00:00Ma soeur choisit le lionfish fae.
00:02Elle a abandoné le whale shifter,
00:04le one que personne ne voulait pour moi.
00:07C'était fate.
00:08A drift born pour un beast.
00:11Instead, je n'ai perdu un roi par accident.
00:14Il me a pris comme sa queen.
00:16Après le bondage,
00:17je n'ai pris cinq heirs pour le roi de la roi,
00:19un clan qui a fait des années sans enfants.
00:23Je suis devenu un legend dans le monde entier.
00:26Ma soeur, qui a été un roi avec le lionfish fae,
00:28was cast out for barrenness.
00:31I came home with my youngest.
00:33My sister poisoned my bowl.
00:34Me and my child both.
00:37And I woke.
00:38It was the day of the right again.
00:40Everyone present is a worthy son of their bloodline.
00:43Choose freely.
00:44The hall filled with glances,
00:46with offered flowers,
00:48with quiet negotiations between bodies and bloodlines.
00:52I didn't want any of it.
00:53In my last life,
00:55childbirth had nearly killed me.
00:57I wasn't doing it again.
00:58I stood alone.
01:00Then the doors blew open.
01:02He arrived in a surge of volcanic current.
01:05A shark lord in his full power.
01:07And he had his arm around my sister's waist.
01:11Thessaly saved my life.
01:12From this day forward,
01:13she is my true mate.
01:15A shark lord choosing one of ours.
01:18Choosing her as first and only.
01:20It hadn't happened in living memory.
01:22I knew then.
01:23She'd been reborn too.
01:25Now I looked at her.
01:26Draped against the shark lord.
01:28Already victorious.
01:30She thought she'd won.
01:31She hadn't thought through what it would cost her.
01:34Shark lords are of the volcanic current element.
01:37Their mates sleep in volcanic current.
01:39Bathe in volcanic current.
01:41Eat volcanic current food.
01:43For a bloodline like ours.
01:45Deep current by nature.
01:46That's not a marriage.
01:48It's a slow execution.
01:50Last time I had no choice but to pretend to like it.
01:53Every day.
01:53I smiled through the sacred thermal vent walks.
01:56Through the scalding baths.
01:58Through the meals that felt like swallowing coals.
02:01By the time I was pregnant,
02:02my core was already cracked.
02:04The children drew what was left.
02:06Thessaly was deep current too.
02:08She just didn't know what she'd agreed to yet.
02:11The whole keep celebrated.
02:13Every unmated girl in the order delayed her own bonding to help prepare Thessaly's.
02:18The gift list ran ten feet long.
02:21The high warden nearly emptied the sanctuary's vaults.
02:24I was the only unmated woman left.
02:27That made me the obvious choice for handmaid.
02:30Thessaly stood over me and smiled.
02:33Before you were the elder, I deferred to you.
02:35How does this feel, sister?
02:37I said nothing.
02:38She stepped forward and struck my face.
02:40The high warden has already agreed.
02:42You belong to me now.
02:44I'll hit you when I want.
02:45Praise you when I want.
02:47You have no say.
02:48Start learning.
02:49A courier arrived from the shark lord.
02:52A volcanic silk mantle.
02:54Vida's seafoam.
02:55Heat resistant.
02:56Enchanted for speed.
02:58Thessaly touched it with both hands.
03:00I knew that mantle.
03:02For volcanic current bloodlines, it was a treasure.
03:05For deep current bloodlines, it was a punishment.
03:09I'd worn it every day of my first marriage.
03:11It had carved away at my core for years.
03:14Thessaly would find that out eventually.
03:17Then a girl came swimming fast.
03:18Volcanic current damage on the sacred reef!
03:20What an awful omen.
03:22Today of all days.
03:25I didn't wait.
03:26I swam.
03:27The sacred reef was burning hard when I arrived.
03:30Black clouds of silt screaming from inside the coral line.
03:34The covenant warden stood at the edge and wouldn't know.
03:37That volcanic current belongs to a shark lord.
03:40We interfere.
03:41We offend him.
03:41One of them said,
03:42Your sister's bonding is today.
03:44Don't make trouble.
03:45They're only low rank phililius.
03:47I looked at him for a long moment.
03:50Then I went in.
03:51The silt blinded me fast.
03:53The thermal current scorched my scales.
03:56But I was deep current.
03:57Wherever I moved, cold spread behind me.
04:00It slowed the thermal currents enough to matter.
04:02I remembered what my foster mother taught me.
04:05Clear a line.
04:06Deny the thermal current somewhere to go.
04:08I tide shifted to full form and called out.
04:11Shark.
04:12Manta ray.
04:13Swordfish.
04:14Sea turf.
04:14They came.
04:15They carried cold hardened vessels in their jaws.
04:18A whale used its mouth.
04:20Sea urchins and mantis shrimp worked the thermal breaks.
04:23We were losing.
04:24Then we worked.
04:25Then the reef shook.
04:28The seabed split open.
04:30A sea serpent came out of that black, ancient, large enough to block the light from above.
04:35He opened his mouth and cold water poured.
04:38The thermal current died.
04:40The sea serpent's voice didn't come from one direction.
04:43This reef is mine.
04:46Who damaged it?
04:48The covenant mordents said nothing.
04:50A thousand tidal cycles in this valley.
04:52And nobody had thought to check whether something older already lived here.
04:56Then Thessaly pointed at me.
04:58Look at her.
04:59Ash everywhere.
05:01Burned scales.
05:02It had to be her.
05:03Every eye turned.
05:04I was standing there with my hands at my sides.
05:07Charred.
05:08Bleeding in two places.
05:09The same hands that had just spent an hour fighting the thermal current.
05:13I was certain someone would say it.
05:15Any of them.
05:16They'd all seen me swim in.
05:17The covenant warden looked at me for a long time.
05:21Then he bowed.
05:22The sea rank and sovereign.
05:24Our wayward daughter did this.
05:26She is yours to punish.
05:27We offer her freely.
05:28I stood still.
05:29Not one of them spoke for me.
05:31I had bent myself in half for these people in my last life.
05:36I had scalded from volcanic current.
05:39From the inside out.
05:40Carrying children for a clan that wasn't mine.
05:44For a man who never once made me warm.
05:47I'd done it for them.
05:48Kept them safe.
05:50Kept them proud.
05:51And now.
05:52They were handing me to a sea serpent.
05:54Just to buy themselves quiet.
05:56I looked at the covenant warden.
05:58The volcanic current was shark made.
06:00Everyone here knows that.
06:02I'm deep current.
06:04How would I produce sacred thermal current?
06:07Thessaly cut in immediately.
06:09You're my handmaid.
06:10You had access to my husband's tide brands.
06:12Easy enough to steal a spark.
06:14Sea serpent sovereign.
06:15The evidence speaks for itself.
06:17She damaged your sacred reef.
06:19I held up my hands.
06:20The skin had peeled back in places.
06:22If I started it.
06:24Why did I try to stop it?
06:27To look innocent.
06:30I laughed.
06:32It came out wrong.
06:33Too much feeling in it.
06:35What do I have to gain?
06:37Any of it.
06:38What exactly do you think I wanted?
06:41The covenant warden stood.
06:43Sylvain.
06:44Just admit it.
06:45That was my name.
06:47Sylvain.
06:48I looked at him for a long moment.
06:50I'm done with this covenant.
06:52All of it.
06:53Every debt between us is settled.
06:55The sea serpent spoke again.
06:58Quieter this time.
06:59Enough.
07:00The girl comes with me.
07:01Whatever she is to you, she isn't anymore.
07:04The darkness rolled toward me.
07:06I closed my eyes.
07:07When I opened them, I was somewhere else.
07:11Bioluminescent light.
07:12Stone.
07:12A ceiling so high.
07:14I couldn't see the end of it.
07:16He was in surface form.
07:18Black robes edged in silver.
07:19He sat like someone who had never once needed anything from anyone.
07:24He was watching me with something almost like amusement.
07:28Go ahead.
07:29He said.
07:30Say what you want to say.
07:31I straightened.
07:32You knew.
07:33You knew the whole time what happened.
07:36Why play along with them?
07:38Because you needed a reason to leave.
07:41He tilted his head.
07:42And the abysmal palace considerably more comfortable than a tide pool.
07:46I thought you might prefer it.
07:48I thought about what he'd said.
07:50In my last life, he had sent me a tear pearl during my labor.
07:55He hadn't explained why then, either.
07:57Only later did I understand.
07:59The wreath was his.
08:01I had defended it.
08:02He remembered.
08:03I knelt.
08:05Thank you, my lord.
08:06I'll serve faithfully.
08:08Don't do it again.
08:10Do what?
08:11Throw yourself at people who aren't worth it.
08:13He stood.
08:14Get dressed.
08:15We're going to watch the bonding ceremony.
08:17He handed me a gown.
08:19Black.
08:20Covered with shimmering scales.
08:22I put it on.
08:23And stood beside him.
08:25And we looked like we matched.
08:27I felt my face go warm.
08:29Without meaning to.
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