Page 43 of Stolen Magic of the Deep

Terror.

She stumbles back, nearly collapsing again, but the coils of her new tail catch her, steadying her. One of the perks of a serpent tail is that it's hard to lose your balance when the lower half of your body is built to anchor you. But she doesn't see it that way.

“What the fuck did I do?” she breathes, voice shaking. “I wanted to shift back to what I was earlier . . . not a smaller replica of you!”

She says it with hatred on her tongue, like the transformation betrayed her. When in reality, it's just the magic starting to take its full effect. Every time she uses it, a new discovery will happen.

I smirk, unable to help myself, leaning just slightly into the tension, letting the words come out lighter than I feel.

“Oh come on, what is wrong with looking like me?” I pause, feigning offense. “I'm very handsome.”

Sarah scoffs, her tail twitching as she adjusts her weight. “Handsome doesn’t excuse the fact that I look like something out of a DND campaign.”

I raise a brow. The term means nothing to me, land-dweller nonsense, but I catch the bitterness beneath it.

“So you admit I'm handsome.”

She glares, but it is weak, half-hearted. “That’s the part you took from that?”

I shrug, keeping the mood light, even though the water between us tells me she's still spiraling inside. “You cannot blame me. Compliments from you are rare.”

She looks away, arms crossed, tail coiled awkwardly beneath her, studying the markings now etched into her arm, their intricate lines winding and connecting across her chest, too. Her fingertips trace one of the runes with hesitant curiosity before her gaze lifts to mine.

"And what are these?"

"They represent your magic," I explain. "When your magic is active, they'll glow. Everyone born with magic in Virellan bears runes of their own. No two are exactly alike, and each glows a different shade."

Her brow furrows. "Do they mean anything?"

I wish I had an answer.

"Unfortunately, we don't know." The admission tastes bitter. "The runes—and the scrolls now stolen from us—are written in a language long lost to time. Whether it was forgotten or purposefully hidden, no one can say." My eyes drift over the symbols adorning her skin. "I believe Mother Ocean preserved them for a reason. When she's ready, I think she'll reveal their meaning."

She falls quiet, her eyes lingering on the unfamiliar marks as though seeing a stranger reflected in her own body, much like I had when the weight of the crown first settled upon my head after my father died.

"I know this is another change you never asked for," I say, my voice gentler than before. "But, in time, you'll learn to carry them." A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth before I can stop it. "And you'll look beautiful doing it."

eighteen

Sarah

Stone scrapes against my shoulder as my tail sends me sideways into another pillar. This tail, a fucking tail, was attached to my body. I envisioned swimming with this tail would be like that of diver fins. But I was wrong. My body crashes into the pillars all the way down the spiral way to the main corridor, realizing every crash echoes throughout the palace. My legs? Gone. Sanity? Hanging by a thread.

The phantom feeling of my legs lingers, my mind still trying to move them, to bend knees that no longer exist. Every instinct I have fires in the wrong direction. The tail responds late, or not at all, swinging away from my thoughts as if it belongs to someone else. I understand the basics of swimming with joined legs. That knowledge means nothing when my body refuses to listen. Why is this so much harder?

Last night, when I used the magic to shift, I thought I’d end up in the same form I had during the meeting. Instead, I got some miniature replica of Orion.

My gaze drifts to the runes winding over my left arm before spilling across my upper chest. Most are nothing more than elegant swirls and sharp, intersecting lines, beautiful in their simplicity. But one mark dominates the others, stretching across the upper half of my chest. Its strokes twist together like conjoined letters from a language I can't read.

Neither can Orion.

Ever since he told me what they were, I've caught myself tracing them absentmindedly whenever my thoughts begin to wander. They look etched into my skin, yet my fingertips glide over them without catching, as if they'd always been a part of me. It's strange, considering I still remember the agony that birthed them. The searing heat. The way every inch of my body felt ready to split apart, convinced I would burn alive the moment I surrendered to my magic and shifted. My fingers linger over the largest rune for another heartbeat before I let my hand fall.

Orion was unusually quiet when he got up this morning, like he was trying not to wake me.

Unfortunately, I was already awake. Out of everything I’ve experienced since being here, gaining a tail was not on my trauma bingo card. The weight alone is exhausting—and paired with little to no sleep, it’s a miracle I made it down the spiral way at all.

It’s not like I didn’t try to sleep. After that final shift, Orion said it was best to rest. Between transforming in the middle of a meeting, my scales apparently drying out in my room, and then shifting two more times with him, my body was on the verge of quitting. I lay there, but my tail twitched and thrashed all night, mimicking everything going on in my brain. Unsettled. Chaotic. Unresolved. But, surprisingly, it wasn’t the tail that threw me off.