Page 47

Marin

The campfire crackled softly. Gavin slept on his side, the fire flickering across his features. Exhaustion weighed on me as heavily as my thoughts. But I lay awake, counting the stars until they blurred.

My hair was still damp, my clothes drying near the fire after washing away the mud and filth from the bog. But fear clung to me, a stain I couldn't scrub off, no matter how hard I tried.

Tomorrow, we’d reach the castle.

The shard was almost within reach, and somehow, I was more terrified than ever. Terrified of failing, losing Gavin, losing everything we had fought so hard to reclaim.

And the worst part? Gavin and I had clawed our way back to what we had before. And then earned something more—maybe love.

To lose that now, when we were so close? I wasn’t sure I could bear it. Hope and fear were terrible companions.

My life felt like a broken hourglass, the sand slipping away faster than I could catch it. I was desperate to scoop it back up, to buy myself a little more time.

Even if we made it through the maze, survived the giant, and claimed the shard, the sea queen's curse might still kill me in the end .

I glanced at Gavin’s sleeping form, a fresh ache tearing through me. Would he agree to finish the quest without me? Find a way to return the shard? It might still save Sirena. Maybe even the kingdom.

All of this couldn't be for nothing.

But how could I ask him? A dying wish, maybe. Morbid, but that was where we were now.

How was I supposed to sleep with odds like that pulling me down like an anchor? And worse, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Gavin’s face. His pleading gaze when he knew—gods, he knew —he was going to die, and he’d wanted me to run.

To save myself.

The thief who could be selfless.

I rolled onto my side and stared into the fire.

Forcing out a breath, I dragged my hands down my face.

My fingers trembled. We were alive, but my body wasn’t convinced it had won.

My arms ached, marked with burning scratches from the cage of trees, and a dull throb crawled up my leg from when I’d hit the ground.

There’d be an ugly bruise there tomorrow.

Sleep wasn't at my fingertips, but at least Cass’s healing salve was.

I reached for my pack but came up empty.

The jar must be in Gavin’s. Careful not to wake him, I eased his pack onto my lap.

Clothes, food, rope—there. A jar. But my fingers brushed against something else alongside it.

Frowning, I pulled a worn journal free and flipped open the leather cover.

Messy scrawl covered the first page. But it wasn’t Gavin’s.

It was Reid's. A pang of grief twisted inside me as I traced my fingers over the ink.

The edges of the page were worn as if it had been touched a hundred times before.

I could almost see Reid hunched over it, brows furrowed behind his spectacles, sketching and scribbling late into the night .

Why had Gavin brought this?

He'd been reluctant to tell me the full story of Reid's death back in the fields. But it hadn’t felt like a secret meant to hurt me, more like one meant to shield me from pain. Maybe even some of his own.

Gavin had been there when Reid died. The guilt of not being able to stop it must be all-consuming.

I skimmed through the pages, my breath catching on a familiar sketch. It was the one of us standing together on a mountain peak. Reid must have redrawn it from memory since the original had been ruined that night in the hot spring.

In the drawing, Gavin's arm was slung over my shoulder, his head tilted toward mine, whispering something that had made me laugh. Everyone else was staring at the vast, breathtaking vista spread out below.

But not us.

Even with the whole world laid out before us, we had only been looking at each other. Reid had captured it perfectly. Not staged, not posed. Just the way we were.

I had loved this drawing because it felt real. Now, it felt like something else entirely. A truth, captured in ink.

I turned the pages, smiling faintly at more of Reid’s sketches, ones he must have drawn after that last hunt.

But his journal entries seemed to grow darker. His writing spilled across the page in a frantic scrawl. He had always been obsessed with uncovering the truth behind myths and magic. And my hand stilled as I flipped a page and found a new sketch.

Reid had drawn a pearl-encrusted hair comb, with amethyst gemstones and a scalloped shell. Next to it, he had written a single name: Tivara.

And beneath that, a damning sentence: Why Marin ?

The air tightened in my chest. There was no way Reid could have known the witch’s true name or her connection to me. Not even Gavin had known. He'd been sure her name started with an E. I hadn’t learned it until after Tivara imprisoned me.

Unless Reid had spoken with her.

Had made a deal.

The realization sliced through me. This was the proof it had never been Gavin.

The warmth from the fire couldn’t reach the ice pooling in my veins. The witch had claimed she’d enlisted a friend to give me the comb.

A friend.

She'd never called him by name. I had foolishly assumed it was Gavin because she'd offered the answers he was seeking, and I thought she meant the compass.

But Reid had been seeking answers too, a story that would set him apart—bring him fame. And he'd lost a year's worth of research in the hot spring. All his journal entries gone, along with the dreams of publishing his work. The witch could have given him what he needed to achieve his ambitions.

And she did.

I flipped the page, finding notes on drowned cities, secrets of the merfolk, and things only the sea witch would know.

I hung my head. I hadn’t trusted Gavin at all, presuming the worst because it fit the witch’s lies, and my fear that Gavin was just like all the others, and he'd break my heart.

He'd tried to claim his innocence, but I hadn’t believed him. It wasn’t until I saw the library he built that I even considered I might be wrong.

And I had been wrong, painfully, blindingly wrong.

That night before we left made sense now .

Gavin had vowed to find proof. And he'd returned with a jagged cut on his temple. He had looked broken. He must have gone to Reid for answers—and found only more loss.

Then I chained him to a rail.

I tipped my head back, a hollow laugh escaping at the cruelty of it all. I hadn't listened to him, tried everything I could to push him away.

And in return, Gavin had used his desires to create a map, followed me up the vine, and carried me through the nightmarish bog.

The thief who stayed when he should have run.

If that didn’t deserve my trust and my love, then nothing did.

Tears blurred the pages. I swiped at my eyes, willing myself to focus. There was more here. Entries I needed to understand. After the details from the sea witch, Reid had written another line.

Marin? Keeper of the ocean’s magic?

I turned to the next page, and my eyes flared. Another drawing. This one was of a towering estate perched on a cliff overlooking the sea. My manor. Reid had been researching my family history. His notes sprawled beneath the sketch:

The house is more than a home. It was built as a gift of love for a woman born of the sea who saved a drowning man at the base of the cliffs .

Their legacy was formed, a covenant with the ocean itself, binding its magic into the stone and glass. Through the generations, that magic remained, tied to the house and its keeper.

The Keeper's duty is simple but sacred: protect the magic, keep the covenant alive for those caught between two worlds while bearing the blood of the sea.

I already knew the stories my father told me about our home were real.

That the drowning man and the mermaid he loved were my ancestors.

And now I knew more about the legacy I'd inherited.

The ocean's magic was woven into the very foundation of the manor.

Magic that needed to be preserved. And I was the keeper.

I closed Reid’s journal and tucked it carefully inside Gavin’s pack. I should tell him what I found. But the weight of it, the shame of everything I'd done to him, locked the words inside me.

Not yet. When this was over, I'd face the look in his eyes when he realized how little I had trusted him.

Only five more days.

Five days to find the shard, right the wrongs of the past, and finally keep the promise I made to my father.

But now, I knew the truth about my family, about the magic, and about Gavin. The innkeeper had said knowledge was power. I just hoped I lived long enough to wield it.