I pressed my forehead to hers, still shaking with laughter that hurt as much as it healed. “Stars, Maleia… I missed you.”
Her grip tightened. “I missed you too. It was so quiet without you. No one to sneak into the kitchens with. No one to dare me to eat sea urchin spines—”
“Youdared me,” I sputtered, laughing through the ache.
She grinned, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. “And you actually did it.”
The current shifted—colder, heavier.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” she whispered, pulling me back into her arms. I held her like I could promise that.
The kelp bowed low, the garden itself were bracing, blossoms folding faintly. Beneath it—beneath the hush—there was something else. A pressure in the water, subtle as a hand at the back of my neck.
“Nerina?” Meris emerged from the shadows, crown gleaming, divine glow gilding the coral in false light. Her voice swept through the gardens, commanding and terrible. Before I could move, she surged forward and pulled me into her arms. I froze—then I shoved her back. Hard. The water rippled outward from the force of it, petals scattering like startled birds. Hurt flashed across her face before she masked it. “You can’t be here,” she said. “It isn’t safe.”
“I know,” I snapped, the words trembling with everything. “The poachers—”
“It isn’t the poachers I fear.” Her tone sharpened, urgency cracking through her composure. “Iftheyfind you, they will make certain you never leave again.”
Maleia’s hand tightened around mine, trembling. “Mother—”
“I know what they did to me." My voice cut through hers, jagged as broken coral. "What you let them do.”
My crescent mark seared—heat blooming beneath my skin. Threads of silver and violet bled from it, pulsing with my heartbeat, answering my fury, answering my grief.
“Nerina—”
“Don’t.” The word snapped like a whip. The water shuddered with it. “Don’t lie to me. I know about the Tidekeepers. I know about you.”
The glow beneath my skin flared brighter. My mark burned like fire underwater.
“You don’t understand—”
“No,” I hissed, tears turning hot in the current. “You don’t understand.”
Meris’s light surged—goddess rising in her like a wave. Maleia flinched at the clash of our glow. Maleia grabbed my wrist. Her eyes were wide with fear and pleading. “Nerina… please. Just hear her. Let her speak. Please—for me.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
The ache in my chest deepened. I wanted to keep screaming. To let the fury devour everything. But this was Maleia—my sister. My only tether left. Slowly, I forced the fire down. The mark still pulsed, restless beneath my skin, but my voice softened—only a fraction.
“Then she tells me everything,” I said. “No riddles. No half-truths. Everything.”
Meris wavered. The edges of her divine glow dimmed, like a lantern guttering in the deep. She exhaled. “Then listen, darling,” she said at last, and her voice trembled. “And I will tell you everything.”
She looked past me, toward the shimmering heart of Thalassia. I listened. I didn’t lean in the way I used to. “On the night of the Eclipscera Convergence,” Meris began, “a celestial alignment so rare it has occurred only twice since the ocean’s first stirring—stars and moons and suns drawn into one terrible line. The bones of the cosmos locked into place. A night of prophecy. A night of immense power.”
A shiver slid down my spine. I had always known I was different—but hearing it spoken aloud, my existence reduced to a cosmic event, made me feel alien in my own skin.
She met my eyes, glassy with memory. “I found you. A newborn, alone—wrapped in seaweed and starlight. No mother. No pod. Only you, wailing with a voice that rippled through the depths.”
My stomach twisted.Found.
“I should have reported it,” she whispered. “Should have called on the other Gods. Instead, I made a choice. I took you into my arms and called you my daughter.”
My head shook once, hard—like refusal will scatter the truth.
“You were different from the beginning,” Meris continued. “Brilliant. Strange. Power crackled in your bones before you spoke your first word. I feared what it meant—for you, for the balance of our world. I sought the Tidekeepers’ counsel.”
Her voice tightened.
