The Current Between US

The Glow

---

*Chapter 8: The Glow*

The blade hovered. A sliver of steel catching torchlight.

Lily bowed her tail to the stone, neck bared, eyes closed. Sadness washed through her first — cold and heavy, like deep water closing over her head. Then fear. Not for herself. For the daughter she’d failed to keep hidden. Vulnerability stripped her bare, scales dulling to nothing. All the lies, all the years of silence, and it ended here. Because of a feeling. Because of love for Raft. Because of a hope she wasn’t even sure he’d return the way he had before.

_I kept her secret,_ she thought, guilt tightening around her ribs. _I kept her close. I taught her to hide. And it still wasn’t enough. Not enough to outrun a king’s blade._

The executioner’s muscles flexed.

In that same heartbeat, something built inside Beatrice. It started low in her belly, nauseous and twisting, like she’d swallowed a storm. Goosebumps rose along her cheeks and down the curve of her neck, even under her scales. Her face flushed hot, then cold. Tears spilled before she could blink them back, blurring the water until the whole world looked like broken glass.

All she kept saying in her heart, mind, soul — not words, just a pulse: _Save her. Save her. Save her. She can’t die for me. She can’t die for Raft. She can’t die because I’m not sure he’ll even love her back like before._

The blade came down.

Steel met flesh. Blood bloomed in the water, dark and sudden. Lily’s head rolled once on the current, eyes still open, still filled with tears and guilt that she hadn’t shielded her daughter well enough. Her body followed a moment later, drifting toward Beatrice like the tide always pulled them together.

Beatrice caught her mother. Arms around the shoulders, cheek pressed to Lily’s cooling scales.

And then the world went white.

It started at her chest. A glow, soft as moonlight filtering through shallow water. It spread down her arms, up her neck, into her hair until each strand shimmered like spun pearl. The glow wasn’t gentle. It was beautiful, yes — beautiful in the way the moon is beautiful when it hangs low and full, too bright to look at without hurting your eyes. Beatrice lifted her face and the light poured out of her. It turned the sand to silver. It turned blood to something like coral.

She looked as though she stood in the moon itself. Too beautiful to witness. Too powerful to bear.

Bale, still bound, jerked back against his ropes. His mouth opened but no sound came out. Shock rooted him there. Even the guards forgot to breathe. Tridents dipped. Eyes widened.

Everyone stared as though they’d seen a prophecy step out of the old songs.

The king went still for one breath. His expression softened, something almost reverent flickering across his face. Then his eyes sharpened. He saw it — the danger coiled inside that glow. The power that didn’t ask permission. The power that could unmake thrones. His advantage, gone.

He opened his mouth.

Before the order could leave his lips. Before the guards could lift their tridents or shift their weight, Beatrice moved.

She didn’t think. She didn’t know the words or the gestures. No teacher. No master. Only the pulse in her soul that screamed _Save her._ The glow flared once, bright enough to burn shadows into the reef wall. It wrapped around Lily’s body, around Lily’s head, around the blood still drifting. It wrapped around Beatrice too, pulling them tight together like kelp roots twisting into one.

The water bent.

Not pushed. Not swirled. Bent. Like the sea itself decided to fold. One moment Beatrice and Lily were there, glowing and bleeding on the execution stone. The next, they weren’t.

They vanished.

No splash. No current. Just a rush of displaced water snapping closed where they’d been, like a wound healing shut. The glow was gone. The moon was gone. Only the smell of ozone and the echo of light remained, dancing on everyone’s vision.

Silence followed. Thick and stunned.

The king’s mouth was still open. The word he’d meant to say died there. The executioner’s blade hung in the water, dripping. Bale sagged against his ropes, chest heaving like he’d been the one pulled through the sea.

The guards looked at each other. Then at the empty stone. Then at the king.

Fear came first — raw and animal. They’d seen magic before. Court magic. Controlled magic. This was different. This was wild, untaught, moon-bright. This was a fledgling without a master who could fold the sea.

Tridents stayed lowered. No one moved. No one spoke. The only sound was the current pulling softly at empty water where two mermaids had been a second before.

---