The Black Marrow
The water glowed milk-pale and warm, moonlight caught beneath the surface. Violet-and-gold petals drifted lazily, lemon slices spinning slow circles, their clean bite flaring whenever they brushed my skin.
The tub’s oak sides curved close, dark and damp beneath my arms. Above, an iron chandelier swayed with the ship’s roll, candles burning low, wax slipping down in molten threads. Each tilt of the deck sent petals skimming over me—soft as fingertips, coaxing me to stay.
I sank deeper into the basin Garen built after the drying-out incident—blackened iron, salvaged ship wood, a brass rim dulled green with age. Fire-warmed seawater curled around my tail, drawing out shifting hues of indigo and silver, deepening to amethyst when the light caught just right. It was a form made for water—fluid, weightless, whole.
I’d nearly forgotten this body.
Legs were stiff, borrowed things. But here, submerged and true, I was closer to myself than I’d been in days.
Garen had brought me a fresh set of clothes earlier—folded with a precision that spoke more of habit than courtesy, still carrying the faint warmth of the galley.
There was something anchoring about Garen, something that reminded me of the seabed far below the reach of storms—unyielding, unseen, always there. He rarely spoke, but his presence was a steady weight in the room. He didn’t watch me like I might break, or like I was some unnatural thing. Just… a crewmate. And for someone like me, that was its own rare kindness.
I shut my eyes, and the creak of the Black Marrow’stimbers faded beneath the slow, swelling pulse of memory.
Outside, the waves whispered against the hull, a low rhythm sinking into bone and blood.
Thalassia bloomed behind my eyelids—not the cold ache of leaving it, but the way it looked in its most impossible moments.I could almost feel the gentle current carrying the scent of salt-sweet kelp and the faint tang of reef flowers—the ones Maelia used to weave into my hair before the Celestial Choir.
Maelia.
Her face rose unbidden—cerulean eyes, always steady when mine wavered. She’d been the one who reminded me to breathe before every performance, who pressed my hand when the weight of expectation threatened to pull me under. I wondered how she thought of me now. If they’d gotten to her—the Tidekeepers—thinking of her sister as a traitor… or worse, never thinking of me at all. I wondered what she would see if she knew what I’d done.
I told myself I’d left to save myself, to find answers, but the truth cut deeper: I’d left her behind for my own selfish reasons.
And still—Stars help me—part of me ached to be there again. To feel the city’s cool waters spill across my skin. To hear Maelia’s laughter ripple through the water like the distant chime of shells. Thalassia had been the only home I’d ever known, and yet it had never felt like mine.
Even in its splendor, it had always felt… distant. Like I was swimming in a dream I wasn’t meant to be part of. I could admire its beauty, even love pieces of it, but I’d never belonged to it. Not really.
Leaving hadn’t been easy, but it had been necessary.
The Veil had been no simple border of sea and sky—it had been a living thing. It closed around me like a skin of shadow and weight, pressure winding into my bones until my heartbeat slowed to match its stillness. The water inside it had been stripped of current, stripped of warmth. It tasted of cold iron and ozone, looking like it had been pulled from a place where sunlight had never touched. It shimmered in violets, blues,and silvers—cold as starlight and just as distant. And when I emerged on the other side, I carried that chill in me for days, like frost clinging to the inside of my veins.
I’d felt that same hollow after Shadeau—like something had passed through me and taken more than it left behind.
And now, we were headed back.
The Black Marrow was still far from Thalassia and the Veil, but the water here had already begun to change—thin and cold, a restless undercurrent brushing at my thoughts.
Alaric hadn’t told me where we were going. I’d overheard it in murmurs.
The Veil.
The Eye of Nareth was in my possession now. That was something. But Alaric didn’t know, and I hadn’t found the words to tell him.
I’d thought about it—more than once—but every time I imagined speaking, the words tangled in my throat. Maybe because he hadn’t tried to talk to me either. He’d been angry; I understood that. It didn’t make the silence hurt any less.
Especially not with the memory of his mouth still lingering—warm, steady, certain. We crossed a line in Shadeau, and now neither of us seemed willing to name it. Something that had rooted itself beneath my skin and refused to let go.
I forced my focus back to the Eye of Nareth, grounding myself in something solid and real.
The Eye didn’t hum with power. It didn’t glow or whisper or thrum in my hands. It just… sat there. A smooth, unremarkable piece of obsidian, its black surface swallowing the light. If I hadn’t risked so much to get it, I’d almost think it was nothing at all.
Why was something so ordinary worth so much? Why did Séraphine warn me away from it with that knowing smile—You ain’t ready t’see what it’ll show ya—could the very sight of what it held unmake me?
I didn’t know how to use it. Didn’t know if I wanted to. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the possibility that it might finally answer the questions that had been chewing at me my entire life—who I was, what I was… why I was.
