New beginning

The morning sun bled through the heavy velvet curtains of the hotel suite, but it brought no warmth to Aniera’s shivering skin. She lay frozen on the edge of the mattress, her breath hitching in her throat as the fog of the drug finally cleared.

Beside her, the man—the golden-eyed man who had claimed her with such primal, oceanic ferocity—was still submerged in a deep, post-heat slumber. In the light of day, she could see the sheer power of him; the muscles of his back were thick and defined, and his skin had a strange, pearlescent sheen that made him look like a statue carved from the floor of the abyss.

With trembling hands, she reached for her dress. It was ruined—the delicate silk torn by hands that hadn't known their own strength. Shame, hot and acidic, burned her throat. She didn't know his name. She didn't even know how she had ended up here, though the memory of Clara’s "special toast" was beginning to solidify into a jagged shard of realization. She had been sold. She didn't had the courage to look at him.

She fled the room on silent feet, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. By the time she reached her father’s estate, her hair was a mess of tangles and her eyes were wild with a mixture of terror and lingering, unwanted heat.

The confrontation in the study was not the rescue she had hoped for. Her father, Richard Sterling, stood behind his mahogany desk, his face a mask of cold stone. Elena and Clara were there, too, tucked into the corner like shadows. Clara’s eyes were bright with a triumphant, malicious light that she didn't even bother to hide.

"I... I was drugged, Father," Aniera gasped, her voice cracking as she clutched the torn fabric of her gown. "Clara gave me something. I woke up in a hotel with a man... I don't even know who he was."

"Enough!" Richard’s voice boomed, vibrating through the floor. He didn't look at her with pity; he looked at her with disgust. "The security feeds show you walking out with your sister. They show you entering that hotel willingly. Do you have any idea what this does to our merger with the Vanguard Group? The news is already whispering about the 'Sterling Heiress's' midnight tryst."

"It wasn't willing!" Aniera screamed, the first tears finally spilling over. "Look at me! I am hurt! I am confused!"

"You are a liability," Elena added smoothly, stepping forward to rest a comforting hand on Richard’s shoulder—a gesture that made Aniera want to retch. "Richard, the girl has always had a wild streak. We tried to guide her, but this... this is a stain we cannot wash out."

"Get out," Richard said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet hiss. "I have already had my lawyers draft the papers. You are stripped of the Sterling name and your inheritance. You have one hour to pack a single bag. After that, if you are found on this property, you will be removed by force."

Aniera stood paralyzed.

" I never wanted your anything, she murmured"

The betrayal was so complete, so surgical, that it felt as though the very air had been sucked out of the room. She looked at Clara, who offered a small, mocking wave of her hand. In that moment, the girl named Aniera Sterling died.

She didn't take an hour. She took twenty minutes. She grabbed her mother’s old jewelry box—the only thing Elena hadn't been able to steal and a few changes of practical clothes. She didn't look back at the portraits or the marble. She walked out the front gate and kept walking until her feet bled.

She took a bus to the far edge of the coast, finding refuge in a tiny, dilapidated apartment above a bait shop. It was there, two weeks later, that the second blow landed. The constant nausea wasn't just from the stress. The faint, rhythmic pulsing she felt in her lower abdomen wasn't just her imagination.

The pregnancy test sat on the edge of the stained porcelain sink, two bold, pink lines staring back at her like an accusation. She was carrying the seed of someone she didn't know. She remembered the way he had whispered in that strange, melodic language, the way his body had felt like a crushing, beautiful tide.

"I can't go back," she whispered to her reflection. Her face looked different—harder, more determined. "Aniera is gone. She’s dead."

She picked up a pair of kitchen shears and hacked her long hair into a chic, shoulder-length bob. She reached into her bag and pulled out her mother’s maiden name: Lucy.

"My name is Lucy," she told the mirror, her voice strengthening. "And this baby... this baby is mine. Not a Sterling's. Not a stranger's. Mine."

She sold her mother’s diamond earrings to fund a move to Oakhaven, a town so small and remote that the Sterling name held no power there. During the long train ride, she felt a strange, cooling sensation in her belly, as if the life inside her was reaching out to soothe her. She didn't know then that she was carrying a halfling of the deep, a princess of the tides. She only knew that for the first time in her life, she was truly alone—and truly free.

Lucy arrived in Oakhaven with nothing but a suitcase and a secret that was growing larger by the day. She took a job at a local nursery, learning the language of flowers to replace the language of high society. She discovered she had a "green thumb"—though, in reality, it was something more. Plants seemed to lean toward her; flowers bloomed brighter when she touched them.

She saved every penny, her belly swelling with a child who seemed to crave the sound of the waves. On a stormy night in April, with the scent of salt heavy in the air, Eirlys was born. The moment the baby opened her emerald-and-blue eyes, Lucy wished her life will be at peace.

" She was a bridge to the man Lucy was trying so desperately to forget."

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