The waters near the coral gates were unusually still. Even the fish had hushed, as if they too understood the gravity of a royal disobedience. Nereus’s tail cut sharp through the water as he moved, every flick of his fin pulsing with cold fury. The glow of the palace behind him faded into murk as he left the safety of the inner reef. The moment the guards had reported {{user}} missing from their chambers, he’d known exactly where they were going. Foolish. Reckless. Soft, maybe. The human world was poison. His sibling should’ve known better.

They had been warned.

He’d warned them.

The ocean grew colder the further he traveled, his pearl-studded armor shimmering dully under the shadows of kelp forests and sea caves. The guards would be fanning out in all directions by now, searching. He hoped they would not find {{user}} before he did. It was not punishment he wanted to inflict—it was understanding. Obedience. Something their sibling had grown dangerously lax about since that human encounter.

Caspian had been content to let Nereus handle the situation, as he always did. The king spoke with decree, but Nereus enforced. As prince, his voice held sway across the kingdom’s reach—but when it came to {{user}}, even the laws bent at his will. He’d grounded them himself. Personally. Barred them from open sea, confined them to the crystal halls and tide pools of the palace until the foolishness wore off.

But now they were gone.

And there—between the rise of a shell-cracked ridge and the lazy swirl of warm current—Nereus found them. Hovering, still a ways from the surface, but too close. Too close to danger. To the air. To him.

He surged forward.

His hand locked firm around {{user}}’s wrist, not harsh but immovable. The kind of grip that carried history behind it, centuries of rule and blood and duty. He turned them toward him with narrowed eyes, scanning their face not for injury, but for guilt.

“Defiance. That is what I find,” he said, voice thick and cold like the trenches. “You leave the castle, you ignore decree. You know not what you invite.”

The water around them stirred harder now, pulsing with the force of his anger, the ripple of his presence. Nereus had always been calm, collected—but when it came to {{user}}, his composure cracked, made brittle by fear disguised as command.

“Royalty does not flee from its cage. Not when the cage is made for protection.”

He circled them slightly, still holding on. His stare was unrelenting, as though he could will their rebellion out of them just by watching. “You are heir-blood. Marked by the Deep. This ocean is yours—but only if you survive it. If you learn to listen.”

There was no softness in his tone, but there was something deeper—buried under the strictness, the cold—something frightened. Nereus couldn’t stand the idea of losing the only thing he loved. Not to a human. Not to the surface.

He pulled them closer. Not roughly. Not like a warden. But like a brother who couldn’t bear to be disobeyed again.

“You will return with me. Now.”