In the healers' dome, Fen and another healer worked rapidly over Juana's body. Shuri's oxygen tank had plenty left but she felt her throat constricting, numbing her from the inside. Fen paused to tug Shuri's frantic hands away.

"She will be fine," Fen said evenly. "We have seen worse wounds after battles."

Another healer yanked out the Kimoyo beads she had embedded into Juana's arm. He tossed them at her without looking. "We have no need for any of this."

Fen said nothing to that, escorting her to another room so she could stay out of the way.

The idea of visiting the Sun with Atzi and some of the other guards had crossed her mind at some point. After the blue flower's blueprint was done, maybe, or as a goodbye tour, but not like this. The head of the guards—the famed captain Tozi—collected her from the healer's dome, bringing summons from their council. The other engineers were thankfully unharmed beyond minor scrapes but the incident quickly made its way to leadership.

Shuri could barely process her arrival to the palace. The only thing her mind registered was it was like the sun rising the closer she swam forward, flanked by Tozi and one of her minions.

"Totl said you shielded her. The council will determine what to do, but I do not believe it was intentional," Tozi said, guiding her to an open archway. Shuri distantly registered her words, almost wishing the woman raged at her. At least she could respond, then, with justifiable anger at an unfair accusation. Not this. Not...listless, gutting guilt.

It wasn't noble idiocy demanding she take accountability. It was that it had been an entirely preventable ordeal. What scientist didn't conduct secondary checks? How dare she wear the title of Most Gifted when her gifts refused to bestow her wisdom and stillness? They burned her when they failed to save her brother until it was too late, and now she put her friend in harms way and created a potential cause for retaliation. Another conflict, more lives on her head.

He was the first person she noticed when she was paraded into the throne room. A crowd of two dozen Talokanil parted to let her through, each wearing progressively intricate headdresses as she floated past them and came to a stop near the front.

A feathered-serpent headpiece sat atop Namor's body, casting a shadow over his eyes. A beaded neckpiece different from his usual thick band of gold, adorned his body, this one showing more of his chest. Pearls dangled from it. Elaborate golden shoulder-pads tapered at each end. The scar she'd healed that fateful night left a thin, discolored seam, barely noticeable amid his commanding presence. He sat in the jaws of a shark, rows of pointed teeth jutting at him. He was the king of the waters, a man no shark could swallow for he was worse. She was a panther, out of her depth and futilely stretching her last moments before she inevitably drowned.

No matter. Shuri almost killed him.

Tozi and the others opened their hands into the Talokan gesture. Namor opened his palms in return. She couldn't tell where he was looking; his face was barely discernible in the dim expanse of the large room.

A figure floating to the right, wearing a shark headpiece, started. She recognized him as the warrior who best Okoye and brought her here the first time. "We kept this intruder here, deceived into thinking that she could restore to us our sacred fruit, and you have all witnessed the consequences." He turned to Namor. "K'uk'ulkan, we need the leader you used to be. Land has made you soft, and I do not speak alone when I say that your judgment has been dubious for a long time."

Over half the room erupted into hisses. Shuri felt Tozi tense next to her.

Namora from her position next to Attuma. "I am in agreement with Attuma's assessment of this intruder, but I reaffirm my faith in our king that he hears our concerns."

Namor lifted his staff and pounded it into the ground twice. Namora and Attuma turned towards Shuri, and she felt the those behind her shoot daggers at her back. She breathed heavily into her oxygen mask, unsure who to address but eventually settling on Attuma, the warrior who spoke first.

"It was an accident. I am very sorry. I requested the American machines—" another hiss, "to help with the restoration project, but I failed to conduct my duties thoroughly."

The guard who was with Tozi spoke. "We confirmed with the engineers, K'uk'ulkan. She is not above reproach, but considering the circumstances and the time-sensitive nature of this issue, we should allow her to continue but increase oversight and assign her our best engineers."

A barrage of voices exploded behind her.

"You speak out of line, that is my niece with the healers now. The engineers are needed to keep this city running and we cannot spare them for child's play."

"She is restoring our huacalxochitl."

"Damage to our city is not a simple mistake."

"Your daughter has done worse. Tell her to beg for my forgiveness after denying my son's fish for that stinky—"

"My children," Namor intoned, voice booming in the throne room, "please leave us."

Attuma grunted and Namora frowned, but they obeyed, treading out with the thinning crowd. Namor nodded at Tozi and her minion. The two left after lifting their hands in the salute.

Then they were completely alone. If he was looking at her, she was none the wiser. Half his face was shadowed. He was draped languidly on his throne, the staff gleaming in one hand and his unoccupied one uncurled over the stone armrest. The sight was breathtaking and menacing all at one. No one else belonged on that throne.

She wished for nothing more than water to flood her watersuit and put her out of her misery. Unfortunately, she was a good engineer. But not good enough to have prevented this.

"I—" she started, steeling her nerves. Was it futile to explain to his man who invaded her country her sincerity? Her regret prickling at her eyes, not just out of fear of his retaliation, but truly at what happened? "I messed up."

Silence.

She continued, undeterred. "You have every right to be angry, but vengeance is not the way. I will have no patience for your threats. I take full respons—"

"I see," his voice beckoned her forward, "in front of me a woman who tried to stay behind and save the life of the handmaid keeping her captive."

Air rushed out of her lungs as her helmet began to fog. "But—"

"Shuri, you are not a woman who mopes."

"But I'm a woman and the Black Panther. I can kill gods, but I can't…" she protested again.

He shook his head slowly, the feathers of his headpiece swaying around his face. "I recently learned failure again at your hands. You have learned failure repeatedly and returned with stronger fire each time." He stood up from his shark jaw throne and swam to her, meeting her at eye level. He was a head taller than her on land, but for the first time her eyes looked directly into his across an equal plane. The rich cloak set on his shoulders flowed behind him in two halves: a mesmerizing dance. She could see his eyes now, still shadowed by his regal adornments but clouded over.

Her heart pounded against her chest.

"You have been avoiding me," he said. It was a statement of fact, not a question. Part of her also realized this meant he had sought her out, in her—his, their?—catacombs.

"I've been busy," she sniffed.

"You overworked yourself to the position you are in now."

"And whose fault is that?" For a moment, she wanted to blame him for adding to her sleeplessness by violating her rules, forcing her to use her brainpower to keep thoughts of him at bay, for not letting her go to the wreckage itself. The last time she was alone with him, she was clawing at his back and yanking him closer. She couldn't trust her own body, and now she couldn't trust her intellect. She had nothing. She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I failed. I almost lost a friend, and will lose her friendship now because I was impulsive, half of the Talokanil don't trust me even more, and I think Fen hates me. I don't have anyone here. Let me go. I'm really not in the mood for your sass right now."

She would not cry.

"You have me."

She wondered if he was toying with her, if it was some sort of cosmic joke Bast thought it funny to witness. "Please," she breathed, a sob breaking through. Hot, fresh tears spilled into her helmet. "Please…" Comfort me. Leave me alone. Touch me.

"Begging is beneath you." Namor's face softened. "I trust your judgment, but your evaluation of yourself makes me doubt if I was wrong."

Something warm flickered in the hollow void of her chest and spiraled outwards, soothing her nerves.

"Come here," he murmured. She didn't give him the satisfaction of a verbal answer after lowering herself to plead to him, but when he opened his arms, she barreled into his chest. He was a god who came to her as an answer to her prayers.She thought she almost saw her mother smile.

Atzi spotted her lurking around the healing dome late in the evening and dragged her inside, her protests useless. Some of Juana's family and Totl were milling about, only to come to a still as Shuri approached.

"I know how you feel," Atzi said, "I once flooded our home with poisonous plants and got everyone sick for two weeks."

That, she thought, is absolutely not the same thing, but her heart swelled with hope. The usually jovial girl quieted as they came to a stop at the entrance to where Juana laid. "Juana's my best friend. Just be there for her, alright?"

"I will."

Juana was awake, but her foot was tied to a hammock with a thin rope to keep her from floating and jerking around. Where her left forearm should have been was a stump. All the melanin had drained from her face, leaving her pale. Shuri spotted a box of bloody shards nailed to the wall — ones the healers had to pull out, she realized with a jolt — and bloodied vibranium bandages hung all around them.

"She keeps bleeding," she heard one healer tell Fen. She remembered Namor's warning about the risk of bleeding out underwater and scurried to Juana's side.

"Get away!" Fen said, blocking her path. Behind her, Juana turned her head.

"I can help," Shuri protested. "Move her to air and that will stop the bleeding. I can use my Kimoyo—"

"That is enough. You have done enough." A large, curvaceous woman entered. She resembled Juana, only older and like she had witnessed a life of hardship, with knobby knees and a missing eyelid.

A voice so small it almost went unheard reached her ears. "Let her."

They all turned towards Juana. Shuri saw the recognition, and pain, dawn on her face.

"Juana. She is of land and science. It almost killed you." The woman who Shuri assumed was Juana's mother rebuked, while Fen continued scurrying around, muttering about delirium.

"Please, Iahui." Atzi pleaded while Juana's eyes fluttered shut. "She wanted to be an engineer. We need to try."

"How is she?" Namor asked, his head barely above the water. He'd left the palace as soon as one of the council members, Juana's aunt, pleaded with him to either kill the Wakandan or exile her. It took some wrangling but she was now in possession of a year's worth of watercress and a personal promise he would revisit the discussion once Juana stabilized.

Shuri's tracksuit, as Tupoc had told him it was called, had splotches of blood around her sleeves. The ring of beads she usually wore were gone, and she tapped frantically into one remaining bead she held in the palm of her hand. Numbers and moving lines floated above her head. She'd settled well into the room — her clothes were folded into a woven basket he recognized was from his office (he hoped his daggers hadn't been dumped onto the floor) and a neat stack of dried seaweed next to the...bed...threatened to topple over.

"We stopped the bleeding, but needed four Kimoyo beads to stabilize her. Totl recovered some of her fingers. If I can get the DNA sequencing going, I might be able to build a vibranium arm in two days." She said in a measured voice, eyes still on her screens. Namor placed his staff against the wall and joined her at the edge of the bed. He felt her tense next to him.

"Where is she now?"

She resumed scrolling. "In my old room. She'll need to be submerged in water again soon before her lungs stop working."

"Your old room?" He quirked an eyebrow. "That makes this your new room."

She swiped at the screen with the numbers, scowling. "Did you hear literally anything I just said? I need to sequence her DNA because the Kimoyo beads have only worked with humans before, but I have no idea how my lab downstairs is looking or if the council will even let me use it." She growled, frustrated, and Namor thought it was rather delightful to witness. Suddenly, she shut down all the screens, and whipped towards him.

"That's what I called you for...the other day," she paused and cleared her throat, "I figured out a way to reconstruct the flower."

Pride moved him to place a finger on her cheek, lifting a stray curl to place it behind her ear. In mere days she solved a problem his people had endeavored for over centuries. He fought a smile, wishing to drop his forehead to hers the way he did others, and wondered if reminding her of the gifts the ancestors gave her would bring about a premature stop to a civil conversation. He was not ungenerous with praise; each of his children had such differing personalities that time provided the best teacher in raising them.

She was not his child, though she was under his protection, yet he was not above meeting her where she needed him to be.

"You have profound gifts."

Conflicting emotions of suspicion and delight warred on her face until the latter won. Seeing through her was sometimes as easy as looking through jellyfish; at others, she was as inaccessible as limestone sinkholes.

"Right. So, that's why I needed to use the submarine equipment. I need surface-world technology. There might be remaining equipment I can use. I don't even want to consider right now what I'll do if not."

He nodded, remembering the request he granted Tozi. "You are to come to directly to me with these issues."

Her eyes narrowed. "I was busy, genius."

"Thank you for the praise. You may use your lab, but I should warn, the damage is extensive. The council imposed a condition that two guards oversee all activities."

She wrinkled her nose but sighed in resignation. She likely didn't notice this herself, but when stressed, she would lean imperceptibly into his touch. Her eyes may not have been of water but her explicit reprimands for touching her were fewer today, something he hadn't failed to notice. Her irises now, as they'd done many times before, expanded as if it could not take in the entirety of his visage otherwise. The muscles of her lean arms relaxed.

The last time he entered through this tide pool, Shuri panted at his neck. The thought alone deepened his breathing, thinking of the times since she must've used this very entrance no one else deigned to use to bathe, her deadly legs moving back and forth and eyes twinkling.

K'uk'ulkan. That accent of hers.

Juana hadn't said anything else to Shuri in her bouts of consciousness. Her mother cradled her the whole way and Shuri already knew she was testing the bounds of their trust. She would do it. She would make it up to them even if it cost her days of delay.

She wanted to ask Namor if he had supported curtailing her freedom again but decided against it. The conversation was going smoothly and she enjoyed not being up in arms, to just...exist. As herself.

She extended a hand to his wound. His chest stopped rising as a breath he didn't need to take stilled. Her finger pressed at the end of his scar, just above his belt. It didn't need any further healing and would disappear completely soon but Shuri still moved a bead over it. The perpetually damp feeling of the man's skin after a swim in the cold waters soothed her.

"Why were you so anxious that day?" She imagined him sniping at her with something like, "not my chest, woman" or "our secrets are not for Wakandan ears." Instead, he shifted so she could better rake her bead and finger across him.

"You know about the illness?"

"Yes."

"It is an annual problem but has worsened this year. Multiple council members have been feeling ill, as have a quarter of our guards and warriors. It has left Talokan unprotected and more vulnerable at an inopportune time."

Fen had told her about this before their friendship strained but she hadn't known it was this serious.

Her bead reached the other end of his scar. She bit her lip, wondering what to do next, and opted let her hand loosen to fall against his lower abdomen. "You sure I won't send a pigeon and tell Wakanda to attack?"

"Pigeons cannot breathe under water," he chortled and she felt his muscles under her fingers relax. She laughed, the anxiety from the day's events dissipating, but didn't know what else to say. Ideally, she would kick him out and resume her work.

She bit the inside of her cheek. Having him around made her lose focus and somehow made crunching numbers less of an immediate neccessity. You've gone mad, a part of her taunted. The absolute blasphemy of abandoning a formula midway.

The growing awareness that she liked this, that she wanted his company like the Black Panther wanted vibranium — which was not so much want as a deep-rooted need — soured into a spiral of fear. He knew her. He knew how to comfort her. He kissed her and she could not taste anything else for days.

The bludgeon of terror knocked her off her feet. She moved away from him, scooting to the other end of the bed and clasped her hands tightly in her lap. He peeled his eyes off of her and looked at the cavernous ceiling, leaning back onto the bed with his hands crossed under his head.

They said nothing for a few moments, weighing the silence. Shuri was never good at playing the waiting game, so she started, "I need to talk to the Americans again," and promptly slapped herself inwardly because reminding the feathered serpent of their precarious political condition was a fantastic way to avoid deepening a crisis.

"Are you asking for permission? I was told you were carrying out your duties heeding little to my word these days."

She almost stuck her tongue out at him. "You just said to come to you with these things."

"The Americans are of little use."

"Did you interrogate them yourself?"

"The ocean will dry before I speak to them." He sneered, his voice steel.

There were so many things she wanted to ask. Why did he change his mind about exposing Talokan to more people? How would his people take accountability? Would Wakanda still be their protector? Did he still hate the surface world? All this and more swirled in her head, but before she could get a word out, he slid onto his feet. She stood too, for whatever reason, and hesitated. Does one say see you later to a feathered serpent? Namor watched her intently, and she knew he would leave without notice if she didn't speak now.

"Thank you. For earlier today."

"I have no need for your thanks." Despite this, he smiled and his eyes dilated.

"You don't have to stay away," she blinked and then quickly added, "from your cabin. It's your place, I mean, and your office. Just don't use this whirlpool unless I ask."

He leveled a small smirk at her before exiting through the open archway, his face turned to the side but eyes trained on her. "Your...Kimoyo bead was off. You should check for malfunctions before tomorrow."

Her kimoyo beads were perfectly fine, thank you very much—

Oh. She fell back onto the bed, head spinning and cheeks burning. So that's what I was afraid of.

"If I were to touch you, it would be when I make you want it."

Killmonger returned, jeering. You're in trouble.