Page 104 of Stolen Magic of the Deep

Even now, I feel the lingering echo of that warmth.

Nyxalene rises with graceful indifference, drifting past me as she leaves. Her voice slices clean as a blade. Sea mate bonds do not forbid exploring someone more enticing.

Her words sink like an anchor into my chest. My heart doesn't simply ache. It drowns. It plummets to the darkest part of me, where all the truth I fear waits to devour me whole.

Regret coils tight around my ribs, threatening to consume me. I spent months denying what was growing between us, refusing to even consider a bond I didn't want to acknowledge. I was drawn to him long before I knew the word for it. I kept turning away with excuses that tasted safe.

I'm not from here. I don't belong. I will never be enough for him.

The mermaid moves against him with purposeful confidence, her hands mapping the ridges of his stomach, sliding lower as if she owns every inch of him. She tilts his chin toward her, lips brushing the edge of his jaw. But even while her body tempts him, his gaze never strays from me.

Those deep blue eyes pin me in place. They burn. They plead. They promise.

His tail curls with hers, their scales brushing in intimate patterns, and a sound escapes him that tightens something low in my stomach. Heat rushes through me so quickly I nearly gasp. Desire doesn't care that this is a nightmare. It doesn't care that I'm terrified. It wants him.

My chest tightens. My pulse races. Desire claws through that fear, reminding me how badly I want him, even as the cavern forces me to doubt my worthiness.

Confidence flickers. Small. Trembling. A realization: he is looking at me even while another woman touches him. His expression isn't lust for her. It's hunger for me. A hunger I've denied again and again.

Maybe I deserve this torment. If I give in to this bond, if I accept what the currents already know, what then? What if I drown in him? What if he sees every flaw, every insecurity carved into my heart? What if he decides I'm not enough, once he truly knows me?

I burn with want and fury at once, a wildfire trapped beneath the waves. He deserves someone from the sea, someone like Nyxalene or the mermaid currently wrapped around his chiseled body. Someone strong and confident, not me. Though I cannot ignore my pulse screaming, urging me forward, demanding I stake my claim to the bond we share.

The mermaid presses her lips to the side of his throat. He draws a sharp breath, but his stare only deepens, smoldering and insistent. A silent plea that I step into the place Mother Ocean has already marked for us.

My pulse bangs against my ribs. The audible sound placing my mind further into panic. My body aches toward him.

I want to be brave. I want to choose him. I don’t know if his choice would still be me, and that's where the hesitation comes in—to finally make that decision and still be rejected in the end.

I see shadows flicker along the walls, moving with a mind of their own, whispering things I refuse to hear aloud. Each echo twists a memory, each breath I take tastes of salt and fear. The cavern doesn't simply show me illusions—it tests the fibers of my being. It answers with laughter. Distant. Everywhere at once. A reminder that this place feeds on every crack in my heart.

Control flickers back into my grasp, a fragile moment where I can breathe and think again. I seize it. I force myself to see the truth. Every illusion here has been about Orion and me. Not the surface. Not training. This is the cavern tearing open my deepest fear. The fear that I don't belong at his side or in the sea the way he does. The fear that the bond Mother Ocean forged between us is wrong.

The cavern knows I don't believe I'm worthy of him. Yet he came to Coravaluné and confessed he loved me. That should mean everything. That should be enough. My heart tries to stand tall on that truth.

The weight crushing me fights back harder. Control slips through my fingers like the ground fracturing beneath a quake. The illusion seizes me again.

The female mermaid is gone.

I'm the one pressed against him now. For a moment, the chamber melts away into pure darkness, replaced by heat and closeness and the wild beat of two hearts. Then, as the darkness dissolves, it’s replaced by the familiar dry air of my resting place within the palace walls. The windows are bare, fully exposed to the ocean beyond, turning our closeness into a spectacle. Anyone could witness this. Anyone could see how undeserving I feel.

Relief isn't what floods me. Dread is. I thought this ordeal was ending. I thought I had proven myself.

The cavern isn't finished. It has saved the hardest trial for last.

forty-two

Sarah

My sleeping chamber is dimly lit, shadows stretching long across the walls as if the room itself is keeping secrets. Warmth spreads through my body, skin prickling where Orion’s breath teases my cheek. We’re tangled together on my bed, his body beneath mine, the soft bedding sinking around us, yet the moment feels too exposed. Too witnessed.

Every object in the room seems to stare. The carved shelves. The vanity. Even the crystalline barrier of my window. All of them are silent spectators to my desire.

Heat rushes up my throat, and I jolt away from him, sliding off his lap far too quickly to look graceful. My back bumps into the table across from the bed. Fingers curl over the edge to ground myself as I force my gaze upward, anywhere but him.

If I meet those deep ocean-blue eyes again, I know I’ll drown willingly.

The nightmare transforms us into human forms. Orion looks exactly as he did the first day we met at my penthouse, bare-chested, skin sun-kissed and muscles carved like he never misses a gym day. His knee-length shorts are torn and wet, clinging to him like a memory. His ink-dark hair is tousled, wild from sleep . . . or from me.