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His fear of killing another wife had ebbed by the time he met and married Kerina. She hadn’t a drop of magic in her veins, and she was forty already when he met her. Neither of them had expected a child, so there had been no disappointment.

But Arden was different. Two days since the Awakening, and already she was controlling the wind like it was an extension of her hand, not even aware she was doing it.

She was strong. Stronger than him, likely.

Or she would be, at any rate. He’d fallen in love with her deeply and truly, before he knew they’d have a hope of creating new life together.

But they did have that hope. It burned like a strange, consuming flame within him.

When her hand stroked his cheek, he curled his fingers gently around her wrist and pulled it over a few inches so he could kiss her palm.

“Life is full of unknowns. But I believe, love. I believe that someday we’ll have a beautiful family.

That we’ll have a full and peaceful life together.

That this love will only grow with time. ”

He expected her to take the news with concern if not outright worry, but as she slipped into his lap, he saw only faith shining in her eyes.

“I believe you—and can’t imagine this love being any bigger.

I already feel ready to burst with it. With this joy of being with you.

I didn’t dare to dream it was possible, Si.

I thought my lot was to bury my love, to step aside.

To make room for whosever blood had called to you. ”

He kissed her, wrapping his arms around her.

“I should have known all along it was you. And yet I’m glad I didn’t.

Glad I fell for you first, not your blood.

” He slid his hands up her back, hooked them over her shoulders, and kissed her deeply as his palms kept moving, refusing to be content with one place to touch.

They slid up her neck, then down over her shoulders again and onto her arms.

She was so precious. So beautiful. Such a miracle.

He felt at once like nothing beside her and like she was the other half of him, a perfect match.

He wanted to sit back and let her love pour over him, wearing away centuries of forsaken hopes.

He wanted to lean forward and pour into her all he’d learned, all he’d gained, all he’d been given, because she deserved every last drop of any good he claimed.

His hand warm against her arm, her mouth warm against his, he imagined his love as a wave and let it flow from him to her.

The magic he usually held tight, strings pulling him taut and connecting him to the world around him, he released, praying that somehow if he could share it with her, it would give her what she needed to understand her own.

She gasped, pulling away from his lips, her eyes wide. “Seidon.”

“Hmm?” His mind was foggy with her, with his need to somehow express the depth of love that consumed him.

“How are you doing that?”

“Doing what?” But the urgency in her tone cleared the haze, and he saw the way her eyes darted between his and then dropped to her arm.

His hand, the one with his Awakening mark, had come to rest on her upper arm, where her own mark encircled her bicep. The warmth wasn’t just the normal pressing of skin to skin—it was hot. It was flame. It was…electricity, sparking blue between them when he pulled his hand away by a centimeter.

“Geysers,” he muttered.

“I could hear you—or see, maybe? I don’t know, I just…I could feel thoughts that weren’t my own. Like when I could sense your pain, only more. Stronger, clearer.”

His gaze flew back to hers. “Like Coral at the ball,” he murmured.

“And that light…” She looked down again at the blue-lit space between their marks. “Like the wall. Seidon! Like the wall!”

He didn’t dare to move, lest he stopped whatever it was he was doing. Didn’t dare to speak again.

What exactly was he doing? Because it would do no one any good if he couldn’t replicate it.

He’d only wanted to show her his love, but that couldn’t be the secret.

Coral had no love for him, and that wall had not been built on selfless affection.

What then? Beyond the reasoning, what was he actually doing ?

“Pushing out instead of pulling in,” Arden whispered, as if she could hear his thoughts.

Perhaps she could. And perhaps, sitting where she did, a step removed from those internal musings he’d become so familiar with over the centuries, she could see it more clearly. “Do you think so?”

“You wanted to share with me. To show me. But that isn’t how you usually work with your magic, is it?”

He shook his head. After each Awakening, he always explained this magic to the newly Awakened in the same way.

“This magic is a connection to the earth, given by its creator, the Triada. We do not dominate it, we receive it. Welcome its touch inside us and learn first to respond to it, and then to influence it in return. But always from within us. It calls, we answer. As our internal ears, so to speak, grow more attuned, we can hear its call from farther away and can answer with more strength. Every show of power is really us asking the water to do something, and it agreeing.”

She nodded, but new light had sparked in her eyes. “This, though—this was you urging power out instead of pulling it in from the water. Sending out what is yours, not pulling in what is the Triada’s. Could that be how the mer have been doing what they have?”

His breath eased out. Could it? Simple, on the one hand.

In theory. But even now, he felt the strain of it, of flipping his training around and doing the opposite of what he’d always done.

It had to have cost Coral to push her thoughts into him.

It had certainly cost Librus to manipulate the water in the air through Jade.

And that wall? No one mer could have done that, no matter how strong. It would have drained them to nothing and still not been created as it was.

But…but this outward push, this giving…if many did it together, at the same time, in conjunction…

He drew a breath in again and pulled his power back into himself before he started shaking.

“I know how they did it. The wall—it took a lot of them. They had to create a chain like this. Push it into those wires. It’s the movement, the movement of magic from them into something else, that creates the power.

Like water over turbines. Like wind or sun in sails. ”

Her hands framed his face, a breath of laughter on her lips. “I knew you would figure it out! Does that tell us, then, how to bring it down?”

Did it? He couldn’t pull that much power into his own body—it would be like getting hit by a thousand lightning strikes all at once.

But if it was movement that created it, it must also be movement that sustained it—the flow of water around and through it. If they could break the contact, keep the circuit from being continually completed, so to speak…

His eyes refocused on hers. He’d already tried to separate the water on their side of the wall from that on the other, but his inability to sense what was beyond the wall, even when it was only inches away, had stymied his efforts. As it would any other Awakened he called to help him.

But if something else could cause the separation long enough for him—them—to hold the water back…break the waves…break the circuit… He smiled. “Stop the waterfall.”

Her brows flew toward her hairline. “What?”

Seidon chuckled, let his hands settle on her waist, and motioned toward the streaming water with his head.

“A strong wind blew from the east and parted the sea for the people of promise in the ancient days. The wind, my love—the wind can part the waters. Try. Use it to hold up the waterfall. Just for a moment.”

Those raised brows crashed into a frown. “I can’t. I don’t have the first clue how to control this yet. I—”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Sweetheart, you have been caressing me with the breeze like it’s your fingers all night long.”

Her shock didn’t surprise him. Only made him chuckle again as her lips fell open. “I have?”

He nodded and turned them a bit to face the cascade of water. “Don’t think about it. Just reach out, like it’s a stream from the bath that you need to flick aside. Or a hair in your face you’re blowing away.”

“You think it’s that easy? That I can flick my fingers and…

” She flicked her fingers. A gust of wind pushed the stream of water out, held it there for a second—just long enough to create a gap in the flow—and then released it again.

She squealed. And turned accusing eyes on him. “You did that. Not me.”

He laughed again, the rumble low in his throat. “I did not.”

“You must have!”

“No, Arden, my love, queen of my heart—you did.”

“But how? So soon? I don’t have any idea how to use this magic yet.”

A bit like a baby bird trying to tell its mother it didn’t know how to fly, he suspected—right before Mama Bird shoved it from the nest. “Darling, this gift you’ve been given is straight from heaven, not diluted by centuries of flesh and blood and its weaknesses.

You’re not quite like the rest of us. It’s newer.

Fresher. Clearer. I daresay you’ll master it within a few weeks. ”

Her eyes looked distant, disbelieving. Her fingers curled into her palm. “It makes no sense. I’ve never been good at anything. Well, I mean, other than seeing farther than others.”

“Eyesight of a hawk, I suppose,” he deadpanned.

She blinked. Exhaled. Deflated against him. “Too much. Too fast. I don’t know how to be someone special.”

His arms slid around to hold her, and he kissed the part of her head closest to him.

“You were always someone special, Arden. Everyone but you knew it.” At her snort, he sighed.

“All right, fine. Most of your neighbors had no idea. But your parents knew. I imagine Jade knew. Storm knew. And I knew it the moment I met you.” He rubbed a soft circle on her back.

“You know very well it isn’t the magic in your blood that made me fall in love with you.

It was your determination. Your strength.

The way you love without bound, selflessly and completely.

It was the fact that you would face down the whole world to save your sister. ”

She sat up again, a bit of that determination in her eyes once more.

“We’re going to. I didn’t know how this would change our ability to do that, but—we can tear down the wall.

If I can move the water, you can hold it back…

we can break it, right?” She made as if to jump off his lap and start for the wall then and there, but he held her down, grinning.

“Seidon!” She huffed out a breath. “Don’t you want to see if we’re right?”

“Yes,” he said slowly, drawing it out into three syllables.

“But I also know that the moment that wall comes down, we need to be ready to move all our forces across it. We need to be ready to charge toward Usquerbis and know our strategy both for getting in and getting out with Jade. We need to expect that they’ll know within hours that you are the one with sky magic. We’re not ready for that yet.”

She pursed her lips, but the way her shoulders sagged said she granted the point. “So then?”

“So we enjoy this single day we have not to worry about it.” He hooked his hands around her shoulders again and leaned forward to kiss his way up her neck. “And then tomorrow, we go back to the palace. We call the council to order. And we start planning.” He nipped lightly at her ear. “Tomorrow.”

Her arms twined around him too, any impatience in her eyes burning off, leaving only a desire to match his own sparking in their depths. “Tomorrow.”