Claire sat on the edge of the courtyard huddled amongst plants, head in her hands as hot tears dripped down her nose. Everyone else had gone and she was alone. This was worse than the time she’d got caught cheating on a maths test, worse even than when she’d had to admit to her dad that she’d left their best horse bridle off track in the National Park. When Claire had first realised what she’d done, she’d wanted to tell the others about her dreams but Gwenivere had shaken her head, even as some of Lord Maellwyn’s men muttered that Claire was as bad as Kelt. Instead, the Dream Mage leader had tried explaining to Maen that it was the Beast that had attacked Sleath, she’d seen it as she’d supervised Claire’s spell in her trance state. The problem was no one had ever had it work through them before and that had caught Gwenivere off guard.

Maen had insisted it made no difference, that it was Claire’s magic that had done the damage and now they’d have to find a way to prevent most of Maellwyn House turning against them. An ashen faced Lord Maellwyn had gone to call a meeting with Maen and Gwenivere to help explain things, including the full extent of Gwenivere’s prophecies and the fate of Kelnarium, but Claire didn’t hold out much hope that he’d turn things around. She didn’t know if she wanted him to or not. What if she was the betrayer claimed? She was fairly sure saviours didn’t set people on fire, but there was the fact she hadn’t intended any wrongdoing either. The Beast had used her somehow. She wished Gwenivere hadn’t hurried off with the others. As soon as Claire got the chance to speak to the Dream Mage in private, she would ask her to honestly tell her what had happened.

For now, with training ended, she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t go inside to face the crushing disappointment of Kiera and the others. Besides, none of them could understand the guilt that burnt her throat and turned her stomach. She’d done the very thing she’d wanted to prevent; she’d harmed an innocent.

A gentle hand rested on her back. “I’ve brought you a handkerchief.”

She looked up. Gareth crouched beside her, his outstretched hand proffering a silk square. She snatched it gratefully and blew her nose, even as questions loomed. Perhaps this was his final act of kindness before she was kicked out of his home? “You shouldn’t help me,” she said with a sniff. “Your people are right. I’m no better than Kelt.”

“Father will curb their whispers. It was an accident.”

His words warmed her like an elixir. Other than Gwenivere, no one had said a kind word after the incident. “I had no idea what was happening.”

“I know. I believe you. We should have expected something like this after what happened to Rinn Taccala. It would seem that the more unstable magic becomes, the more that thing appears. Because you’re powerful in learth and key to closing the Rift, perhaps we should have expected the results of its appearance would be more unexpected where you’re concerned.”

“We expected the Beast to attack me and my spell, not use me,” she said miserably.

“Father will tell people that. Don’t worry.”

“But if magic is so unstable and this Beast can control me like that, how will I close the Rift? Maen said he couldn’t stop the spell and I didn’t know what I was doing to stop it myself. I can’t use magic again. I’m a monster.” Her mind filled with images of the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and her shoulders shook. She couldn’t risk it.

“We’ll find a way,” Gareth insisted. “We don’t have a choice.” He jerked his head away so she couldn’t read his expression. “Either road we take leads to death but only one destroys Kelnarium and that way is not yours.”

“Is Sleath dead?” She had to know.

“No,” Gareth said. “It will be a painful few months, but they think he’ll live.”

She couldn’t speak for relief.

A servitor entered the courtyard with a bundle of rags to clean the charred tiles. Gareth frowned as the man stared openly at Claire rather than getting on with his task. “We should get out of here,” he muttered. He chewed at his bottom lip and ran a hand through scruffy curls. “How would you like to see some of the lesser known parts of the Manor?”

Claire guessed he was offering in order to keep her out of sight until Lord Maellwyn could calm things a little, but she was grateful. Keeping her body and her mind busy would be a blessing. She took his proffered hand and got clumsily to her feet.

He led her through the courtyard and quiet corridors that inclined steeply downwards. Whenever a Maellwyn approached, Gareth would knit his brows together and shoot them his sternest expression and they’d soon scurry away. But they didn’t run into many people. Most were still listening to Lord Maellwyn, Claire assumed, as she bumped into Gareth’s back, not realising he’d come to a stop.

“Sorry!” she mumbled as she stepped back.

“That’s fine,” he said. With a turn to the left, he gestured towards an enormous tapestry that covered the whitewashed wall from floor to ceiling. “Take a look at this.” The aged threads of the tapestry depicted a man with his feet in the sand, his hand outstretched to salute a pod of dolphins swimming in an impossibly blue ocean. The waves had been sewn with different blues, fading in and out of each other to make a strange pattern. The wave tips curled, with white foam stitched into the blue. The sand was a dirty and faded yellow. The man saluted the jumping dolphins and his expression reminded Claire of Lord Maellwyn. She wondered if each new Lord of the Maellwyns’ took on the characteristics of the one before.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” came Gareth’s voice at her side. “It was done by one of our greatest artists. She alone of all four Houses chose to renounce the way of learth. Instead, she became an Enchantment Weaver. You can see, even in this earlier work when she could still feel the ocean, that her calling was for a different kind of magic.”

“That must have been a great blow to your clan.”

“No,” he said softly. “We did not begrudge Marian her leave-taking nor the loss of her enormous talent. We felt for her deeply, for we knew the difficulty she would have juggling two identities. No matter how far we run from the sea, no matter how strong we think we are, its aching call finds us in the end.”

“What happened to Marian? Her story sounds like a tragedy,” Claire said, interested despite her own misery. The way Gareth told his story reminded her of her father. When he got caught up in the telling, his eyes shone just like Gareth’s did now.

“It is,” he said. “You see, my people cannot leave the sea for more than a few hours, so we take a part of it with us, just as you never go anywhere without a salamander opal egg around your neck.” He tugged his tunic to one side to reveal a tiny glass vial, half the size of her pinkie and filled with clear liquid.

“Didn’t Marian wear one?”

“Yes, she took hers to the mountains to learn the craft of the Enchantment Weavers. The Arras Ranges are so different to our home here and that took its toll on Marian. She was talented and learned fast, but she became restless. Despite many of her Maellwyn friends advising she return to her people, she would not do so. She felt that she had abandoned us, and in her pride, she would not come back, not for all the pleading or all the persuasion in the world. Besides, she was good at her work and she took pleasure in that. After a year, her links with the sea were broken, until she heard its song no more. Tired of living between two worlds, she smashed her vial, thinking she could fully commit to the Weaver way of life, but our blood doesn’t work that way. She became ill, waning without the energy of the incoming tides that give my people strength. She died within two days of her vial breaking. Though she became skilled in the craft before her death, there is a naivety and simplicity in her earlier work, like this one, that is treasured far more than her later, more grandiose designs.”

“You sound as though you knew her,” Claire said.

Gareth laughed. “Oh no. She died long before my time. It is a story passed down from generation to generation, but though I did not know Marian personally, I have heard the sound of the waves, felt the soft sand under my feet and whispered to the creatures of the sea at twilight, and so I understand how deep her pain must have been without these things.”

Claire wished that she could think of something intelligent to say, but her mind had gone blank. Time drew out, second by agonising second. Finally, she grasped at the one part of Gareth’s story that was familiar to her. “Grandfather told me true Dorrans need to wear necklaces like you Maellwyns do.” She fingered at her golden chain. “Did House Ushanan and House Domain do the same?”

“Yes. I’ve been told House Domain carried metal discs. The metal was dug at a mine near their estate. I don’t know if they needed it the same way we need water. House Ushanan had some kind of quartz.” He readjusted his tunic so his vial was covered once more. “But come. We have dwelt on the past long enough and I have more to show you.” Without waiting for her assent, he turned and led her to the right of the main corridor and Marian’s tapestry, and through a dark wooden door. The passageway beyond was softly lit by the strange blue insect-filled lamps and descended even more steeply than before. Claire touched a hand to the hard rock as her eyes adjusted.

“There’s an extensive cave network under the building,” Gareth explained. “Don’t try coming here without me or you’ll never find your way back.”

After what felt like an age, the tunnel they travelled through opened out into sunshine and a small cove surrounded by steep rocks. The air turned cool and long afternoon shadows touched the beach and the seaweed scattered along the sand. Claire spun around. The Manor rose high above her, built partially into the cliff face, blocking out part of the sun. Claire turned back. Gareth had walked further onto the beach. Soft white sand crunched under Claire’s sandals as she followed him.

Gareth sat on the grainy sand, the waves almost lapping at his feet, and looked up at Claire expectantly as he patted a spot next to him. “This is Merriam Beach.”

Claire plopped down beside him, then followed his gaze out to the breakers, but she saw nothing along the horizon. Closer to shore, white spray crashed. It would be so easy to swim out as far as she could, until the water closed in and dragged her somewhere else. Then she pictured her head dashed against a rock and made a face.

“This is a nice spot,” she said, wanting to be polite, “but are we waiting for something in particular?”

“Oh, you’ll see!” he said with a mysterious grin.

Claire stared at the ocean waves as soft yellow light touched the water. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the ocean sparkled, broken up occasionally by grey stone peeking above the surface.

And then she saw them—black dots, far out to sea.

“Dolphins!”

They leapt about, a whole pod of them, circling each other in a complicated dance. Claire watched them in silence as tints of rose and tangerine began to appear in the sky.

“They’re lovely, aren’t they?” said Gareth. “My mother used to love sitting like we are now. When I come here, it’s like I’m closer to her.”

Claire felt her mouth drop open. She’d thought Gareth her age, but that couldn’t be right if his mother had been killed at the creation of the Rift. That was thirty years ago. Unless the Maellwyns aged differently to other people? She asked Gareth about it.

He smiled at her question. “Oh, no. Nanami wasn’t my mother. My father remarried a woman named Gallia. She died giving birth to me.” He turned his face away as his breath hitched. “By all accounts, they married more for companionship than for love, and she was too old for childbirth. I was a happy accident. Still, Father spoils me rotten.” He dug his fingers into the sand. “Do you miss your mother?”

“Yes,” Claire admitted, “even though I’ve only been gone for a fortnight or so.” She saw how envious of their relationship Gareth was and felt bad for him. She tried not to think about all the times she’d complained about Suranne being too weird to Marcus and her father. If she got home, she’d never do it again.

“What’s it like to have a mother?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “She’s ready with a delicious treat when I get home from school and we ride and go for walks as a family and we paint together and when she hugs me she smells like essential oils, especially if she’s been doing a yoga session.”

Gareth was facing her again, laughing. “I have no idea what half of you just said means. School? Essential oils? Yoga?”

Claire paused, trying to figure out how to explain such foreign concepts, but instead her breath caught.

With the sunset rich with colour, mermaids straddled the grey rocks and swam in the ocean, some floating right up to the sand close enough for Claire to almost touch. They weren’t beautiful in the way they were in the storybooks of home. They were pale-skinned and naked. Their tails were rusty reds and dull greens, the scales blotchy and uneven colours with patches of sand sticking to them. In their long, dark hair, shells clung to the wet strands; some even sported a starfish or two strapped across one shoulder or on their slender necks.

Claire shivered as she looked into one mermaid’s hard grey eyes, and then at her blue lips. She wouldn’t want to cross these mythical creatures.

“Have you seen the Mer-people before?” Gareth asked quietly. “Do you have them in your world?”

Claire smiled as she stared at the strange, awe-inspiring creatures. “No. For me, they’ve only ever existed in fairy stories.”

“They’re a solitary race, but we are one with water, as they are, and so we respect each other. I think it was a kind of resignation on their part. Our people wandered all over this coast and discovered its creatures; it was easier for the Mer-people to come to a truce with the Maellwyn Clan rather than try to keep us away, just as it was easier for the salamanders to do the same with House Dorran.”

Suddenly, Claire understood. “The Mer-people are your elemental creatures, aren’t they?”

Gareth nodded, then pointed at a mermaid close to the shore. His white beard was long and flowing and blended in with the sea foam, his green eyes were wild, and his skin was nut-brown, tough and wrinkled with great age. On his nearly bald head perched a circlet of seashells. “The Nereus is their leader,” Gareth said, as the great creature raised a bulky hand in silent greeting, sea snakes wrapped around his wrists and arms. “One day he’ll speak to me as he speaks to my father.”

Claire couldn’t help but think of the Saura. She hadn’t seen the powerful elemental since lodging inside Maellwyn Manor. She suspected it was because a being of fire didn’t like the estate’s closeness to water.

The sky continued to blaze with colour as sunset deepened. As Claire watched the mermaids, one ducked underwater and resurfaced with a crab in her hand. She put it in her mouth and crunched down with sharp teeth, swallowing the crab with a wild grin. Others stared and pointed at Claire.

“Can you hear them?” Gareth murmured.

“What do you mean?” If Claire concentrated, she heard a faint hum, like someone singing something tuneless far away, but that was all.

“They’re speaking to you. Can’t you tell?”

“No,” Claire said. “What do they say?”

“They say that we must trust you.”

“And do you believe them?”

“I believe every word.” Gareth cocked his head to one side and put a hand behind his ear. “Listen. They tell me that you are from another place, aeons and aeons away.”

“But you already know that,” Claire insisted, laughing. “Everyone does. I think you’re making it up so I’ll feel better.” Even if he was, she had to admit it was working. For this small while she’d been able to put the horrible events of earlier behind her.

Gareth went on as though she hadn’t said a word. If he’d been offended by her accusation, he didn’t show it. “They tell me that I must walk far with you.”

His voice cracked and Claire saw with surprise that he was crying. She didn’t know what to do or say. She felt small and silly as she put an arm around his broad shoulders.

“It’ll be fine,” she said, wishing she could believe it. “I’ll beat Eidan in the end.”

Gareth looked up with a sad smile. “It is not that which I fear.” Before Claire could reply, he got to his feet and saluted first the Nereus, then the rest of the Mer-people, before turning back towards the tunnel.