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I grab his collar and pull him close. “What are they going to do? Kick you out? They’re nothing without your voice.” I push him back against the bench and kiss him deeply.

He responds with equal passion before pulling away abruptly. “You have no idea how hard it is to say no to you, but the guys are already upset with me for bailing on them so much lately.”

“Is that my fault?” Guilt stings. He should be the one being the bad influence on me, but maybe it’s actually the other way around.

“Never. Well, maybe.” The corners of his mouth twitch. “You’re the best thing to happen to me, Marra. Things have been crazy since you showed up, but I wouldn’t change a thing.” He pauses. “Other than you pushing me away. Can you promise me you’ll tell me when something’s bothering you? It’s fine if you can’t talk about it right away, but just keep me in the loop. That’s all I ask.”

“I promise. Although, I really hope nothing like this ever happens again.”

“Hopefully, you don’t find out someone else is actually your father.”

I frown. “At least now I know why I didn’t come into my full powers.”

A flicker of realization crosses his face before his eyes widen. “Wait just a minute. You think you have to kill Tiberias now?”

“I don’t want to!”

“You don’t have to!” He holds my gaze. “This whole thing is ridiculous. You’re not Queen Sirena, and there’s no reason for you to do the things she did.”

“That’s not the way it seems to be working. I didn’t want to kill my dad, yet look what happened.”

“Because you thought you had to! And he wasn’t even your dad, so that just proves it was all in your head.”

I scoot away. “All in my head?”

“You know what I mean.”

“That I’m mental?”

He narrows his eyes. “That’s not it, so don’t even go there.”

“It’s not in my head—it’s on my head!” I hold out some of my pink hair. “I never even heard of the legendary queen until this happened. Until her trident chose me.”

Bash tilts his head. “Her trident?”

“That’s what it tells me.”

“What else haven’t you told me?” He scoots farther away from me.

My heart sinks. “I don’t want to argue. We just made up!”

He sits taller. “What else haven’t you told me?”

“Nothing! I haven’t intentionally left one thing out. If there’s anything I haven’t told you, it’s because I’ve been so distracted by everything else that it slipped my mind. And that’s the truth. If you don’t believe me, you can just—”

“I believe you.” He scoots closer and wraps his arms around me. “You’re right—let’s not fight. We need each other now more than ever.”

I lean against him. “Thank you.”

He kisses the top of my head. “Let’s get going. I have to get to the band, and you need to study.”

We rise, he puts his arm around my waist, then we make our way out of the garden and into the building.

An upper-year student from the School of Magic Arts stops me. “Is it true? You’re Tiberias’s daughter?”

I swim away, only to have other students question me about Tiberias.

“Come this way.” Bash wraps an arm around me and leads me down a hallway. We turn down another until all sounds of conversation are gone. “I think we’ve lost them.”