I wasn’t ready to forgive her. But saints help me—
I wasn’t ready to lose her either.
24
Nerina
Shadeau
Shadeau was worse than anything Alaric’s grim descriptions had prepared me for.
The air felt thick—pressing against my skin like a damp shroud—heavy with dark magic and unspoken curses. The stillness was unnatural: too quiet, too expectant.
The docks were a graveyard of forgotten ships and rotting wood. Lanterns flickered in the mist, their glow turning tangled masts and broken rigging into monstrous silhouettes. Crates lay half-submerged in seawater—some split open, their contents spoiled and scavenged long ago. The stench was worse than I’d imagined: salt, soot, rot… then iron, moldy parchment, and the faint bite of sulfur beneath it all.
Dockworkers moved like shadows—hunched, cloaked, silent. Birds circled overhead, but not the kind that sang. Scavengers. Patient. Watching.
Above the rooftops, dense fog clung to the city, swallowing spires and lantern posts in its damp grip. Hanging nets dripped seawater and tangled bones.
The instinct that had once kept me alive beneath open water screamed now. Not of predators in the deep—of eyes that measured worth in coin and consequence. Here, safety wasn’t something you lost all at once. It was peeled away, layer by layer, until you didn’t notice it was gone.
I felt Alaric’s presence beside me before he spoke.
He was still furious with me. He hadn’t said it—not directly—but I could feel it in the way he moved: tense and controlled. His words echoed in my mind—There are worse things they can do than kill you.
I had dragged us into this. Into Morgra’s bargain. Into Shadeau. Into danger. And the worst part?
The deal haunted every step I took. Morgra had asked for something simple—or made it sound simple. A favor. An exchange. A cursed artifact for hours of freedom. For answers. But even I knew better. Nothing in this world came without cost. Not truly.
And I didn’t know what that cost would be yet—only that I’d already begun paying it.
Alaric didn’t trust me. Not now. Maybe not ever again.
I’d made the choice without him—risked his life, his crew, his ship—for a whisper of memory and a truth I couldn’t even name. I didn’t fully understand what I was chasing. Only that the artifact shards, the journals, the maps hidden in the trench… weren’t coincidence. There had to be something waiting to be found. Some piece of truth I hadn’t been meant to see.
He had every right to be angry. Every right to hate me for it. But I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. Not fully.
Because beneath the fear and the guilt, there was something else—a certainty. That this mattered. That Shadeau held something meant for me. Other than the Eye of Nareth.
The Eye wasn’t just an artifact—it was a promise. A relic whispered to show its beholder what waited ahead. Not prophecy. Not certainty.
Just the future… as it could be.
He wouldn’t admit it, but I could see it in the tension of his body. Was he afraid? Afraid that the potion wouldn’t work—or worse, that it would? That the promise of land beneath his feet would be ripped away as quickly as it was given?
I tried to imagine what this moment must feel like for him. To be so close to something he’d lost for so long. To walk on land again. To stand without the ever-present pull of the sea shackling him to the depths.
Did he miss it? Did he ache for it the way I ached for answers?
Or had he learned to accept his curse—to stop dreaming of things that could never be?
He exhaled through his nose and handed me a folded cloth.
"Cover your face," he said quietly, his tone edged with urgency. "Your marking will draw too much attention here."
He didn’t wait for a reply.
In one swift motion, he shook the vial, uncorked it, whispered the incantation, and tipped a single drop onto his tongue.
