{" The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls"}
"I didn't do anything," I said.
It came out steady. Calm. Like a truth I could swallow and make real.
Ardanis did not speak at first. He watched me with those pale eyes, the colour of moonlight on broken ice calculating, unreadable. The silence stretched, thick with unasked questions and too many memories.
"No?" he said at last, voice quiet. "Then tell me why the tides are screaming?"
"I don't know," I replied, careful, measured.
A lie. Not a full one, but a lie all the same. I had not meant to trigger anything at the Sanctuary when I created the link to Sovereign Abyssal Morkai. But I was not about to admit that. Not to Ardanis. Not yet.
"I went to the Sanctuary because I was called," I said. "Dreams. Signs. The usual fae nonsense. You know how the sea gets."
He frowned. "The sea has always whispered. This is different. This is rage and the storms that defy the wind. Tides that rise unbidden and entire coastal villages were swallowed in a night, and something was stirred."
"And you think it was me?" I stared at him in shock.
"It coincides with your reappearance. And that is enough." He adamantly muttered.
I crossed my arms, grounding myself in stubbornness. "You've summoned me here to be your scapegoat, then?"
Ardanis did not rise to the bait, and he turned from me, descending the steps of the throne and pacing across the mirror-stone floor, each footstep echoing like a chime struck underwater.
"No. If I wanted a scapegoat, I would summon a mortal sorcerer or a Sea-Touched priest. Not you."
"Then what do you want, Ardanis?"
He stopped, gaze fixed on a point I could not see. "I want to understand what changed."
Me, I thought. I had triggered something at that moment at the Sanctuary, but I would die before admitting it. I would not plan to investigate it myself. "I didn't wake anything, I attended the event and left with Ellowen," I said aloud.
"Did you use magic?" The question hung in the air like smoke.
"No," I lied, eyes steady. "I haven't used magic since I was called an outcast and exiled to Drevina."
Ardanis studied me. I hated that look, the one that always made me feel sixteen again, caught halfway between arrogance and fear. He used to see through me like glass, and I wondered if he still could. Finally, he turned away and approached the wall where moon-crystal vines pulsed faintly. His fingers traced them absently, and I saw the tightness in his shoulders. The weight of command. Of doubt.
"There must be another source," he murmured to himself. "A break in the seals. A fracture in the tides. The currents do not shift for one man's return... unless the sea remembers him."
I said nothing and stood in waiting, wondering if Morkai had felt.
"Whatever's waking," he continued, "it is not just power. It is will. And the Sanctuary—" he stopped, turning back. "The Sanctuary has always been sealed."
"I did not break it, "I raised my chin defiantly.
"Then someone did." He sounded less certain now and more curious than accusatory.
The calm mask was slipping, just a little, and I saw what he did not want the Court to see: he did not know what was happening. And that terrified him. "Prepare yourself," he said after a long pause. "We will return to the Sanctuary. I want to see it with my own eyes."
"Now?" I asked.
"Tomorrow at dawn." He turned from me again, the conversation over. "Rest while you can, Caelen. I have the feeling the rest will be in short supply before long."
I left the Moon Spire Hall without another word and was escorted by the guards as I walked the crystal-laced corridors of the palace I once called home, a whisper stirred at the edge of my thoughts.
I clenched my jaw and shoved the thought away. I would not attempt to reach Morkai again and would investigate what happened even though the tides were rising and deep below the Sanctuary, something was listening.
The room they gave me was called Moon Shade. I remembered that much. It had once belonged to some minor noble with more titles than sense; he drowned in starlight wine a century ago, I think. Fitting that they had put me here. Out of sight. Out of mind. Not in the high towers, not among the noble wings. But close enough to remind me I used to belong. The walls were carved from pearl stone, etched with sigils meant to soothe the mind and ward off nightmares. I stood at the window, staring out over the gardens of the Crescent Court. The night-blooming trees below pulsed with gentle light gold, violet, moon-white. Their petals shimmered with dew that never dried, feeding roots that burrowed deeper than the palace itself.
Every stone, every blossom, every inch of perfect symmetry whispered, " You do not belong."
I could still hear their voices, after all these years.
Half-blood.
Witch Spawn.
Moon's mistake.
The Court had never forgiven my mother for what she was, a wild witch of the western isles, born of salt and storm, untamed by fae laws. And they had never forgiven my father Ardanis's brother for choosing her.
They called it a disgrace. He called it love, and it killed him, in the end. The official story was that he fell in battle during one of the border skirmishes with the Crimson Folk. But I knew better. The blade had found his heart far too neatly. And the Court had been far too quick to mourn him with silence.
They kept me here after, out of obligation, and Ardanis raised me with all the cold precision he gave his politics. I was taught the blade, the tongue, the arcane. I learned how to move through a room without being seen, and how to speak without saying anything real.
But I was never Fae enough, and when I turned seventeen and the sea began calling me, I left. The Court let me go without a word. They were relieved, and now I was back, and I still did not belong. I sank down onto the window bench, head leaning against the cool stone, and let the weight of it all press against me. I closed my eyes. Let the memory of the Sanctuary crawl up my spine, the old stones. The water was singing beneath them, and then a knock broke the silence.
I opened my eyes. "Go away."
The door creaked open anyway because, of course, it did. Manners meant nothing when power was involved, and a familiar face stepped inside, and I tensed before I could stop myself.
Lirae.
She had once been Ardanis's favoured emissary and my training partner. We had bled together in the old sparring courts. She used to laugh like lightning, and now, she looked like polished steel.
"Still brooding at the windows, I see," she said, arms crossed.
"Still walking through closed doors." I retorted.
She offered a small, mirthless smile. "Ardanis wanted me to check on you."
"Afraid I might disappear again?" I smirked.
"He's afraid of a great many things these days," she said, stepping closer. "He just doesn't show it."
She glanced around the room, then back at me. "It has not changed, has it? The way they look at you."
"No. And it never will." I chuckled.
A silence stretched between us and finally, she asked the thing I could see in her eyes since she entered.
"Did you do something at the Sanctuary?"
I stared at her. "Would it matter if I said no?"
Her expression softened a little. "No," she admitted. "But I wanted to hear you say it."
I said nothing and, it was enough as she nodded once, then turned to leave. But paused at the door. "Get some rest, Caelen. The sea is not the only thing rising."
When she was gone, I let the silence wrap around me again, and outside, the wind stirred the trees, and the stars seemed to flicker in patterns I did not recognize. The magic in Aeldoria was thick tonight. Watching. Waiting and deep beneath it all, something ancient turned in its slumber.