CHAPTER 5: Every Lie Has a Shore
1397 Words
SERA'S POV
His name is Caelum Voss. He says my parents are alive. He says they're trapped. He says the world is ending and I'm the only thing that can stop it. He says he's known for eleven years.
I let him get through all of it before I speak, because if I open my mouth too early I'll say something I can't take back and I need information more than I need to be honest about how I feel.
"Start with the Shore," I say, when he finishes. "Specifically the part where it took my parents and you watched that happen and said nothing."
"I didn't watch it happen," he says. "I found out through intelligence channels, three years after the fact. By then you were eight years old and placed safely..."
"I was placed with a fishing family in Dunrath who didn't want me," I say. "Don't call that safe."
He goes quiet.
Kairo is standing slightly behind and to my left, not speaking. He's been watching Caelum the way he watched everything else on this road, like he's taking notes. I find that useful. If Caelum is lying, Kairo's the most likely person in this conversation to catch it, because he has no stake in believing him.
"The Shore is connected to what I am," I say. "You said the boundary weakened. The Shore anchored to the nearest Verenei signal. My parents were there. It took them."
"Yes," Caelum says.
"And now the boundary is failing faster," I say. "And both courts know."
"Both courts have known for two years," he says. "Neither has admitted it publicly because admitting the boundary is failing means admitting they need the one thing they both rejected."
"Me," I say.
"Yes."
"So they spent two years hunting me to use me," I say, "while simultaneously sending hunters to kill me to stop the other side from using me first."
"That's a concise way to put it," he says.
"I grew up reading political history in every library I could find," I say. "I had a lot of free time. What does the Shore actually look like right now?"
He pauses. That pause is the most informative thing he's done since I met him.
"I don't know," he says. "I haven't been able to get close. The Shore has been sealed. Not by the courts. By itself. About eight months ago it stopped admitting anyone."
"Eight months ago," I repeat.
"Yes."
Eight months ago is when I arrived in Calla's Reach. Eight months ago is when the fish started dying.
"It sealed when I got close," I say.
He doesn't answer. That's also an answer.
Kairo steps forward. "The letter my client gave me, before I found the other one, described the Shore as a location of significant historical convergence. They called it a locus point. Said whatever is sealed inside it is sustaining the boundary from within, but degrading." He looks at me. "Like something burning up to keep a fire going."
My parents. Burning up to hold a world together for eleven years.
I fold that thought very small and put it somewhere I won't be able to reach until later.
"What do I actually have to do?" I say. "When I get there. Specifically."
"The Shore needs to recognise you," Caelum says. "A Verenei is a keystone creature. The boundary between the worlds was built on a convergence, sea and dark, water and night, life and the absence of it. You're the living proof that convergence is possible. Your presence at the Shore's centre should stabilise it."
"Should," Kairo says.
"Should," Caelum confirms, which I appreciate for its honesty.
"And my parents?" I say.
"If the Shore stabilises," he says, "what it used to sustain itself should release. Yes."
"If," Kairo says.
"If," Caelum confirms.
I look at Caelum. "You've known about me for fourteen years. You've been watching from a distance. You've never once made direct contact." I keep my voice even. "Why now?"
"Because Draven's order changed," he says. "He was always planning to retrieve you. Tonight I found out retrieval has been replaced with elimination. He'd rather the Shore fail and rebuild from the collapse than let you come home under anyone's authority but his."
"He'd rather the world end," Kairo says, "than lose control of the thing that could save it."
"Welcome to vampire court politics," Caelum says.
I put my knife away. Not because I trust him. Because I need my hands free to think and I've been gripping it so long my knuckles ache.
"The riders who went north," I say. "Draven's?"
"The letter suggests Tidal Court," Caelum says. "But the hunter I took down was Voss. Someone's running two separate operations on this road and trying to make each one look like the other's work."
"There's a third party," Kairo says, very carefully.
We both look at him.
He pulls another paper from his pack. Not the kill order. Something else, smaller, different handwriting. He's been holding it back, I realise. Testing us. Deciding whether to show us.
"I found this in my camp this morning," he says. "Before I met either of you. Someone left it in my pack during the night."
I take it.
It's a single line. Not mer-script. Not Voss cipher. Something older than both, a script I've seen exactly once before, in a burned book I found in a market in Corrath when I was sixteen. I spent three days trying to identify it. I never did.
I can read it.
I've always been able to read it.
The Shore has a door. Your blood is the key. Come before the others burn what's left of us.
Us.
Not them. Not your parents. Us.
My parents are still alive. They're still aware. They wrote this.
I look up. Caelum is watching my face. He doesn't know what the letter says. I can tell from the way he's waiting. He recognised the script, clearly, because something in his expression just cracked open.
"What does it say?" he asks.
I fold the letter and put it inside my jacket, next to my skin.
"It says we're running out of time," I tell him. "Move."
We go north through the trees, fast, and I keep my eyes forward and I don't let either of them see my face, because what I need from them right now is movement, not sympathy.
Two miles further, Caelum stops so suddenly I nearly walk into him.
He holds up a closed fist. Silence. Stop.
The trees ahead are wrong. Still in a way that has nothing to do with the wind, pressed-still, held-still, the kind of stillness that happens when something very large and very controlled tells everything around it to stop moving.
Twelve figures step out of the dark between the trunks. They're dressed in the deep blues and blacks of Abyss Court formal guard. Armed, trained, and between us and the Shore.
But it's the woman at the centre who stops my blood.
She's older than anyone I've seen in the surface world. She carries herself like someone who hasn't doubted a decision in three hundred years. Her eyes are the pale green of water over deep rock, and they are fixed on me with an expression that is not cruelty and is not warmth.
It is ownership.
"Hello, Sera," she says. "I am High Warden Thessaly of the Abyss Court. I knew your mother before she made her mistakes." She pauses. "I was also the one who turned you away at the gates of Thalassyn when you were five years old."
She steps forward.
"I've come to correct that," she says. "You'll be coming with us now."
Behind me, I hear Caelum draw breath to speak.
And then a sound comes from somewhere deeper in the trees. Not from the twelve guards. Not from Thessaly. Not from any direction I can place. A sound that isn't possible, that can't be here, that I've never heard with my own ears but know the way I know the volcanic rock, the way I know the mer-script, the way I know things I was never taught.
A voice.
A woman's voice, thin and fractured and absolutely unmistakable.
"Sera," it says. "Run. She's not here to save you. She never was."
My mother.
She's not on the Shore.
She's in the trees.
- Writer
