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And worse—the mer would come from the east. The Desert Dwellers from the west. His people would be crushed between them. Countless innocent lives, sacrificed. Valiant hearts, snuffed out. Families, destroyed or torn apart.

His whole body ached at the thought of it.

“I don’t know how many more years I have.

I may not fall prey to disease, but I’m not immortal.

The right weapon could do damage too severe to let me reach the healing waters.

” He glanced down at the slow trickle of his blood seeping out from the bandage.

“And even if I continue to avoid that, I’ll still reach the natural end of my life.

Another hundred years, a hundred fifty, two hundred. Maybe three.”

According to Mother, he was stronger than any of them had been, likely because he’d been ruling so long already.

Mother had never wanted to be queen so had stepped down the moment she deemed him ready, when he was only seventy-five.

That meant two hundred years he’d been stretching his magic, testing it, growing it.

Strengthening it. That, in turn, meant a longer life.

Whatever magic filled Awakened blood, it was, so far as they could gather, what gave them youth and longevity.

He could, perhaps, live to five or six hundred years.

But he didn’t know for certain.

His throat felt so tight that even the sight of a Great Golden Sea Hawk soaring high above the Banks couldn’t bring him peace. “I need to remarry.”

Enoch nodded, so slowly that it was obvious he understood Seidon’s unspoken words as well. “And this time, it must be a mer.”

Somehow, his throat went even tighter. “No. A halfling, like me. The whole mer race doesn’t have magic, any more than the whole land-dwelling race does. Magic only comes in the meeting. And I think that’s what I need—a woman with magic in her blood compatible with mine. That’s the only way…”

His throat closed completely, and he had to take a long moment to work a swallow past it.

All these years—two hundred and fifty of them—and it still tore him to pieces when he thought of it.

He’d loved Zella first, with all his heart, with all the passion of youth.

He’d thought, foolishly, that his love, their love, would be enough to overcome any blood magic.

That they’d have children just because they wanted to.

She’d died for that assumption.

He cleared his throat. “That’s the only way she’ll be able to bear a child to term, I think. That’s what Mother had to do—find a husband who was a halfling.”

“But her father before her married a full mer—didn’t he?”

“Not quite. Three-quarters.” He shrugged.

“It isn’t exactly mathematics. It may be science, but if so, we haven’t unlocked the secrets.

My grandfather found a compatible mate in his third wife, who was more mer than not…

my mother with another halfling. Regardless, I’m going to need to visit the Sunken Cities and try to find a bride. ”

Enoch frowned at him, sidestepping loose rocks with the ease of long practice and familiarity. No doubt he walked this way at least weekly, with the brothers. The friary’s path joined this one before they’d entered it from the palace. “Is there no halfling in Daryatla of a suitable age?”

“If so, I haven’t found her.” A frustration that had him raking his hand through his hair, fighting the wind for control of it.

He’d let it grow again, and the sun-kissed brown waves reached his shoulders now.

He pulled it back and tied it at the nape of his neck with a band he’d had around his wrist. “I’ve pored over all the reports from the Awakening Ceremonies.

There’s been no one with magic strong enough.

A few sparks, a few trickles of it—and those people have gone into training, of course.

They can help protect the coast, but they’re unlikely to be compatible with me. ”

They reached the promontory, but neither rushed to jump off. They paused instead, looking out at the sea. Past the barrier islands. Toward the distance, where his sea-dwelling cousins lived.

Enoch folded his arms over his chest. “And among them? Is there more magic? More halflings?”

Seidon held up his hands, palms out. “We can only assume so. They’re careful to hide them from our delegations, of course. But so many young men and women have vanished from boats and coastal towns throughout the decades.”

“The people think they’re dead. That the mer took them to sacrifice them—sea demons, you know.”

Seidon winced. “I have no doubt there are demons roaming the world, but they’re not the mer. They’re people, just like us.”

“Which means they want power, just like us. They want to defy their limitations, just like us.”

“Exactly.” Seidon swept his hands out, encompassing the coastline.

“Are we, land-dwellers that we are, content to keep to the land? No. We build boats. Solar sails to carry us over the waters at incredible speeds. We create dive suits to let us reach the depths. We encroach more and more on their territory with our fishing and crabbing. Yet when they dare to emerge from the waters and take off their tails and walk the land, we are outraged and afraid. How many mer children were kept in aquariums before my great-grandmother discovered what was happening and shut them all down? Yet when they steal one of ours away…”

“Not to sacrifice them.” Enoch’s tone held no question. Only understanding. “To incorporate them into their families, their culture. To force them—or encourage them, perhaps—to marry and have children.”

“So that those children are magical.” Seidon nodded.

“But land-dwellers can’t live that long in the Sunken Cities, can we? The pressure.”

Pressure sickness—his father’s father had been plagued by it. And his father’s mother by surface sickness. Which had meant that though they’d loved each other, the years they chose to live together had actually caused them harm. “Lifespans would be shortened by about half. Assuming…”

“Assuming?” Enoch turned to him.

Seidon motioned eastward again. “There are islands beyond the reach of our solar sails, on the far side of mer territory. Mother suspected that at least some of the time, those missing young people end up there. Where they can live out their full lives—or split their time between land and sea, anyway, with their families. And let’s be honest.”

At Enoch’s raised brows, Seidon smiled. “Not all the disappearances are kidnapping. At least half the reports contained interviews with friends of the missing person who admitted that they’d been fraternizing with a mer.

That they’d been talking about moving beneath the waves.

Their parents hadn’t approved, so they had to be sneaky about it—but nothing was done against their will.

Those cases weren’t kidnapping. They were elopement. ”

Enoch let out a long breath. “Actually, that makes me feel better.”

“Doesn’t it? Not demons. Not always kidnappers—though sometimes, yes. Just as sometimes we do the same on land. People are people, wherever they are.”

“You won’t stoop to that though. You’ll visit them. Find a halfling beneath the waves. Convince her to marry you and come to the land.”

It sounded so cold, calculating. Political.

But what choice did he have? He needed a wife who could bear him a child.

He needed a child he could train up to love Daryatla and its people in the same way he did and his mother and grandfather and great-grandmother had.

He’d spent the last two centuries praying that the Triada would give him either a wife who could carry his child to term or even a magical child he could adopt and train.

He’d tried moving the Awakening Ceremony age requirement to childhood, thinking that would improve his chances of finding someone capable of the strength required to maintain the empire, someone to train up as his son or daughter.

He’d been Awakened at age five, after all. It had done him no harm. Only good.

But they’d ended up with a generation of angsty children who had to train in magic instead of childhood, and they’d turned into angry adults who wanted nothing to do with the work.

He’d learned his lesson and reset the age to eighteen.

Anyone who showed magic had to be trained, yes—but they had the choice in what they ultimately did with it.

Some of the most promising of his people now refused to acknowledge what set them apart from their friends. They pretended they’d only gone to university and then returned home to try and forget all they’d learned.

He sighed. Silently sent another prayer heavenward. Absently scratched at the trickle on his arm where the wound still oozed. And stepped toward the edge of the cliff. “Enough of this. Let’s dive, shall we?”

Enoch grinned. “Race you to the lagoon.” And he jumped.