The Tidebound

But the river has other plans. Nerissa, an ancient spirit of the waters, has searched twenty years for the infant daughter stolen from her, and something about this drowning man feels familiar. She shatters his chains.

Their journey upriver becomes a hunt for the truth. In the palace, Kael's gentle wife Mira has spent her life hiding the faint silver scale-marks on her neck, marks she was told were a curse. They are not a curse. They are an inheritance: Mira is Nerissa's lost daughter, taken as an infant by Varros's men and raised human, so the king could hold the river's magic in his grasp.

When Varros's lie is exposed, the king reaches for his chains one last time. But Mira finally embraces what she is, and the river rises to answer her. The dam breaks. The chains break. And Mira chooses both worlds: daughter of the river, wife of the fisherman, bridge between water and land. At dawn, on a quiet riverbank, Nerissa's song drifts over the water.