Page 10 of Stolen Magic of the Deep

I blink, gesturing with both hands at the tablet. “No, Leo. It winked! Right after the surge. It looked right at me and closed one eye!”

He looks again, brows furrowing. “It’s blurry, Sarah. That’s just artifacting. Bad pixels and light distortion.”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t distorted when I witnessed it in person.”

He studies me for a moment, the teasing edge in his voice fading. “Okay, real talk?” He takes the seat next to me at the bar. “Maybe you should get checked out. Just to be safe. You got hit with something down there, and now you’re seeing things that aren’t there. I’m not saying you’re losing it, but maybe your brain got . . . rattled a little.”

I roll my eyes, though a part of me can’t shake his concern. I know what I saw. Even if the camera didn’t catch it clearly. And I sure as hell know something is changing inside me.

After several long minutes of arguing back and forth, I agree to schedule an appointment to get checked out neurologically, which seems to sate Leo enough that we settle into our normal rhythm—going through the rest of the feed and documenting all the sea life we saw around the structures from yesterday. He’s back to making jokes about pufferfish expressions and silently judging the way the octopuses maneuvered like tiny underwater aliens over the rusted beams.

It’s almost easy to forget that something massive is unraveling just beneath the surface. But I feel it every time a ripple shifts on screen. Every time the light hits a certain way. My instincts are hyper-focused, tuned to patterns I wouldn’t have noticed before. My fingers hover over the keyboard on my laptop that I grabbed earlier, ready to type out more sea life we discovered during our expedition, when suddenly the elevator dings.

Leo and I didn’t order any food, and it’s the middle of the day, on a Thursday. Everyone is at work.

I rise slowly from my seat at the island.

Leo looks up from the tablet. “Were you expecting someone?”

I shake my head, already moving toward the elevator. My bare feet are nearly silent against the hardwood as I cross the room, a subtle unease curling at the base of my spine. I adjust the tie on my robe, ensuring nothing is exposed.

I pause in the foyer, just as Leo cuts in. “Maybe it’s the turtle coming to apologize.”

I shoot him a look over my shoulder, but the tension lessens just a little. Leave it to Leo to find humor in the weirdest moments.

I turn back just as the doors of the elevator slide open to a man. Shirtless, pants shredded and hanging low, barefoot and his hair slick with seawater, looking as though he’s only just risen from the ocean’s water.

I blink. He towers over me with broad-shoulders, his shoulder-length, black hair plastered messily to his forehead. He’s impossible to ignore. His intense, deep blue eyes stare me down, but I can’t help but notice the chiseled abs across his stomach.

I stay silent for a moment too long, my brain clearly short-circuiting.

Leo squints from behind me. “Hey dude, you sure you’re at the right penthouse?”

The man doesn’t even glance at Leo. He looks at me—only me. As if he already knows me, like he has been searching for me.

“I know who you are,” he whispers, “And you know exactly what you have taken.”

five

Orion

The ocean stretches endlessly around me, a vast expanse of silence and pressure. My body moves with effortless precision—long and sinuous, built for these depths. My fins flare and tuck as I glide through the shifting currents. My tail undulates in smooth, powerful waves and my scales consistently catch the faint glow of bioluminescent life, shimmering like starlight beneath the surface.

I stop only when I must, when the ache in my limbs grows too deep or my senses dull. I drop into a narrow trench, its cold darkness perfect for a quick hunt. But the moment I have fed, my body carries me forward again, answering a need deeper than hunger. The drive to find her eclipses everything else.

I move as Morin instructed along the east side of the ocean, only a few miles from the coast, getting close to the rusted bones of surface ruins the sea has claimed, now smothered in coral and silence. I have not been to the surface in some time, but I remember it well. A few years back, when my father still lived, I would slip away after sparring sessions to watch the land-dwellers from a distance. Their world always fascinated me. So fast, so fragile. Thanks to my shape shifting abilities, I could join them easily by altering my body into human form with little more than a thought. As if I was always meant to straddle both worlds.

Finally, I arrive at the room Morin described. The room is hidden in muck-grey water and draped in seaweed that sways like it is dreaming. My hydro-senses stretch to their furthest edge, wide open. I feel every flicker of motion, every subtle shift in the water’s temperature, searching for something familiar. Preferably a trace of my father’s magic. Or would it be hers now?

I am still unsure as to how she obtained my father’s power. Especially because I do not know what kind of person she is. If she is kind, cruel, frightened, or simply lost. But none of that matters.

My father’s power cannot reside in a human. Which is another thing I am still trying to understand. Any land-dweller with deep sea magic should be considered dangerous.

I drift deeper into the chamber, letting the silence speak.

The seaweed coils lazily along the walls, and the water echoes with an incongruous charge. The magic lingers inside, but I feel more. A faint trace of tension clings to the space. Definitely human.

This is where it happened.