The river always had an attraction to the sea. It wasn’t a simple curiosity. It was a quiet urgency that lived in her bones. While other girls in her neighborhood dreamed of city lights or distant colleges, River often found herself standing alone at Penn’s Landing, watching the water breathe. The tide never shouted at her. It whispered. And somewhere deep inside, she understood it was speaking to her.
She just didn’t know why.
No one told her she was born of more than one world. No one told her that the truth she was seeking wasn’t buried in books, but in blood. Or that her eyes, those strange sea-colored eyes, were a mark of royalty.
Her mother gave her love but not answers. Her father was only a memory wrapped in silence. And yet, the tide knew. It had always known. For years, River stood above the water, wondering why it felt like home. She sensed something waited for her just below the surface.
It wasn’t fantasy. It was heritage. Arcaccia, the underwater kingdom ruled by King Armen, carried her name in its currents. She was his daughter, born of sea and land. A secret the kingdom had hidden. A truth the queen wanted erased.
It all began to unravel when the queen's seer revealed a child who threatened the royal line. River wasn’t just a long-lost daughter. She was the true heir. Older than the queen’s son. A living threat to the throne.
The truth was powerful enough to send killers after her. But it was also powerful enough to awaken something in River. The moment she touched the necklace sent by her father, something ancient stirred. Her body remembered. Her lungs adapted. Her vision changed. The sea no longer felt like danger. It felt like destiny.
She had not been forgotten. She had been protected.
Arcaccia was not what River expected. Beneath the water, beauty collided with betrayal. Politics moved like predators. Power shifted with the current. And all around her, voices she had never heard began to echo. Whispers from the tide, the land, the past.
The ocean didn’t scream the truth. It whispered it, steadily and patiently. It showed her who she was. Not the girl from the Towers. Not the outsider with strange eyes. But a princess. A warrior. A survivor of silence.
Every whisper was a revelation. Every wave carried a story her mother never told. The truth had always been speaking. River just hadn’t been close enough to hear it.
With each step deeper into Arcaccian waters, River began to change. Physically, as well as emotionally, her lifelong doubts started to change. She questioned less. She listened more. And what she heard was clear.
She belonged.
But belonging came with a price. Secrets waited around every corner. Her father’s regrets, the queen’s fury, her brother’s loyalty. None of it came without consequence. River had to decide who she wanted to be, now that the truth was no longer hidden.
Tides that whisper truths is more than a phrase. It is a reality carved into every page of Below the Tides. The story of River is not just one of fantasy or magic. It is about identity, ancestry, and the slow, powerful way truth rises. Not with explosions. But with whispers.
The sea never forgets. And when it speaks, it does not shout. It waits. Until you are ready to listen.
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