For a heartbeat, I saw flashes—visions that still clawed at the edges of sleep: the cold disappointment in the Tidekeepers’ eyes, their smiles like blades sheathed in silk. My mother’s voice, honeyed and hollow, laced with secrets I hadn’t yet unraveled.
I had been adorned. Paraded. Silenced. Controlled.
A scream swallowed by ceremony. A silence that answered every question with another leash.
I was never cherished—only used. Never seen—only shaped.
The ocean hadn’t cradled me. It had caged me. It sang lullabies to keep me docile, to keep me drowning in a life that was never mine to begin with.
"You think I was safe beneath the sea? Sheltered?" I whispered, the words catching on the edge of something buried deep in my chest.
My crescent mark pulsed, faint but fierce, reacting to the storm inside me. I stepped closer, voice trembling with fury and something more fragile. "You have no idea what it was like. You don’t know what it’s like to be told who to be, what to feel, what to become. To be watched me with cold calculation."
I swallowed hard, pain threading through every word.
"I’m asking is that you trust me. Stars help me—I ambeggingyou to do that."
Alaric's expression cracked.
"You think I don't understand? That I haven't been branded, broken, bound to the sea like a dog on a chain? I bled for freedom, Nerina. And just when I thought I’d clawed back a piece of it, you go and throw yourself to the wolves for a riddle."
His voice trembled—not with fear, but with the kind of pain that came from helplessness. "You aren’t the only one the ocean tried to shape into something else."
It was like a switch flipped in his eyes—pain swallowed by fury, storm clouds eating the moon. He stepped closer, eyes burning. "You’re the spoiled daughter of a sea goddess—raised in a palace, taught songs instead of survival. You can’t fight. You don’t even know the full reach of your own magic. And now you want to gamble your life and all of ours like it means nothing? This—this will not end well."
The words left his mouth—and something in his face tightened, like he’d just bitten down on a blade.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
He’d flung every fear I hadn’t dared name right in my face—and Stars, it burned.
But I wouldn’t let him see me break. Not now.
23
Alaric
The Black Marrow
I’d seen recklessness before. I’d lived recklessly. Hell, I’d built half my reputation on it. But nothing—nothing—compared to the kind of recklessness that came wrapped in a hypnotizing smile and a stubborn streak made of starfire.
No plan. No strategy. Just blind, infuriating stupidity.
And now we were sailing straight into hell because she couldn’t sit still with her questions. Because her desperation outweighed her reason. It wasn’t bravery—it was madness. And we were all going to pay for it.
And she didn’t know where it led. Not really. If she’d ever seen Shadeau—felt what it did to souls, to hope—she never would’ve chosen it so lightly.
Or maybe she would have.
But at least she would’ve known the price.
Everything I’d bled for would slip beneath the waves. Not overnight—but eventually. And when the ship died, we’d be forced to drift. Vessel to vessel. A rootless, bitter existence. The Black Marrow was more than timber and sail. She was our sanctuary. Our shield. And for me—Saints help me—she was the only thing my father had ever given me.
I held no love for the man, but the ship… the ship I cared for. I had made her mine.
And now I was gambling her survival on a deal I didn’t make, for a girl I didn’t understand, in a place that wanted us dead.
Still, we sailed on—toward the one place I swore I’d never return to. A place so steeped in rot, even the dead refused to stay buried. Shadeau wasn’t cursed—it was forged to be a nightmare.
