Status Updates From A Dive into Darkness (Dark ...

I have always known that peace is only a breath between storms, that the world will always find new ways to break and reshape itself. That power shifts like the tide, endless in its ebb and flow. And I know that Jude and I will remain in flux, caught between the currents of what we were and what we are still becoming.
But whatever comes next, we will face it together.

Balance is never permanent.

“They seem content for now,” Jude says, his voice thoughtful. “They thanked me for writing. Said they’re still wandering, still searching for something of their own. They don’t want to be found. Not yet.”

Jude’s letter from the kelpies

Lorien- We’re still growing together, still finding our way, and Jude knows that although much has changed, I’m still the same possessive asshole who doesn’t like it when he keeps secrets.

Lorien- I used to think his defiance was a challenge I could conquer.
Now, I know better.
Jude was never meant to be tamed. But he is mine, bound to me as surely as I am to him, our souls braided together by the darkness we walked through and the love we bled for. The love we chose and almost died for. The love that made us what we are now, and in it, let him find the acceptance he didn’t know he was missing.

I reach out, brushing my fingers against his skin, and he leans into my touch, his hand finding mine, intertwining our fingers. In that simple motion, everything is said. Once we needed words, and now we don’t. Not now. Not when we have this.
“I love you,” I whisper, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world.
He smiles, his lips curving in a way that makes my heart race. “And I love you.”

🩵💙

This isn’t lust, this is love, and this, this moment, is about unity and trust.

Jude and Lorien

I remember the way he looked at me afterward, the infinity of all our unspoken emotions passing between us as the priest declared it done.
Bound.
Mated.
Mine.

Jude and Lorien
Mating ceremony

Names are anchors. They are more than a few syllables, but perhaps they mean less when the past has devoured yours. They are supposed to grant identity, but when that has been unmade, it is difficult to know where to begin.

Lorien about the kelpies

My advisor was always a diplomat and he might have made an excellent eel in another lifetime. Soren is damn near impossible to pin down, and he slips through the spaces between words with an ease I’m forced to respect.
Lorien holding

In this quiet aftermath, as the water wraps us in its embrace, we know that everything has changed. Lorien’s shattered the boundaries that once defined me, and I rewrote the rules that governed his world. All that’s left is an irrevocable promise of unity and a bond forged in the depths of desire that was sealed by our sheer will and reckless abandon.

I can still taste his kiss, his promise—his vows, darker and deeper than anything I’ve known. It’s not just a promise. It’s a damn eternity.

Jude thinks about Lorien

Now, I know. I know that this is no longer just love. This is obsession. This is devotion and it’ll consume us both, pulling us deeper than we ever thought we could go. It’s a bond so powerful that it isn’t just written in flesh, it’s etched into our souls. 
Lorien

“The blessed and the cursed tore themselves and each other apart, and Helena found a way to force the Gods to mend what was broken. We found balance, Jude. You and me. My light, your dark, my nights with your days. When the water and the land could finally coexist, when we could accept each other and ourselves for all we were, everything changed.”

Lorien explains what happened

“Tell them that the man who almost died to save the oceans—who defied death itself—needs my undivided attention. And I think, Soren,” I add with a soft, unshakable certainty, “he’s earned it. For all eternity.”

Lorien to his advisor about Jude

Lorien exhales, a slow, unsteady thing, before he moves. He does not let me go. He simply shifts me closer, a silent promise woven in the way his arms remain firm around me, in the way he cradles my weight that he knows I cannot hold myself.

Lorien holding Jude
Both recovering

Jude- You would have me die, Helena?
I hear her laugh through the ether of time.
I would have you do what must be done. Sacrifice is not easy, Jude. It carries a price, and now you must choose to accept it or not.

The magic is killing me.
A voice slithers through my mind, Helena’s voice, cool and distant.
You were never meant to survive this.

Jude is struggling against the magic within him
Helena’s magic

Jude- A fissure rips through my chest, invisible yet devastating, like my body is trying to tear itself apart from the inside. My ribs are too tight, my lungs too small to hold my breath. The magic gnaws at my bones, a relentless hunger that will not be denied. My veins burn, molten and volatile, like they have been rewritten with an inhuman soul by a being that does not know the limits of flesh.
I am unraveling.

…the air itself fractures under the stress of what is happening. Shadows spill like ink across the ground, thick with the remnants of curses that have long overstayed their welcome. The sea rises to claim them, to wash away what was, to make way for what will be.

Jude and Lorien and their magic

Jude- This is my aunt’s magic, but it is not just hers. I hold something else, something other. I contain that which I cannot describe and can only know. It is the echo of another’s power, a current of magic that once ran through the kelpies’ veins, stolen and reforged. It did not begin with Helena, but she was its keeper, and now she has made me its vessel.

This is not just my battle.
Not just his choice.
It never was.
I exhale, slow, and the storm inside me settles.
“Together,” I say.
Jude reaches for my hand.
And I take it.
The ocean surges.
The temple shatters.
And the world begins to change.

Lorien and Jude will change the world together. 💙🩵

Love.
I have used love as a weapon. I have used it as a blade honed to a perfect edge. I have wielded it, felt its sting, let it cut into the soft places I once thought invulnerable. But I have never used it like this. I have never been this carefree with it, nor ever been so rash.
And I have never known its salvation.

Lorien thinks about what Helena said
She had a hunch

“If you & Lorien find a way to balance each other, to co-exist, then the magic will settle. It would have become a new thing, a force that does not destroy. Together you can undo what was done in error & free the kelpies from their purgatory of eternal pain.”
“And if we don’t?” Jude asks
Helena exhales & the water around us seems to darken
“Then the magic will spill into the ocean & consume everything.”

“This cycle started long ago, Jude,” she says. “This conflict between the mer and the kelpies, between the dark and the light, the living and the dead. The suffering. The hunger. The curse that should have been broken if only the Mer King had not been too proud to deny the truth of what his people did.”
Helena

She bound her magic into Jude without his permission, without explaining what it would mean. She has made him part of this, forced him to be part of a world he never agreed to, and that has put him in unimaginable danger.
And for that, I will never forgive her.

Lorien about Helena after seeing her ghost

The kelpies were once part of a great bargain, their fate bound to the ocean, but something twisted the magic, something dark and unforgiving that trapped them in this form. 
I see the broken ritual, repeated time and time again. I experience the magic that should have set them free as it binds them in chains of saltwater and shadow.

Jude sees the kelpies
He understands them