“A threat,” hissed a third.
Their robes drifted like kelp in a storm as they gathered around Meris, whispering rapidly—too low to hear clearly.
But I heard enough. “She is unstable.”
“What if it fractures the Veil?”
“What if—”
Meris raised a hand, silencing them. As she always did.
Her eyes tracked every movement I made. Measuring. No doubt weighing whether my existence tipped their scales too far.
Maleia’s voice broke through the hush. “You’re bleeding,” she whispered, horror threading her voice as she wiped blood from beneath my nose.
She glanced at Meris, then at the Tidekeepers clustered too tightly together. “You need to get out of here before—”
Before she could finish, a pod mother pulled her child closer, fins flaring as she guided them past me. The child stared over her shoulder, wide-eyed and silent.
“Nerina?” Maleia breathed.
I didn’t answer.
Part of me was afraid too. And part of me… wasn’t.
Part of me wondered what would have happened—what that had been, what it might have become—if the Tidekeepers hadn’t crushed it.
My limbs felt slow, my thoughts dulled at the edges. Nothing alarming. Just… distant. As though part of me had been set somewhere I could no longer reach.
“Did you see—”
“The stars—did you see the stars?”
“She’s not one of us.”
“What was that?”
“She’s dangerous.”
Dangerous.
The word tasted familiar on my tongue. I’d heard it many times before. But tonight, for the first time, something in me didn’t recoil from it.
Something in me leaned toward it.
“Nerina.”
I froze.
Meris’s voice was soft—almost gentle—but the chamber stilled at once. Her stare locked onto me. “You will report to the Tidekeepers at first light.”
Protection was never gentle. It was careful. Measured. Necessary. The Tidekeepers bore the weight of the entire ocean. If they were cautious with me, it was because they had to be. They never impulsively confronted power like mine—not without consequences they could not yet calculate. Still, being managed so precisely left me strangely unmoored. They always spoke of balance, but none of them looked at me when they said it.
My mark throbbed in answer—heat flaring across my brow—and I left before she could change her mind.
The ocean beyond the Court felt altered—more aware. Currents curled toward me, brushing my skin with curiosity as I swamfrom the towers and closer to the Sanctuary, and with every stroke, I felt weaker. My magic stirred, but sluggishly, and I told myself it was nothing more than a lack of discipline. That I was simply less… balanced than the others.
I should have been terrified. Instead, I trembled with something else entirely.
