Heir to a Fallen Star

Chapter 65

I close my eyes, floating on the surface, and let the starlight in my veins guide my breath. I open my mouth and start humming the haunting tune I heard from the green light days ago. Then, the words form.

"My heart was pierced by Cupid..." I sing softly into the night.

The water stirs more aggressively around me, churning with a sudden, deliberate life.

"I disdain all glittering gold..."

Suddenly, a slick, terrifyingly cold texture brushes against my bare legs. A gasp rips from my throat, and I swallow a mouthful of brine, my heart hammering against my ribs. I force myself to keep going, pushing the melody through the panic.

"There is nothing can console me..." I choke out.

Right in front of me, the water breaks. A head emerges from the glassy dark, cutting off my breath, and a voice—melodic, ancient, and layered with the echo of the deep—finishes the line for me.

"...but my Johnny sailor bold."

Up on the deck, Kaelen and Silas are plastered against the wooden railings. From the corner of my eye, I can see them completely frozen in terror. Kaelen’s hands grip the wood so hard I can hear it groan from here; his face is stark white, his mouth open in a silent, horrified scream as Silas holds him back by the iron strength of his arms. They are watching a nightmare unfold.

But to me, she is breathtaking.

The creature circles me, her movements completely weightless and predatory. Her skin is a pale, shimmering blue that reflects the amber beams of the lighthouse, and her long, deep green hair flows around her like living sea-weed. Her eyes are a piercing, solid gold, lacking any human pupil, burning with a fierce, ancient intelligence. Her beauty is mesmerizing, almost paralyzing.

Slowly, she closes the distance. A long, webbed hand rises from the surf, her sharp, translucent claws tracing the line of my wet hair. She is playing with me, testing the boundaries of the strange creature that just dove into her domain.

"You sing my song," she murmurs, her voice vibrating right through the water and into my bones.

"Heart of a star..."

I force myself to hold her golden gaze, feeling the celestial warmth inside me rise up to meet her cold magic.

"I need your help," I say.

"There is something hidden for me down below," I say, my voice gaining strength as the starlight within me responds to her presence. "My blood is your alliance. I want to go down with you... but I need my crew safe from your sisters."

She doesn't answer right away. She swims around me again, a playful, lethal grace in every fluid motion. Her tail brushes my ankles, and her webbed fingers lightly trail along my shoulder, teasing the edge of my collarbone.

"Hmmm..." she hums, a sound like grinding tectonic plates and singing glass.

Suddenly, she stops. She places her wet, webbed palm flat against the centre of my chest.

Instantly, a brilliant, blinding light erupts from within me. It’s as if I am holding the fallen stone itself, my celestial blood flaring to life. The pale blue of her skin turns iridescent under my radiance, and her golden eyes widen in sheer, primal awe as her deep-sea magic mixes with the pure, untamed light of the heavens. She gasps, a sharp, ragged sound, and a pointed-toothed grin widens across her mesmerizing face.

She turns away from me, swimming with lightning speed toward the hull of the Vanguard's Wake. She breaks the surface right beneath the railing, looking directly up at the frozen, horrified faces of Kaelen and Silas.

"I will protect the star," she commands, her voice booming against the wooden hull like a rogue wave, stripped of all playfulness. "I will guide the star, and I will return the star to her ship before dusk."

She narrows her golden eyes, her gaze locking onto Kaelen, who looks ready to tear the ship apart to get to me.

"You and your men stay below," she warns, her sharp teeth glinting in the lighthouse beam. "Hide your scent and turn off all your lights should you wish to see her again. If a single lantern burns, my sisters will feast."

Without waiting for their compliance, she darts back to me, her webbed hand locking firmly around my wrist. The moment her skin clamps down, the suffocating fear of the deep vanishes. My lungs expand, breathing in the freezing saltwater as if it were sweet, crisp air.

"Come, Little Star," she whispers, her grin turning feral. "Let us see what the ocean has kept for you."

And with a powerful flick of her tail, she drags me down into the endless, beautiful dark.

At first, I see absolutely nothing. Everything around me is an oppressive, terrifying black as we plummet into the abyss. The salt water burns my eyes fiercely, making them water against the sting, but the creature’s grip on my wrist holds true—my lungs expand naturally, pulling oxygen from the brine without a single hint of struggle. I am breathing in the deep.

The further down we sink into the crushing depths of the Trench, the brighter I become. The celestial energy in my blood reacts to the darkness, casting a brilliant, ethereal starlight that cuts through the midnight water.

As we finally reach the sandy bottom, the wedged, towering stone walls of the trench seem to come alive. Shadows detach themselves from the rock faces. I watch, mesmerized and terrified, as several of her sisters join us. Then tens. Then dozens.

They look exactly like her—the same shimmering, pale blue skin, the same flowing sea-weed hair, and those unblinking, solid gold eyes. There are so many of them, emerging from caves and crevices by the hundreds. Some carry wicked, rusted iron tridents; others have their hair intricately decorated with ancient shells and pearls. Together, we form a massive, glowing armada, swimming as a silent, powerful group along the narrow trench floor.

The tight canyon walls suddenly drop away, opening up into a massive, submerged valley that makes my heart stop.

It is a graveyard.

Thousands of human bones lie half-buried in the white sand, picked clean by time, scattered among the shattered hulls of century-old vessels. It’s a monument to the predatory nature of the creatures swimming beside me.

But right in the dead centre of the valley, resting upright on the ocean floor, sits the largest ship I have ever seen. Its grand masts are broken, its sails long rotted away, but its structural silhouette is entirely unmistakable.

My breath hitches in the water, a trail of glowing bubbles escaping my lips.

It’s the one. The ship from the legends. The keeper of whatever was stolen from the sky.

Out from the shattered hull of the massive ship swims a distorted, mangled creature. It is hideous—a twisted nightmare of the deep, its flesh translucent and warped, glowing with the exact same, familiar green light I had chased across the ocean.

As it approaches, the water grows freezing cold. Instantly, the hundreds of merfolk around me form a defensive wall. They hiss, their golden eyes flashing as they thrust their tridents forward, guarding me with a terrifying, fierce loyalty. The creature stops, recognizing the power of the armada, and slowly extends a pale, long-fingered hand toward me.

In its skeletal grip, it holds a simple glass bottle, sealed tight with wax, with a weathered scroll of parchment rolled up inside.

I reach through the barrier of tridents and take it. My fingers tremble against the glass. Is this the treasure? Is this what we risked our lives for? A single note?

The creature offers no explanation. It simply retreats, melting backward into the haunted, rotting shell of the sunken ship. With a sharp click of her teeth, the mermaid leader pulls me upward. The entire armada turns, and we retreat back toward the surface, a swirling galaxy of blue scales and starlight racing away from the graveyard.

The oppressive pressure thins. The black turns to midnight blue, then to the pale, misty grey of the surface.

SPLASH!

My head breaks the water. I gasp for air, the crisp morning wind hitting my face as the magic of the deep leaves my lungs. The Vanguard's Wake sits perfectly dark and silent beside us, just as commanded.

"Kaelen!" I call out, my voice raw but carrying across the water. "Kaelen!"

Before I climb the boarding lines, I turn back to the water. The hundreds of merfolk are floating just beneath the surface, their golden eyes reflecting the dawn, their beautiful, terrifying faces looking up at me.

"I will be eternally grateful for this," I tell them, holding the bottle tightly against my chest.

The mermaid leader smiles, her pointed teeth flashing one last time. She bows her head, and behind her, the hundreds of warriors do the same. Before they sink back into the endless dark, their voices rise together, a haunting, beautiful chorus that vibrates through the hull of the ship:

"It was an honour to serve a star."

With a soft ripple, they vanish into the depths, leaving the ocean perfectly still once more.

"KAELEN!"

My second cry is a desperate scream, my voice cracking under the sudden, brutal reality of the elements. Now that the ancient magic of the merfolk has receded, the protective warmth is entirely gone. The freezing Atlantic water hits me like a physical blow, heavy and paralyzing. My limbs instantly turn to lead, and the bottle clutches like a block of ice against my chest. I can barely keep myself afloat.

Thud-thud-thud-thud!

The sound of frantic, heavy boots explodes across the deck above. The galley doors slam open, breaking the strict mandate of silence.

"Iris!!"

Kaelen’s voice tears through the misty morning air, completely unhinged by terror. He doesn't care about the rules, the sirens, or the darkness anymore. He leaps over the railing, not even bothering with the ropes, and hurls himself into the freezing sea.

Within seconds, his powerful strokes cut through the water toward me. His strong arms wrap around my shivering frame, pulling my head above the surface. He is shaking violently—not from the cold, but from pure, unadulterated panic.

"I've got you, I've got you," he chokes out, his moss-green eyes wide and frantic as he searches my face, checking every inch of me for injuries. He presses his forehead against mine, his breath hot against my freezing skin. "By the gods, Red... don't you ever do that to me again. I thought you were dead."

"I'm c-cold," I manage to say through violently chattering teeth, my jaw aching from the shivering that's now racking my entire body. I cling to his wet shirt, the glass bottle still clutched tightly between us like a frozen relic.

"I know, I know, sweetheart. I've got you," Kaelen breathes, his voice thick with a mixture of terror and fierce relief.

He doesn't waste another second. Tightening his grip around my waist, he swims us back to the side of the Vanguard's Wake with powerful, desperate strokes. Silas is already leaning over the lower rigging, his massive arms reaching down to hoist me up the side of the hull first, with Kaelen following right on my heels.

The moment my bare feet hit the wet deck boards, Kaelen is there, scooping me up into his arms before I can collapse. He carries me down the companionway, blowing past a shell-shocked Silas and the murmuring crew who are just now emerging from the lower decks.

He kicks open his cabin door, carries me inside, and sets me down gently on the edge of the mattress. Without a single word about the captain, the ship, or the absolute madness of what he just witnessed, he rips off his dripping coat and flies across the room. He tears the heavy wool blankets off the racks, wrapping them tightly around my shoulders, and immediately kneels on the floor in front of me, vigorously rubbing my freezing hands between his calloused palms to bring the blood back to them.

"Look at me, Red," he commands softly, his green eyes boring into mine, completely wild and searching. "Breathe. You're safe. You're out of the water."

"We need to go," I say to him urgently, the words stumbling out through my violently chattering teeth. I grip his wet sleeves, my whole body shaking so hard the glass bottle rattles against my knee.

"They... they kept me safe from the Sire-kin. It took about forty merfolk just to keep me safe from one s-ssssiren-kin... but they know we are here."

Kaelen freezes, his calloused hands pausing over mine as the sheer gravity of my words sinks in.

"The whole Trench is waking up," I whisper, trying to conquer the shivers wracking my chest. "The merfolk gave us a window, but it's closing. We need to go, Kaelen. Now."

The captain instantly snaps back into his eyes, overriding the raw terror of the man who just thought he lost me. He looks from my pale, shivering face down to the sealed glass bottle clutching in my hands, recognizing the sheer, impossible weight of what I just brought up from the dark.

"Silas!" Kaelen roars toward the open cabin door, his voice booming down the corridor with absolute authority.

"Already on it, Captain!" Silas’s voice bellows back from the deck above, followed by the immediate, frantic shouting of the crew and the heavy groaning of the capstan as they begin to heave the anchor.

Kaelen turns back to me, pulling the heavy wool blankets tighter around my chin. He presses a hard, lingering kiss to my freezing forehead. "Stay right here. Drink the rest of that water. I'm getting us out of these shoals before the deep comes looking for what you took."

He rises, his jaw set in a grim, determined line, and charges out of the cabin to command his ship away from the graveyard.

Kaelen halts mid-stride right at the threshold of the cabin door, his hand still gripping the heavy iron handle. He turns his head back, his moss-green eyes searching mine through the dim light of the quarters.

"Kaelen," I call out, my voice still trembling, but carrying a desperate need for him to understand. "I didn't steal the bottle. It... it gave it to me."

He stares at me for a long, quiet second, his gaze dropping to the sealed glass vessel clutched tightly in my lap. The sheer impossibility of it all—the monsters of the deep willingly handing over a prize to a girl from the sky—hangs heavily between us. He doesn't look at me with the cold skepticism of a hardened captain anymore; he looks at me with a profound, quiet awe.

"Then we'll keep it safe," he says softly, a fierce, protective vow settling into his features. "But we still have to run, Red."

With a final, reassuring nod, he steps out and slams the heavy door shut behind him.

Above, the ship suddenly jolts. The floorboards groan beneath my feet as the massive canvas sails catch the morning wind, tearing the Vanguard's Wake away from the jagged rocks and the haunted graveyard below. The race is on, but as I sit alone in the shivering quiet of the cabin, my fingers trace the thick wax seal of the bottle, ready to finally learn the secret of the stars.

The violent shivering slowly begins to fade as the heavy wool blankets trap the warmth against my skin. With the Vanguard's Wake safely cutting through the waves and moving away from the Trench, the crushing adrenaline finally drains from my body, leaving behind a hollow, aching exhaustion.

The weight of the ocean's depth, the sting of the salt, and the raw cosmic pull of the starlight have taken everything I have left to give.

I lay back against Kaelen’s pillows, curling my sideways body around the glass bottle, holding it securely against my chest like a lifeline. I close my eyes, the distant, rhythmic shouting of the crew and the steady creak of the ship’s timbers turning into a comforting lullaby. Before the first ray of true morning sun can pierce the cabin window, the sheer fatigue takes over completely, dragging me down into a deep, dreamless sleep.