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“I’ve rested enough,” I snap. “Where’s Sigurd?”

Ysra studies my face and sighs. She gestures toward the far end of the medical bay. “Just through the archway. He hasn’t left the corridor since he brought you in to heal.”

Walk straight out. Find the billionaire and get some answers.

I don’t know what kind of rules govern this abyssal empire. But I won’t cower in the dark and wait for permission to speak. He brought me down here and derailed my entire life. I won’t wait for him to deliver answers on his terms.

I turn my back on the healer and march toward the archway.

I step through expecting a standard stone corridor, but stop dead as the space opens up. The architecture doesn’t end in another hallway. It opens directly onto the ocean.

The right wall is a massive pane of reinforced glass, holding back the black water of the abyssal trench. I cross the wide floor until I stand inches from it, then press my bare palm against the freezing surface.

Outside, the trench opens into an entire city.

Rock terraces have been carved into the walls, their windows glowing with warm golden light. Towers rise from the seabed at different heights, connected by enclosed transit tubes that disappear into the surrounding stone.

A group of merfolk swims past the glass in sleek armor. Lamps strapped to their forearms cast narrow beams through the water. They patrol the perimeter with the casual routine of security guards working an ordinary night shift. I track their lights until they disappear behind one of the towers.

This isn’t a hidden bunker. It’s a functioning city at the bottom of the ocean.

A low vibration travels through the glass beneath my palm. Farther along the trench wall, a mechanical hoist crawls over the rock face while thick chains drag a heavy piece of cargo through the water.

Eiriksson Maritime owns shipping lanes across the surface, but this feels like the real heart of Sigurd’s empire. Saltweather would barely register against the scale of it.

For a moment, the sheer size of the place threatens to overwhelm me. I’m standing barefoot in borrowed clothes inside a fortress I didn’t know existed until yesterday, surrounded by a civilization built beneath miles of ocean.

“Just close your eyes and listen to the rain, Val,” my grandmother used to say when the coastal storms rattled our cottage windows. There is no rain here. Instead, the fortress carries the distant hum of machinery and the occasional groan of metal under pressure.

I keep my palm against the glass and make myself look at what is actually there. The merfolk are workers. The transit tubes connect buildings. The machinery moves cargo from one part of the city to another. However impossible the setting feels, people live and work here every day.

The sharp click of leather shoes against stone cuts through the mechanical hum behind me. I lower my hand from the glass and turn.

Sigurd walks out of the shadows and stops several feet away.

He’s wearing a fresh suit. The familiar corporate armor feels wrong after the memory of his bare skin against mine, but it does nothing to hide the exhaustion in his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept since the wedding.

For one disorienting moment, I want to step into his arms. My body remembers him too easily—the weight of him above me, the feel of his mouth against my skin, the way he held me when everything went wrong.

Then I remember why I’m standing at the bottom of the ocean.

“You changed your clothes,” I say. “Are we treating this like a corporate retreat now? Or what is this supposed to be?”

“Valerie.” His voice is quiet, and he makes no move to come closer. “I’m sorry. My restraint failed, and I forced you into this.”

There is no excuse attached to the apology. He simply stands there, keeping several feet of empty space between us.

“Sigurd, I only agreed to a few days on a mountain,” I hiss at him, the anger finally breaking through the panic. “My friends will be terrified wondering where I am. Hattie is probably calling the police back home right now, thinking the Eiriksson Corporation just made me disappear.”

“It’s not permanent,” Sigurd says, taking a half-step forward. “You’ll just have to stay here temporarily until the side effects of the ritual fade. Your lungs require the pressure to heal.”

“Temporarily,” I repeat.

“I’ll personally go to Saltweather to speak with your friends,” he says, his voice hardening into the flat, unshakeable vow of a kraken. “I will explain the delay. I won’t let them worry. I promise I’ll make sure you do not experience any discomfort. And in the meantime, I will let you rest.”

I remain silent, refusing to drop my guard. He doesn’t move toward the archway. Instead, he holds my gaze.

“Until then, I want you to know that the contract is fulfilled,” Sigurd continues. “Your town is safe, Valerie.”