POV: Aerin
The sea never called out to me.
It didn't need to.
Its pull lived in my bones, quiet and constant, like a memory I hadn't chosen to keep.
Even as a child, I had known better than to trust it. I'd watched grown men return from it hollow-eyed, their boats lighter, their voices softer, as if something vast and unseen had listened too closely. The sea took without apology—and it never returned what it stole.
Still, when the village lamps dimmed and the night folded itself over the shore, I found my feet carrying me back to it.
Again.
The sand was cold beneath my soles, damp from the earlier storm, grains sticking to my skin as the wind tugged at my skirts. My shawl was too thin for the weather, but it was all I had. I pulled it tighter anyway, the familiar ache settling between my shoulders as I walked.
Behind me, the village murmured with the last sounds of life—wood creaking, a baby crying somewhere, a door shutting too hard. Soon, there would be silence.
No one would notice I was gone.
No one ever did.
My name was Aerin, and I had learned early how to disappear without leaving a trace.
I wasn't the kind of girl who caught attention. My hair was always pulled back, my dresses patched more times than I could count. I kept my eyes lowered and my words few. Life had taught me that being seen often meant being taken advantage of—and I could not afford either.
I came to the shore for one reason only: survival.
Storms were cruel, but they were generous in their aftermath…
POV: Aerin
(continued)
Storms were cruel, but they were generous in their aftermath.
That was what the elders said, anyway. That the sea, after taking its fill, sometimes tossed scraps back toward shore like an afterthought. I had learned not to hope for generosity, but hope had a way of surviving even when everything else didn't.
I moved slowly along the waterline, eyes scanning the dark shapes half-buried in sand. A length of rope. Splintered wood. Nothing worth much. My fingers were already numb, my breath coming out in thin clouds as the wind worried at my hair.
I bent to lift a broken crate and felt the familiar sting in my lower back. I paused, straightening with a small hiss, one hand braced against my spine until the ache dulled. Lately, my body seemed slower to recover. Tired in ways sleep didn't fix.
You're just worn down, I told myself. Everyone is.
Still, I pressed a palm briefly to my stomach, an unconscious gesture, and forced myself to move again.
The tide crept closer.
Each wave reached farther than the last, licking at my feet with quiet insistence. I told myself it was nothing—just the moon pulling harder tonight—but the rhythm felt off. Too deliberate. Too aware.
I glanced out toward the horizon.
The sea stared back.
A ridiculous thought, I knew. Water had no eyes. And yet the surface seemed to breathe, rising and falling in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. Moonlight pooled in one place, trembling as if caught on an unseen current.
A memory surfaced unbidden.
I was small again, my hand swallowed by my mother's grip as she stood rigid at the shoreline. The same moon. The same restless water.
Never answer it, she had whispered. Promise me.
At the time, I'd nodded without understanding what she meant.
Tonight, the promise pressed heavy against my ribs.
"Aerin," I murmured under my breath, the sound of my own name anchoring me. "Finish quickly."
I waded a step deeper, then another, skirts darkening as the water soaked through. Cold wrapped around my calves, sharp enough to steal a breath from my lungs.
Then—warmth.
It slid over my skin, subtle and wrong, as if the sea had exhaled just for me.
I froze.
The wave didn't retreat. It lingered, curling around my legs, holding me in place. Sand shifted beneath my feet, loosening, tugging forward.
My heart began to race.
I tried to pull back.
The water resisted.
Panic flared, sharp and sudden. I stumbled, dropping to one knee as the tide surged higher, soaking the hem of my dress. My hands slapped down instinctively, palms meeting the surface—
And light bloomed beneath my skin.
I gasped, jerking my hands back, but the glow followed, pulsing faintly beneath the water like a living thing. It wasn't blinding. It wasn't violent.
It felt… familiar.
Drawn despite myself, I leaned closer, breath shallow, fingers trembling as I reached out again. The warmth intensified the nearer I got, humming softly, almost inaudible, like a heartbeat carried through water.
My fingertips brushed something solid.
Smooth. Cool. Etched with ridges I couldn't quite see.
The moment my palm settled fully over it, the world shattered.
Pain flared beneath my collarbone, sharp enough to rip a scream from my throat. I arched, clutching my chest as heat spread through my veins, flooding me from the inside out. Light burst through my skin, searing bright against the dark.
The sea roared.
Water surged upward in a spiraling column, lifting me off my feet. I screamed again, lungs burning, body suspended between sky and sea as images slammed into my mind—endless depths, crushing pressure, ancient cities carved from stone and coral.
Eyes opened in the darkness.
Not one pair.
Two.
The column collapsed, dragging me under.
I expected cold. Darkness. The crushing panic of drowning.
Instead, the water parted.
I landed against something solid, breath tearing in and out of my lungs as if the sea itself refused to let me die. My fingers curled into warm skin, nails digging in as I clung instinctively to whatever held me upright.
Slowly, the chaos stilled.
The glow beneath my skin softened, settling into a steady pulse just below my collarbone. The water around us shimmered, held at bay by an invisible force.
I lifted my head.
He was nothing like the stories.
Not the mindless monster sailors whispered about after too much drink. Not a half-beast lurking beneath the waves. He was tall—impossibly so—his body solid and powerful, shoulders broad, chest marked with faintly glowing patterns that mirrored the burn on my skin.
His hair floated around his face like living shadow, dark eyes fixed on me with an intensity that stole the breath from my lungs.
Those eyes weren't cruel.
They were furious.
"Human," he growled, his voice resonating through the water, through me. "What have you done?"
"I—" My throat tightened. "I don't know. I didn't mean to—"
His gaze dropped to my chest.
The mark flared brighter.
The change in him was immediate. His jaw tightened, lips pulling back just enough to reveal sharpened teeth as something dangerously close to a snarl slipped free.
"That mark," he said, voice low and disbelieving. "It should not answer you."
Before I could ask what that meant, the water shifted again—this time gently, controlled, as if guided by a calmer hand.
The pressure around us eased.
A second presence emerged from the glow of the moonlit surface above, moving through the water with effortless grace. Where the first felt like the abyss itself, this one felt like the tide—steady, inevitable.
Silver hair framed his face, his expression composed even as his eyes sharpened the moment they found me.
They softened just as quickly.
He drifted closer, studying me with unsettling focus. When his gaze met mine, something inside my chest stilled, the frantic pounding of my heart easing as if soothed by an unseen current.
"She's human," he said quietly.
The dark one's grip tightened at my waist. "She bears the mark."
The silver-haired merman's eyes flicked to the glow beneath my skin, then narrowed. "Two signatures," he murmured.
My breath caught. "What does that mean?"
Neither of them answered me right away.
The dark one went rigid. "That's not possible."
"And yet," the silver one replied calmly, "it's happening."
The water around us began to churn, currents tangling and twisting as the mark burned hotter, the pulse beneath my skin growing stronger—demanding.
I shook, overwhelmed. "Please," I whispered. "I don't understand what you want from me."
Both of them looked at me then.
Not as prey.
Not as a prize.
But as something far more dangerous.
"The sea has chosen you," the silver-haired one said softly.
"And the sea," the dark king finished, his voice dropping to a vow that echoed through the depths, "never binds without consequence."
The mark flared.
And somewhere deep within me, something ancient and impossibly vast answered back.