The edges matched too perfectly, the shimmer identical. My fingers trembled as I reached for the closest piece. What if they locked together? What if the power we’d been circling was never meant to be divided?
It was a puzzle, shattered across time.
But what was this artifact? What did it do?
The journals and maps gave no answers. Their writing curled across the pages in a strange, serpentine script—even I couldn’t read it. And that was rare. Mermaids were fluent in every language beneath the sea, and most spoken above it, too. A skill born from generations of migration, back when we traveled freely across the oceans—when our tongues had to adapt to every shoreline and creature. Even after those journeys stopped, the practice remained sacred. We were taught every dialect, every variant. But this? This was something older. Or… not of this world at all.
I opened my mouth to speak—but the ship lurched violently. My chair scraped back. Alaric slammed his hands against the desk.
Impact. Then silence. Then chaos.
Above us, the crew began shouting—a rising chorus of panic. The ship moaned like something alive, wood straining and groaning under pressure, sails snapping overhead like thunderclaps. The scent of wet rope and smoke filled the air, thick with tension and brine. Another impact struck, harder this time. I gripped the chair to stay upright.
“That’s not a wave,” I whispered.
Alaric was already at the door. “Stay here.”
“No,” I snapped, already moving past him.
“Nerina—”
“I’m not some fragile little keepsake, you can not just lock me away.”
His jaw tensed. “You nearly died less than a day ago.”
“And yet here I am. You don’t get to order me around.”
“I’m not,” he growled. “I’masking.Stay here. Let me handle it.”
I stared back, defiant. “Let me decide what I can handle.”
His jaw clenched, the muscle ticking in irritation. For a moment, he looked like he might argue—but his fists only tightened at his sides, white-knuckled with the restraint of a man who’d rather yell but knew it wouldn’t sway me.
His eyes locked on mine, fire behind them. “You want to be reckless, fine. But don’t expect me to save you this time."
Whatever waited above deck, I wasn’t meeting it as the girl who hid behind someone else’s blade.
When we reached the deck, the sea wasn’t right. It writhed like a thing possessed, foam boiling in unnatural patterns, its color shifting from obsidian to deep cerulean. Lightning forked through the sky without thunder, illuminating the swells in blinding white flashes.
And then I saw it.
The Leviathan.
I remembered the roar, the eyes, the unnatural weight of it dragging across the current like it knew exactly where to strike.
The crew had barely survived. I had barely survived.
And the worst part—the part I still felt like a bruise behind my ribs—I hadn’t survived because of my strength.
I’d survived because Alaric had thrown himself between me and the monster, teeth bared, blade drawn.
I’d been useless. Defenseless.
Pathetic.
The memory clung to me like kelp, cold and cloying. I’d hated the way I’d felt afterward—small, breakable, like all the power everyone claimed I possessed was nothing more than a myth wearing my skin.
And now here it was again—stronger, bolder, like it had been waiting.
