CHAPTER 65: THE EMBRACE OF THE ABYSS

Caedrion’s mind rebelled.

One moment he had been leaning back in the marble baths of Dawnhaven, steam easing the ache from his limbs, the grime of a year’s war slowly lifting from his skin.

A quiet moment at last, the first since Emberhold’s fall.

The next... darkness. Salt. Water crushing in from all sides. Arms, pale and inhuman, coiled about his chest.

His ears roared with pressure, his chest clamped like an iron vice, every instinct screaming to thrash upward, but there was no upward, no surface, only black water swallowing him whole.

He gasped, but air did not come. Instead warmth, teal and radiant, filled his lungs, not his own breath, but another’s.

He coughed, choking, half-swallowed by the glow before he realized he was still alive. Still breathing. Somehow.

And then he saw her.

A woman, if such a word could contain her, hovered before him, hair as dark as the midnight sky, drifting like a banner in the deep, her body shimmering with lines of light that curved across her skin like constellations carved into flesh.

Her lower half, serpentine and scaled, shifted in the abyss as though the sea itself bent to her command.

Her hands stroked his face, her lips curved with delight, her eyes, those vast, abyssal eyes, stared at him with a love so sharp it cut like a knife.

"My little land dweller..." she whispered, voice carrying in the water as though the ocean itself were her tongue.

"At last you are mine. At last I can hold you."

The words weren’t merely heard; they vibrated through his bones, filling marrow and blood with a rhythm not his own.

Caedrion jerked in her arms, but her grip did not yield.

He clawed for his sword, only to realize he was naked, stripped of steel, stripped of dignity, dragged from his home into this nightmare.

"Who... what are you?" His voice came strangled, but the words somehow carried, threaded with the strange magic that let him breathe. "Where am I?"

She only laughed, a sound melodic and venomous all at once.

Her tail coiled tighter, pulling him against her body as though he were a treasure long lost.

"You are beneath the sea," she crooned, pressing her brow to his. "You are in the heart of my dominion. Safe. Loved. Kept."

Her lips brushed his ear, the words sinking into his mind like hooks.

"I have watched you, my little guppy, my storm-forged darling. I saw you shatter Ignarion’s pride, bring lions to heel with thunder and fire. How could I not love you?"

His heart pounded, not with pride, but with terror.

The sea. A woman he had never seen, never even dreamed could exist.

She knew his name, his deeds, and she spoke as if she had always been waiting for him.

And his family, his father, his aunt, Aelindria, where were they? Did they know he had vanished?

Was he lying face-down in his bath at this very moment, drowned like a fool, while this creature dreamed her madness upon him?

"Release me!" he demanded, forcing iron into his tone, though fear prickled every nerve.

"I don’t know you. I don’t even know what you are!"

Her smile faltered, though only for a breath. The glow of her leylines brightened, wrapping them both in teal light, and her hand pressed firmly against his chest.

"Oh, you will know," she said, with a sweetness that chilled him more than her touch.

"You will learn every part of me, and I of you. You are mine, Caedrion. Mine to cherish, mine to guard, mine to crown beside me."

Her tail curled around them, sheltering them in a spiral of shimmering scales.

"I let the humans learn of me for you," she whispered.

"I drowned fleets, broke suitors, silenced traitors, all so I could clear the seas for you. And now the sea brings you to me, as it always was meant to."

Her eyes locked to his, fever-bright and endless.

"Do not fear. You need not understand yet. In time, you will. In time, you will love me as I love you."

Caedrion struggled, his every instinct screaming to fight, to flee, but her arms were the ocean itself.

And as she kissed him again, gifting him breath that was not his own, one thought clawed at him above all others:

If I am here, what has become of my home? Of Aelindria?

The palace shook with shouts.

Servants had entered the bath after hearing the splash of something unnatural, only to find the chamber empty.

The water still rippled, but their lord was gone. Not a robe, not a trace, nothing but silence.

Within minutes, Malveris stood in the steam-filled chamber, his jaw tight, staff trembling as he pressed wards into the walls. No portal. No breach. No spell residue he recognized.

"This... this is not mortal magic," he muttered.

Sylene stood beside him, eyes wide with dread. "He was here. Here, Malveris. His aura was strong, and then... nothing. As though torn away."

And Aelindria... Aelindria was nearly hysterical.

Her bond with Caedrion should have pulsed steady in her mind, but now it flickered erratically, like lightning glimpsed through storm clouds.

She clutched at her temples, tears streaking her face.

"He’s alive... I can feel him, but... he’s drowning, he’s suffocating, he’s... oh Architect help us!"

Her scream echoed through the baths until Sylene seized her shoulders.

"Daughter, calm yourself! If he yet lives, we must think clearly. Where has he been taken?"

Aelindria shook her head, hair damp with steam and sweat. "I don’t know... it’s vast, cold, endless. I feel... water. But it is not death. It’s her... someone else is holding him!"

The chamber fell still. Malveris’s gaze darkened.

"The Shivering Sea," he said at last.

"A place of whispers, of songs no man should follow. Sailors speak of women with scales, of queens who drown armies with a glance. We thought them fancies, madness born of storms. But if Caedrion has vanished into that abyss... then something stirs there still."