The silence that descended upon the villa after the storm of the confrontation was of a different quality than before. It was not the tense, waiting silence of Jure's brooding presence, nor the terrified hush of Mirna's isolation. This was a bruised and battered silence, a quiet thick with the fallout of shattered illusions and physical violence. The air itself felt wounded, the echoes of shouted words and crashing furniture seeming to linger like ghosts in the polished spaces.
Ante had retreated to his room, his body aching from the struggle. A dark bruise was already blooming on his ribs where the edge of the slate table had bitten into him, and his knuckles were raw. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the seismic shift in his understanding of his father. The man was not just difficult or ruthless; he was unhinged, possessed by a demon of ownership that had consumed his humanity. The dragon, once a metaphorical beast of business, was now a very real, fire-breathing monster guarding a treasure that was not his to keep.
He had showered, the hot water stinging his scrapes, and tried to calm the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. His mind replayed the confrontation, the raw, ugly truth of his father's words: "She is mine." It was the creed of a slaver, not a saviour. And now, armed with the impossible knowledge from the old books, the words felt even more blasphemous.
He had to see her. He had to know if she was alright, and he had to offer her the key he had found, the key that might unlock the prison of her own mind.
He found her not in the solarium or her room, but back by the infinity pool, as if drawn to the closest approximation of the sea she could find. The scene was a poignant echo of the morning, but the feeling was entirely different. The sun was lower now, casting long, deep shadows, and the light was a soft, liquid gold.
She was sitting on the submerged ledge in the shallow end, her simple cotton dress hitched up above her knees, her legs submerged to the thighs. Her feet were bare, pale and graceful in the turquoise water. She was leaning back on her hands, her face tilted to the sky, her eyes closed. And for the first time since he had known her, she looked not just beautiful, but truly at peace. The ever-present tension in her shoulders had melted away. The lines of fear around her mouth were smoothed. She was absorbing the last of the day's warmth, her body languid, her breathing slow and deep. She looked, in that moment, less like a captive and more like a resting naiad, a water spirit returned to her element.
Ante approached quietly, not wanting to shatter the fragile serenity. But she must have sensed his presence, for her eyes opened. They were not wide with fear, nor hollow with despair. They were calm, the violet depths clear and reflective, like the still surface of a mountain lake at dusk. She didn't startle. She simply turned her head and looked at him.
He sat beside her on the warm stone, not too close, letting his own legs dangle in the cool water. They sat in a companionable silence for a few moments, watching the light dance on the surface.
"I remember… songs," she said softly, her voice no longer a terrified whisper, but a melodic murmur that blended with the lap of the water.
Ante's heart skipped a beat. He remained silent, letting her find the words.
She closed her eyes again, as if listening to a distant melody. "Not with words. Not like… human songs. They are… the sound of water moving through deep caves. The echo where the light is blue, and then… gone. The vibration of the great currents, the paths that run under the world." She opened her eyes, and they were filled with a profound, aching wonder. "I was singing them today. To the dolphins. It felt… like breathing."
She looked at him, a faint crease of confusion on her brow. "I think… I think I was lost, Ante. Not from a boat or a city. I was lost from… the song."
Her words were not the confused ramblings of an amnesiac. They were the precise, poetic descriptions of a native returning to her homeland. They confirmed everything he had read, everything he had felt in his soul on the dinghy.
He took a slow, deep breath. The moment had come. The line between science and myth, between the rational world and the world of wonder, was about to be crossed.
"Mirna," he began, his voice low and earnest, filled with a reverence he usually reserved for the most sacred mysteries of the deep. "I need to tell you something. It will sound… impossible. But after today, after hearing you, after seeing you with the dolphins… I believe it is the truth."
She watched him, her head tilted, her expression open and trusting. There was no fear, only a deep, quiet curiosity.
"I don't think you are human," he said.
The words hung in the golden air, simple, stark, and world-shattering.
He expected shock. Disbelief. Perhaps even laughter. He saw none of that. Her violet eyes simply widened, absorbing the statement, turning it over like a smooth, familiar stone found on a long-forgotten beach.
He continued, the words pouring out of him now, a river of legend and logic. He told her of the Morske Devojke, the Sea Maidens of the local folklore. He described the tales of beautiful women with hypnotic eyes who were as much a part of the Adriatic as the water and the stone. He spoke of their ability to charm the winds and the creatures of the deep, of their songs that could guide or destroy, of their intimate, elemental connection to the sea.
"They say these beings can walk on land for a time," he whispered, his gaze locked with hers, "but they are tied to the sea. Their spirit is of the water. To be trapped on land, away from it… it would be a kind of suffocation. A forgetting."
He gestured to her, to the way she sat half in the water, as if needing the connection to feel whole. "I don't think you were lost from a ship, Mirna. I think my father found you in that cove in a state between worlds. I think he pulled you from your sanctuary, from your home, and in doing so, he severed you from the very thing that gives you life. Your amnesia… it's not an injury. It's the disorientation of a fish pulled from the ocean. You don't remember because this…" he gestured to the villa, the world of air and stone, "…this is not your world. You belong to the sea."
He finished, his heart hammering. He had laid his insane theory bare before her, the culmination of his research, his observation, and a leap of faith that had forever altered his perception of reality.
He waited for her reaction.
A single, perfect tear welled in the corner of her eye, but it was not a tear of sadness or fear. It was a tear of profound, soul-deep recognition. It traced a slow, silvery path down her cheek and fell, disappearing into the pool with a tiny, insignificant plink.
A shuddering breath escaped her, and then… a transformation.
It was as if a shell, an invisible carapace of confusion and terror that she had carried since the moment she awoke in this world, simply cracked and fell away. The last vestiges of tension melted from her face, replaced by an expression of such immense, overwhelming relief that it was almost heartbreaking to behold. It was the look of a prisoner who has just heard the jail door clang open after a lifetime of confinement.
"Yes," she breathed, the word a soft exhalation of absolute certainty. "Yes."
She looked down at her hands, her arms, her legs in the water, as if seeing them for the first time. Not as a human woman's body, but as the temporary form of something else, something ancient and wild.
"I have felt it," she whispered, her voice gaining strength, coloured with a wonder that was entirely new. "A pulling. A calling. In the deep of the night, I hear it—a hum that is below the sound of the waves. It hurts to be away from it. It is a… a thirst." She looked at him, her violet eyes blazing with a clarity that was terrifying and beautiful. "When I am near the water, the thirst is less. When I am in it…" she trailed off, gesturing to her submerged legs, "…it is almost gone. I feel… whole."
She looked out at the darkening sea, and her expression was no longer one of yearning, but of belonging. "I was not lost," she said, the truth settling into her like a cornerstone. "I was going home."
The confirmation, from her own lips, was the final, irrevocable proof Ante needed. The legends were not stories. They were history. She was living myth, and his father had committed the ultimate sacrilege.
In the quiet of the evening, by the glowing water of the pool, a new alliance was forged. It was not just between a man and a woman, or a protector and a victim. It was an alliance between the world of human reason and the ancient, magical truth of the sea. Ante had given her the one thing no one else could: the truth of her own identity. And in return, she had given him a purpose that transcended family, career, or science.
He had to get her back. Not just to safety, but to the sea. To her home. The task was now more daunting and more sacred than he could have ever imagined. He was no longer just defying his father; he was attempting to correct a cosmic wrong. He was trying to return a goddess to her throne. And as the stars began to prick the velvet sky above them, Ante knew he would die before he let his father's monstrous obsession keep her caged on land for a single day longer.