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Rico moved to assist in filling them from the saltwater tap, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

He’d always been proud of his daughter, Seidon knew.

But now? He couldn’t fault his old friend for the joy and pride gleaming in his eyes, for that smile always fluttering when he saw his precious girl in her new position.

Perhaps Seidon had never experienced the feelings of fatherhood firsthand, but he’d seen it aplenty over the centuries. Rico all but preened with it.

“We’ll let each of you who are Awakened recreate the Ceremony,” Seidon narrated, motioning the three forward, “so you can feel her power for yourself. But no need for the rest of you to feel left out.” He flashed a smile over Rico and Xia.

“You’ll be able to see it for yourselves when her blood mixes with mine. ”

Xia’s brows hiked up.

Ulri, Pnina, and Rodriguez all moved to stand in front of one of the bowls. He’d asked them each to come with their own Awakening Blades, and when he motioned to his own, they drew them out of their sheathes.

Seidon quirked a brow at Arden. “Ready?”

She blew out a breath. Rather than reach for the Blade herself, she held out her hand toward him.

Her hand was steady, but he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to be the one to cut herself. Especially having never practiced with the Blade to know its sharpness or heft. He gave her a soft smile, picked up the same Blade he’d used at the Ceremony, and carefully pressed it to her finger.

Was she thinking, as he was, of that day not so long ago? The day that had sealed their fates? The day that had broken through his every fear and promised him his heart’s desire?

She must be, given the things he saw swirling in her beautiful amber eyes. Her own hopes and dreams and fears, and that shadow at the back that said part of her still couldn’t believe this was real.

He set the Blade into the sterilizer and moved forward with her toward Ulri’s bowl. The High Guardian had already cut his own finger and lowered it into the water, so all Arden had to do was let a drop of her blood fall into it.

The two swirls mixed, and Ulri moved his finger to more quickly intercept it.

The man’s eyes widened, he sucked in a sharp breath, and jerked his hand out of the water as if he’d been shocked. Seidon grinned.

“Skies!” Ulri’s gaze flew from Arden to Seidon and back again. “I’ve never… yours is the only blood that ever felt like that, Si.”

“I know.” He nudged her to Pnina’s bowl. “That’s what I wanted you to experience for yourself. Her magic is not of the water, not like us—but it is as strong as mine. Stronger, I daresay, once she’s had more than a few days to train.”

Pnina actually yelped at the touch of blood, and then laughed, her eyes gleaming in delight. “Congratulations to you both. Though I’d better at least see a recording of this wedding. I’m still miffed about not being invited.”

Rodriguez wasn’t quite as demonstrative, likely because he was braced for it, but Seidon could tell from the way the Guardian’s pupils dilated, from the pounding of the man’s pulse, that he was just as convinced of Arden’s raw power.

Rico and Xia crowded around the fourth bowl, but Seidon chuckled and motioned them back. “You’ll want to move out of the splash zone. Unless you’re in need of a shower.”

They’d tested this, too, a few days ago, to see if the reaction would still be so overt, to make certain it hadn’t been a product of the Awakening itself. To know if this was a demonstration worth offering his High Guardians.

The results had been exactly what he’d hoped. He and Arden moved to opposite sides of the bowls, their gazes catching. He reached for his Blade again, made a quick cut, and they both lowered their hands into the bowl.

The zap still felt like lightning in his veins. The fire of it still made him want to reach for her, pull her close, claim her lips. Still cried out that he needed more, more, more of her.

But he settled, this time, for squeezing her other hand with his.

So that he could watch as, once again, the water leapt from the bowl, dancing and twirling with the wind that kicked up, teasing it and holding it and carrying it through a choreography that he knew she wasn’t creating intentionally any more than he was.

Xia gasped—as did Rico, who had been there the first time. But then, he’d been too shocked, too quickly distracted by Angelica’s arrival. Perhaps hadn’t even remembered this part, given all that came after.

During their test the other evening, Seidon had given up on restraint right about now and kissed his wife senseless—to which she’d made no objection.

Today, he dragged in a long, shaking breath, squeezed her fingers tighter, and together they pulled at the magic to wrestle the water back into the bowl and unravel it from the wind.

It was harder than he’d expected. Required more focus than most things did these days. As if when woven together like that, their magic created something more than what either of them put into it individually.

More than what either of them could directly control.

A frisson of fear, one mixed with a strange kind of excitement, pulsed through him. He still didn’t understand this thing between them. This connection that added something so physical, so powerful, so magical to the love he’d felt so quickly.

He didn’t know, yet, what they’d be able to do.

To create. To stop. To control. He didn’t know how they would react—to themselves or each other.

He didn’t know if it would grow as the years went on, or if perhaps this was its apex, when her power was still so raw and new, and when his was, perhaps, at its peak.

What he did know was that this was the very time the Triada had chosen for them to come together.

This moment, in all the years he’d already lived, all they yet would.

This was the moment when the mer were poised on the brink of genocide.

This was the moment when Seidon had been stretched to the point of breaking with the wall, when he’d learned something new after all these years of strengthening the old.

“Skies above.” The mutter came from Rodriguez, the oldest of his High Guardians, who was easing back to his chair, eyes unfocused. He blinked, met Seidon’s gaze. And then bowed his head toward Arden. “My queen.” He pressed a fist to his heart.

The others matched the sign of loyalty. “May you live a thousand years and your rule encompass the world,” they said in unison.

“You may achieve that,” Rodriguez said, looking between them. A smile touched his wizened lips, gleamed in his wrinkle-bracketed eyes. “Together, I mean.”

“I don’t dare to guess the number of either of our days, and I have no designs on the world.

” Seidon moved to the projection and tossed it into the space before their chairs.

“But for now, we have a war to stop, before it kills every Awakened under the sea and encroaches more than it already has on the land.”

He spun the globe until the right section faced them, then halted it and flicked up the weather overlay. Every gaze focused on that rotating eye of a storm. “Let me tell you what we have in mind.”