Duchess Of Blanca Sirena | EASY ◎ |

By eighteen, she was the most feared woman on the crescent coast. Not because she was cruel—she was not—but because she remembered things that had not happened yet. She would walk (float) into the throne room and say, “The sardine fleet will return empty tomorrow,” and the next day, the nets came up full of jellyfish and sorrow. She would touch a courtier’s hand and whisper, “Your mother is already gone,” and a gull would tap the window an hour later with news of a drowning.

The Duchess did not mourn solitude. She kept company with the tide pools in the courtyard, where anemones opened like tiny, vengeful mouths. She spoke to the storms before they arrived, calling them by names no weather bureau could pronounce. The fishermen left offerings at her gates—not out of love, but out of terror. A braid of kelp. A coin bitten by salt. A single pearl, always flawed.

They say she still rules Blanca Sirena, but from below now. On stormy nights, you can see her face in the curl of a wave—not cruel, not kind, but watching. And the pearls that wash ashore afterward are always perfect. And always warm. Duchess of Blanca Sirena

The Duchess of Blanca Sirena never walked. She floated—an inch above the marble floors of her palazzo, the hem of her silver gown whispering against the salt-scoured stone. The servants had long stopped staring. They simply laid the carpets straight and kept the corridors clear of shells.

The palace shook. The tide rose three feet in an instant. Every bell in the city rang backward. By eighteen, she was the most feared woman

Her name was Serafina, though no one dared speak it aloud except the sea. She had been born during a tempest, the night the old lighthouse cracked in two and the bay turned white with foam. The midwives said the child came out smiling, and the water in the birthing chamber had tasted of brine.

And Serafina—no longer floating, no longer a duchess, no longer anything so small as a noblewoman—walked to the window. She looked out at the sea, which had been waiting for her to remember. She would touch a courtier’s hand and whisper,

“I misplaced it,” she said, almost lightly. “A century ago. Maybe two. I was a different woman then. I had feet.”

She closed her fingers around the pearl. For the first time in anyone’s memory, the Duchess of Blanca Sirena touched the floor. Her bare soles met the salt-crusted stone with a soft, wet sound, like a kiss from something that had been waiting a very long time.