I stare at her retreating back. My mind races, tearing through the fog of grief, searching for solid ground. The memory of the Turning Feast surfaces. Leaving the plaza, hurrying to my quarters to grab my satchel. Mira had been right outside my door. She brushed past me in the narrow hallway. Her fingers had grazed the woven kelp as she moved.
I leave the armory without another word.
I swim faster than I have in a week, my heart pounding a new, terrifying rhythm in my chest. The water parts for me, but I barely feel it.
I reach my quarters and shove the heavy stone door open. I swim to the hook where my satchel hangs and pull it down, my hands trembling so violently the woven fibers scratch against my palms. I turn the bag inside out.
There. Tucked into the bottom corner, almost hidden by the dark green weave, is a small, hardened stain.
It's dark purple.
The memory shatters in my mind. Kael taking the fruit from my hand. The way his heavy fingers lingered against mine for one agonizing second. His dark eyes soft, vulnerable.
Then the break.
He didn't clutch his stomach. He clawed at his own throat, his sharp nails tearing at scarred skin. His black eyes went wide with a suffocating, paralyzing terror. He opened his heavy jaws, but no sound came out. Not a croak. Not a hiss. Only silence pouring from his broken throat.
The snarl. The terrifying snap of teeth inches from my face.
He was protecting me. Even while his body was shutting down from the poison, his only thought was to scare me away before the paralysis took him completely. To keep me from being dragged down with him.
The truth lands with the devastating force of a collapsing trench wall.
Poison.
I poisoned him.
The realization is a physical blow, stealing the water from my lungs. I handed the mer I was falling in love with a laced fruit. I smiled like a fool while feeding him a weapon disguised as affection.
Mira knew. She knew I was going to the boundary. She knew I was bringing him food. She snuck into my quarters, laced the fruit with Hush-Urchin venom, and used my own trusting hands to deliver the death blow.
A horrific, agonizing wail tears itself from my throat. I collapse onto the stone floor of my room, clutching the stained satchel to my chest as if it could absorb the shattering of my heart.
The previous grief was nothing. A dull ache compared to this consuming agony. Kael didn't abandon me because he was a monster. Kael fled because I handed him a betrayal so profound it defies logic. To him, every moment we spent together in the dark, every quiet confession, every gentle touch, was a calculated trap. A long game played by a pretty Vael assassin sent by the Elders.
I murdered his trust. I destroyed the only beautiful thing I have ever found in this ocean.
I push myself off the floor, a cold, absolute rage solidifying in my veins. The grief crystallizes into a single, sharp point of focus.
I am going to find Mira. I am going to wrap my hands directly around her throat and demand exactly what she gave him. I will tear the antidote out of her bare hands, or I will simply kill her myself.
I swim out of my quarters, my crimson fins flaring wide with intent, my body a coiled spring of violence.
Before I can reach the central corridor, a sound vibrates through the water structure with terrifying force.
It's a deep, resonant booming that shakes the very foundations of the coral spires.
The War Drums.
All around me in the hallway, mers stop dead in their tracks. Heads snap upward. Fins flare in instinctive, collective alarm. The drums mean only one thing. The High Council has made a unilateral decision.
"All citizens report immediately to the Central Plaza," an amplified voice booms from the highest spire. "Attendance is mandatory. This is a martial decree."
I am swept up in the frantic hoard of bodies. We move together like a panicked school of bait-fish, pressed tightly together by a shared, vibrating fear.
The Plaza is crowded by the time I arrive. The heavy ceremonial armor of the High Elders glints sharply from the raised dais, each piece a perfect, polished reflection of the filtered sunlight piercing the water above. Behind them, the elite guards held their form like stone statues, their long spears aimed outward in perfect formation, a wall of sharpened bone and metal.
Elder Soryn swims forward to the edge of the dais, his ancient face a mask of grim authority.
