A shiver ran across my skin. “What reason would it have to surrender the abyssal conch?”
Morwenna met my gaze with frozen fjords and ancient knowledge passing behind her eyes.
“I suppose we will find out,” she said, stepping towards where the ladder was being lowered. “Or we will not.”
And without a godsdamn care in the world, she lowered her gown off her shoulders and let it fall to the deck, not a scrap of clothing covering her. She turned her head to me.
“Well, daughter of the sea, it is time to find out if you are worthy.”
With that, she lowered herself over the ladder and disappeared beneath the twilight moon.
“She’s incredible,” Dilly whispered, already writing down everything she hadn’t been allowed to moments ago.
“Rose,” Bash said, coming up behind me.
“Don’t worry, I don’t intend to go into the sea naked,” I said, turning to face him.
His lips were pressed into a thin line, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “That is low on the list of my concerns at the moment.”
“Really?” Oscar said, coming up beside us. “It was pretty high on mine.”
I shot him a sardonic smile, and even though he tried to play it off, I could see the worry written into the lines under his eyes. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed like all the times before when it had been us against the world.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Twins are meant to stay together, remember?”
He squeezed me back before stepping away. “Don’t do anything more stupid than usual.”
I winked at him, unable to form words because the truth was that I was scared. I didn’t know what the fuck I was getting into, but I did know that we were out of choices now.
So I turned to my husband, and I kissed him, not caring that all eyes were on us. His lips danced with mine in a hard fight of each trying to claim the other before fate or the sea did. When we finally broke the kiss, we were both breathless. There was nothing left to say, so I backed away slowly, holding his sea fire gaze until I couldn’t hide from what came next any longer.
So it was that I followed Morwenna into the sea where a monster older than the stories and writings of men lurked below.
Chapter thirty-seven
The Black Tide Moon
Rose
The Black Tide Moon paints the sea in ink, and in that ink, the monsters write.
— From The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
Morwenna slipped beneath the waves as if the sea had made her for this moment alone.
Moonlight—thin, trembling, silver-blue—struck her bare back as she waded deeper into the Atlantic. Her hair streamed behind her like black kelp, and for the first time since I had met her, she looked utterly at peace.
I followed because she said I must. Because there was no one else who knew how to do what I needed to do.
Cold water clasped my waist. My ribs. My throat.
The ocean breathed around me—a slow, indifferent exhale.
“Do not fight it,” Morwenna murmured, turning her sharp, ancient profile toward me. “A daughter of the sea never drowns. She is only ever reminded.”
For a second, I was reminded of the Gharaq clan, who we’d gone to for an elixir to brave the glass sea. Of a girl who looked like me, swallowed by the sea.
“That’s not comforting,” I choked.
