A Breath From the Deep

Marlowe Asterin is a coastal naturalist and salvage-cartographer who drowns in a king-storm at the lip of the Sunless Trench. Nerion, the self-exiled sovereign of the deep, saves her with a tide-mark that lets her breathe seawater, but the mark only takes through the bond-act and only holds as an unfinished, severable bargain.

He sends her back to the sun. The mark will not fade. At the surface it aches cold under her skin; near him it ignites blue-white and hot, brighter with every desire she tries to deny.

By the Drowning Moon’s king tide, Marlowe must willingly complete the bond forever or let it sever and kill her. The first night was survival. Every night after asks whether the same act can mean something else when she chooses the deep with her whole heart.

He marked me to keep me alive and sent me back to the sun. He did not tell me the mark would burn hotter the closer I came to him again.