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Ambitious teens could request special dispensation or even solitary ceremonies between the scheduled ones. But she’d been content to stay here, in Papa’s house. To help him keep a watchful eye on the waters. To stay at Jade’s side, to joke with Storm, to watch Mama put worlds on canvas.

It had always been enough. It always could be. Couldn’t it?

Movement caught her eye—shifting shadows. Probably a fish, though she glimpsed only the flash of a dark tail. Scales glinted in the meager light, though, which was good. Not a shark.

Another flash. One that made her heart thud. Light instead of dark, this time. Not a fish. Stationary. Metal . Metal, but bright and shiny rather than dull and textured. Not a piece of mangled building. Something else.

Something valuable? Possibly.

With a finger on the sound-making mechanism built into all their dive belts, she clicked to get Jade’s attention and motioned in the direction of the glint, not sure if her sister could see it yet.

Quite possibly not, given the way Jade swept her head back and forth.

None of the others had spotted it either, or they would have come closer instead of fanning away.

Good. They always pooled what they found, sent it inland with a representative, and split the sales—but there was pride at stake. And she and Jade almost always recovered the most valuable artifacts. Arden’s eyesight was the best of the bunch, and Jade was quick as a mer once she spotted something.

It was closer to Arden though, and her sister must have struggled to see what she’d found. By the time she made her usual dart toward it, Arden was already there, reaching for the small, curved piece of…silver? Maybe, but she wouldn’t know for sure until they got it to the surface.

It was smaller than she’d thought it would be. Sitting there, exposed, on what was likely a rooftop. Original to the site? Or had it fallen from a ship and come to a rest there more recently?

It didn’t look that old to her eye. Maybe a thousand years, but not the four or five of the ruins themselves. A blade? It looked like it, though she’d never seen one of that shape. She reached for it even as Jade did, both of them grasping it at the same time, laughing into their mouthpieces.

Both jerking away a second later as blood spiraled from their fingers.

Their eyes met, panic in Jade’s that was no doubt reflected in Arden’s. It didn’t take much blood to draw the sharks. They both shoved their fingers into the pockets of their suits designed to staunch the flow of blood from minor wounds, but not before those first drops had swirled out.

Only a bit. Not enough to draw the predators.

Probably.

Jade reached again for the blade—more carefully this time—even as Arden sent a series of clicks to the rest of their crew. Drops of blood in the water. Surfacing.

Not that she wanted to after only a few minutes, with only one small find for their bag. But they had to tend their fingers or they’d put everyone at risk.

Quickly , Jade clicked in reply. She’d put the blade into her bag and was reaching for the weight sacks. Arden did the same, letting the sand flow out so that they could shoot upward, their feet propelling them without having to fight their suits.

Arden didn’t take the time to check for sharks, just swam as fast as she could. Given her signal, the others would be watching the deep and would let them know if any hungry predators appeared out of the murk. Better to focus on where she was going and trust her friends for the rest.

The water brightened as they neared the surface, and then they burst out into the sunlight.

The shadow of the hawk circling overhead flashed in front of the sun, massive enough to draw both their gazes to the sky.

The bird was lower than usual, its shadow big enough to cover the whole boat and then some.

Reassurance, that shadow. Jade’s angel was watching over them.

Arden met her sister’s eyes across the boat and they spat out their mouthpieces to smile. “One,” Arden said, knowing they’d have to climb back into the boat for the first-aid bag stowed under the seat.

“Two.” Jade nodded, bracing her hands on the railing.

“Three,” they said together, hauling themselves up at the same time to keep the boat steady.

Arden hooked one of her knees over the edge, like always.

The boat rocked. Jade screamed and vanished beneath it.

“Jade!” Arden scrambled the rest of the way into the boat, throwing herself to Jade’s side of it.

The whole world pulsed in time to the pain in her finger.

Thump . She saw her sister descending. Thump .

Hands on Jade’s arms, bronze against ivory.

Thump . Tails. Tails! But not the shades of green and blue that the mer kingdom wore as their military uniforms. Black.

Black as night. Black as sin. Black as secrets.

Thump . A flash of light on silver as Jade wrestled the blade out of her sack.

Thump . Arden dove in, aiming for the mermaid on Jade’s left rather than the merman on her right—she had a better chance of fighting off the smaller one.

Thump. Their descent slowed as Jade fought them, wriggling and punching and then slashing with the blade.

Thump . Another blade, black instead of silver, slashing against Jade’s skin.

Blood. Blood. Blood.

Arden tried to scream, not remembering until water filled her mouth that she was diving, swimming.

Slowing. Geysers! Why had she let all the weight out of her suit? There was no way she could dive down far enough to reach Jade now, much less follow the mer if they moved onward. She was too light—it was why her suit was so heavy, even though she was taller than Jade.

She tried to make sense of what was happening below her through the cloud of dangerous red. Tried to push herself down and down and down when her own buoyancy wanted to pull her up and up and up. Tried to will the water to obey her and lift her sister free of the demon hands.

Something grabbed her arms. She struggled, spun, flailed, ready to deliver a blow to the jugular of whatever mer had snuck up on her. But there was no human face or figure anywhere she could see, just columns of yellow-gold.

In the next second, air surrounded her again, giving her breath to scream. “No! Jade!”

The hawk. It was the hawk that had her—its feet wrapped around both of her arms.

If it thought to make a meal of her while the mer sacrificed her sister, it was in for a surprise. “Let me go!” she yelled at the feathers above her. But wait. This was Jade’s angel. Her protector. Had it been trying to save her ? “You got the wrong one!”

As if in answer, the hawk released its grip, and Arden fell—though only a few feet. Her legs clattered down, boneless, into the bottom of her own boat. She gripped the edge and screamed at the bird, “Go back! Get her! Now !”

It soared up instead. Arden gritted her teeth, grabbed at the bags of sand she would have used to refill her weight sacks if she’d had the time, and stood, ready to dive in again.

A head surfaced beside her boat, instantly familiar. Storm. He looked pale as he hauled himself up. Arden counterbalanced the boat without thought. “Move. I need to go back in.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Arden.” He put large hands on her shoulders and pushed her to a bench. She struggled against him for a moment, though she was startled into compliance when the hawk dove again. Yes . It must have been getting height enough for another dive.

Storm winced away from the splash then motioned toward the water. “Her guardian is helping. Kav is the fastest swimmer and deepest diver among us. He’s giving chase. Pash is following, and he has his weapon.”

But the hawk could only dive so far, even from so great a height, and the mer would know it—they’d have pulled her deeper and deeper, past where the bird could go.

“You’re better than either of them. Why are you here?

” Why was she? Even if she couldn’t dive deep enough, she needed to try.

She strained against his hands, but he only pushed back.

His face went hard and tight. “Stop it! You think Jade’s the only one worth saving?

You jump in there bleeding like that, and you’ll be shark bait.

Not only you but all of us. There’s blood enough in the water already, but at least the mer got her away from it and staunched the flow. The sharks will come to empty water.”

Arden shook her head. “It’s a tiny cut, it’s not even bleeding anymore.” She held up her finger to prove it. “I have to—”

Storm muttered something harsh and low and wrenched her right arm up. “Not your finger, Ar—this.”

She glanced at her arm. It took a long moment to process what she was seeing. The sleeve of her dive suit was sliced away and sagged down to her elbow. A ring of blood dripped down her upper arm. “How…?”

“The hawk. You were fighting. It must have cut you with its talon before it dropped you.”

“The hawk.” She leaned over the side as much as Storm would allow.

Fractured sunlight caught the bird’s feathers, turning them to gold. Its dive had slowed. Stopped. But Jade wasn’t in its protective claws. Its wings unfurled like massive sails, beating against the water, pushing itself up. Up. Up.

It broke the surface feet from their boat, rocking the vessel with force. Its wings continued their strokes as it rose into the air. Up and up and up.

No . Tears threatened, but Arden blinked them back and leaned over the side.

She searched the waters, peered into the depths, caught glimpses through the murk.

A flash of red that could only be Jade’s hair was obscured by something.

Two black tails, and more alongside them.

How many? Four? Five? Limp dive-suit-clad legs between them.

Kav, swimming faster than Arden ever could but still not gaining on the mer and Jade.

Pash, pausing and taking aim with his cross-harpoon. The hook leapt out, aimed unerringly at the mer.

One of them deployed a…shield? It must be. It bloomed out like a flower but with the speed of a mechanism, glinting dully. The weapon ricocheted off it. And then, somehow, the mer put on even more speed.

And then they were gone. Into the dark. Into the murk. Out of her sight. All that remained were her two friends swimming helplessly in their direction, blood spiraling out in tendrils that looked like grief—and the dark bodies of sharks on the prowl.

Her chest squeezed so tight she thought it would explode. The wind whipped around her, lashed at the sea, but all it could do was kick up whitecaps. It couldn’t reach beneath the water and pull her sister out of it.

“Storm.” His name emerged only as a whisper. He’d sat across from her, released her, and gripped the sides of the boat as the gusts rocked them. “You should have gone after her.”

Storm squeezed his eyes shut. “Pash and Kav were closer than I was. And I couldn’t let you die, Ar. You can’t think I would.”

She wanted to argue that he should have, shouldn’t have even thought of her. Jade was the one he was in love with.

But Arden was one of his best friends, as he was one of hers.

She swallowed the argument. “The sharks are here.” Pash and Kav were far enough away that they could probably avoid them, but the predators would circle relentlessly. They wouldn’t be able to resurface at their boats.

Storm looked down, but the way his eyes moved this way and that said he couldn’t make them out. Not yet. “I’ll signal them to rendezvous with us at the rally point. We’ll tow their boats.”

She nodded, but she only knew it because the world rocked a little more before her eyes. She couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel anything. How could she?

Her sister, her best friend, was gone. Kidnapped. Stolen. What did that leave in the world that mattered?

The wind died as suddenly as it had come up. Arden closed her eyes and let the defeat drag her down.