Chapter 17 Daughters of the Current

Chapter 17 Daughters of the Current
Cleo

It starts as a feeling before it becomes a sight.

The air thickens, heavy with salt despite the windows being shut. The lamps flicker low, flames shrinking as if the very oxygen in the room is being quietly stolen. Somewhere in the distance, a sound echoes up from the shore, not a crash of waves, not the call of birds, but something thinner, sharper…

Almost a song.

Aries stiffens beside me, every muscle in his body pulling taut as if an invisible string has been drawn through his spine.

“She has found me,” he says, his voice barely audible.

I don’t have to ask who.

Another sound follows. Soft. Luring.

As if the sea itself is whispering my name.

I move toward the front window slowly, part of me desperate to see, part of me terrified of what waits outside. Aries follows two paces behind me, his presence large, coiled with a protective tension I have never seen before.

At first there is nothing.

Then the moonlight changes.

The ocean has gone strangely smooth, like polished glass, reflecting the sky so perfectly it almost no longer looks real. And out beyond the tide line, where the water grows darker and deeper…

There are shapes.

Women.

They stand just beneath the surface, water kissing the edges of their pale shoulders. Their bodies are long and fluid, moving as if they are made of currents instead of bone. Hair like dripping kelp and river weeds drifts around their faces, yet their features are sharp, almost carved, too perfect, too symmetrical to be human.

Their eyes glow faintly in the dark. Not white. Not blue.

Green.

Like deep-sea lanterns.

One lifts her hand, fingers webbed ever so slightly, nails tapering into translucent points like bits of polished shell. Where her skin touches the water, it glows with a faint shimmer.

“You were not supposed to cross,” Aries whispers, fury low in his chest. “She sent the Naiyra…”

“Water nymphs?” I breathe.

“Yes,” he says. “But not the sweet ones the land stories tell. These are hers. Twisted by her will.”

The nymph’s lips part. I cannot hear her voice, and yet it slides into my mind anyway.

Come back, Aries of the tides.
The sea mourns you.
The land will swallow you whole.

Another rises beside her. Then another. Five. Six. Each one different, yet bound by the same eerie elegance, the same haunting unfinished beauty.

They do not step onto the sand.

They do not have to.

The power they carry is enough to make the shore itself tremble.

Aries lets out a slow, controlled breath through his nose, like he is forcing an old instinct down into the earth.

“They cannot cross fully onto land without invitation,” he says. “But their influence can stretch farther. They will poison the shoreline. Cause storms. Lure sailors, animals… people.”

My blood runs cold.

“How long until they can come closer?” I ask.

“Until the witch grows strong enough… or until I weaken enough.”

His gaze drops to me briefly.

“And she knows exactly how to do that.”

I don’t respond at first. Instead, I pull myself away from the window, away from the hypnotizing horror of the sea, and cross to the back room where my grandmother’s things are stored. Old trunks, journals, leather-bound books that smell like dust and secrets.

If these creatures have a name, someone has written about them.

Aries follows me as I drop down to the floor, pulling the trunk open. Inside: brittle pages, sketches of symbols, pressed flowers, notes scribbled in my grandmother’s wild, looping handwriting.

“This is where she kept the dangerous knowledge,” I remind him quietly.

“She knew of my world,” he mutters.

“She came from a long line who believed it existed,” I say. “Looks like she was right.”

I flip through pages until drawings begin to appear: serpentine creatures, tide markings, half-human outlines emerging from waves.

And then...

I find them.

Seven figures drawn in charcoal. Women, rising from the sea, their bodies adorned with markings that look like veins of water running across their skin. Beneath it, a word in faded ink:

Naiyra-Daughters of the Current.

I read aloud:

“They are neither land nor sea, but the bridge the witch has corrupted. Once spirits of guidance, they now serve as watchers and hunters for the deep. They do not exist to kill the body… but to unravel the mind. To whisper longing. To fracture loyalty. To drag the heart beneath the tide of memory.”

My eyes lift to Aries.

“They’re not sent to destroy you physically,” I say.

“No,” he answers darkly. “They are sent to make me choose her… or die wishing I had.”

I keep reading.

“They feed on confusion. On grief. On homesickness. Salt in the veins strengthens them. Love weakens them, but also enrages them.”

A small, uneasy silence pools between us.

“That part seems important,” I add.

“Dangerous too.”

Another note catches my eye, different handwriting, probably written in a later time.

If they are seen together, land and sea bound side by side, the Daughters recoil. They cannot touch what exists in balance.

My heart beats faster.

“They weaken when we’re together,” I say slowly. “Not physically, but in purpose. Their magic feeds on separation. On doubt.”

Aries crouches in front of me, his face level with mine now.

“Then doubt is what she will sharpen,” he murmurs. “She will dig into the parts of you that fear me. And the parts of me that fear you.”

Outside, the song begins again. Louder this time. Closer.

Not angry.

Not cruel.

Just… heartbreakingly beautiful.

“They aren’t going to leave tonight,” I whisper.

“No,” he says. “They are settling in.”

“For how long?”

His jaw tightens.

“Until she gets what she wants…”

“And what’s that?”

His eyes rise to meet mine, the storm, the ocean, the man, and the mystery of him all colliding in one dangerous, beautiful truth.

“To see whether I belong to the sea…”

“…or to you.”