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I said nothing, wiping the tracks of salt from my cheeks, watching her shell lips and waiting for the words that would free us.

I love him, I thought. That has to be enough.

But the fear crashing through my heart made me doubt whether it was. Was I too late? Was my love even enough? I wished I could turn back time – reverse the sunset and force those words from my lips a moment sooner.

‘In love but out of time,’ Nerida murmured, reaching out to trace a finger along the curve of Sebastien’s arm. There was an exaggerated pout on her lips as she drank in his stone features. ‘So sad.’

I looked into her gleaming eyes, turned indigo as twilight settled over us. I could barely recognise the sea I loved in them.

I’d never truly feared the water, until now.

‘Please,’ I whispered, knowing I couldn’t fight a tide so devastatingly cold. ‘Bring him back.’

The sea shook her head, hair rippling like silk over her shoulders. ‘Like his heart, he belongs to me now. I saved his people. This is his fate.’

You didn’t save them, I wanted to cry. You turned them to stone.

Instead, I bit my tongue, hating the tears that betrayed me, that laid my mortal weakness bare before a god. The deck was silent, the pirates entranced by the scene unfurling before them. The goddess and the girl, and the man whose heart of stone belonged to us both.

I dug within myself, steeling my will into a weapon I could use. ‘Give him back his heart and take mine,’ I said. ‘If he’s stone, then so am I.’

Nerida laughed. Peals of siren song filled the air, hollow as shells. ‘You thought you would be rewarded for loving a monster? Did you think you could redeem him, little girl? That your love could purge the blood he has spilt from my seas?’

The blood drained from my face, deserting me. I’d said the words, and meant them – had been so sure that the answer to everything had been stitched inside me all along.

‘I know your heart, Aurelia Lucroy.’ The ocean’s eyes glittered, bright and infinitely cold. ‘You are selfish, human, and for your greed, you have forgotten those capable of loving you truly. Your own family.’

Shame sliced through me at the thought. I’d never forget my family, but I had left them to a life none of us wanted. All for a chance to save my crew – and now I’d failed them, too.

‘I said it, I love him—’ The words came out choked, so bitter I could scarcely stomach them. ‘Bring him back. All of them.’

‘Foolish girl,’ snarled the goddess. ‘This isn’t about you. The curse was his alone to break, just as his heart is mine to keep.’

I blinked, looking around me at the faces of the crew, remembering that I was swept up in something centuries old, something about so much more than a king. Mersey, Mors, Bane, Una, now me. So many of us mortals drawn into the heart of something timeless, unable to outlive it, unable to survive unbroken by it.

‘Tell me how,’ I pleaded. ‘How do I save them?’

Those eyes of winter seas bore into mine. ‘You don’t.’

Nerida strode in a slow circle, pausing to trail a delicate finger over Aron’s bowed granite head, the slope of his neck. My eyes burned at the thought of never seeing him smile again. A world empty of his laughter, his crinkled eyes and slouching gait . . . It would be just that – empty.

Una drew back a step, her eyes wide with fear as she gazed up at the goddess. Mors’ arm tightened protectively around her shoulders.

‘There is no soul more lonely than a god.’ The sea moved towards Golde and my hands curled into fists as I fought the urge to shove myself between them, to stop Nerida from laying a finger on her. ‘I lived for thousands of years in peace before bringing mortals under my dominion. I knew their greed, their wiles – I should have known better than to let their cities take root in my waves. To trust a man with my heart.’

Her gaze slid to Sebastien, full of spite – yet not entirely.

‘I knew that with his people in the way, his heart would never truly be mine. I turned them to stone so that my touch would not fill their lungs, as I had promised. And in return I took his heart, for it should have been mine alone to take. I gave him three hundred years, thinking that if he could not love me enough with a heart, then he would be hopeless to love another without it.’

‘You should’ve let him die!’ I cried. ‘If you truly loved him, you’d have let him die rather than watch him torture himself for centuries.’

‘How could I?’ mused the sea. ‘How could I let him bleed to death because the very idea of being mine was so abhorrent to him? I wanted to save him, and yet . . . I hated him with all that I am.’

‘You cursed him.’

‘I curse him every day, human. He destroyed me, just as he will you. Even with a heart, he is too broken to love.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I choked out, angry that a part of me would have believed her, once.