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My fingers tremble when I take the fish. It smells of sea and butter and something bright I don’t know the name for yet.
“I shouldn’t be so nervous, I mean I’ve done the Earth version of this for years,” I murmur.
“You can do it, Telya. Nice and slow,” Kael says from behind me.
His eyes narrow, careful, protective, but he doesn’t move to stop me or to take over.
He watches me as if I am the rare thing he has discovered—equal parts treasure and tentative miracle. And I can only hope I’m reading that right.
I kneel at the rock’s edge, more reverent than I have any right to be, and follow the handler’s slow, patient rhythm.
Toss. Step back. Bow.
The whale lifts like a cathedral, mouth opening in an almost-smile.
Its breath fogs the air, and when it takes the fish, the sound is a low, contented inhalation that makes tears prick the back of my eyes.
“Do they remember people?” I ask after wiping my palms on my skirt because my fingers feel ridiculous and sacred all at once.
“They remember kindness,” the man says. “And names tied to songs. You gave them a name today by your hands, Lady Phoebe.”
He bows to me with a little grin.
“They will follow you for a season, if you want them to.”
I look up at Kael and see something in his face I’ve been trying to name—fierceness threaded with awe, like a man who has kept storms in bottles and still discovers new kinds of wonder.
I realize, with a ridiculous, overwhelming joy, that the thing I want more than anything is to know how to belong here.
To the whales.
To the shore.
To the strange, tragic, beautiful Demon who stands with his hands folded and lets me learn.
When I slide my hand along the wet, leathery snout the whale nudges me gently, like a dog asking for a belly rub. Its skin is cool and absurdly soft.
The calf chirps beneath the surface as if cheering me on. Around us the tide holds—patient, approving—and for a beat I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I have to wonder, is Nightfall supposed to fit me this fast?
Like a coat I didn’t know I owned.
Part of me is giddy, like I’ve slipped into the best dream of my life. The other part sits cold and practical in my chest, ticking off reasons this could all be snatched away.
It feels unbearably right and impossibly fragile at the same time, and I keep waiting for the moment I’ll wake up back in Jersey under the fluorescent lights of the aquarium and realize it was only a beautiful mistake.
All I can do is beg whoever is listening, if this is a dream, then let me sleep.
Chapter 17
Kael
First Shore—TheTidal Lands, Nightfall
After the whales, after the way she’d knelt like a child and fed the great beasts with the same fierce curiosity she’d fed everything since she arrived, Phoebe and I drift back into the center of the feast like two planets pulling the same small moon along behind them.
I don’t let myself linger on the way she moves, but the truth is a tide that will not be held back.
