Lior blinked. “My lady?”
They say she still rules Blanca Sirena, but from below now. On stormy nights, you can see her face in the curl of a wave—not cruel, not kind, but watching. And the pearls that wash ashore afterward are always perfect. And always warm. Duchess of Blanca Sirena
“Ah,” she said. “So you’ve found my heart.” Lior blinked
A diver named Lior found it on a dead man’s ribcage, forty fathoms down in the trench called the Madonna’s Throat. The pearl was black as a bruise and warm to the touch, even in the cold deep. He brought it to the Duchess because he had nowhere else to go. His boat was rotting. His wife had coughed blood for a month. And the pearl, when he held it, whispered to him in a language that sounded like his own name being erased. And the pearls that wash ashore afterward are always perfect
Her name was Serafina, though no one dared speak it aloud except the sea. She had been born during a tempest, the night the old lighthouse cracked in two and the bay turned white with foam. The midwives said the child came out smiling, and the water in the birthing chamber had tasted of brine.
And Serafina—no longer floating, no longer a duchess, no longer anything so small as a noblewoman—walked to the window. She looked out at the sea, which had been waiting for her to remember.