I know this is not an ordinary nightmare from the moment I open my eyes. For one thing, Sara is floating beside Wyatt's lifeless body on the ground, staring open-mouthed at her trembling hands. For another thing, I can't see a dagger clenched in her hand.

From my position, I can't detect any blood on her, but when she turns toward me, the blood-stained piece of sharp coral clutched in her hands immediately becomes visible. Ordinarily, a chunk of it can't do any harm, but when sharpened to a fine point...

The same gashes I saw in reality are also present in the nightmare. Blood has dried in streaks on her arm, even more dripping from the cuts themselves. Unable to help myself, I swim toward her, reaching out a hand. Not expecting a response, I jerk my hand back when she suddenly starts talking. Babbling.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just couldn't take it anymore." When she says my name, I suck in a breath so hard I cough. "Drew, please. You don't understand. I killed my brother!"

Her voice breaks on the last word, and she has to pause and take a shuddering breath before continuing. "Every time I close my eyes, I see Wyatt's smirking face. I don't even feel relief when I think about his death. All I feel is guilt and shame.

"It's eating me up inside. Sometimes, I go to bed at night wishing I wouldn't wake up the following day. How can I live with myself after what I did?"

Her voice breaks again as she stares at a fixed point over my shoulder. As I turn—following her gaze—I gasp, clapping a hand over my mouth before I realize she can't hear me. I see myself swimming up to her, hands outstretched in front of me placatingly. I can only stare, open-mouthed, as Dream Drew opens his mouth. "I do understand, Sara. It's the loneliest, most isolating feeling ever.

"I felt like that for weeks, months after Faye's death. I hated myself so much that I didn't see any point in living. The guilt and shame festered inside me until I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. After Faye died, I didn't get out of bed for weeks. It wasn't until a few months after her death—the day I met Ani—that I realized Faye wouldn't have wanted me to wallow in guilt and shame for the rest of my life."

I shut my mouth in time to see Dream Drew drag a trembling hand down his face. His voice breaks when he speaks again. "You wish you could do anything to make the pain go away. When healthy mechanisms don't work, you turn to unhealthy ones." He jerks his chin to the coral still clutched in her hand, so tight her knuckles are white.

"You think that by hurting yourself, you can somehow make the pain you feel inside disappear. It may feel like it's working now, but you'll be miserable in the long run. Instead of turning to healthy ways of dealing with it, you end up using unhealthy ones more and more, getting hooked on the pain.

"Coraling won't make the pain go away. It won't solve anything. It won't bring her back." He doesn't mention a name, but he doesn't have to. Judging from the tears that well in Sara's eyes and spill down her cheeks, she knows who he's talking about.

She swipes at her eyes furiously, her breath trembling. "Faye didn't deserve to die. She was kind, loving, and good. All the things Wyatt wasn't. He was vindictive, cold, and wicked. I hate him, Drew."

Dream Drew swims towards her when her voice breaks and gently dislodges the coral from her hand. "I know. I care about you, Sara. You're my friend. I don't want to see you go down this self-destructive path." With his free hand, he wipes the tears off her cheeks and pulls her into his arms.

When I opened my eyes, I had to clap a hand over my mouth to stifle the sob that was dangerously close to escaping. Blowing out a shaky breath, I dragged a trembling hand down my face. I heard a deep breath, then a soft and sleepy voice. "Drew? What's wrong?"

I opened and closed my mouth several times, but nothing came out. I couldn't get the image of Sara extending her bleeding arms to Dream Drew out of my mind. Ani's hand slowly rose to my chest, resting just over my heart. I closed my eyes, covering her hand with my own.

"'You think that by hurting yourself, you can somehow make the pain you feel inside disappear. It may feel like it's working now, but you'll be miserable in the long run. Instead of turning to healthy ways to deal with it, you end up using unhealthy ones more and more, getting hooked on the pain.'"

I shuddered as Dream Drew's voice floated through my head. For a long moment, neither of us said anything. When I finally spoke, my voice was hoarse. "She started coraling. Gods, Ani... You should have seen her arms."

I held Ani close, savoring the sound of her heartbeat. "She believes it's the only way she can cope with the guilt and shame that eats at her daily. She told me she couldn't take it anymore."

It terrified me more than I was willing to admit that Sara's self-hatred had spiraled this far out of control. I blamed myself for not seeing the signs and not contacting her sooner. "I'm so sorry, Drew. You can't blame yourself," she said as if she'd read my thoughts. "You know what guilt and shame can do to someone—it festers inside you, eating at you until you're willing to do anything to make it go away."

And I did. I knew precisely what guilt and shame did to someone—it had almost consumed me in the weeks and months following Faye's death. I probably would have let it if it hadn't been for Ani. "Maybe we should visit her tomorrow; see if we can do anything to help." My voice was barely audible; I wasn't sure she had heard me.

When I looked at her, she was staring at the ground, her gaze distant. Worry filled my eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks, making tracks in the silt. I gently touched her shoulder, and she flinched, hurriedly swiping at her eyes. "I—I'm sorry."

I took her hand, rubbing my thumb over her knuckles. "Are you okay?" I wouldn't press her if she didn't want to talk about it, but I'd never seen her cry before. It simultaneously worried and scared me.

Even if she hadn't just comforted me, my automatic reaction was to do the same. Plus, I suspected her tears stemmed from a deeper wound that never fully healed. Ani inhaled shakily, blinking rapidly to keep the tears from escaping. My free hand moved to her back, and I rubbed soothing circles. Several minutes passed before she spoke, and when she did, her voice strained.

"My younger sister battled depression for years during our childhood. Our parents divorced three days after her tenth birthday, and it took a toll on her mental health. She got mixed up with the wrong crowd and started coraling."

I didn't say anything. I hadn't even known she'd had siblings. Nevertheless, I couldn't suppress the shudder that rippled through me at her words. Coraling was an unorthodox method of self-harm. Unfortunately, it had been popular in Mom and Dad's teen and adult years.

People hardly ever talked about it now; it was criticized and heavily stigmatized when Mom and Dad were younger. Even then, if someone had discovered someone coraling, they were automatically shunned. Ani swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. "At first, it was just a way of numbing the pain she felt inside as a result of her depression. But after they divorced, she was mad at Dad.

"I think she blamed herself. She was always sneaking off to watch cometball games with her friends late at night. And almost always, she would get into a fight with Dad after she got caught. Mom blamed him for not keeping Della safe. That's when it got worse. To hear that Sara's dealing with it now..." Her face crumpled as tears streamed down her cheeks.

"After Della turned sixteen, she got involved with a merman from Nepptheas whom she'd met at a cometball game. I never met him but heard rumors that he was a Serenity dealer. I begged her to stay away from him, but she didn't listen."

I pulled her into my arms, stroking her hair while trying to understand what she was telling me. Serenity was considered one of the most harmful drugs for merpeople. It seemed like a benign substance—to the naked eye, it looked like medicine—with its colorless and odorless appearance, but once ingested, one could get high in an instant. It also made one dangerously susceptible to suggestion.

Ani took a shaky breath, and her voice broke when she spoke again. "One evening, Della didn't come home, and I got worried. Mom wanted to look for her, but I convinced her to stay put while I went out. I searched for hours before finally spotting her in an outcropping near the outskirts of Beltmare. The merman was with her, speaking softly to her, stroking her hair.

"I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I saw the tears on her cheeks. He wrapped his arm around her, shielding her body from view. When she shrugged out of his touch, I saw them. Long, jagged cuts on both arms—Della had started coraling. Later, I found out that she'd begun taking Serenity to cope with the guilt and shame brought on by the divorce. I haven't seen or heard from her since.

"I should have noticed that something was going on. Maybe then I would have been able to—" Sobs drowned out the rest of her words, her cries loud and heartbreaking.

I wondered how long she had held that in, but I didn't want to upset her further. "Thank you for telling me," I said softly.

She had buried her head in my chest, so when she spoke, her words were unintelligible. I held her tightly, letting her release all the pent-up shame, anger, and regret she'd harbored all these years. When the knock came on the suite door, we both flinched.

I glanced out the nearest window and was surprised to find the sun streaming into the water. "Just a second," I called out. We both swam out of bed and quickly dressed before swimming out of the bedroom. Ani had scrubbed her face clean of the tears, but the haunted look still lingered in her eyes.

I took a breath as I opened the door, exhaling when I saw Mom and Dad on the other side. Matching grins were on their faces, but concern quickly replaced the joy when the former glimpsed the hollowness in Ani's eyes. "Are you okay, honey?"

Mom's words came from a place of love and concern, but I knew Ani wasn't ready to tell anyone about her sister—one glance at the haunted look in her eyes and I knew she'd had a hard enough time telling me. It would be a long time before she'd be ready to open up that wound again.

I opened my mouth to respond, but Ani beat me to it. "Yeah. I just didn't get much sleep last night." Her hand tightened on mine as the words left her mouth. Begging me to take the attention off her.

"What's up?" I asked. I hadn't seen them this excited in a long time.

Mom nudged Dad, her grin widening. "We have a surprise for you at the school. Come on!" Before I could so much as open my mouth to respond, they were gone.

I looked at Ani, shrugged, and followed them out of the palace. We'd barely reached the open water when a mermaid stopped before us. She'd pulled her curly red hair into a knot, and her ice-blue eyes were wary as she regarded us. A loud, heartbreaking wail tore from Ani's chest as she faltered. When I looked at the mermaid, my heart stopped dead. I'd never seen her before, but Ani's sudden reaction told me all I needed to know.

The mermaid lunged for Ani, collapsing against her as they sobbed. I could feel the confusion radiating from Mom and Dad, but I couldn't speak. I could only stare at my wife and her sister.

When Ani spoke, tears muffled her words. "Oh, Della, I missed you so much!"

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