“I don’t need the Artifact whole,” I said, forcing the tremor from my voice. Both men turned to me, storm and sun colliding in their eyes. “The two shards I carried might be enough." I swallowed, the memory bitter. “But when they captured me, one of the poachers took the satchel. They laughed at the shards—called them worthless—and tossed them overboard.” My hands curled into fists, nails biting into the burns at my wrists. “Somewhere near the Veil—where it used to be.”
The weight of it settled heavy and merciless. The Veil was gone. The water would be swarming. And the only pieces of myself that might save Thalassia lay lost in the deep. “We need to go back for them,” I said.
“If we get close enough to where the Veil stood,” I continued, voice rough but steady. “ I can go into the ocean and search.”
Alaric’s head snapped toward me, storm-gray eyes blazing. “No. Absolutely not.”
Veyrion shifted, eyes narrowing as he cut across Alaric’s fury. “If she says she can, she can.”
Alaric rounded on him, anger crackling across his face. “And you’d throw her straight into the jaws of death. Do you care for her—or just the power she carries?”
Veyrion didn’t flinch. His frigid stare burned, steady as a glacier. “I could ask you the same.”
The words struck harder than steel. Alaric stiffened, jaw flexing, the storm in his eyes darkening.
I pushed myself to my feet, desperate to stand between them—to prove I wasn’t fragile, wasn’t something to be argued over. That I could choose.
My knees buckled. The world tilted. Black crept in at the edges of my vision, and I hit the deck hard. Pain flared at my wrists. Hunger hollowed me out. Thirst scraped my throat raw. I hated it—hated that weakness had stolen my legs, hated that it handed them proof I never wanted to give.
Alaric was on me instantly, crouched low, a storm blazing in his eyes. “Look at you,” he growled. “You can’t even stand. And you’d dive back into waters crawling with poachers? One round wasn’t enough?”
The words cut because they weren’t wrong. But it wasn’t truth he was pressing into me. It was fear. His fury didn’t frighten me—it lit something hotter. Every order, every attempt to cage me in the name of protection, only made me want to push harder.To prove him wrong. I had always resented him for that. For thinking safety meant smallness.
Before I could snap back, Veyrion’s voice cracked across the deck. “Water. Food. A healer’s kit.”
His men moved at once.
He knelt beside me, calm and steady. He didn’t look away from the burns. Didn’t soften his eyes at the hollow carved into me. “Strength will return,” he said quietly. “Pain is a passing tide. But the fire that would face death for the helpless—that is what they tried to break. Hold to it. Take back what they stole. Take yourself back.”
When the healer’s kit arrived, I finally looked—really looked—at my wrists. The sight hollowed me. The skin was blackened, split, eaten through in places. Raw flesh glowed red against charred edges. The burns crawled up my forearms like rust through iron—too deep, too jagged to ever be mistaken for anything else. Every movement sent a sick pulse of fire through me.
And it wasn’t just my wrists. Bruises mapped my ribs. My legs bore the mottled marks of boots and fists. My back stung where nets had bitten in. Even my face throbbed—cheekbone swollen, lip split. I hated that my body had become evidence. That it spoke before I could.
Veyrion glanced up, eyes unreadable. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
Shadeau rose unbidden—the fear, the fury, the silver salt burns screaming at my wrists.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I still don’t.”
“And yet,” he said mildly. Then, quieter, “You don’t pull away like you used to.”
His hand steadied my arm. The bruises throbbed—not from his touch, but from the memory of theirs. The poachers.
He looked at me steadily. “You must care for yourself first, Neri,” he said, certainty steady as the tide. “Only then can you protect others.”
Part of me wanted to rest. Let someone else carry the fight. Another part—darker, angrier—hated that I was this broken. That he saw someone who needed tending instead of someone who could save.
As his hand lingered at my wrist, I caught the flicker in Alaric’s expression. Discomfort. Anger. The sight of me like this undid him—jaw locked, fists clenched, shoulders trembling with restraint.
I couldn’t tell if he hated seeing me weak—
Or if he hated that it was Veyrion’s hands, not his.
55
