Page 37 of Whispers of the Starlit Sea (Avalore Chronicles #1)

“Now,” Rona added with a sneer, “run along to your little corner and heal someone, why don’t you?”

Heal. She wasn’t a strong fighter. She couldn’t command storms or break stone. But her magic still mattered. Maybe, just maybe, she could heal the damage the bracer was doing. If she couldn’t stop them outright, maybe she could slow them. Hold the spell at bay. Just long enough.

Sorcha lifted her chin and began to sing.

She shaped the magic into every note, letting it rise from her chest with steady resolve.

Rona shot her a glare, but Sorcha didn’t stop.

She’d learned how to breathe like a human, learned how to stretch each phrase between ragged inhales.

It wasn’t as easy as singing with gills, but she could do it.

She focused on the stone above, seeking the deep cracks, the fractures weakening the cliff. If she could calm them, seal even one…

Nothing resonated.

Maybe she needed to touch it? But it was too high. Too far.

She shifted her attention to the floodwaters around her feet. Sang to them gently, coaxing, reminding them of their home, the ocean, not this shattered cavern.

Still nothing.

Her song faltered for a breath. Why wasn’t it working?

“Can’t heal? Or won’t?” Rona mocked.

The familiar flush of shame flowed over her. Rona had always pushed her to heal in ways she couldn’t.

Or could she?

She’d been trained to mend wounds of flesh and bone. But how many times had Rona tried to get her to soothe a frightened mer’s panic, to calm the aching hearts of those who felt forgotten? Back then, Sorcha had thought it beyond her skill.

But maybe…maybe this was her moment to try.

She shifted her song.

Not to the stones. Not to the sea.

To Rona.

She reached with her magic, not toward the storm but toward the storm’s maker.

She poured her power into a new melody, one that carried not resistance but hope.

A lullaby, soft and gentle, spun from childhood memories: the hush of the grotto, coral-light flickering on the walls.

The sound of laughter echoing through sea tunnels.

Her sisters spinning in circles, hair streaming like kelp in the currents.

Lessons by their mother’s fin, her voice a steady anchor in the shifting tides.

She offered all of it in her song. Peace, safety, love.

Would Rona listen?

Her sister’s melody twisted, sharp and jagged, clashing against Sorcha’s like a coral reef battering a tide.

Sorcha flinched at the resistance. She recognized it — the way a Watcher’s body fought healing when the pain ran too deep. But she didn’t let go. She pushed more of herself into the song, drawing from the aching core of her magic, from every tender note of peace she could conjure.

Rona’s voice rose higher, harsher. Her tune turned discordant, weaponized.

A rushing filled the cavern.

A wave shot toward her down the tunnel like a living beast. Sorcha barely had time to suck in a breath before it crashed over her, slamming her to the stones. She tumbled backward in a surge of freezing current, limbs flailing, dress dragging like seaweed around her legs.

Gasping, sputtering, she clung to a rock, the chill biting through to her bones.

As the waters receded, a flash of movement by the door danced in her periphery.

Her head snapped up. Through the mist and crashing spray, a familiar figure slipped into the cavern, keeping low. Water swirled around his boots.

Arick.

Hope flared in her chest, sharp and sudden.

He was here. He’d come back.

Maybe now they could stop them.

Or maybe they'd only buy the world one more breath before it shattered.

A rick locked eyes with Sorcha, relief and fear crashing together in his chest. She wasn’t injured. That was all that mattered — for now.

He pressed a finger to his lips and shifted sideways, boots sloshing quietly through the ankle-deep water. The rumble of thunder and the low hum of magic masked the noise, but every splash still made him flinch. He kept low, eyes fixed on the two figures floating at the center of the large pool.

His pulse raced as he took them in. He'd known magic existed — couldn't deny it with the presence of merfolk and the bond tethering him to Sorcha — but seeing it before him now made it irrefutable. Magic may have vanished for a hundred years, but there was no question now. It had returned.

Sorcha stepped forward, rising from the flood with water trailing from her ruined dress. But instead of confronting Rona, she turned toward the other mer.

And that’s when Arick saw him clearly.

The one who’d been chained up during each of Arick’s visits to the prison cavern.

He barely recognized him. Gone was the drawn, silent captive. The mer before them now radiated purpose and cold fury. Yellow light flared from the bracer wrapped around his hand, its glow painting long shadows across his face and casting cracks into the cavern ceiling above.

Scars ringed his wrists, dark and raw, proof of what he’d endured — but they didn’t explain why he stood at Rona’s side. And Sorcha’s voice, sharp with disbelief and something like heartbreak, told Arick she didn’t understand it either.

He kept one eye on her as he went, for even drenched and shivering, her dress in tatters, Sorcha was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. But then he noticed her hands. They moved with purpose, fingers forming shapes against the yellow glow. The merman was too distracted to notice.

She was signing for him.

“Why would you do this, Ewan?”

Her hands moved deliberately as she asked the question, even as her voice carried it into the cavern.

The merfolk’s chant broke off. Ewan’s expression twisted with something darker than anger — resentment. Regret. Rage.

Arick couldn’t understand his bitter words, but Sorcha’s signs filled in the gaps, his own limited knowledge helping him bridge the rest.

“Why? Ha. At first, it was just a job. Get the mirror, get paid. A lot of gold, too. Enough for Ciara and I to disappear. To start over. Somewhere far from duty and rules and all the people and their expectations.”

His voice scraped like broken coral.

Arick slipped another step closer, water swirling around his boots as he drew his sword from its sheath.

“But you disappeared months ago,” Sorcha said.

“And if I’d succeeded then, none of this would have happened.” Ewan’s voice dripped with bitterness. “Merfolk wouldn’t have been captured, and the humans wouldn’t have found out about us. But some fool human was where he didn’t belong.”

Arick’s grip tightened on the hilt.

Ewan sneered. “There was a shipwreck. I got trapped inside. The humans found me before the Watchers even knew I was missing.”

A laugh, low and cold. “How…unfortunate the human died. Couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing. So the mosaic stayed unguarded. And no one saw the next storms coming.”

Arick froze, his mind cycling through the words Sorcha had signed.

Shipwreck. Human. Killed.

Months ago.

Only one human had died in that storm.

Daniel.

Arick’s breath caught, the world narrowing to a single, awful truth.

Ewan was talking about Daniel.

His brother.

The perfect son. The heir. The man everyone expected Arick to become.

The one who should’ve been here tonight.

Not lost to the sea. Not an accident.

Murdered. By the traitor floating smug in the water.

Something inside Arick cracked.

A surge of grief, love, and pressure came to the surface. Rage and hurt blinded him.

He roared, lunging forward, water crashing around his legs as he plowed toward the pool, sword raised.

“Arick!” Sorcha’s cry pierced the chaos, startled and afraid.

Rona’s song shifted.

The cavern trembled.

A rumble shook the walls, and a shower of stones fell from the ceiling. Arick halted just short of the pool, sword poised, when a great crack of stone drew his eyes upward.

A slab of stone the size of a man hung suspended.

Right above Sorcha.

No.

He spun, driving himself back through the rising water. It dragged at him like hands trying to hold him back. He pushed harder.

She didn’t see it.

She was still looking at him.

He reached her just as the stone broke free.

He hurled himself forward, catching her around the waist.

“Down!” he shouted, and flung her clear with every last ounce of strength.

The boulder struck.

The force of the impact lifted him off his feet.

Stone and water exploded around him.

He slammed into the far wall with a sickening crack and crumpled to the ground as blackness swallowed him.

“A rick!”

Her scream tore from her throat as the rocks slammed him across the cavern.

His body hit the wall, then he slumped to the ground, motionless.

Sorcha staggered forward, but agony ripped through her legs.

She screamed, crumpling as fire shot up through her bones. Something in her chest snapped.

Her vision swam. Her breath caught.

And then…

The pain vanished.

She lay panting on the cold stone, chest heaving.

Why couldn’t she breathe?

Something wasn’t right.

Her dress clung strangely to her skin. Her limbs felt wrong. Heavy.

A hand grabbed her leg and jerked her into the deeper water of the pool.

No. Not her leg.

She gasped, flailing — then froze.

In the dim light, her sapphire scales shimmered beneath the ragged hem of her gown. Her fin gleamed, long and strong, slicing the water with every panicked kick.

She stared at her fin — her real fin — and couldn’t process what it meant.

She was free. The curse was broken. She was a mermaid again.

But at what cost?

“Huh. Guess he was capable of it after all,” Rona said coolly. “Too bad for him.”

Sorcha’s breath hitched.

“He…he broke my curse.”

The words caught, fractured by sobs she couldn’t hold back.

Arick’s act of selflessness — throwing himself between her and the falling stone — had shattered her curse.

And shattered everything else with it.

She turned toward him.

He didn’t move.

His chest was still. Blood streaked the stones, seeping into the rising water in dark tendrils.

The band around her heart clamped tighter, not loosening with the broken curse but locking into place forever.

He was gone.

Because of her.

No.

Her gaze snapped to Rona.

Because of her .

“Why are you doing this?” Sorcha demanded, fighting to keep herself afloat. Her skirts kept dragging her down, and she suspected Rona was doing something to add to that.

“I told you. We need that piece of glass.”

“Find another way! If you kill the humans, they’re going to start a war against the mer. How are our people going to protect themselves against the weapons humans have?”

Rona smirked. “Once we have the mirror, then we won’t need to fear the land-dwellers any longer.”

She looked around, desperate for some way to stop them. Maybe, if she could disrupt the magic, even for a moment, the storm would weaken.

Sorcha set her jaw and dove beneath the water. She shot toward Ewan, hoping to disrupt his focus — anything to stop the bracer’s magic.

But Rona was ready.

A sudden current slammed into Sorcha’s side, hurling her into the stone wall. Pain burst through her ribs, and the impact left her reeling. She twisted back into the flow, but the water fought her at every turn. Rona’s magic surged through it, turning the cavern into a trap she couldn’t escape.

Again and again, she tried — racing forward, singing, clawing for anything that might give her the edge.

But she couldn’t reach them.

Not on her own.

Another boulder crashed down into the cavern pool, sending a wave surging over her. The thunder outside was now loud enough to be heard, and the ceiling groaned, cracks spidering out from the bracer’s beam. The cavern couldn’t take much more.

Sorcha surfaced, gasping, the water stinging her eyes, her limbs trembling from cold and exhaustion. Her gills flared, desperate for breath.

A sob cracked in her throat.

Nothing I do is enough.

She’d tried to heal, to reason, to fight. But she couldn’t win. Not like this. Not without Arick’s help.

And Rona was going to destroy everything.

How could one little Healer fight against such hatred?