a mare barrow whose name takes after latin mare. sea.
a mare barrow born with the rivers in her blood and oceans in her soul. with enough strength in her to drown the burning crown.
mare, who draws the water from her opponents and watches as they shrivel to nothing. who is not afraid to kill instead of watch her friends die.
in summerton, the day of the riots, the day gisa’s hand broke, she watches the orange-haired nymph torture a red man about the scarlet guard. and something in her snaps.
she wrests control of the fountains away from every silver who watches, and she turns the flood on them all.
that day, she meets cal not in an inn, but in a market square before the hall of the sun, and she, a red girl with no training, born to dirt and poverty, brings the heir of norta to his knees.
eventually, the sentinels overpower her. the royal family hides her as a daughter of house osanos and gives her to maven calore, but we all know how that goes.
on the run, she raises tides that level entire cities. corros prison becomes nothing but crumbling stone and wasteland. dozens drown, including her allies. she does not feel remorse. her brother lives.
she does not tremble before evangeline or ptolemus, even though it takes half the might of all house arven to bring her down. but the silent stone is particularly brutal. water had been ever-present as long as she could remember, in the air, in her very pores, but now it was gone.
they say a human cannot live more than three days without water. mare does not die, no, but deprived of her ability, her element, her soul, something else snaps.
she meets iris cygnet, princess of the lakelands, a formidable nymph in her own right. but mare is red and silver and stronger than both, and even the lakeland nymphs, royal for generations, stand no chance. mare still considers it a pity when she drowns iris at her own wedding in her own ability, but it is more of a pity in her eyes that the groom escaped.
even at the piedmont base, there are no others like her. flood, they call her. girl of the tides. no one is like her, but perhaps that is only just. she was born to deliver nortan reds from oppression, but she has paid dearly for the price. and she will pay more dearly still.
the lakelands come calling, enraged by the death of their second princess. harbor bay and haven flood. lake eris sweeps over its banks to ravage the northern reaches of norta.
the guard and montfort let them tear at each other, content to see them both weakened. but norta is already divided between the calore brothers, two thrones, and so cenra marches on archeon.
mare faces the lakeland queen and her fleet alone.
archeon river bursts its banks, drawing from the endless ocean, overturning battleships like toys. thousands of lakelanders die on their decks. for weeks after, their remains will choke the river.
this is the first time mare has killed on such a massive scale. it does not bother her.
in fact, something about it is almost cathartic.
the girl of the tides unleashes her flood. brings it north, drowning and dehydrating and everything in between. the lakeland citadels crumble. detraon falls. the choke, klling ground of a hundred years, becomes a new river.
she draws freed reds like the moon draws the ocean. they follow in her wake, planting new flags of liberation and equality, but there is death as well. so much death, all at the hands of one girl who finally snapped.
her eyes are hard and empty and hollow. her hands steady as she wipes homesteads from the face of the earth. her heart hard and unfeeling. she did what was necessary, that was all. that was all.
cal will not speak to her. gisa’s voice shakes. kilorn cannot look her in the face.
the only things she can think of are those she has killed, and those she still has to kill. she can think of no other way to do this, no way to win a war and keep her soul. this was the price from the very beginning, after all.
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2087
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