Yes," I said, and my own voice sounded foreign to my ears, bubbling up from somewhere deep in my transformed lungs. "I'm alright. I'm better than alright." He smiled, a real smile, one that softened the hard lines of his face and made him look almost young despite the centuries behind his eyes.
"Good," he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead, his lips warm against my skin even in the cold water. "Hold on tight. We're going deep." I tightened my arms around his neck, and then we were moving faster than I'd ever moved before. The water rushed past us, cold and dark and full of pressure that built in my ears and behind my eyes. I could feel the weight of it, the ocean pressing down from above, the depths opening up below.
Down and down and down. I lost track of time. Lost track of distance. There was only the darkness and the cold and the steady beat of Kaelan's heart against my cheek, the only warm thing in a world that had gone cold and strange.
Then, gradually, shapes began to emerge from the darkness. A reef appeared first, massive and sprawling, covered in coral that glowed with soft bioluminescence. Fish darted between the formations, their scales catching the faint light. Anemones swayed in the current, their tendrils reaching toward us like curious fingers.
It was what lay beyond the reef that made me catch my breath.
A ship.
Not like the one I'd just escaped, this one was ancient, its hull encrusted with centuries of sea life, its masts long since rotted away. It listed to one side, half-buried in the sandy ocean floor, its deck covered in coral and kelp that swayed in the current like a garden.
"What is that?" I breathed, my eyes widening as we drew closer, taking in the sheer size of it.
"Home," Thane said softly, swimming up beside us, his golden-brown eyes shining with something that looked like pride, his honey-colored hair floating around his face. "Our home. Your home now."
We swam toward the wreck, and I forgot how to breathe.
It was beautiful in a haunting, melancholy way. The ship must have been magnificent once—a galleon, maybe, or some other vessel from an age long past. Now it was a skeleton draped in sea life, its bones transformed into something new. Coral crusted the railings. Fish swam through the empty windows. The figurehead at the bow—a woman with flowing hair—was barely visible beneath layers of barnacles and growth.
"This is where you live?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, afraid that speaking too loudly might shatter the spell.
"This is where we've existed," Kaelan corrected, his voice soft and serious, his dark eyes fixed on my face like he was memorizing my reaction. "Where we've waited. It wasn't home until now."
"Until you," Riven added, swimming closer, his golden eyes intense, his scarred face softer than I'd ever seen it. "You make it home."
They guided me around the ship, showing me the territory they'd claimed. The reef stretched out in all directions, teeming with life, a natural barrier that hid the wreck from casual observers. Schools of colorful fish parted around us as weswam. An octopus watched from a crevice, its eyes ancient and knowing.
"The ship is just the entrance," Vale explained, his silver hair streaming behind him as he led us toward a dark opening in the hull. "The real home is below."
We swam through the gap, what must have once been a cargo hold—and down into darkness. The passage narrowed, then widened again, twisting through rock and coral and the buried bones of the ship. I lost track of the turns, trusting them to guide me, feeling Kaelan's arms strong and sure around me.
Then, suddenly, we were rising. My head broke the surface, and I gasped, not because I needed air, the potion was still working, but because I hadn't expected to find any.
We were in a cavern.
The ceiling arched high above us, the rock studded with crystals that caught the faint bioluminescent light filtering up from below. The walls were smooth, worn by centuries of water, and the space was larger than I'd expected. It was what filled the cavern that made my breath catch.
Treasures. Everywhere I looked, there were treasures.
Chests overflowing with gold coins and jewels, their surfaces dulled by age but still glinting in the soft light. Bolts of fabric, silk and velvet and lace, stacked carefully on rocky ledges above the waterline. Books, their leather covers worn but intact, arranged in neat rows. Bottles of wine, their labels faded but their seals unbroken. Weapons, swords and daggers and things I had no names for, hanging from hooks driven into the rock.
In the center of it all, built on a raised platform of stone that kept it well above the water, was a bed. Not a nest of kelp or sea silk, but an actual bed, a massive four-poster frame salvaged from some long-dead ship, piled high with blankets and furs and pillows that looked impossibly soft.
"We made it for you," Thane said quietly, his voice thick with emotion, tears already gathering in his golden-brown eyes as he pulled himself out of the water onto the rocky ledge. His tail began to shift, scales receding, fins splitting and reshaping until legs emerged—long and muscular and very, very human. "We didn't know what you'd need, what you'd want, but we tried to think of everything."
I stared at him. At all of them, as they pulled themselves from the water one by one, their tails transforming into legs, their bodies adjusting to the air. I had been too worried about Cort and not paying attention to my surroundings to notice until now.
"You can..." I started, then stopped, not sure how to finish.
"Walk?" Riven supplied, a hint of dark amusement in his rough voice as he hauled himself onto the ledge, his tail splitting into legs covered in scars that matched the ones on his face. "When we have to. It's useful for survival, if humans spot us in the water, we can surface, shift, and pass as one of them long enough to escape." He grimaced, rolling his shoulders like the human form didn't quite fit right. "It's also how we got the gifts that we left you on your ship. Plus the dresses, the jewels, the soaps. Can't exactly swim into a port market with a tail."
"You went on land?" I asked, trying to imagine these massive, ancient predators walking among humans, browsing market stalls. "For me?"
"We take turns," Vale said, pulling himself up gracefully, his tail shifting into long, elegant legs that somehow still managed to look otherworldly. "Quick trips to port towns when ships dock. We don't like it—the air feels wrong, the ground is too solid, and being away from the water for too long makes us..." he paused, searching for the word.
