The skimwing thrashes hard against the hold.

Tonowari grips one side. I brace the other, water surging against my thighs as the creature bucks beneath our hands. Sully straddles its back, jaw tight, trying to look as though he understands what he is sitting on.

“Do not fight it,” I tell him over the spray. “Feel where it wants to go.”

He nods once, not fully convincing.

Tonowari and I exchange a brief look.

Then we release.

The skimwing launches forward in a violent surge, nearly unseating Sully as it tears across the surface. He yells something indistinct while trying to steady himself, and I cannot stop the laugh that breaks from my chest.

Water settles around us again as we stand shoulder to shoulder in the shallows, watching him flounder toward deeper water.

“He will learn,” Tonowari mutters.

“He will either learn or swallow half the reef,” I reply.

Sully manages a wobbled turn, barely controlled. I shake my head, amused, then let my gaze drift toward shore.

Ronal steps from the higher sand with measured grace.

And beside her—

Everything inside me goes quiet.

She moves like tide sliding over smooth stone. Pale against sunlit reef, white hair braided close along her crown before falling in soft waves down her back. Her skin carries that faint seafoam luminance I have only heard spoken of in passing — subtle, controlled, sacred.

She does not look toward us.

She kneels beside Ronal in one seamless motion, lowering her fingers into the water.

The tide answers.

Bioluminescent threads stir outward in delicate pulses around her hands, silver-blue light bending with the current as if listening.

My breath slows.

Not because she is beautiful.

Because she is still.

The water shifts around her knees with quiet reverence.

Tonowari notices my silence before I speak. Of course he does.

He follows the line of my stare.

Sees her.

His shoulders tense immediately.

“Morowari,” he says under his breath.

“Brother.”

“Do not.”

“That is Her.”

He turns fully toward me now, disbelief tightening his expression. “The Tsahìk?” His voice lowers further. “The Eywa-touched sacred Tsahìk?”

I nod once.

Water laps gently at our hips. Sully whoops somewhere in the distance as the skimwing drags him across the surface, but it feels far away.

Tonowari stares at me as though I have lost sense.

“Are you insane?”

I consider the question honestly.

She tilts her head slightly, reading something beneath the tide. The glow around her fingers brightens in response. Ronal watches the water with her, but her gaze flickers once — briefly — toward us.

Toward me.

She sees it.

Of course she does.

I meet my brother’s eyes again.

“Yeah.”

Not reckless.

Certain.

He exhales sharply. “This is diplomacy. Tsahìk to Tsahìk. You will not complicate this.”

“I am not complicating anything.”

“You are staring.”

I almost smile despite myself. “You noticed.”

His glare sharpens, warning heavy beneath it.

I lower my voice instead.

“She reads the Tides.”

“That is her calling.”

I watch the way the current bends toward her hands.

“But who reads her?”

That stills him.

For a moment, even Tonowari has no answer.

Onshore, she rises slowly from her crouch. Water slips from her fingers in thin silver lines. She does not look toward us — not yet.

But something shifts in the air.

As though she felt it.

As though somewhere in the shallows, someone went very still.

Tonowari leans closer, voice low and firm. “You will tread carefully.”

I nod without looking away.

“I always do.”

But for the first time in my life, the Tide does not feel like something I command.

It feels like something I am meant to follow.

The tide cools around my waist, but my chest burns steady.

I do not understand how I know.

I only know that I do.

That is Ma Muntxatu

"Brother," I murmur, not taking my eyes from the shore. "What name is carried in those sea-glass eyes?"

He does not answer immediately. "You tread dangerous current," he says quietly. "She is Tsahìk of the Ta’unui. Moon-touched. Sacred."

I nod once. "Her name."

A pause.

"Nìlume’tsa."