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A rden checked their position among the rest of their little salvage fleet, nodded to her sister, and secured her oars. They never bothered with the solar sail for this short journey to the edge of the shallows. The sails’ speeds were too fast and the distance too short.

“How does it look down there?” Jade asked—though she wasn’t looking down into the water to gauge visibility or the shadow of the newly revealed city on the deep side of the shelf. She was looking northward, toward Storm’s boat.

Arden tried to bite back a grin. And failed. “I don’t know yet, but it’s pretty telling up here.” She lifted a teasing brow.

Jade blushed and sent her a playful scowl. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Riiight.” Arden leaned over the side of the boat, excitement eclipsing her dread of the next two days when she saw several new feet of ruins revealed by shifting sands. “Looks good down there. Suit up.”

Jade passed Arden her suit with an exaggerated grunt of effort.

Or maybe not so exaggerated. It was ridiculously heavy—but that’s what she needed to be able to dive deep enough for exploration.

Jade didn’t need quite so many weights, though she looked smaller than Arden.

They could have waited to add the weights until they were in the boat, making the suits lighter for transport, but this gave them more time to dive.

When Jade glanced again toward Storm, Arden laughed. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know. I mean, Kav and Pash may cling to oblivion, but we all know where your heart lies. Why do you keep trying to deny it?”

She expected another blush, a grin. But Jade sighed and dropped her gaze to the suit she was tugging slowly on. “He said…he said he’d give it up for me. The hope of training for the Elite Guard.”

Arden’s hands paused in their own task. “I’m going to need you to parse that for me. Because it sounds sweet, but you’re saying it like he announced he only has a few months to live.”

Jade fiddled with one of the weight pouches instead of tugging again on the fabric.

“He knows I want to go to university and study diplomacy with the goal of being assigned to the Sunken Kingdom. That my dream is to be the ambassador to the mer someday. But if I do that and he pursues a Guardian career, we’d never see each other.

What kind of relationship could we have?

So he—he offered to give up his dreams. For mine.

” Jade lifted stricken green eyes to Arden.

“I can’t do that to him, Ar. I can’t be the thing that takes his dreams from him.

I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering if he’s going to resent me. ”

Arden pushed her feet through the legs of her suit but didn’t take her eyes off her sister. “Wait a minute. When did you have this conversation?”

The blush spread again over Jade’s fair cheeks. “Last night.”

That made no sense at all. Unless… Arden leaned closer, pitching her voice to a whisper. “Did you sneak out? To meet him? And you didn’t tell me so I could keep watch?”

“No!” The horror in Jade’s expression was as amusing as it was typical. A rebel her sister wasn’t. “When I went for a walk after dinner, he was at the jetty, and we…talked.”

“Talked, huh?” Oh yes, the blush deepened. Arden couldn’t restrain her delight. “Did he finally work up the nerve to kiss you?”

She half expected an equivocation, a “maybe,” a demure drop of her gaze.

Instead, Jade grinned and nodded. Though a second later it faded.

“Then… this . I know he means it. I know he’ll give it up.

But I can’t let him. This is what he was born for, Arden.

You’ve seen him—he’s better than any other boy in the Banks.

Better than the ones on the mainland he trained with last summer.

Papa says Storm’s better than he was. He could end up the master someday, in charge of the whole Guard.

Following the king wherever he goes. He could retire to a position of authority like Papa did and be one of the most important people in the empire. ”

With a slow nod, Arden tugged her suit’s legs up a little more, though the rubbery fabric resisted her every inch of the way. “He could. And you could offer to give up your dreams, but he won’t let you do that either.”

“I could insist.” Jade heaved a sigh and looked Storm-ward again. “And maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll take a couple years at university while he’s in deep training. Maybe that’s all I’ll really need, and then I’ll miss him so much I won’t care about the rest anymore. I just…” Her eyes slid closed.

Arden gave her a moment, then nudged her with a foot. “You just what?”

Her sister drew back in the air she’d expelled. “I see Mama, you know? I know she loved my father, loves me, loves Papa. But I see the look on her face when she’s painting. And I see the one that takes over when Papa suggests she try to sell something. When she says, every time—”

“‘That’s not why I made it,’” Arden recited. She’d always thought it a beautiful sentiment. That Mama painted from the heart, for the joy, not for the money. What had Jade seen that Arden hadn’t?

Jade tugged her own suit on more. “She’s afraid to dream. Afraid they won’t sell, and it will hurt. Afraid they will, and then it will tempt her away from the life she’s made. She’s afraid she’ll get a little success and will then wonder what she could have found if she’d pursued it fully.”

Arden’s hands fell still again in her lap.

Had anyone else said such a thing, she’d have dismissed them.

Because Mama loved her life. She said so frequently.

But this was Jade. And Jade saw people like no one else did.

Which was why she’d make a fantastic ambassador someday, if she pursued that path.

If this was what Jade saw in Mama, then it was true. And it put her sister’s dilemma into stark perspective. Arden stood long enough to pull the suit over her rear end and then sat again. The next gaze she cast over the waves made her sigh. “A sea of impossibilities.”

“It’ll all work out. Right? We just don’t know how yet. And since we can’t really plan much, anyway, before we have our Awakening Ceremony next month, maybe I shouldn’t overthink it.”

Arden snorted another laugh. “Riiight.”

Jade reached over the side of the boat, scooped up a fingerful of water, and flicked it at her.

Arden punched her arms through her suit’s sleeves and stood before Jade could turn the tables of the conversation. She had no interest in being grilled on her own lack of plans for the future. “We’d better hurry. The others are already in the water.”

Jade recognized the diversion, of course, but she couldn’t argue the point. She grinned and finished suiting up. “Can’t let them be the ones to find all the good stuff, can we?”

“Not a chance.”

Within seconds they were easing feet-first into the cool water from opposite sides of the boat, to keep it steady, then pausing to fit their mouthpieces.

They’d both charged the air units of their suits after yesterday’s dive, which would provide them with about two hours’ worth of air, if they were using them exclusively.

They wouldn’t, though. All the Banks inhabitants trained in diving and underwater exploration, which meant they learned to work while holding their breath for minutes longer than inland people usually could.

Far from the hour the mer could reportedly go without air, but still.

Respectable. They’d only use their air when they needed a hit, and then they’d resurface with whatever they found and take a long gulp of free air.

It allowed them to work a full day beneath the waves, most of the time.

Or a half day for them, today. Thanks to the king and his stupid ball.

The weights were already tugging them down, and Arden let the water close over her head without resistance. She and Jade flipped in unison and swam downward, toward the section of exposed ancient city beneath their boat.

Visibility was good today, as Arden had expected, given the calm. Their friends fanned out around the new exposure, their own suits drawing them down toward the mysteries beyond the shelf.

The drop-off was quick between the shallows and the deep, and the currents that had exposed new ruins today could cover them again in another day or week. They had to work quickly when something new appeared.

But she always had to take a moment to swim in awe of what lurked beneath the waves.

Cities, but not like any she’d ever seen on land.

No, the cities of the ancients were…odd.

Full of metal and concrete and gaping windows that had presumably once held glass.

Little marble. No crystal. Some of the buildings had touches of beauty and grace, but not like they had now. They were utilitarian. Ugly.

At least the ones they saw here. She’d heard tales from farther north about ruins with buildings so tall they would have scraped the sky, but she had to think that was more fable than truth. Fish stories. Akin to Papa’s claim that Arden’s mother had fallen from the sky, right into his arms.

Although the thought of being up so high, on a level with the angels, made her smile around her mouthpiece.

And think, again, about what came next. Not today, but generally.

She’d taken all the classes she could via crystal, and she thought maybe it would be fun to go to university for her last two years and study birds, like the hawk that had been circling Jade every day of her life…

but she couldn’t make any firm plans until after next month’s Ceremony.

She could apply, and she had—but acceptance always hinged on one’s Awakening results.

No university wanted to invest in a student who was going to get whisked away for other studies instead.