Will alone won’t move the sea.
SoImove.
Ilisten.
Isend out feelers where worlds kiss—beaches at dawn, tidal pools under impossible moons, the seam between rain and storm.
The runes etched into me pulse and throb.
I read currents like handwriting. I steal small things—a drift of foam from a fisherman’s net, a song hummed by a child who lingers with seals, a name hidden in a gull’s cry.
Little thefts, yes. Also prayers.
The sea answers with the one thing I hadn’t dared ask for. A laugh in fluorescent light, a capable hand feeding a creature on a leash, the bright stubbornness of a woman who croons to a sea lion like a friend.
Earth. A cement pool.
A badge with a name.
Phoebe.
Which is when duty and desire start arguing like brothers.
We had a plan once. Brutal and efficient.
The four Lords would bring humans into our fold, stage zareths convincing enough to hoodwink Fate, collect our boon, go for the crown.
Laws bend. Oaths can be written so tight virtue can’t get its fingers under them.
Desperate? Yes.
But we agreed.
Thorne sharpened his knives on the idea.
Dagan weighed it like quarried stone.
Alaric drafted the script—and then broke it.
He didn’t trick the Fates. He found the mate they’d carved for him.
Any other day, I’d rage at the hypocrisy.
Instead, I watched him soften and hated how much I wanted what softened him.
Because here is the other ledger I keep—quiet, away from councils and banners.
I don’t want to stitch a pretty ribbon over a ruin and call it healed.
I don’t want a hand-picked bureaucratic match, a clean signature, a staged vow for a desperate court.
I want what answers my runes without coercion.
I want what the sea itself insists on.
Meanwhile Castletide coughs.
Where the city once thrummed—coral like chandeliers, tide-gates chiming, gulls turning on bright wings—now it rasps.
