Tide Servant's POV
The sea is far from here, yet the air tastes of it.
Not the brash salt of a fisherman's net, but the deep, cold brine that seeps from black trenches where light has never lived.
I feel it on my tongue. In my teeth.
In the borrowed skin I wear tonight.
The pulse has reached the high places.
The Vessel breathes.
The forest leans toward me as I pass, as though the trunks remember what it was to be roots in drowned soil. There are no waves here, but the tide does not need water to rise.
The man whose body I wear had been broad-shouldered and quick, with a hunter's eyes. I took him when the river's orders came. His heart had stopped quickly; his skin had not yet cooled when I stepped inside. It fits well enough.
My true form is not for these trees. Not yet.
Ahead, the wolves move. Keal's kind. I smell their musk and pine, the heat in their breath. Two linger near the old watchtower, one higher on the ridge, listening. They are spread thin. They are tired.
I know how to walk past a wolf. You must not mimic prey or rival. You must move like you belong to something they cannot name.
The highest sentry turns his head as I pass, nostrils flaring. His eyes narrow, trying to focus on what the tide blurs. I stop—not in fear, but in invitation. Let him come.
He does. Steps heavy, shoulders squared. His jaw twitches as if chewing over the thought of a challenge.
"You shouldn't be here," he says.
I tilt my head. My voice, when I let it out, still carries the rough cadence of the man I'm wearing. "Neither should you."
That confuses him. They never expect the prey to speak.
I let him step closer. I let him smell the faint salt on my breath. His hackles rise, but his pupils flare—not with rage, but with… something else. Something like recognition.
The tide slips into him then, soft as fog, curling through his mind. His shoulders loosen. His mouth opens as if to speak again and I touch his chest. Just two fingers, right over the heart.
The beat falters. Slows. Matches the one that is not his.
When I pull my hand away, his eyes are glassy. He will remember nothing of this, only a dream of cold water and a name he cannot quite say.
I leave him swaying and move on.
The Vessel is close now.
I feel her before I see her. The shimmer in the air is faint but certain, like heat bending stone. It is the mark the Drowned King leaves on what is his. She walks beside the wolf, her steps lighter than they should be, as if she has begun to notice the ground bending toward her.
I step into the shadows at the edge of the clearing. She is not looking my way, but the sight of her hits like the first breath after surfacing.
Her hair catches the moonlight in a way I remember.
No. Not I. The man whose body I wear remembers. His memories are faint to me, like shells pressed to the ear, but they are there: a girl on a cliff's edge, laughing as the tide sprayed her face. A voice calling her name from the shore.
That name burns now in my mouth.
Lyra.
The wolf at her side leans in to speak to her. His hand hovers near her back, protective. Possessive. He would die for her.
The tide will make him prove it.
She turns then, and her eyes those eclipsed moons sweep the clearing. For an instant, they pass over me. And I wonder did she see me? Or did she only feel the water in her chest answering mine?
My orders are not to take her yet. Not to break her before the countdown ends. But I feel the tether between us pulling taut.
When I step back into the trees, the wolf sentry from the ridge is there again, eyes still unfocused. He whispers something that freezes me in place.
"She's not yours," he says.
Not his words. The tide is not speaking now. This is something else something in him that fought its way through my touch.
Before I can silence him, the ground beneath us shifts. The air turns wet, heavy, and the shimmer that marks the Vessel flares bright enough to sting.
Somewhere beyond the trees, she gasps.
I do not move toward her.
Because something else already has.