“It wasn’t meant to be.”
She pressed her palm to the surface; the sea sank under her touch like skin indenting under a thumb. The Black Tide Moon—new, starless, an ink-dark disc overhead—hung suspended above us as if waiting for permission to fall.
I didn’t know how she called it so quickly, only that it was not there, and then all I could see was.
Some in London whispered that there was such a thing as witches that danced naked under moons and called upon the devil. I didn’t know if they existed, but I did know that whatever Morwenna was, she was the same.
“Repeat after me,” Morwenna said.
An icy tendril of fear ran through me, and here, alone in the sea with a terrifying woman, I said what I’d been too afraid to say before.
“I’m scared,” I said.
Morwenna raised a single eyebrow. “Then you are not as stupid as you seem.”
As if that was all there was left to say, she ignored me and hung her head back, calling to a moon that was impossibly dark.
She whispered words that felt older than salt. Older than the moon. Words that were not spoken so much as remembered by something inside me.
My throat formed them before my mind understood them. Like everything she’d said about being the daughter of the sea and chosen by a Norse goddess was true.
The tide surged.
The moon shuddered.
And the ocean tore open.
Water swallowed me whole. I did not flail—Morwenna had been right. I was not drowning. I was being…claimed. Pulled through a seam in the world, through a pressure that felt like a heartbeat against my bones. Light expanded behind my eyelids in colors no surface-born eye should see.
When my feet touched solid ground, I gasped.
Atlantis.
It was not a city—it was a memory of one. A cathedral built of light and pressure and silence. Stained glass dressed the cathedral that was covered in stained glass, showing creatures I’d never heard of. For a moment, I spared a thought for how much Dilly would have loved to see this. If I were a better artist and if I were sure the ocean wouldn’t spit me back out any second, I would have rendered it for her.
Towering spires of coral-glass spiraled upward into a sky that was not sky at all, but a shimmering dome of black water curving above, held back by nothing except forgotten magic.
Schools of silver fish drifted through walls as though they were simply passing through light. Statues taller than ships lined the bright pink pavement leading into the cathedral. Merfolk, sea serpents, and the first humans who dared to worship the deep all stared at me as if passing judgment on whether or not I was worthy to be here. Everything glowed faintly, like starbreath caught underwater.
I didn’t know if I deserved anything, but I did know that Edmonds and his fast spent many years trying to find someonelike me to stand here. Now that I was here, I would not turn back.
So I stepped into the Cathedral that showed not one sign of aging. It was perfectly preserved, waiting. I followed the path into the open archway that was midnight black. It required a leap of faith to step into it, but more than that, I was desperate and too stubborn to turn back.
I took the next step, and it was like all the air was ripped from my lungs as my body hung suspended between time and space. Just as quickly as it came, I was released onto a floor of sea shells and older, more ancient things. Perhaps they were the ancestors of the shells we knew, but no longer existed.
The cathedral spanned higher than I could count and was entirely empty except for the stained glass and, what seemed unlikely, twenty feet in front of me.
At the center, a dark well opened into forever.
The Abyssal Conch rested at its edge.
A single shell, enormous, spiraling inward into shadow so deep it felt alive.
It hummed—not sound, not language, but whispers. Millions of them. The secrets of the drowned. The promises of the sea. The histories that had been stripped from the world.
I didn’t need to touch it to know that it was a power too great for any one person. Giving it to Edmonds would be a mistake. This knowledge, this thing–it was best left untouched. Yet the serpent on my arm burned, and I knew it was not only my life that lay in jeopardy. Bash would not survive my loss, and I wasn’t sure my family could either. So I would be selfish, and I would choose me and mine once more.
My breath thinned.
