The Current Between Us

Few Hours Earlier

## Chapter 4: A Few Hours Earlier

Bale was with the king when they inspected the boundary.

Malnourished and shaking, he forced himself to hold the trident straight and keep his eyes down, the way a good servant was supposed to. Three days in the cells hadn't broken him — not fully, not yet — but they'd left him gaunt in ways that would take weeks to undo, if he lived long enough to try. Skin stretched tight over bone. Ribs visible under his thin, salt-stiffened tunic, each one countable at a glance. Every breath was shallow, rationed, as though his lungs had forgotten how to take in more than they absolutely needed. Every movement hurt, a deep, grinding ache in joints that hadn't moved freely in days.

They reached the edge of the king's territory just as the current began to shift. The water changed there, the way it always did at boundaries drawn by kings rather than nature. Colder. Heavier, pressing down against his scales like a hand on the back of his neck. Like the sea itself had been ordered to draw a line and obeyed without question, the way everyone in this kingdom eventually learned to obey.

And there he was: King Reo.

Standing at the other end of the boundary, calm, arms crossed over his chest, watching their approach with an ease that bordered on insolence. No guards trailed behind him. No weapons drawn, no trident in hand, nothing but that infuriating stillness he always carried, as though the entire ocean answered to him too and he simply hadn't bothered to raise his voice about it yet.

When Reo's eyes landed on Bale, he smirked.

Just a small tilt of the mouth. Barely there, gone almost before it registered. Like he knew something no one else did. Like he'd been waiting patiently for Bale to look up, savoring the moment before it arrived.

The king saw it too.

Bale felt the shift instantly, a change in the water pressure around them that had nothing to do with current or tide. The king's gaze hardened, sliding from Reo to Bale, slow and calculating, weighing something invisible. Suspicion settled into the space between them, thick as ink spilled from a wound, spreading before anyone could stop it.

That was the moment Bale knew he was in trouble. Not because of anything Reo had done — the man hadn't so much as spoken. Because of what the king now believed Reo knew. And a king who believed you were hiding something from him rarely bothered to find out whether the belief was true before acting on it.

---

They got back to the gate hours later. The sun had climbed higher, and the water burned brighter, gold light slicing down through the surface in long, shifting columns that turned the sand below to shimmering coin.

Beatrice and Lily had already rushed to their post, heads down, trying to look invisible in the particular way slaves learned early — hands busy, movements small, eyes fixed on coral and rope and anything that wasn't a face that could be remembered later. Anywhere but on the king. Anywhere but on the guards trailing behind him, tridents catching the light.

Bale's eyes found Lily the second she moved, before he'd even consciously looked for her. Some part of him always knew where she was in a crowd, the way a compass always knew north whether or not you wanted the direction.

She was still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, even gaunt with hard work and hollowed out by years of hiding. Brown hair pulled back messy and practical, tan scales catching the light in flashes of copper and gold, the same sharp jaw and steady eyes he remembered from eight years ago — before the exile, before the cells, before either of them had learned exactly how much the sea could take from two people who loved each other at the wrong time. She was everything Bale needed and everything he couldn't have, both at once, in the same breath. Time hadn't changed her, not really. It had only made the ache of not-having worse, sharper, more familiar, the way an old wound aches differently once it's fully healed over.

And right there, across the sand, with guards and a king between them, something clicked. A pull — old, quiet, undeniable. Like a rope he'd tried to cut a hundred times over eight long years and never quite managed to sever all the way through.

They still had feelings for each other. Both of them knew it, had always known it, even if neither said it aloud, even if saying it meant danger for them both. Some things didn't need words to be true. Some things were truer for never being spoken.

Bale's guard slipped, just for a second. Fatigue made his mind thin, stretched too far from three days without proper food or rest, and the walls he usually kept locked tight around his gift wavered like a current losing its shape.

He caught a flicker of Lily's thoughts, sharp and unguarded, slipping through the c***k before either of them could stop it:

*The king will never allow the prince to marry Beatrice. Not even if she has the comb. Not even if she's royalty by blood. He'll kill her first. He'll kill all of us first. If he finds out she has it right now, he'll call it treason.*

Bale's breath caught hard in his chest. The trident wavered in his hands, nearly slipping from fingers gone numb with shock.

*Beatrice had the silver comb.*

Had had it for years, apparently — given to her by Prince Raft himself, or so she'd told her mother, back when it must have seemed like a secret small enough to keep.

Lily didn't mind, he realized, catching more than he meant to, more than she would have willingly shared. She thought her daughter had a reason worth the risk. She thought maybe love could change even a king's mind, given time. Maybe love and blood together would matter more than the law that said they shouldn't.

Bale knew better, and the knowing sat in his stomach like a stone. The king wouldn't care about blood or love, not when it threatened his throne. A human's blood carrying royal magic wasn't a romance to him — it was a death sentence waiting to be signed. A threat with a face and a name. And the king killed threats long before they had the chance to become crowns.

Bale looked away first. His hands shook badly enough that the trident's tip dipped toward the sand.

Because now he had a choice to make before nightfall, and it was already closing in around him like a net drawn tight. Tell the king what he knew and watch Lily's daughter — and likely Lily herself — pay for a secret they hadn't even asked him to keep. Or say nothing, and let Alpha's trident find the truth some other way, some far worse way, dragging it out of him one cut at a time until there was nothing left to protect anyone.

Either way, nightfall would come. Either way, someone he loved would bleed for it.

And as the guards began forming up around him again, prodding him back toward the cells to wait out the hours until the deadline, Bale caught one last glimpse of Lily across the sand — and saw, with a cold drop in his stomach, that she was already watching him. Already knowing, somehow, exactly what he'd just overheard in her own unguarded mind.

Her lips didn't move. She didn't need them to.

*Don't,* her eyes said. *Please don't.*

But Bale had already run out of ways to keep everyone alive.