She’s seated at the table where she told her story, her kelp robes pooled around her like seaweed left by a retreating tide. The other guards have dispersed—to rest, to keep watch, to process the impossible truths they’ve been given. Only Thorne remains, standing at the hall’s entrance with the expression of someone who knows bad news is coming.
“You’ve made your choice.” Thalira’s storm-cloud eyes track us as we approach. “I can see it in how you move. How you hold each other.”
“We’ve made nothing.” Zoric’s voice is granite. “We have questions.”
“Questions are all anyone ever has.” The old witch gestures to the chairs across from her. “Sit. Ask. I’ll answer what I can.”
We sit. Zoric’s hand stays locked with mine, our fingers interlaced on the table between us. A small defiance. A declaration that whatever comes next, we face it without separation.
“The binding.” I force my voice steady. “You said it requires someone attuned to the hunger. Someone who’s carried its gold. How does it work? What would it mean?”
Thalira studies me for a long moment. In her gaze, I see something I didn’t expect—not judgment, not satisfaction, but something almost like sorrow. As if she’s delivered this news before, to other desperate people, and knows exactly how it ends.
“The binding is a marriage of sorts.” Her voice has lost its edge, softened into the cadence of a storyteller sharing uncomfortable truths. “The guardian becomes part of the hunger—not consumed by it, but intertwined with it. You would exist in the deep, feeding your own desires to the ancient want, keeping it dormant through perpetual sacrifice.”
“For how long?”
“Until someone releases you. Or until the binding fails.” Thalira spreads her hands. “The old guardians lasted four hundred years. Some might say that’s long enough to matter.”
“Four hundred years.” The number sits in my chest like a stone. “And in that time?—”
“You would never age. Never die. Never feel warmth or cold or hunger or satisfaction.” Her storm-cloud eyes are pitiless now, laying bare the cost with clinical precision. “You would exist as a consciousness without form, feeding want that can never be filled, longing for release that may never come.”
“But the coast would be safe?”
“The coast would be safe. The villages would survive. The fishing boats would return to waters that no longer hunger for their crews.” Thalira pauses. “It’s a fair trade, some would say. One life for thousands. One eternity for countless generations.”
“Some would say.” Zoric’s grip on my hand has become painful. “What do you say?”
“I say it’s not my choice to make.” The old witch rises from her chair with the slow grace of someone who’s carried centuries on her shoulders. “I’ve told you what I know. The rest is yours to decide.”
She moves toward the door. Pauses at the threshold, looking back with an expression I can’t read.
“The hunger spreads faster than I expected. By morning, it will reach the first villages. By next week—” She shakes her head. “There is no time for debate, children. Only time for action.”
Then she’s gone, her kelp robes rustling as she disappears into the darkness beyond the hall.
Zoric and I sit in the quiet she’s left behind. His hand still grips mine. His thumb traces circles against my palm—nervous, unconscious, seeking comfort in contact.
“There has to be another way.”
“There might be.” I squeeze his fingers, draw his attention to my face. “But if there isn’t—Zoric, if this is the only path?—”
“Then I’ll walk it with you.”
The words hit me like a wave. I stare at him, searching his expression for doubt or deception and finding neither. He means it. This man, who’s spent years running from his past, who’s built walls around his heart so thick that even he couldn’t see past them—he means every word.
“You can’t.” My voice breaks. “The binding requires attunement. You’ve never carried the gold?—”
“Then we find a way to change the binding. Or we find a way to attune me. Or we find something else entirely.” His palm cradles my jaw, thumb catching the tears I didn’t know I was crying. “We carry each other. That doesn’t end because the sea wants to claim you.”
I can’t speak. Can’t find words for what’s happening in my chest—the cracking, the flooding, the overwhelming sensation of being seen and wanted and chosen despite everything.
So I kiss him instead.
This kiss is grief and hope and terror and love wound into something I can’t name, a declaration of things we haven’t said and might never get the chance to say.
When we finally break apart, the hall is still. The torches have burned low. Outside, the hungry light of the Wrecktide pulses against the windows, a reminder of what waits for us.
