Chapter 10 The tide between us

Chapter 10 The tide between us
Cleo

Morning came softly, like it had something to apologize for.

A pale ribbon of sunlight crept through the worn curtains, brushing the edge of the quilt, touching the rise of Aries’ shoulder, then finally grazing my closed eyelids. I didn’t move right away. I was afraid to.

Not of him.

Of reality.

My body had folded itself toward his sometime in the late hours of the night. I remembered doing it, remembered the decision forming without being named. The pillow wall we had pretended would hold our distance now lay crushed near our feet. His arm was curved loosely beside me, a breath away from touching my waist.

I could feel his warmth.

Human warmth.

And still…something else beneath it. Something vast, patient, and old.

For a heartbeat, I wondered if I had dreamed him. The storm. The scales. The voice in the mirror. The promise in my bones that nothing would ever be normal again.

Then his fingers twitched.

And I knew.

He was here.

Alive.

Breathing.

Real.

I turned my face slightly and studied him. In sleep, the sharp edges of his expression softened. The worry lines smoothed. He looked younger, not as though he had lost memory, but as if he had never needed it at all. As if he had always belonged to something simpler.

A cruel irony.

The faint shimmer along the line of his hip, where skin met scale, had dulled further. It looked more human than it had yesterday. Less foreign. As if his body were choosing its side.

Or absorbing mine.

The thought made my stomach flip, equal parts fear and heat.

I shifted carefully, willing the mattress not to betray me with its familiar creak.

Too late.

His eyes opened instantly.

Not groggy.

Not confused.

Aware.

“I wasn’t asleep,” he murmured.

I froze. “You were breathing like you were.”

He smiled faintly. “I was listening.”

“To what?”

“To you trying not to breathe.”

A laugh escaped before I could contain it. It felt strange and wonderful in my chest, a sound from before this all began.

“How long have you been pretending?” I asked.

“Long enough to decide I like mornings better with you in them.”

I sat up, suddenly self-conscious. My hair had to be a tangle, my face still marked by the crease of pillow and dream.

“You don’t even know what a morning is supposed to be,” I said.

“I’m learning fast.”

The way he looked at me said that wasn’t all he meant.

I pushed myself out of bed before the air thickened any further. “We need to get you cleaned up and fed,” I rambled, heading for the small bathroom. “You lost blood, you weren’t properly hydrated, and I don’t know how your… metabolism works.”

“You’re stalling,” he said gently.

I paused in the doorway, my back to him. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because if I look at you too long, I might forget to be afraid of what’s happening.”

“Should you be?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But my grandmother always said when something feels this right this quickly, it’s usually tied to a curse.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then: “Did she say how to break those?”

“I never listened that far.”

The bathroom mirror caught my eyes as I glanced at myself. They looked darker. More charged. Like the sea before thunder.

I turned on the tap and splashed my face, trying to wash away whatever had settled on me during the night.

But it wasn’t going anywhere.

The town felt wrong that morning.

Even the birds kept low and quiet, as if aware of something unspoken moving beneath the soil. I walked a block ahead of him, like I was walking a stray I hadn’t yet claimed. He wore one of my loose linen shirts and an old pair of drawstring pants I kept for painting. On anyone else, the clothing would have hung clumsily.

On him, it looked intentional.

Dangerously so.

“People are staring,” he murmured.

“I know.”

“Because of what I am?”

“Because you’re beautiful,” I said without thinking. Then quickly: “And also because no one new ever comes here.”

He glanced around. “They don’t look curious.”

“They’re not.”

Through the windows of the café, I saw Mrs. Halver stiffen as she spotted him. The man outside the hardware store narrowed his eyes. A woman I didn’t recognize made the sign of the cross beneath her breath.

Cold crept along my spine.

“They can feel you,” I whispered.

“Good or bad?”

“Both.”

A little girl standing near the flower shop broke free from her mother’s grip and stepped toward him, holding out a seashell. Her eyes were wide, knowing.

“This is yours,” she said.

He crouched without hesitation and accepted it, turning it in his palm like he recognized its voice.

“I lost it,” he said softly.

The mother rushed forward and pulled the child back, eyes filled with fear and apology, and hurried away without another word.

My heart hammered.

“You didn’t just find it,” I whispered. “She stood three feet away from dry land and pulled that out of her pocket without ever going near the ocean.”

“I didn’t take it,” he said. “It came back to me.”

I stared at the shell.

An intricate symbol was etched into its surface, a swirl surrounded by crescent marks and tiny stars.

My breath hitched. “Come with me.”

Back at the house, I didn’t stop for tea or food or logic. I dropped to my knees in the hallway and yanked upward on the loose floorboard my grandmother had shown me only once when I was very small.

Inside lay a cloth wrapped bundle tied with twine blackened by age.

My hands trembled as I opened it.

A leather bound journal. A small silver charm shaped like a crescent tide. And a shell identical to the one in Aries’ hand.

The same symbol carved within its curve.

“Grandmother…” I breathed.

He knelt beside me, looking at the items carefully, reverently.

“She knew,” he realized.

“Yes.” My voice cracked. “And she was waiting.”

I flipped through the journal, pages filled with her looping script and pressed flowers, salted stains, and frantic notes scribbled in the margins.

If the Tide-Born returns, do not fear him. The sea will try to reclaim, but the land must choose him first.

He will not remember. Love will call memory back faster than blood.

Keep him warm. Keep him dry. Bind him to sound, to scent, to breath.

I looked up at Aries, heart slamming against my ribs.

“You were written about,” I whispered.

“Was I named?”

I turned the journal toward him.

One line stood alone at the top of a page, written much darker than all the others:

ARIES – Son of the Moon-Pull. Guardian of the Gate. The One Who Must Choose.

Silence rushed through the house like a held breath.

“And what happens if I don’t choose correctly?” he asked.

I reached for his hand, intertwining our fingers without thinking.

“Then the sea will take you,” I said.

His grip tightened around mine.

“And if I do?”

I met his eyes.

“Then the ocean will come for both of us.”