They'd been under too long. The twisting caverns deflected the worst of the tide's pull, but it still tugged them back and forth as the ocean gushed into and out of the shore. Kahldar swam with power, but slowly, to avoid scraping against sharp rocks or tumbling into unwanted passages.

Selida could still feel his fingers, strong on her wrist, but after diving past half a dozen crevices, he kicked upwards, towards the ceiling. She felt hesitation tighten the muscles on his back: the tide had erased the pocket of air he had expected. She mouthed a prayer, and a slice of new moon, barely visible in the pitch blackness, coalesced between them.

Kahldar's face blurred into view, framed by an orchestra of coral and kelp. Selida gestured at the narrow cave around them. Does that help?

He glanced down towards another passage. He hesitated again. Selida saw his eyes dart back the way they had come, weighing his air against his desire to press forward.

He looked at her, and started to pull her back towards the tunnels that led back to Emmeline.

Oh for Aluna's sake. Before he realized what she meant to do, Selida twisted under his arm and came up hard against his chest. He was new to swimming; the ocean had been her childhood playground. She pressed both palms into his torso and kicked off a wall. Her momentum carried them both back against the coral as she used her grip on his shirt to press her lips into his.

She felt his dense body stiffen; felt his hands close around her shoulders to shove her away. Before he could, she reached up with one hand to pinch his nose shut, and got the other around the back of his head. She sealed her mouth against his. Then, she opened her throat and exhaled Aluna's air into him.

His body jerked under hers. Through the magic of the prayer, he inhaled, even though his lungs had already been full. Their garments floated like jellyfish between them as he stilled with surprise. Selida continued to exhale. She counted the seconds to herself: One. Two. His palm came up, just enough to graze her cheek. Three. Slowly, she closed her lips and pushed herself away. His fingers trailed through her hair, undoing some of her coils from their loops.

They floated there, in the trace moonlight, as his body struggled to trust his new reservoir of breath. Selida, watching him, felt the tide tug every surface of their bodies, moving them through the dark like partners in the same dance.

The images came to her involuntarily: sliding herself up once more against him, tangling her fingers in his hair, wrapping her legs around his waist.

Kahldar was watching her, mouth closed, eyes dark. Who would you be, if you were free of your Dawnlander oaths? Not himself, she supposed.

She turned her head and gestured down at the crevasse he had glanced at. Shall we?

Kahldar nodded, and then touched his chest with a questioning expression.

3 minutes, she signed.

This time, instead of taking her hand, he drew her along the back of his body, securing her arms by wrapping them around his chest. The tide fit their bodies together like a pair of nesting spoons. Then he dove and drove them further down into the castle's tangled root.

***

Selida understood, now, why she and Laurence had never found the treasure. They had been looking downward for an outlet to the beach. Kahldar, however, now swam upwards, past turns too convoluted to remember. How had young Lydris come all this way? Had Aluna called to him?

Long after a mere human breath would have run out, she saw her first glint of gold.

A coin lodged between two shadowed barnacles. And then she saw another. And then a pair, both decked with Aluna's visage. And then a pearl brooch: the sort her mother might have offered in exchange for Laurence's healthy delivery—if Dawnlanders had not destroyed the temple, the year before. Another sparkle caught her eye: the clasp of a small metal chest, ivory engraved with pearl. And then Kahldar rounded a corner and Selida would have gasped, if she dared spare the air: around a pillar of dead coral, her little light illuminated a veritable dragon's hoard. Gold coins formed a lavish bed for precious stones, chased goblets, silver platters, and delicate altar figurines. Stalagmites grew throughout, and small fish flitted among their needle teeth, scales glinting like living treasure.

It was beautiful in a way that made her chest hurt, a fillip of the once-great wealth of the Tidelands, gifted in exultation and sorrow to their Goddess. Each coin, a fervent prayer.

Which of these yearnings did you deign to grant, Tidemother?

Years of funeral boats, released silently to the sea, piled up in her mind. Aluna grants all prayers, she had counseled grieving fathers, mothers, and children. Just not always in the way you ask.

The chill in her heart returned. Tidemother, in what way do you intend for me to grant our people's prayers this day? The implications stretched out before her: armies and bugles and castles, rebuilt over ruins. Surely you cannot find greater value in this child's passing, than in his seal-pup-smile. Despite the wet black, her skin felt hot, and then cold, and then hot again.

Selida reached out to a gold bust of the goddess, half buried in sand. Meet my eyes and tell me that this cannot be what You want.

Kahldar grabbed her hand and pressed it back against his chest. He pointed.

Past the treasure, in the dark recesses of the cave, she saw a larger movement. The long sinewy tail of a coldfire fish fluttered against a wall. Where there was one, there was usually a nest. And they were very fond of metals.

Then, Selida felt Kahldar stiffen. A moment later, he surged upwards towards something that floated at the edge of a shelf that jutted out from the wall.

It was Lydris. Selida broke the surface of the water and breathed blessed air out and the normal, dank air of the tidepools back in. He slumped as if in sleep, his body half submerged in surf.

Kahldar heaved himself onto the ledge, his hands reaching to measure breath and pulse. Selida floated behind him, suspended in cold possibilities.

"Still alive," he breathed, his voice hoarse. "Exoeras, we were close." Then he shook the child by the shoulder. "My lord? My lord, you must wake up now."

Selida dragged herself to the lip of the shelf. The weight of her clothes and hair dragged her backwards. "Wait. He's not asleep. Look." There, under Lydris's hand, sat an enormous pearl. It was at least the size of her palm, and shaped like the inside of the clam it had once inconvenienced. Ancient script slithered over its surface. As she watched, it seemed to glow in time to the ebb and flow of the water. Her stomach knotted, and she had to exert effort to continue breathing.

"Is he ensorcelled?"

Selida's mouth felt clumsy as her heart started to surge. "Those are runes of memory and language. He might be... communicating with someone."

Kahldar's face contorted. "How do we wake him?"

"Let's break contact, first." Gently, she wrapped her fingers around Lydris's wrist. It was cold, the pulse thready. Aluna keep you, she mouthed, and a little bit of blush came back into his pale cheeks. Then she lifted his hand free.

The pearl rolled up through the air, and into her hand. Selida had not guessed it could do that, nor was the movement accompanied by light or scent or any of the trappings of magic. It sat on the rocky outcropping one moment, and landed in her outstretched hand the next. Its scarred surface touched her skin—

***

Selida was eighteen. She stood with chapped palms and aching knees before the Grand Cleric's driftwood door. She raised her hand to knock, but her movements were slow; the hallway was under water. She glanced around, but her vision fractured as if she saw through a kaleidoscope of sea glass. Around her coiled the prayer-worked stone warrens of the Grand Abbey, but through them, she could see the arch of the wall of a deep, dark, cool place: a grotto hidden in the womb of the ocean, always shadowed and yet writhing with life. The ghost of a great peace surrounded her, deep and intimate.

Tidemother?

She pushed open the door. It creaked and dissolved like a whisper worn thin with years. The study was dense with green-yellow light and the memory of a hymn. The Grand Cleric's chair sat beside her embroidered firescreen. In it, Selida felt the absence of an enormous presence, the faint warmth left in the hollow of Her dented cushions.

As she stared, trying to understand, her awareness fractured again. Though she was still standing in the Grand Cleric's office, she was also five, and tracing the embroidery on her mother's cold pillow. She was seventeen, flushed and bewildered in the silent garden. She was twenty, and tearless, hands pressed to the grave marker. She was the serpent, climbing the rise before Wyvernsvow with a heart full of lead.

Then—

***

"Selida!" Her eyes burst open as the last of Kahdar's bellow echoed through the flooded chamber. He had seized her by the shoulders and shaken her hard enough to snap her head backwards on her neck. His grip burned through the cold fabric and scorched her skin.

He was so present that gratitude welled up behind her eyes like hot vinegar.

"It's just us." The words came out a strangled mumble.

His face contorted. "Selida, can you hear me?"

Her tongue sat enormous in her mouth, and her lawn shift was a slimy film on her skin. Her chest felt like an empty bottle, shriven through with cracks. She tried his name: "Kahldar?"

He leaned closer. "What was that?"

Her eyes must be dilated; she could see every ridge and crevice of the rock wall above her, writhing like scales sheathing coils of lithe bodies. Beside her, the moon orb shone like a star.

She tried a simpler word. "P—pearl?" She turned her head. Lydris, still limp on the rocks; the cavern, still close around them, the water, still nibbling the rocky shelf, the treasure, still glinting like a fever dream underneath the black surface.

Kahldar shook her again; not very gently. The heat radiating off his body warmed her like a fire. "It—possessed you. You fell backwards and started to spasm. The pearl fell into your lap. I dared not touch it, so I heaved you over and it rolled—" he glanced downwards, "back into the water."

Her limbs felt suffused with sleep, and reluctant to obey her. "It was Aluna's," she said. Her cheeks were hot. Her eyes smarted.

His lips writhed. "Did—did you see her? Talk to her?"

"No." Selida inhaled, delicately, so her chest wouldn't shatter. "It was more like... a memory. A vision of a place she once loved, but is no longer. It's not a— communication device." She looked over at where he'd indicated. She could see no glimpse of the pearl now. "Or at least, not one that anyone is listening to."

She didn't realize the tears had spilled out of her eyes until his rough thumbs brushed them from her burning cheeks.

Her hands were too heavy to stop him.

He held her for a moment longer, as if he was afraid that if he let go, she'd dissolve like salt into the ocean.

"Stay with me," he said.

"I'm here." Gingerly, she covered the back of his hand with hers. The chair is empty. She would not cling to his warmth. She must not. She forced her fingers open, and turned her face away from his molten gaze.

With a rough exhalation that might have contained words, Kahldar shoved himself back onto his heels. Her eyes were adjusting, and in the orb's light she could now see, well... all of him, through the wet fabric. She focused on the strong swell of his shoulder, under the snaking wetness of his hair. The cave. Lydris. Emmeline. Right. She wiped her eyes and pulled her knees up towards her chest, as a courtesy to his modesty.

Kahldar crouched over Lydris. The tide was still rising. He pulled the boy deeper onto the little shelf, so he rested with his back against the rough wall. "He is getting colder." They both listened to the waves, roaring in the distance. "Now what? Do you have another spell that allows for breath?"

Selida estimated the passages and hairpin turns in her head. "The prayer will only help if he is conscious to accept the blessing." She inched forward until she could touch Lydris's wrist. His blood bumped idiosyncratically against her fingers. "If we cannot wake him, we need to wait until the tide goes back out."

"That's hours from—" he took a breath and tried again in a quieter tone. "If Lord Lydris is missed, the castle will fall into a fatal disarray. If the Fox takes the keep—"

She could imagine what he imagined. "My guess is that he will be unconscious commensurate with the time he spent in the vision." She rubbed her face. Salt burned the folds of her skin: her eyelids, her cuticles. She felt ten years older than she had this morning. "Let's try rubbing his hands and feet. It might rouse him faster."

Kahldar took a seat with his back facing her. "I'll take his hands," he said.