Because whatever waited inside would be of her choosing.
-Maris-
The ship groaned low as it docked, ropes flung and sails unfurled. Sea spray misted the air like an exhale of tension.
Nerium rose before her like a memory, and yet everything about it felt… off. Too still. Too sharp. Like it was waiting to see what kind of creature stepped off that ship — girl, goddess, or ruin.
She stood there moment longer than necessary, her fingers gripping the salt-stained wood. Behind her, the ship was still alive with activity crew preparing to unload, warriors gathered in small clumps, murmuring about the return.
Alarik was somewhere in the mess, he hadn’t said a word since the moment when she’d left him standing beneath the stars.
To her left, Serenya shifted. “You ready?”
Maris blinked, startled by the warmth in the question.
Serenya wasn’t watching the castle or the crowd or the city blooming before them in sea-kissed cliffs and silver stone.
She was watching her.
“I don’t know,” Maris answered truthfully.
Serenya smiled, one side of her mouth only. “That’s the most honest answer I’ve heard all week.”
Then, with a nod to the gangplank, she added, “Let’s face it together, yeah?”
Maris swallowed thickly and nodded, stepping forward.
Her boots hit wood. Then stone. And suddenly she was walking through the port of Nerium, her feet remembering the way though her heart stumbled. Everything felt closer than before, too many eyes, too many whispers. The glow in her veins had faded, but she could still feel it curled inside her. The Hollow’s gift.
They reached the base of the winding path toward the castle.
Guards bowed. Servants paused. And still, Maris kept walking.
Step by step.
-Alarik-
He hadn’t touched her since the kiss.
Not since her eyes welled with conflict and her spine straightened like steel, and she’d walked away with the kind of grace that made him ache.
But he walked behind her now, silent and steady, not daring to reach for what still lingered on his lips.
The city of Nerium opened around them, its white stone arches, silver-brushed towers, and cliffs that dropped straight into the sea. Familiar, but sharpened by tension. Too many eyes. Too many expectations. Too many truths they had no time left to run from.
He felt it before the words were spoken.
A shift in the air. A tightening in his chest. A pulse of something ancient and warning.
The guard who waited at the bend in the palace path bowed low, his voice quiet but urgent as he leaned toward Alarik.
“Your Majesty… the King of Nythra waits for you.”
Kael here already.
The gods had a wicked sense of timing.
He looked up toward the towering gates of the palace, the high arched entry glowing with morning light and somewhere within it, the shadow of the male who still held Maris’s past.
