Chapter 6 Enna's Secret

"Blood keeps what memory fails to. And sometimes, the currents carry more than rubbish-truth."

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The sea lay stiller than usual after the storm, its stillness however like a tense breath. A silence so in anticipation of either a scream-an epiphany. Merbel walked the path along the cliffs with an unsatisfied restlessness, her hands tracing along damp bramble like it could confess secrets. She felt the wind from the sea tug at hair. Bare-footed she wandered along moss-shrouded rock. Each footstep a query she did not know.

Behind her, the form of the cottage stood like a weary sentinel. And against the wall of it, Anacobal stood, his eyes steadfast with the immobility of a rising tide. His arms were folded, his eyes enigmatic, his presence a burden in the atmosphere. He had told her of things she wasn't ready to hear. But something in the very marrow of her bones warned her that worse was yet to come.

That morning, there had been a message slipped under her door. The paper was wet, thin, the words scrawled in a hand that was fine and shaking:

"Come before the sun sets. Bring no shadows."

No signature, but Merbel recognized the sender.

Enna.

The old woman was healer, gossip, ghost-teller. She was more than these things. She was a remnant. A witness. A keeper of stories no one else was brave enough to tell.

Merbel took the path into the valley, grass slippery under her feet, heart pounding. Enna's hut crouched at the bottom of the cliff like a shell jammed into the rocks. Seaweed netting overhung its eaves, shells threaded on it clinking as the wind whistled through. The door opened before she could tap on it.

"Come in, girl. Getting on for late," Enna croaked, not unkindly.

The seaweed smell of mossed herbs greeted her, heavy as incense. The fire burned down low, casting shadows on the walls of driftwood with dancing flames. Fishskin and kelp hangings moved softly, as if stroked by breath.

Enna poured a dark green tea in ill-matched clay cups. Her hands shook, but her eyes-obscured by years-glowed with a brief flame.

"I suppose he didn't say anything," she answered, her voice as unforgiving as smoothed stone in a wave-crashed beach.

Merbel hesitated, fingers encircling the scalding cup. "Anacobal is. wary. I believe he's protecting me."

Enna snorted, more laughter than scoff, half-and-half between. "Protecting or delaying? There is a difference, child. The tide defends the shore-but it hides what is within the deep."

Merbel drank tea to soothe herself and experienced mint, salt, and something exceedingly ancient.

"I don't know what I am anymore," she confessed.

The old woman drew closer. "That's because you've only heard half the story."

Elaborate on this.

She knelt beside a frayed chest beside the fire and slowly creaked open the lid, as if she was afraid the memories inside would snap at her. Rags of silk sparkled in the fire-sea colors faded by time. Coral necklaces were tied up with bone trinkets. A comb of pearl and driftwood, as gentle as a sigh.

Enna gently took up the comb with sacred hands and laid it before Merbel.

"That was your mother's."

The words fell like stones into a still pool.

Merbel's breath caught. "My mother died when I was a baby."

"She vanished," Enna said. "But not on dry land."

The fire spat. Outside, somewhere, a gull screamed out into the wind.

Enna's eyes searched Merbel's face. "Her name wasn't Lira, like they said. It was Lirae. She wasn't a village girl. She was Cerulean Court-a sea princess."

Silence beat in the room. Merbel looked at the comb. Her fingers trembled as they rested against its handle. There was a rhythm there. Faint. Like something breathing.

Perhaps Enna's voice softened. "She emerged on shore after the Deepquake shattered the reef gates. Hurt. Half-transmuted. I discovered her on the beach, bleeding and singing in a tongue that predates storm. She healed quickly. Too quickly." *

She paused, eyes distant. "We were friends. Close. Until she met your father. Sweet, clever liar. He had eyes like the sun on sand, and she fell. Quick. Hard."

Merbel's head was reeling. The tea churned in her stomach.

"She gave birth to you under a moonless sky. There was magic in the air that night. Thick as fog. But they stole her away-not to return her home, I think, but to silence her. She left you with me before she vanished. I never saw her afterward."

A thousand questions raged through Merbel's head, but only one escaped.

"Why now?"

Enna looked out the window, toward the dark ocean beyond. "Because your blood is waking. The storm was a signal. The sea knows you've come of age. And he-" she pointed toward Anacobal's shadow-"he knows more than he says."

Merbel stood, the comb clutched against her chest. She felt suddenly like a stranger in her own skin. Like the shape of her life had been a lie carved by absence.

Outside, dusk shrouded the sea like a pot of ink. She didn't realize she was crying until the breeze kissed the salt from her cheeks.

She found Anacobal standing still, as if he had known where to look for her.

"You knew," she accused harshly.

He remained silent. Just nodded.

"Why did you not tell me?"

"Because once truth touches you," he said, "it never lets go. And I did not want to take your peace from you."

She laughed-bitter, painful. "Peace? I've not known peace since the first time I awoke in the woods and had blood in my mouth."

He stepped nearer to her, somber. "You are in excess of wolf, Merbel. In excess of any prophecy or curse. You are moonlight on turbulence. You are tidebound. Legacy."

She rejected it. "I'm nothing but confused. Haunted. I can't bear a throne I didn't ask for."

"But you're already carrying it," he said. "Your mother's mark-behind your ear. A crescent-within-a-wave. It's not a birthmark. It's the royal sigil. The Seal of the Moon Court."

Her fingers rose to the spot instinctively. A faint pulse stirred beneath her skin.

Anacobal's tone fell. "The Moon Throne governed the Veil-the fringe of land and sea, men's worlds and magic. Keepers of the peace. When your mother disappeared, that control disintegrated. The storms became more violent. The creatures of the sea. less kept."

"And now?" she drew in her breath.

"Now the blood moon ascends. The Veil becomes tenuous. You must decide what you shall be before anyone else does."

His words cut. Merbel's body was a battlefield-half-wolf, half-something else, something less. Feral. Summoned.

"I do not want a throne," she answered. "I want my life. I want my choice."

Anacobal put his hand on hers. His fingers were warm, coarse, true. "Then use the throne to gain your freedom. Not for yourself alone. For all of us."

Above, the moon broke through the clouds, sending a silver fire along the cliffs. Waves pounded harder below, their beat broken, ravenous.

"Something's stirring," she said.

He nodded. "And it knows your name."

---

That night, Merbel could not sleep. The comb rested under her pillow, softly pulsing, dreaming with her. When sleep finally came, it was bright and cutting.

She stood on a great bridge of water that stretched between twin moons. Below, an army forced-a line of creatures built of nightmare and coral, shadow and scale, flame and fin. At her side, Anacobal carried a trident that glowed with light. Her own hand gripped a sword of starlight.

The sky was rent in two with a cry: "Daughter of tide and fang-rise or be unmade!"

Merbel woke gasping. Her bedding clung to her in sweat. Thunder thundered outside.

She rushed to the door-and he was there.

Anacobal.

He did not ask. He did not have to.

"You saw it too," she gasped.

He nodded. "The tides are speaking. The Veil is cracking. We must go."

"Go where?"

"To the ruins beneath the Deepwater Arch. The last temple of the Moon Court. Your birthright lies there. And your choice."

Merbel glanced back at the cottage, the only home she'd ever known. Then at the sea, dark and endless.

"Then let's go," she said.

And far beneath the waves, something ancient smiled in the dark.

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