The garden is still dying.

Three days have passed since Kael retreated into whatever corner of his underwater kingdom he inhabits when he's not pretending I don't exist. The flowers—those impossible blooms that shouldn't survive anywhere, let alone in an underwater palace—have turned the color of bruises. Purple bleeding into black. The scent has changed from intoxicating sweetness to something closer to decay, and I've stopped visiting the kelp archway altogether.

I tell myself it's because the smell makes me nauseous.

I tell myself it has nothing to do with the fact that Kael was there the last time, and he looked at me like I was a stranger wearing a familiar face.

The chamber he's given me—"given" being a generous word for a prison decorated with bioluminescent lanterns—has become my entire world. Four walls of smooth stone that might be marble or might be compressed bone. A bed that's far too large and soft, the kind of luxury that feels like mockery. A bathing pool that smells of minerals and ancient things. And a window that looks out onto the open ocean, where I can see the shadows of his people moving through the blue-green dark like memories I can't quite grasp.

They don't come near me anymore.

I'm lying on the bed—fully clothed, because even I'm not self-destructive enough to pretend comfort right now—when Nerida appears. She has a way of materializing that makes my skin crawl, as if she's been there all along and I've only just noticed her. Like a thought becoming solid.

"You're not eating," she observes, her voice carrying that underwater quality, all liquid consonants and echoing vowels. She's holding a tray of fruit I don't recognize—colors too vivid, textures too perfect. Things from the deep that probably shouldn't exist on land either.

I don't move. "Not hungry."

"Kael is worried." She sets the tray on the stone table beside the bed, and I catch the scent of her: coral reefs, bioluminescent algae, and something that smells like flowers blooming in absolute darkness. It's beautiful in the way a venomous snake is beautiful—the kind of beauty that wants to kill you slowly.

"Kael," I say carefully, "doesn't seem to be worried about much of anything lately."

Nerida's luminous eyes—they shift color when she moves, like oil on water—settle on me with something that might be pity. "He's protecting you."

"That's a funny way to spell 'avoiding me.'"

"You don't understand what he is." She sits at the edge of the bed with the fluid grace of someone who's never had to learn to move through solid space. "What he carries. The tides respond to his emotions, Mira. The entire ocean breathes with his heartbeat. When he's with you, he loses control. The storms, the currents—they become... unpredictable."

I finally look at her. Really look at her. The way her silver hair moves like it's underwater even here in the still air. The way her skin seems to be lit from within by something ancient and bioluminescent. She's exquisite in a way that makes me feel like a particularly ugly piece of driftwood.

"So I'm a liability," I say flatly.

"You're a distraction." Her voice is gentle, which somehow makes it worse. "A beautiful one, yes, but a distraction nonetheless. Kael has responsibilities that predate your existence by millennia. The balance of the oceans, the safety of his realm—these things cannot be compromised for the sake of a mortal woman's feelings."

There it is. The thing I've been thinking in the dark of the night, the fear that's been eating at me since Kael started keeping his distance. I'm a mortal woman. He's a god. This was always going to end with me as a cautionary tale.

"I never asked him to compromise anything," I say, and my voice is steady even though my hands are shaking. I curl them into fists so Nerida won't see.

"Didn't you?" She tilts her head, and her hair cascades over her shoulder like a waterfall. "By existing? By asking him to choose between his duty and his desire? That's the cruelest thing you could do to him, whether you meant to or not."

I want to tell her to get out. I want to throw something at her. I want to do a lot of things, but mostly I want to curl up and disappear, which is apparently my default setting when things get difficult. Old patterns die hard, and I've been perfecting the art of self-abandonment since I was fourteen years old.

"What if I left?" The words come out before I can stop them. "Would that help him? Would that fix the storms?"

Nerida's expression shifts into something almost like sympathy, and that's when I know I've played right into her hands. "I think," she says softly, "that it might be the greatest gift you could give him."

After she leaves—dissolving back into the water like she was never solid to begin with—I lie in the dark and let that thought settle into my bones like cold.

The greatest gift would be to disappear.

It's not even a new thought. It's the same thought that's followed me since the shipwreck, since I realized that everyone I loved was at the bottom of the ocean and I was still breathing. The same thought that whispered at me in every port, every bed I woke up in, every morning I had to decide whether it was worth getting up. The thought that maybe I'm the problem. That my presence is a burden, a weight, a stone tied around the neck of anyone foolish enough to care about me.

I've been running from it for years.

Maybe it's time to stop running.

---

Kael finds me the next morning on the rocks at the edge of his domain, where the garden transitions into open ocean. I'm not sure how long I've been sitting here. Time moves differently in the deep—or maybe it's just that I've lost the ability to mark it when there's no sun, no moon, no natural rhythm to anchor myself to.

He appears without warning, stepping up from the water like he's been waiting for me. The salt spray clings to his pale skin, and his silver-grey eyes—the ones that reflect light like the ocean's surface—are dark with something I can't quite name.

"You're leaving," he says. Not a question.

I don't turn around. "How did you—"

"I can feel it." He moves closer, and I become hyperaware of everything: the temperature shift as he approaches, the way the air tastes different when he's near. Like standing on a cliff edge. "Your mind is already halfway to the surface. You're planning your escape."

"It's not an escape if I'm leaving willingly." I finally look at him, and the sight of him hits me like it always does—that impossible beauty, that otherworldly perfection, that makes me feel like I'm looking at something too bright to directly observe. "It's just... leaving."

"Because of what Nerida told you." His jaw tightens. "She's manipulating you."

"Is she?" I stand up, brushing off my clothes. I've kept wearing the same things since I arrived—Kael's gifts of flowing sea-silk sit unworn in the chamber. "Or is she just telling me things I already know? You've been avoiding me. The garden is dying. The storms are getting worse. I'm clearly—"

"You're clearly the only thing keeping me sane." He moves faster than I can track, suddenly close enough that I can smell him—salt spray, deep ocean minerals, something ancient like standing in a cathedral made of stone and memory. His hand reaches out, and I think he's going to touch me, but he stops just short. His fingers hover in the space between us, trembling slightly. "Don't you understand what you do to me?"

My breath catches. The proximity is excruciating—close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that I could close the distance with a single step. I don't move.

"I understand," I say quietly, "that I'm making things worse."

"You're not." His voice is raw, stripped of the careful control he usually maintains. "You're the only thing that's ever been right. But when I'm with you, I can't think. I can't control the tides. I can't—" He breaks off, running a hand through his dark hair. It moves like it's underwater, even in the still air of the cavern. "Three days, Mira. I've stayed away for three days, and do you know what happened?"

I don't answer.

"Nothing," he says bitterly. "The storms are worse. The currents are more violent. The entire ocean is responding to my misery because apparently I'm not capable of separating my emotions from the fundamental forces of nature. So running away doesn't fix it. Staying away doesn't fix it. The only thing that comes close to helping is—"

"Is what?" I whisper.

He finally touches me. His hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb tracing the line of my scar—the one from the shipwreck, the one that marks me as someone who survived something that should have killed her. His skin is cool, but where he touches me, I burn.

"This," he says. "You. Exactly like this."

My heart is racing so hard I think it might break through my ribs. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to close the distance, to let him pull me against him, to stop being so goddamn afraid of what it means to be wanted this desperately by someone this powerful.

Instead, I step back.

"Kael—"

"Don't." His hand drops, and the loss of contact is physically painful. "Don't do the noble thing. Don't sacrifice yourself because you think it's what I need. I've had millennia of noble. I've had eons of duty and responsibility and doing what's best for the greater good. I don't want that from you. I want you to stay because you want to, not because you think you have to."

"I'm mortal," I say, and the words taste like ash. "You're a god. This is temporary. I'm temporary. Eventually, I'll die, and you'll still be here, and—"

"And I'll spend eternity remembering the time I had you and was too afraid to hold on to you." He moves toward me again, but this time I don't step back. He takes my face in both his hands, and his silver eyes are fierce, desperate, terrified. "I've been alive for three thousand years, Mira. Do you know how many people I've met? How many I've tried to connect with? And not one of them has ever looked at me like you do. Like I'm not a force of nature. Like I'm just... a person. Someone worth loving."

"You are," I breathe.

"Then don't leave me." His forehead comes down to rest against mine, and I can feel him trembling. A god, shaking like a mortal. "Please. I can't—I can't do this again. I can't watch you disappear."

This is the moment. The moment where I could still walk away, where I could still choose the safe path of self-sacrifice, where I could convince myself that leaving is the noble choice. Where I could protect myself from the inevitable pain of losing him by ensuring I lose him first.

But I'm so tired of protecting myself.

I kiss him.

It's not gentle. It's desperate and clumsy and tastes like salt water and despair. My hands fist in his hair—it's long and moves like water even when I'm holding it—and he pulls me against him so hard I can barely breathe. The scent of him overwhelms me: ancient and deep and mine, somehow, in a way I don't quite understand but can't deny.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say against his mouth. "I'm terrified, and I'm pretty sure this is going to end badly, but I'm not going anywhere."

He makes a sound that's almost a sob, and he kisses me again. This time it's slower, deeper, like he's trying to memorize me. Like he's afraid that if he lets go, I'll disappear.

I understand the fear completely.

---

The message arrives that evening, delivered by a creature I don't recognize—something with too many tentacles and eyes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at directly. It drops a sealed letter on the stone floor of my chamber and disappears back into the water before I can ask questions.

The seal is familiar. A merchant's mark. Expensive wax, the color of old wine.

Dorian.

My hands shake as I break it open.

My dearest Mira,

I've spent the better part of a year searching for you. Imagine my surprise when I discovered you weren't at the bottom of the ocean where everyone assumed you'd drowned, but rather somewhere far more dangerous. In the arms of something that shouldn't exist.

I don't know what he's told you, what lies he's used to keep you in that palace of his. But I know you, my love. I know that you're a woman of reason and survival instinct. I know that you would never willingly choose a life of hiding with a creature you barely understand over the safety and security I can offer you.

I'm coming for you. With or without your cooperation, I will bring you back to the surface. Back to civilization. Back to me.

I've always protected you, Mira. That hasn't changed. No matter what you think you feel for that thing, I promise you—I will save you from him.

Yours in devotion,

Dorian

I read it three times, and each time my stomach twists tighter. Because Dorian doesn't understand that this isn't a rescue. He doesn't understand that I'm not trapped here—I'm the first thing in three thousand years that's made Kael feel like a person instead of a god. And I'm not trapped in that either, even though every rational part of my brain is screaming that I should be.

Kael finds me staring at the letter, my face probably giving away everything.

"What is it?" His voice is sharp, dangerous.

I hand it to him without speaking.

He reads it in silence, and I watch his expression shift. Watch the careful control he's maintained start to crack. His hands tighten on the paper until it tears, and I can feel the temperature of the room dropping. The water in the bathing pool starts to churn, and the bioluminescent lanterns flicker like they're struggling to stay lit.

"He's coming," Kael says quietly. Too quietly. "He's coming to take you."

"He doesn't know where I am—"

"He found you once. He'll find you again." Kael looks up at me, and his eyes are terrifying in their intensity. "I won't let that happen. I won't let him take you. I won't—"

"Kael." I move toward him, reaching for his arm. "Listen to me. He's mortal. He's dangerous in the way that mortal men are dangerous—through manipulation and persistence—but he's not going to—"

"I will drown him." The words are stated as simple fact. "I will drag him to the bottom of the ocean and hold him there until his lungs fill with water. I will make sure he never even comes close to you again."

"No." I grab his face, forcing him to look at me instead of out toward the water. "No, you won't. Because if you do that, you become the monster he's already convinced himself you are. You become the thing he's using to justify coming after me."

"I don't care." His hands come up to grip my wrists, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough that I can feel the desperation. "I don't care what he thinks. I don't care about his justifications. I care about keeping you safe. I care about—" He breaks off, and when he continues, his voice is barely a whisper. "I care about not losing you."

This is the moment where I'm supposed to be afraid. Where I'm supposed to realize that his possessiveness is dangerous, that his need to control the situation is a red flag, that I should run while I still can.

But I've spent my entire life running from people who loved me in complicated ways. I've spent my entire life convinced that I didn't deserve to be loved at all. And maybe Kael's fear is intense and overwhelming and occasionally terrifying, but it comes from a place of genuine connection, not from a desire to control me.

There's a difference.

"I'm not going anywhere," I say again, and this time I mean it with every fiber of my being. "Even if he comes. Even if he brings an army. I'm not going back to the surface. I'm not going back to him. I'm staying here, with you, and we're going to figure this out together."

"How?" His grip on my wrists loosens, but he doesn't let go. "How do we figure this out, Mira? He's not going to stop. Men like him never stop."

"Then we stop him first." I pull him closer, and he lets me, collapsing against me like a god remembering what it feels like to be mortal. "We figure out what he wants and we take it away. We make sure he understands that I'm not a prize to be won back. I'm not a puzzle to be solved. I'm a choice I've made, and it's my choice to make."

"What if he doesn't listen?"

"Then we deal with it." I run my fingers through his hair, and it moves like water under my touch. "Together. Okay? No more running. No more sacrificing yourself because you think it's what I need. We do this together, or we don't do it at all."

He's quiet for a long moment, and I can feel him processing this. Can feel the moment where he decides to trust me, to trust us, to trust that maybe there's a way through this that doesn't end in drowning or despair.

"Together," he finally says.

But even as he says it, I can hear the sound of the ocean shifting. The currents changing. The tides responding to his fear and his determination and his desperate need to protect what's his.

Something is coming.

And I have no idea if we're ready for it.