Maybe she never had.
Snap out of it, Desi.She pressed her palms to her eyes.Daria.Focus on saving Daria.That was all that mattered.
Across the room, the Ring sat inside the collection bottle on her desk, still encrusted with coral and barnacles, yet faintly gleaming beneath the glass.It seemed to pulse, beckoning her, daring her to touch it, to dive again, to return to him.
Her throat tightened.Caleb.
But she couldn’t.Not now.She had to give it to Briar.It was the only way to save her sister.And once she did, she would lose Caleb forever.
Desi sat upright, heart pounding.Was she imagining it, or was the Ring truly glowing?
She crossed the room in a rush, snatched the bottle, and held it to the lamplight.The crusted metal seemed to hum beneath the glass, as if aware of her gaze.It’s real, she thought.It has power.She’d seen that power with her own eyes—power over life, over death, over time itself.
But what did Briar want with it?
Did he know what it could do?
She’d never asked.Never wanted to ask.But now, knowing he was a Montverre, a descendant of the man who had hunted Caleb, dread pooled like cold water in her stomach.
Ethan had sensed it, had warned her about Briar.Ethan, with his quiet faith and steady eyes.The memory of him made her sigh.How she missed him.
Desi moved to the window and looked out over the marina.The sea rocked the boats in a slow, mournful rhythm, their masts creaking in the wind.Thick clouds smothered the moon and stars, cloaking the night in darkness.
Was she about to trade her sister’s life for a tide of destruction she couldn’t even imagine?
She rubbed her temples, her thoughts spinning like storm currents.Everything, everyone, hung in the balance.Decisions that could alter not just lives, but time itself.
Her gaze drifted to her grandfather’s old sea chest in the corner.The journal.Maybe, somehow, it held an answer.
She pulled it out and sat cross-legged on the bed.Her fingers trembled as she opened it and studied the drawing taped to the inside cover, an image of the original journal, a cross imprinted on the leather cover.She flipped to the first page, then the second—the same familiar words.Swallowing hard, she turned another page, hoping—pleading—for more.
Ink shimmered on the next leaf, as though appearing from nowhere.Desi’s breath caught.Words began to form.
I arrived in the midst of another battle, a storm raging above us while cannon fire blasted across the sea.The marquis hunted us, his eye upon the Ring, his guns set to destruction.But there stood the captain, boots braced upon the heaving deck, coat flapping in the wind, a force to be reckoned with—powerful and commanding as he ordered his crew to task.A shot thundered, and once again, his warmth and strength surrounded me, left me breathless.
I was home.His touch, his kiss brought every inch of me back to life as if I’d only just woken from a long sleep.How can I leave him now?
The crew lies stricken by a curse no mortal doctor can break.The trap is set.The marquis’ guns surround us, ready to send us to the depths.Is this to be his fate?And mine as well?
Then…he calls upon Almighty God.No trace of doubt rings in his voice, but faith, fierce and powerful, reaching all the way to Heaven, calling down a promise made…in a name above all names.
The sea itself trembles.The curse shatters.The crew delivered.There is a God, after all.And perhaps… He even hears me.
The Ring is in my palm.TheSentinelbucks and reels beneath me, sails snapping, timbers groaning, cannons thundering.Mighty guns roar through the sky.
He is before me, eyes burning with a love fierce enough to defy heaven itself.A love I never knew existed.One that sacrificed all for another.No one had ever loved me like that.
How could I leave him again?
Tears blurred Desi’s vision.The ink swam before her eyes, and then, impossibly, new words began to form, one by one, faint as breath on glass, written by an invisible hand.She blinked, wiped her face.The lines wavered, shimmered.And vanished.
Gone.
As though the rest of the story had yet to be written.
Or perhaps, this was the end.
The end of his story.
