“They told me what I was too afraid to admit: that you were too powerful. Too unpredictable. A danger to yourself—and everyone around you.”
Meris pressed a hand to her chest, as if the weight still lived there. “They convinced me the only way to protect you—and the realm—was to dampen your magic… or end your life.”
My breath hitched.
“And so,” she whispered, “we removed the Crescent. The source of your magic. We couldn’t risk what you would become.”
The ache in my ribs worsened with every word.
“We tried to raise you like the others,” Meris said, softer now. “But, even without the crescent, every year you grew stronger. Louder. Brighter. The crescent magic was only a fraction of you. The Tidekeepers feared a surge.”
Her shoulders dipped slightly before she spoke. “So, they created the Celestial Choir,” she said. “A rite meant to dampen your power further.”
My chest burned. I remembered the amphitheater. The cold stone. The voices twining together in hollow reverence. The way I’d believed I belonged.
“They assured me you would never notice,” Meris whispered. “And if you did… that one day you would understand.”
“But I wasn’t the only one in the Choir,” I said, clinging to the last shred of hope. “There were others. We sang together.”
Meris’s expression crumpled. “No, darling. The others were for show. A performance. Their presence was to keep you from asking questions—to make you believe it was normal. That you were like everyone else.”
“The magic,” I said slowly, voice barely louder than tide against stone. “The power the Choir took from me—where did it go?”
Meris’s hands stilled. Just for a moment. Her shoulders slumped. “The Veil.”
My heart lurched. The water went still. No current. No hum. Even the reef-song beyond the gardens seemed to falter.
The Veil—the shimmering border that had haunted my dreams, the wall I’d pressed my palms against, the thing I’d been told protected us—
“It was never meant to keep others out,” Meris whispered. “It was meant to keep you in. It was forged and maintained using your magic. And when you left… the balance began to break.”
The world tipped. I couldn’t tell if I was sinking or rising. The Veil wasn’t a shield. It was my prison. My own power staring back at me all along. Fury roared in my ears like a riptide—but beneath it was something worse. Grief. Grief for the girl who had begged to belong while wearing chains she helped sing into place. My hands were clenched. My mark blazed—light splitting out in jagged cracks like a heart unraveling. Strands of my hair lifted, caught in an unseen current. The garden bowed around me, blossoms trembling, kelp bending as the sea itself mourned with me.
“Do you know,” I asked, voice raw, “Where I’ve been these past months? What I have been through?”
She nodded once. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Nothing happens in this ocean without my knowing.”
She reached toward me—then stopped, as if touch might shatter what little was left. “The truth,” she whispered, “is that you were safer out there than you are here.”
She knew. While I clawed answers from shadows, I nearly lost myself to poachers and pirates and storms—she had known.
My throat burned. “Then tell me,” I demanded. “Tell me about him.”
Meris’s expression flickered—confusion, then sorrow.
“You cursed him,” I said, the fury breaking loose at last. “The chains that bind him to the sea. The hunger in his veins. That was you.”
Meris’s mouth tightened, restraint pulling it thin. “It was a mercy.”
I shook, salt stinging my eyes. “You damned him. You made him a monster.”
“He made himself one,” she snapped—light flaring like a storm surge. But the edge of her voice cracked on something softer. “Do not be deceived, Nerina,” she said, her eyes darkened. “He was not cursed by chance.”
Her glow shifted. “The night of the Convergence—before I found you—”
She exhaled slowly. “Alaric and his men plundered the Sanctuary of Milos,” Meris said. “They cut down its guardians. Stole relics consecrated to the ocean. Spilled blood into sacred waters. He desecrated what was meant to be eternal.”
Her light swelled, tidal and terrible. “And he sought more,” she said. “He dared to strike deeper—into the Trench itself—hungry for what no mortal was meant to touch.”
