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I mages swirled through the darkness, and Jade wasn’t sure which she was fighting.

Was it the memories tying these knots in her stomach, or the black that kept snatching them away?

She tried to reach out a hand, to grasp hold of something solid, but there was nothing to latch hold of.

Only air. No, water. But she was breathing, even if she could see nothing with her eyes. Or was that a trick of the dream?

Arden . That was the vision that circled back time and again. Arden, swimming toward her, fury and panic and determination on her face. Arden, with a giant’s claws wrapped around her. Arden, a new panic in her eyes as the monster they’d always called an angel yanked her from the water.

Arden . Where was she? What had happened? Had the hawk killed her? Eaten her? Never in her life had Jade heard of one of the great hawks harming a human, but how else could Jade explain the beast grabbing her sister like that and carrying her away?

Or…or maybe it had been rescuing her. Was that possible? Could Arden be all right?

Before Jade could even wrap her hands around that hope, the darkness pulsed over it.

Blood filled her vision. It flourished like a vine putting out new tendrils, curling out in lines instead of clouds. So much blood that she bucked against the image, begged the Triada to deliver her from the spilling life that meant certain death in the water.

A familiar beach filled her mind’s eye instead.

She knew, even as she felt herself digging her feet into the sand, that this was not real.

Or it was, but it wasn’t now . It was yesterday.

The same soft melding of rose and gold and purple on the western horizon, the same low tide leaving vast stretches of sand for her feet to find.

The same thoughts swirling through her like a hurricane.

Only a little more than a month until their Awakening Ceremony.

All the islands were abuzz about it, because the king was back at the Tidal Palace, which meant that he, not one of his Awakened delegates, would be the one to hold his Blade over their fingers.

For most of them, it could well be the only time they’d meet the king.

Not for her. Not with her stepfather being one of his close friends, one of his High Guardians.

Jade had always known she’d meet the king someday, and though part of her bristled at the thought that it could be her family connections that smoothed the path to her goals instead of her own talent, she was too practical to let that stop her.

She knew what she wanted out of life. To go to university. To study diplomacy and the world of the mer. To get an assignment in one of the Sunken Cities as soon as she could as an intern or aide and work her way up to ambassador.

The Awakening Ceremony stood between her and her dreams, and as she walked the familiar stretch of beach, she tried to focus on the waving dune grasses to her left, the sparkling waters to her right, rather than the band of tension wrapped around her chest.

Just that afternoon, as they’d been dealing with the day’s haul from the ruins, Kav had said the thing that made her stomach roil with nausea and brought all these thoughts to torment her mind again.

When Jade’s Awakened… Whatever else he’d said hadn’t registered.

That one phrase had been enough to derail her entire day.

Because if it happened, it would derail her entire life.

Magic follows beauty . That was the prevailing wisdom, and why all her friends looked at her and assumed that when the Blade sliced her finger and her blood dripped into the ceremonial bowl of salt water, there would be that telltale flourish.

The king would lower her finger into the water, slice his own finger, and let his blood travel through the water to hers.

That whatever made the magic in his blood, it would react to hers, activate it. That she would be Awakened.

No. Please, Triada, no .

She curled her fingers into her palm. If she were magical, it meant that nothing was what she thought it was.

That her mother had been keeping secrets.

That Liam Calimore wasn’t really her father.

She had his red hair, yes, but it wasn’t like there weren’t ginger mer out there.

And she’d long ago done the math and realized Mama had already been pregnant when she got married.

What if Liam had just been a convenient savior, a way to cover up a liaison she hadn’t wanted or regretted or couldn’t make work? It wasn’t like Jade could even remember him, to try to deduce something from his behavior.

But sometimes Mama got that wistful look in her eyes when she painted. Sometimes she was so determined to remain unknown, to cling to her quiet island life, that Jade had to wonder.

What was she hiding from? What had scared her into a world of monotony? What if it was something that could tear their family apart?

Not to mention douse all of Jade’s dreams. No Awakened was permitted to serve in the underwater embassies.

They had been, once, but every time, they’d gone missing.

Kidnapped, killed, defected, forced to serve the mer instead—no one knew what happened to them, but the pattern had resulted in the rule.

If she were magical, she’d have to give up all she ever wanted.

But she could do good, serving Daryatla from the Sunken Cities.

She knew she could. People fascinated her.

Their psychology, the way they reacted to things, how so often they didn’t understand their own motivations.

But land-dwellers had a notoriously difficult time interpreting sea-dwellers.

It was largely the differences in physiology, according to the texts she’d studied.

Mer bodies were adapted to higher pressure.

When on land, their expressions looked different than they did when underwater.

But when underwater, land-dwellers’ senses were off because of that same pressure.

It meant centuries of misunderstandings. Conflict. War.

She wasn’t so arrogant that she thought she’d be the one to change all that. But how many times had everyone, from her parents to the village priest, said that the Triada gave gifts to each of his children in the measure in which they needed them to serve him best?

This was what she’d been given, this ability to understand people. And she wanted to use it to help defray the quarrels that kept their world always on the brink of war. She wanted to make a difference, make things safer for the people she loved. She wanted…

She wanted to matter . And she wanted it to be through something she did, something she offered, not because the features she’d inherited from her parents happened to be symmetrical—or because their blood in her veins had mixed to create magic waiting to be Awakened.

A flock of gulls took to wing as she approached them, pulling her attention back to the shore. When she spotted a figure sitting on the jetty she was nearing, she considered stopping and turning around. She had no desire for a conversation with a neighbor right now.

But the setting sun caught on his dark hair, glinted off his bronze skin, and her feet halted in indecision. Storm.

He spotted her and stood, and her stupid heart pitter-pattered like raindrops on a roof.

He was one of the tallest men on the islands, his height made even more impressive by broad shoulders and toned muscles.

It wasn’t his handsome face that gave her pause, or the strength so readily on display.

It was that quiet calm he always exuded. It called to her like a siren’s song.

Just a crush . That’s what she’d been telling herself for a year now. Maybe two. Perfectly natural. What young woman wouldn’t look at him and feel that increase in her pulse, that desire to spend a few more minutes in his company?

Only Arden could joke and tease him and be perfectly at ease around him, because she was his cousin.

Jade wasn’t. His uncle might be her stepfather, but she’d always been keenly aware that it didn’t make her and Storm family.

He didn’t approach her. No, he waited for her to decide if she’d approach him , because that was Storm. He’d made it clear in a million small ways lately that he wanted to be more than her friend, but he always, always left every move up to her.

Even in this dream or memory or hallucination or whatever it was, conflicting tugs pulsed within her, as they’d done yesterday.

To approach or to run away. To seek solitude or companionship.

But now there was a deeper battle too. The temptation to leave the vision.

To go back to the waters clouded with blood, the darkness, the horror.

Facing that would be less painful than being here again.

Yet her yesterday-feet moved forward, drawn like a moth to his flame, and her today-mind followed, desperate to experience it again, even if it hurt.

As she neared the rocks of the jetty, Storm held out a hand to help her up. The moment her fingers landed on his palm, the same jolt coursed up her arm that always did when he touched her.

Just a crush, just a crush, just a crush . Attraction. Chemistry. Natural. It didn’t have to rule her, didn’t have to blind her, didn’t have to change anything.

He didn’t drop her hand again once she’d joined him on the flat of the jetty. A month ago, he’d held out a hand to offer assistance, and in a moment of weakness, she’d held on. She’d given herself away in that moment. He knew it as well as she did.

She could pull away. He’d let her.

She didn’t. Couldn’t. It was like there were magnets in their palms, holding them together.

Storm was scanning the beach behind her, a light furrow to his brows. “No Arden?”

It shouldn’t embarrass her that she was out without her sister. It did, solely because of the reason she’d snuck off, even though she usually preferred company. “No, I…needed some quiet. To think.”