Issaela Leifsdóttir swam into Atlantis to marry a man who did not want her. Her father, King Leif of the Atlantic, had sealed the pact years ago. She was the envoy. She was the bride. She would wed Prince Triton and carry the North Sea into his bed as treaty. Her ice crown caught the glow of the golden palace ahead. She squared her shoulders and told herself duty was enough. Triton met her at the palace gates with his mother beside him. Queen Amphitrite looked Issaela over once and nodded, iron in her stillness. "My son has waited for you," the Queen said. Triton had not. He barely looked at Issaela. "You came a long way," he said. "That's — good. Welcome. I mean it." He said it flat, bored, as if reading a list. Issaela saw his eyes drift past her shoulder, toward an armored young guard holding the gate. The guard looked back at him, just once. Then away. Issaela understood. Triton's heart was already spoken for, and not for a noble. That suited her, strangely. She did not want a man who looked past her. She bowed to the Queen and asked to see the gardens alone. The coral reef gardens burned with color. Giant luminous reefs rose in layered branches, glowing blue and pink and gold. Issaela drifted among them, free for one hour of the pact she carried. Then something sleek brushed her tail. A seal, silver and bright-eyed, spun around her and darted off. She followed. A grey-bearded merman worked among the herd, guiding seals with an orichalcum staff. He moved without rush, speaking low to the animals. One seal nosed his hand. He was Proteus, she would learn — Poseidon's son, half-brother to Triton, raised in the house but never counted an heir. "You're the northern envoy," Proteus said. He did not bow. "You smell of ice and old oaths." "I am betrothed to your brother," Issaela said. "He doesn't love you." Proteus met her eyes. "You already know that." "I know it." She lifted her chin. "It changes nothing. I was sent to seal a pact." "Pacts break." He studied her the way he studied his seals, reading something under the surface. "I can see what's coming. Most futures end badly. Yours just shifted." The seal between them pressed against Issaela's hand. She did not pull away. Neither did Proteus. For a long moment the garden held only the two of them and the glow of the coral. "I should go," she said. She did not move. "No," he said. "You shouldn't." Issaela returned to the palace that night with the betrothal still binding her name to Triton. But the duty she had carried for years felt thin now. She wanted the grey-bearded god in the gardens. She wanted him for her consort, for the North Sea. And to have him, she would have to break the pact that defined her.