Tide Prince POV
I had prayed the bond would not awaken in my lifetime.
When the currents screamed earlier, when the sea bent inward as if bowing, I had known what it meant—but knowing did not prepare me for her.
Aerin was nothing like the stories.
They spoke of chosen vessels hardened by fate. Of women raised for sacrifice or power.
She was soft in all the ways that mattered.
Soft voice. Soft hands. A strength that came not from hunger, but from refusal.
And that terrified me.
"She carries convergence blood," I said carefully, watching her reaction more than the Abyss King's. "Your mother was the last living Echo-Bearer to escape the sea's claim."
Her head snapped up. "Escape?"
"Yes," I said quietly. "By breaking a vow."
The abyss darkened instantly.
The other king's anger rolled outward, violent and sharp.
"She was bound," he growled. "She fled before completion."
"And paid for it," I said. "Slowly. On land."
Aerin's breath hitched.
"The bond did not die with her," I continued. "It waited. It diluted itself through you. Quietly. Patiently."
"Until now," Aerin whispered.
"Until both kings returned to the same waters," I finished.
Her gaze flicked between us.
Realization bloomed—slow, terrible.
"You triggered each other," she said. "Not me."
The abyss went still.
The truth hung heavy between us.
The Abyss King's jaw tightened. "The convergence requires balance."
"And opposition," I added. "Your mother knew this. That is why she ran—why she hid you on land."
"To deny the sea its balance," Aerin said hollowly.
"To deny it us," the Abyss King corrected.
The bond surged again—not violently this time.
Awakening.
Aerin's mark burned warm beneath her skin, light threading through her veins like liquid gold. Her body adjusted instinctively, spine straightening, breath deepening as the sea welcomed what it had waited generations to reclaim.
She shook her head even as her power answered the depths.
"I don't want this," she said softly. "I don't want to be the reason kingdoms rise or fall."
The Tide Prince felt something in his chest crack open.
"You are not the reason," I said, and for once, I meant it. "You are the choice."
The Abyss King's gaze softened—just a fraction.
"And the sea," he said quietly, "has never known how to let its choices go."
The currents tightened around us.
Above, far above, something ancient shifted in its sleep.
The convergence had begun.
The silence after her words was worse than any scream.
Aerin could still feel the echo of her mother's voice in her chest, like a bruise pressed too hard. Run. That had always been the word. Not fight. Not understand. Just run.
She shook her head slowly, strands of dark hair loosening from their tie, drifting around her face like ink in water. "You're wrong," she said again, softer now. Not because she believed it—but because she needed it to be true.
Her reflection shimmered faintly in the water between them, distorted by the currents. That was when she noticed it—really noticed it—for the first time.
Her eyes.
They had always been strange. Too pale for her skin, too reflective in low light. Villagers used to say they looked like storm glass, the kind sailors carried for luck. But now, suspended beneath the surface, they caught the bioluminescence around her and bent it—fractured it into soft rings of silver and blue that pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
The mark beneath her collarbone answered.
A crescent, delicate as a scar, glowing faintly through her skin.
Aerin sucked in a sharp breath and pressed her palm over it. "This—this wasn't here before."
The Abyss King's grip tightened instinctively, protective, possessive. "It was," he said quietly. "Dormant."
Her fingers trembled. "I would have known."
"No," the Tide Prince murmured. "You would have ignored it."
The words weren't cruel. They were… gentle. Understanding.
Aerin's throat tightened. "Why would I do that?"
Because denial was survival.
She had been doing it her whole life.
Her body had always reacted strangely to the sea—skin warming instead of chilling, lungs burning slower than they should have when she dove too deep as a child. Cuts healed too cleanly. Fevers broke overnight. Her mother had called it luck and kissed her forehead like she was warding off a curse.
"I'm human," Aerin said, more to herself now. "My mother was human."
The Tide Prince's gaze softened painfully.
"She was in love," he said. "With someone she could never return to."
The words slid under Aerin's ribs and lodged there.
"No," she whispered. "She never—there was no one."
"There was," the Abyss King said, voice rough. "And losing him is what broke her vow."
The sea shifted.
Not violently.
Mournfully.
Aerin's chest tightened as memories surfaced unbidden—her mother staring out at the horizon too long, hands clenched white in her apron. The way she flinched at certain songs. The way she never, ever spoke of Aerin's father.
"You're saying," Aerin said slowly, "that she chose me… over the sea."
The Tide Prince nodded once. "And paid for it with her life."
Something inside Aerin cracked open—not loudly, but completely.
Her knees buckled, and if not for the arm around her waist, she would have drifted downward into the dark. The Abyss King held her without hesitation, pressing his forehead briefly to her temple, a wordless promise she didn't yet understand.
"I don't want this," Aerin whispered, tears dissolving into the water. "I don't want to be what she was afraid of."
The bond responded—not with force, but warmth.
Acceptance.
That frightened her more than anything else.
The moment the mark fully awakened, I felt it.
The Tide Prince had ruled currents and courts, storms and treaties—but nothing had ever prepared him for the feeling of recognition. Not desire. Not power.
Home.
She floated there between them, fragile and luminous, grief softening her features even as something ancient straightened her spine. The convergence blood always did that—turned pain into resilience.
Her mother had begged us to let her go.
We had let her.
We would not make the same mistake twice.
"She is not a weapon," I said quietly, sensing the Abyss King's rising fury. "And she is not a crown."
The other king's jaw tightened. "She is the balance."
Aerin lifted her head sharply. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here."
The words rang with a new resonance—steady, commanding, felt by the sea itself.
Both of us stilled.
Her denial had not vanished.
But something else had taken its place.
Choice.
"You want to know why this happened now?" she asked, voice shaking but unbroken. "Why you—both of you—felt it at the same time?"
The sea leaned in.
Aerin's hand rested over the glowing crescent, fingers no longer trembling.
"Because my mother didn't just run," she said slowly. "She hid me where the sea couldn't reach me."
Her gaze met mine.
"And you came too close."
Above us, far beyond the surface, the tides shifted course.
The abyss stirred.
The sea had found her.
And it was done waiting.