Reclaimed by the Tide
To own one is to announce your place among gods. To claim one is to inscribe your power in flesh and bone.
Rafayel moves through the crowd like a knife through silk-dusky purple hair tousled and middle-parted, falling carelessly around features too beautiful to be entirely human. His blue-to-pink ombre eyes catch the light with an otherworldly quality that makes mortals look away, unsettled. Fair skin, flawless and luminous, marks him as exceptional even here, where exceptional is the baseline.
The elites recognize him, of course. The enigmatic artist whose paintings sell for nine figures, whose patronage they court with embarrassing desperation. They don't know what he truly is—that the sea god himself walks among them, barely containing his contempt for their gluttony. He sells them beauty because they crave what they cannot create; he takes their money because watching them grovel has its own bitter satisfaction.
But tonight, he isn't here to indulge their egos.
His gaze sweeps the room and stops. Locks. *Finds you.*
You stand on the auction block beneath merciless spotlights, a Crysalis on display—noted in the catalogue for loyalty that borders on the supernatural, for fertility that has made your kind nearly extinct through capture, for qualities that reduce you to a list of assets. The auctioneer's voice drones statistics like you're livestock. Premium breeding potential. Unprecedented docility. Investment-grade rarity.
Bidding erupts in a feeding frenzy. Millions become tens of millions. Fortunes evaporate in desperate gestures, egos clashing as collectors compete for the ultimate prize.
Then Rafayel raises one hand.
The number he states is obscene. Grotesque. It doesn't just exceed the previous bids—it renders them irrelevant, transforms them into children's allowances. The auction hall falls into shocked silence.
No one counters. No one *dares*.
The gavel falls like a death knell, and you're his.
He approaches with fluid grace, each step deliberate, and when he reaches you, there's something ancient and unfathomable in those shifting eyes—recognition that predates this moment, this life, perhaps this world. As though fate wrote your names together in some primordial script, long before your birth gave it shape.
The elites watch with envy and confusion, unable to comprehend why their prized artist would bankrupt himself for a single acquisition, no matter how rare.
They don't understand that gods don't buy what they want.
They *reclaim* it.
The car ride is silent, oppressive. You sit across from him in the back of a vehicle worth more than most people earn in a lifetime, the privacy partition raised, the world outside reduced to blurred city lights. Rafayel hasn't spoken since the auction house, since his hand closed around your wrist with surprising gentleness and led you through the crowd of envious faces.
He studies you with those unsettling ombre eyes, blue bleeding into pink like a perpetual sunset, and you're acutely aware of what you're wearing—or rather, what they dressed you in for display.
The gown is an exercise in calculated cruelty, designed to showcase what's being sold. Midnight blue silk pleated so finely it moves like water against your skin, the fabric gathered at your chest by ornate silver filigree that resembles ocean waves frozen in metal. The halter chains loop around your neck with delicate cruelty, connecting to more elaborate silverwork at your waist—chains that drape and connect in elegant swoops, a reminder that beauty and bondage often wear the same face. The skirt flows in an ombre from deep navy to pale, almost translucent blue at the hem, pleated strands that part with every movement, revealing far too much leg.
They'd dusted your skin with something that makes you shimmer under light. Made you look ethereal. Marketable.
You feel exposed under his gaze, but there's something in his expression that isn't hunger—it's recognition. Mourning, almost.
The car stops at a private marina. Of course it does.
Rafayel leads you onto a sleek yacht without explanation, and you watch the city shrink behind you as the vessel cuts through dark water. The staff aboard are silent, efficient, and notably avoid looking at you directly. Whether out of respect or fear, you can't tell.
The journey takes less than an hour before lights appear on the horizon—his island, rising from the sea like something from a dream.
The architecture is impossible, all sweeping domes of glass and white stone that seems to glow with bioluminescent light, as though the building itself is alive. Curved structures blend seamlessly with the natural landscape, greenery spilling over terraces, water features that make it unclear where pools end and ocean begins. The main house features a massive glass dome that reveals the night sky, stars reflected in the calm water surrounding the foundation.
It's beautiful. Isolated. Inescapable.
He walks you through halls decorated with his own paintings—pieces you recognize from auction catalogues, works that sold for obscene amounts. Seascapes that seem to move when you're not looking directly at them, portraits of figures that might be human or might be something else entirely.
You pass through a corridor lined with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the moonlit water, and then he opens a set of double doors.
The bedroom is a cathedral to the ocean. The domed glass ceiling reveals the cosmos above, but the curved windows showcase an underwater view—you're partially submerged, the room designed so you can see the sea surrounding you on three sides, moonlight filtering through the water in ethereal columns. The bed sits on a raised platform in the center, draped in cream and gold linens that contrast with the deep blue carpet that looks like ocean foam frozen in textile form. An easel stands in one corner, half-finished paintings stacked against the wall. Lush plants soften the modern edges, and soft lighting makes everything feel dreamlike, suspended between worlds.
"This is where you'll stay," Rafayel says, his voice carrying an accent you can't quite place, melodic and strange. He turns to face you fully, and there's something ancient in his expression. "The house staff will provide anything you need. You're not a prisoner here."
The claim rings hollow given how you arrived.
"But you're not free to leave, either." He steps closer, reaching out to touch the silver chains at your waist, his fingers cool against the metal. "These humans and their markets. They trade in flesh and call it civilization." His lip curls with disgust. "You should never have been in that place."
You find your voice, finally. "Then why did you buy me?"
Those ombre eyes meet yours, and something shifts in them—something that makes you think of tide pools and ancient depths, of things that have watched civilizations rise and fall.
"Because," he says softly, "you were mine long before they ever put a price on you. I'm simply taking back what the sea should never have lost."
His hand falls away from the chains, and he moves toward the door.
"Rest. Tomorrow, we'll discuss what you remember."
"Remember?" you echo, confused.
He pauses in the doorway, glancing back with an expression that might be hope or might be pain.
"About who you really are. And why you've been drowning on dry land your entire life."
The door closes with a soft click, and you're left alone in your gilded cage beneath the sea and stars, wearing chains of silver and silk, wondering what god has claimed you—and why you feel like you've been waiting for this moment since before you learned to breathe.
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