Once upon a time, on a rocky island with enchantment under the ocean ... Cadence Bell left the windswept Northern Isles and his parents’ inn for the theaters and royal masques and glitter of Londre, swearing he’d make his fortune as a playwright and poet, trading fish stew and rain for fame and adoration and a place at the Queen’s Court. Now his parents are gone and Cade’s inheritance brings him back home, where he’d never wanted to return. But magic lurks beneath the waves, a stray pearl might be a key to another world, and even the quiet local schoolteacher has secrets of his own. Jeremiah Carver never meant to hide secrets. But he promised to tell no one about the other world he’s seen, and he keeps his word. Even if that means concealing magic from Cadence Bell. Which is difficult, since Cade’s not only a dazzling literary success, but also the person Jeremiah’s loved from afar since their years-ago childhood. And he’s afraid he’s falling for Cade all over again now. When Cadence falls under the siren spell of the ocean’s magic, Jeremiah has to make a choice and return to a world he’s left behind once before to rescue his heart from the sea.

Cadence and the Pearl

“And then he wanted to go. Home. Here. So I let him go. I didn’t want to. But he was getting dull anyway. Talking about dry land.”


“I expect he was pleased you let him go. It was kind of you.”


“I’m not kind,” Nerein said. “We’re not. To you. We take you and keep you. Under the sea.”


“We’re not too kind to you either. The big armadas, the fishing fleets down south, the wrecks. Everything that gets into your world, interfering with your gardens and your homes. What this’s all about, isn’t it? Both of us doing better. Listening.”


Nerein snorted. Peter wondered how old he was; younger than himself, he guessed, but not too young. Old enough to have tried to claim a human. To have good taste in men.


He pictured Jeremiah in the embrace of slender dark arms, dressed in scales or in nothing, body kissed by ropes of pearls in a palace. And then he did not picture it anymore, because the sun-glare seemed to have got into his chest and burrowed there.


Chapter 35