For several minutes, neither Korrin nor I spoke.
The submarine continued through the dark water, its engines humming beneath our feet. Beyond the glass, the ocean stretched into an endless blue-black emptiness. Every so often, a pale fish darted past the window, disappearing before I could properly see it.
I kept hearing the same words.
Don't come looking for me.
My father had said them—or something that sounded exactly like him had. I didn't know which possibility frightened me more.
If he was alive, why didn't he want me to find him?
And if he wasn't, why was the Ocean's Heart using his voice?
I turned toward Korrin.
"Take us to Blackwater."
He didn't look at me. "No."
"That wasn't a question."
"And my answer remains the same."
I stared at him, almost impressed by his ability to be infuriating at the worst possible moment.
"You know what? I think I've finally figured out your greatest talent."
His eyes shifted toward me. "And what would that be?"
"Making me regret every conversation we have."
Under different circumstances, I might have enjoyed the tiny change in his expression. It wasn't quite a smile, but it came close enough to annoy me further.
"Blackwater isn't a place you can enter without preparation," he said. "The station has been abandoned for years. Its lower sections are flooded, and some of its security systems may still be active."
"Then we'll prepare."
"You don't understand what we're dealing with."
"You're right. I don't. That's why I'm asking you to stop keeping half the truth to yourself."
That silenced him.
I looked down at the three shards resting inside the small protective case beside me. Their faint blue light had dimmed since the voice spoke, but I could still feel something coming from them. Not heat exactly. More like the strange sensation of standing near someone who was watching you without saying a word.
My mother had said the Heart was never stolen.
Isaac claimed my father had been taken by its guardians.
And Korrin knew Blackwater was where my mother disappeared.
Three people, three versions of the truth, and somehow I was expected to trust all of them.
"Did you know my mother disappeared there?" I asked.
Korrin's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
The answer was so quiet that, for a moment, I wished he had lied.
"How long?"
"I learned the location of her last known expedition several years ago. I didn't know whether she had entered the station or died before reaching it."
"And you didn't think I deserved to know?"
"I didn't know you then."
"You knew who I was."
"I knew your bloodline. That isn't the same as knowing you."
I hated that he had a point. I hated even more that he used reasonable arguments to defend things that hurt me.
"Would you have told me eventually?"
He took longer to answer than I expected.
"I intended to."
"That means no."
"It means I was trying to find a way to tell you without sending you straight into danger."
I let out a short, humourless laugh.
"Well, congratulations. You've managed to send me straight into danger while making sure I don't trust you."
He looked away.
For once, he didn't argue.
We returned to Arealis shortly before the city lights began to brighten for the evening.
From the submarine, the city looked almost unreal. Towers of pale coral rose from the seabed, their surfaces catching the glow of floating lantern-creatures. Bridges connected the taller structures, and schools of silver fish moved between them like ribbons of living metal.
I'd seen the city before, but I still found myself watching it through the glass.
Somewhere beyond those beautiful towers, my mother had lived a life I knew almost nothing about.
Somewhere beneath that peaceful glow, people had apparently decided that keeping secrets was a perfectly acceptable way to govern an entire civilisation.
I was beginning to understand why Korrin spent so much time looking as though he had a headache.
The submarine docked near the outer platform. Before I could step out, Korrin caught my wrist.
"Selene."
I looked at his hand, then at him.
He released me.
"Don't mention Blackwater to the council until I've spoken with the queen."
"Why?"
"Because if the wrong people hear that you're going there, they'll make sure you never reach it."
I studied his face. He wasn't trying to frighten me. That was the problem. He sounded as though he was remembering something that had happened before.
"Who are the wrong people?"
"I don't know who can still be trusted."
That answer was considerably worse than a name.
We crossed the platform together. Two members of the Ocean Guard stood near the entrance, their armour reflecting the blue light. They bowed to Korrin, then looked at me with the familiar uncertainty that seemed to follow me everywhere in Arealis.
I had grown accustomed to the stares.
The whispers were harder to ignore.
"Bridgeborn," one of them murmured.
I pretended not to hear him.
Korrin didn't.
"Is there something you'd like to say?" he asked.
The guard immediately straightened. "No, my prince."
"Then remember that she is a guest of this city. Treat her accordingly."
We continued walking.
I glanced at him. "You didn't have to do that."
"Yes, I did."
"Because I'm a guest?"
"Because they were being disrespectful."
I waited for him to say something else, but he didn't.
It was irritating how a person could be so frustrating and unexpectedly decent in the same breath.
We were halfway to the royal district when a familiar voice called from behind us.
"Well, this is a surprise."
Toren approached with two warriors following him. His gaze moved from Korrin to me, lingering on the protective case in my hand.
"You're back already," he said. "I thought the Hall of Ancients might have taught you some patience."
"It taught me that ancient people were very good at making simple things unnecessarily complicated," I replied.
One of the warriors looked down quickly, hiding a smile.
Toren didn't look amused.
"What happened at the Hall?"
"Nothing that concerns you," Korrin said.
"I'm part of the royal guard. Anything involving the Heart concerns me."
His eyes returned to the case.
"Especially when she carries it."
I felt my fingers tighten around the handle.
Korrin stepped slightly in front of me. "Not here, Toren."
His brother's expression changed at the warning. For a moment, I thought he would challenge him. Instead, he looked past Korrin and addressed me directly.
"Tell me something, Selene. Have you ever wondered why the Heart responds to you?"
"Every day."
"And have you ever wondered why our mother allows you to wander through this city, even though the elders still disagree about what you are?"
"Toren," Korrin warned.
"No. She should know." His voice sharpened. "You're searching for answers about your parents, but you haven't considered that the people you're asking may have spent years protecting you from the truth."
I stepped around Korrin.
"Then perhaps someone should stop protecting me and start telling me."
For the first time since I'd met him, Toren looked almost uncertain.
It lasted only a second.
"Ask Queen Nerathe what happened the night Lyra left Arealis," he said. "Ask her why Father ordered the records sealed. And when she tells you that it was for the good of the kingdom, ask her whose good she meant."
Then he walked away.
I watched him disappear between the coral pillars.
Korrin exhaled slowly.
"That was helpful," I said.
"He enjoys making things worse."
"Runs in the family, apparently."
He gave me a tired look. I almost smiled, but Toren's words kept returning to me.
Ask Queen Nerathe what happened the night Lyra left Arealis.
My mother hadn't simply disappeared.
Someone had made a decision that night.
And whatever had happened, the royal family had buried it.
Queen Nerathe received us in a private chamber rather than the grand hall.
I had been there once before. The room was smaller than the throne chamber, with curved windows overlooking the city's central gardens. Pale plants swayed in the water outside, and tiny lights drifted between their leaves.
The queen stood beside a table covered with old maps.
She looked at Korrin first.
"You're back sooner than expected."
"We need to discuss Blackwater," he said.
Her hand stopped above the map.
It was a small movement. Anyone else might have missed it.
I didn't.
The queen slowly turned toward me.
"What have you heard?"
"That my mother disappeared there. That my father was taken. That the Ocean's Heart was never stolen." I placed the protective case on the table. "I'd like to know which of those things is true."
For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then she closed the map.
"All of them," she replied.
The room seemed to grow smaller.
Korrin stared at his mother. "You knew?"
"I knew that Lyra went to Blackwater. I knew she intended to meet someone there. I knew your father ordered the records sealed afterward."
"And you never told me?"
"You were a child."
"I'm not a child anymore."
"No," the queen said softly. "And that is precisely why I can no longer protect you from what happened."
I pulled out a chair and sat down before my knees could decide to betray me.
"Please," I said. "No more riddles. I need to know what happened to my parents."
Queen Nerathe looked at the three glowing shards.
"Years ago, Blackwater was not merely a human research station. It was a place where humans and merfolk worked together under a secret agreement. Your father helped establish that agreement. Lyra was its messenger, and Isaac's father was among the scientists involved."
I thought of Isaac, injured and alone in that abandoned station.
"Then why did everything fall apart?"
"Because the Ocean's Heart began to change."
The queen moved to the window.
"At first, the changes were small. Currents shifted without warning. Certain regions of the sea lost their light. The Heart began responding to emotions it had never acknowledged before. Fear. Anger. Grief."
"Is it alive?" I asked.
"We never agreed on what it was. Some believed it was a source of power. Others believed it was a guardian. Your mother believed it was something that remembered."
I glanced at the case.
Remembered what?
Queen Nerathe continued.
"When the changes became dangerous, your father and Isaac's father proposed studying the Heart together. They believed they could understand what was happening before it affected both worlds."
"And my mother?"
"She believed they were already too late."
I waited, but the queen's expression closed again.
"What happened at Blackwater?" I asked.
"That is what we must discover."
I stood so abruptly that the chair scraped against the floor.
"You're telling me you don't know?"
"I'm telling you that the official records are incomplete. The people who sealed them are either dead or unwilling to speak. And the only person who might have known the entire truth was your mother."
"Then why did you seal the records?"
The queen looked at Korrin.
He looked as surprised as I felt.
"Your father ordered it," she said. "He believed that revealing what happened would divide Arealis and provoke a war with the surface."
"Did it work?"
"No."
Her answer was immediate.
Outside the window, one of the garden lights flickered and went dark.
"After Lyra disappeared, your father sent a team to Blackwater. They found the station damaged and abandoned. They recovered several fragments of the Heart, but neither Lyra nor your father was there."
"My father was taken," I said. "Isaac told me."
"Then Isaac knows something we do not."
"He's at Blackwater."
Queen Nerathe turned sharply.
"What?"
"He contacted us before the signal failed. He said his father's old station was where my father had been taken."
The queen's face lost its colour.
For the first time, she looked genuinely afraid.
"That is impossible."
I was beginning to despise that word.
"Why?"
She moved back to the table and touched one of the old maps. Her finger settled on a small black mark near the edge.
"Because Blackwater was destroyed twelve years ago."
A strange vibration travelled through the table.
The case opened by itself.
All three shards lit up, filling the chamber with a cold blue glow. The water outside the windows began moving in the wrong direction, flowing upward along the glass.
Then a voice emerged from the shards.
Not my mother's.
Not my father's.
A voice I had never heard before, speaking in a language that somehow made sense to me.
"The door remains open."
Queen Nerathe stumbled backward.
Korrin caught her arm.
I couldn't move. The words had settled somewhere behind my ribs, carrying a feeling I couldn't explain—recognition mixed with a grief that didn't belong to me.
The shards flashed once.
And a fourth light appeared beneath them.
A small, dark fragment lay at the bottom of the case, so faint that I hadn't noticed it before.
I reached toward it.
"Selene, don't!" Korrin shouted.
Too late.
The moment my fingers touched the fragment, the chamber vanished.
For one brief second, I saw a station surrounded by black water. A man stood behind a wall of glass, his palm pressed against it.
My father.
He looked older than I remembered. His hair was streaked with grey, and there was a deep exhaustion in his eyes.
But he was alive.
He opened his mouth, and this time, I heard him clearly.
"Selene, listen to me. If you've found Blackwater, then they've already found you."
Behind him, something moved in the darkness.
My father turned.
His expression changed from fear to absolute horror.
Then he looked back at me.
"Whatever happens, don't let them open the—"
The vision shattered.
I was back in the queen's chamber, gasping as Korrin held me upright. The fourth fragment had gone dark.
Nobody spoke.
I stared at the empty space where my father had been.
Then I looked at Queen Nerathe.
"Who are they?"
She didn't answer immediately.
When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"The ones who were supposed to protect the Heart."
I swallowed.
"And what happens if they open it?"
The queen looked toward the darkened windows.
"Then, Selene, we may discover that the ocean was never trying to keep something out."
Her eyes met mine.
"It was trying to keep something in."