Elara crouched low by the pool side, touching her hand to the surface of the water. It rippled under her fingertips, circles spreading out, a perfect motion.

"Do you know that there are some waters that are even deadly to the Naiad?" she said, her voice low.

She'd expected to be scared then, a bone-juddering trepidation of what was to come, but Elara found that a strange sense of calm had overtaken her. A resignation, maybe. What else did she have to lose? Everything she had ever cared about was obsolete now.

"Elara, what did you mean?" Juda said, kneeling by her side. "You cannot tell me you believe in the madness of prophecy? That's just fodder for the devout and the foolish, for those who wish to fashion a world around a fucking fantasy and nothing more."

"Fantasy?" Elara glanced back at the cavern walls. "What is written there is no fantasy, Juda. Everything on that wall has come to pass, do you understand? Stories, prophecies, call them what you wish, but it is not something to be dismissed as fodder for the foolish."

Juda frowned and she found that she liked that, the deep valley that beset the skin between his dark brows. The urge to smooth it out with the pad of her thumb was strong, but she could see the way in which he wrestled with her words behind his eyes.

"What I understand is that my entire life has been bent around cold, harsh realities," he said, his hand skimming over the black rock. "There are things you cannot prevent, and things you can. We are all moulded by the decisions we make for ourselves, and by the decisions others make that either drift on the current or that raise the waves so high that it changes the shape of everything we have come to know. But what I refuse to believe, is that our fate is determined by a madman prophet who sat down one tide, dreamt up all this crazy shit in his head and scrawled it onto parchment that is only fit to gather dust on a library shelf."

She understood his words and ached for him a little, because she could see his bedchamber then—that stark space where his anger and his trauma filled every corner and pushed at the walls until the cracks threatened to widen and split apart. There had been nothing but reality there. A dark, all-consuming reality that had shaped the boy he'd been into the man by her side now.

"People are unpredictable creatures, that is true, and we cannot determine how the actions and decisions of others can ripple through reality, but I do believe in these stories. The Fall of the Naiad was foretold by my own mother, as was the story of the last of our kind. Those stories have shaped my entire life, Juda, just as your reality has shaped yours. It doesn't make them any less true."

She smiled as she stared into the water's depths.

"I didn't want to believe the stories written here. By my foremothers, Juda, there were times I wanted to scream into the blessed black of moontide until my throat was raw at the fucking unfairness of it all. Because while it's true what we do and what decisions we make can truly shape reality, a prophecy will just twist itself around all of that, alter its trajectory until it finds its path again. And trust me, it always finds its path. I would have ended up here anyway, in this chamber, sitting by this pool."

She looked at him, at the Batak oil scars slashed across his eyes, the curve of his mouth that had the power to twist from cruelty to beauty with one turn of his lips. "I think the only unpredictable kink of reality in all of this is you. I doubt all the prophets and priestesses in all the kingdoms could have predicted your presence here. You are a surprising twist of fate, novice."

He stared at her, the serious dark-hearted boy he had been and the vengeful creature he had become.

"Well, I have been called many things, witch—by you in particular—but I'm not sure any have been as strangely complimentary as that."

Elara smirked. "Not even in the bedchambers of Clova Dell's house?"

He preened then, actually fucking preened. An arrogant flicker of pride crept into his features.

"That, witch, is between me and the good women of Clova Dell."

Elara raised a brow. "That's what you think. Those good women don't tend to keep these things to themselves. How do you think the slums are rife with the talk of the King's Highguard who fucks as if it's his last moontide on this accursed rock?"

She laughed and pressed her mouth to his, unable to stop herself, drawn to that dark flicker in his eyes as much as she was the cruel curve of his lips. When she drew back, she sighed, the beat of the temple suddenly louder under her skin. The pulse was particularly relentless this tide. Not that she should have been surprised at that. Her mother had told her that the sacred ground always knew when it was time. And blessed foremothers, was it time now.

As if sensing the change in her, Juda said, "Why are we here? Why are you here?"

"To discover the stories that were untold. To learn my story. If that is what the water wishes for me." She let her hand linger on the surface again, drawing patterns with the drag of her fingertips.

"What if it doesn't wish that for you? What does it mean?"

Goodness, but he really was perceptive, this one. The way he could pick up on the hidden messages behind words that others would never see. Not even if you slammed those words into their eyes.

"Then I will die here this tide, Juda. The waters of the divining pool will take my body, strip the flesh away and sink my bones to the bottom, to lie with the bones of all the other Unchosen that have dared to step into its depths."

His eyes widened, almost like a child's would, before glancing into the pool as if he thought those bones would rise to the surface.

"You can't mean to do this?" His hand was heavy on her forearm, his grip insistent.

"I was born with the mark of the Chosen, Juda, here, look."

Elara swallowed and sat on her behind, splaying her toes, showing him the tiny scars between each digit, the ones he would never have noticed because he'd been too preoccupied with other parts of her body.

"The webbed skin was cut away, to protect me from any Druvarians who would know the signs. The Druvari priests would have bashed my head on the black rocks before I could have barely uttered a single cry." She smiled wryly. "Of course, maybe I was just a surprising twist of fate too, but my mother was convinced. She was a Chosen herself, after all. The stories of the Naiad place us where we are meant to be. I am the last. If I am Unchosen, then it ends with me. If not, then..."

"Then what?"

The panic on his face surprised her. He was so cold, distant. Angry. Sometimes it seemed as if his anger would engulf him; raise up that wave so high that it would crash over him and sweep him out into the dark to be adrift forever. But of course, she'd seenhim, maybe even understood him. There was warmth there. Tenderness even. He hated that part of himself as much as the Naiad under her skin hated those same traits in her.

"Then upon these walls, I will tell a new story."

She stood up and unlaced her britches, pushing them down over her hips and stepping out of them, kicking them to one side with her foot. She kept on her underbritches and her tunic, and Juda's lightweight one too which she took a strange comfort in having next to her skin. If she was to die here this tide, better that she do so with something of his close to her body. With the memory of his touch still so prevalent in her mind.

"Elara..." he began, but she was already wading into the pool.

"Don't enter the water, Juda," she warned, not looking back. "Even if I do not resurface, do not look for me. Take whatever treasures remain here and leave the temple. Seal it shut and never return."

***

Whatever the waters in the divining pool, they were not of the Setalah.

Even Elara's own mother could not tell her where the waters came from, whether from the within the core of the black rock itself or somewhere else, all they knew was that the pool had always been here. Where the Naiad existed, so did the divining pool of the Chosen.

The waters themselves were nectar-thick, possessing a greater viscosity than the Setalah, and warmer, despite never having been touched by the sun.

As she waded from the edge, the ground dropping away from under her feet, she trod the water for a few moments, before tilting backwards and letting her legs float until she was on her back. Closing her eyes, she felt the steady beat of the Naiad pump through her body, feeling it reach into her chest until it was as if two hearts were caged there.

Thud-thud. Thud-thud.

"Blessed foremothers," she whispered. "Blessed waters."

And then she was sinking, the waters pulling her down, down, down into the dark with only bones for a bed...

Her mother was screaming. And their foremothers screamed with her, the vibrations of their cries sending waves crashing over the seastacks, battering the shores of Druvaria.

The Highguards dragged her, by her hair, her arms, her legs and by the dead gods, did she struggle and yet it was all for her Naiadini—all to distract them from the girl who had lingered too long in the water, unwilling to do what her mother had told her, unwilling to turn her back and swim away because she knew it would be the last time she saw her mother's face.

She'd stilled as soon as they were free of Grimefell, her body numb, her heart dead, for she had already seen her fate through the eyes of her own foremothers, through the eyes of all those who had gone before her. Dragged, persecuted, despised.

The black palace was alive. A monster. Breathing in and out, stretching its talons, sharpening its teeth on the bones of all those who had been forced inside its jaws, over its tongue and down its throat.

She followed the path of bloodied footprints, her bare feet fitting inside them perfectly.

She could feel them, the others—the press of their bodies as they walked alongside her, fingers entwined with hers. She could smell them—sea salt and dragon's gold. And she could hear them—screams that continued to echo inside these walls even though they were dead.

Breathe in, breathe out. Scream. Bleed.

She bled until it ran like a river around her feet, between her toes, until it pooled in her throat and lungs and drowned her.

The King before her was ageless and yet all ages. Old and yet young. Worn, tired skin and smooth, youthful flesh. He was everything and nothing and where his face should have been, was a shadow. He was darkness and light, ice and fire, a beating heart and yet devoid of life.

And most of all, he was vengeance. Consumed by a love he could not have. Consumed by desire and power and hatred. A burning thing. A cold thing.

A hungry thing.

And he saw her, this King, and he hungered.

He saw her, and he hungered still.

He saw her. Bare feet fitting inside bloodied footprints. Bare feet with scars and blood between her toes.

He saw her...

Elara burst free from the surface of the pool, her eyes wide, spluttering and choking, spitting out the dark, bitter remnants of the waters that had gathered in her throat.

Strong hands grasped onto her body as she swam to the edge, pulling her onto the rock, but she shook them off, staggering to her feet and stumbling to the walls. Dripping wet and cold now, she set to work, and finding the blank space she needed, she pressed her palms to the rock face and whispered the words she'd heard in the black depths.

The songs of her foremothers. The incantations of the Chosen.

The words, the words, the words.

The water followed her voice, forcing its way up out of the stone, carving her story onto the obsidian canvas and with the water, came violet quartz. She'd expected to conjure the red goldstone, like her mother, but the purple felt fitting—powerful and violent—and she let it cover the space, carving the stories the waters had showed her until her palms were bleeding. Until she was crying. Until she finally collapsed, feeling Juda's arms pull her against his chest. Heartbeat hard and strong against her spine. Mouth whispering softness into her ears.

She clutched at him, her head full of voices and screams that wouldn't stop, but she heard his through them all.

"What does the story say? What did the waters show you?"

Elara shivered in his arms, staring up at the violent purple story. Her story.

"I saw him. The King. I saw what he did, and I know everything...by my foremothers, I saw it all..."

Juda's arms tightened. "Saw what? What did he do?"

"I know his power and it's ours, Juda. The Naiad's. He lives still because of us. He is a god because of us."

She crawled out of his arms and went back to the wall, placing her palm over the symbols she had written and looked back at him.

"Bachaeia es aldoris. Bachaeia es elidan," she said. "The blood is divine. The blood is the way."

Tears streamed down her face because she understood now. The pulse of the Naiad. The power in her veins. She finally understood.

"He bled them, Juda. The faceless one and his priests. He bled them all and he drank from them. Our blood in his mouth, on his tongue, down his throat. Our blood is divine. Our blood is the way."

She turned to face him, pressing her back against her words—words that pained her, far more than a dagger under her shoulder blade ever could. She'd always known the truth would hurt, but this truth was agony.

"And what's worse is that he knows, he sees me..."

Juda climbed to his feet, going to her, one hand cupping her cheek to brush the tears that fell. "But how? How can he see you? He would have ripped Grimefell apart by now if he thought you lived."

"I don't know," she said. "It's the blood, maybe. I really don't know. But I could sense it, I could feel it. Feel him. He knows of me, Juda, I am certain of it and he's going to come for me. I saw it happen. He needs me. He hungers."

She pressed a trembling hand to his chest, felt the surety of his heartbeat thud against her palm.

"Bachaeia es aldoris. Bachaeia es elidan. My blood is the way. It's the only way."