They pressed against my forehead. Light flared violently, heat spiking so fast it stole the air from my lungs. My tiny bodyarched. My cry ripped out of me, raw and desperate. Pain exploded—white, endless, consuming. There was no word for it, no thought—only the sensation of being split open at the center of myself. I screamed until my throat burned, until my voice broke into hoarse, gasping sobs. The light didn’t spill. Something tore from my brow. A small gem.
The space it left behindached—raw and hollow and wrong. My cries thinned, turning weak and broken as the glow at my brow dimmed to nothing. The wound sealed. The pain lingered.
I tried to move. Tried to claw. Tried to tear their fingers from my face.
I couldn’t. I could onlyfeel.
A sound tore out of me—half scream, half sob—as the vision crushed back into my chest.
“The Tidekeepers,” I whispered.
The name tasted like iron. My knees buckled. Ice flooded my veins.
Not protectors.
Grief and rage collided so violently in my chest I thought my heart would rupture. My hands shook uncontrollably. My throat burned. Heat flared at my brow—phantom pain, phantom pressure.
And—
My mother.
Meris.
Her arms wrapped around my tiny, shaking body. Her hands cradled my head—right where it hurt most. Her voice hummed low and steady, a lullaby meant to soothe, meant to quiet.
“Shh,” she whispered. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
She rocked me as I screamed. She whispered comfort—while they ripped the crescent from my skin. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t stop them. She held mestill.
The realization hit harder than the pain ever had.
“Sheletthem do this to me,” I whispered.
The words barely made it past my throat. I pressed a shaking hand to my mouth, trying to hold back the sob clawing up my throat.
My fingers slid beneath the folds of my gown and closed around the cold, jagged edges hidden there.
The quartz shards.
The moment I drew them free, the chamber changed—currents tightening, light warping, the water along the walls pulling inward as if the sea itself had gone still.
I didn’t speak.
I opened my palm, where the two quartz pieces lay.
She did not ask where I found them.
She did not ask how many.
Her eyes lifted—to my brow.
She reached out, hesitated, then took the shards from my hand.
The fragments flared at her touch—fractured light bleeding between her fingers, pulsing in time with my heart. She closed her eyes. “This is what was taken from you,” she said quietly.
The chamber tilted.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
