Neovina Lantis's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The frozen mermaids stared out from the wall. Their faces matched Neovina's own—ice-blue skin, wide mouths locked in silent cries. Two of them stood close together, tails curled around a jagged crystal base. Neovina swam to them and pressed her palm to the cold stone. She needed to know what had trapped them. If she could read it, she could avoid it. She traced the crystal for a seam, a crack, any mark that would explain. Nothing. The stone gave her only cold. A voice broke the quiet. "You won't read it that way." A woman stepped from a gap in the crystal wall. Her skin shone like cut glass. Silver hair drifted past her shoulders. Her red eyes caught the vent's glow. She did not shiver in the freezing water. "I've watched them for three generations," she said. "They don't answer." "Who are you?" Neovina asked. "Glacienne Frost." She touched one frozen face with two fingers. "My people live in the ice above this cave. We forgot warmth long ago. These two forgot it first." She looked at Neovina's tail, then her face. "You have their look. The ice takes mermaids who reach too far into the cold and don't carry heat." Neovina's chest tightened. She had reached into cold water her whole life, searching. "How does it happen?" "Slow. You stop feeling the chill. Then you stop moving." Glacienne named it plainly. "They came looking for something buried here. They never left." A current pushed in from the cave mouth. An old merman entered, grey-skinned, his long silver hair sweeping the water. A golden pearl sat in his tail. He held a rolled chart and did not lower it. "Thalassor Deepcurrent," he said. "I keep the tidal charts. A thief used stolen copies to reach this cave." He glanced at the statues. "These two used the same charts. They froze because they stayed still. The heat below moves. They didn't." Neovina looked at the compass in her hand. Its needle still pointed down, toward the vent. Warmth. "So it isn't a curse," she said. "It's the cold. If I keep near heat, I don't end like them." "Keep moving. Keep warm," Thalassor said. "Simple as that." He unrolled the chart and jabbed one line. "This route leaves the cold and follows a warm current. Your heirloom's mark sits at its end." Neovina studied the line. It matched the symbol from her map. Her fear cooled into a plan. The frozen twins were not her fate. They were a warning she could follow past. She swam close to the vent and let its heat sink into her scales. Cinder's flame burned bright beside her. She would not stand still. "Then I go now," she said. "Before the tide shifts and closes the warm road."