Page 127 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“Hello,” I whispered. “It’s me, the goddess of the sea.”

Saying it out loud sounded foreign and strange on my tongue.

Then the same low, somber sound I’d heard the day it turned away from me in the arena, sniffing the blood at my feet instead of finishing what it started, lumbered toward me.

“You’re free,” I said, stroking its coarse hair. “You are free to roam as you please. I got the queen’s permission to set you free.”

The boarox huffed through its nose in response.

Nira had said the boarox was a gentle animal once, before it was caged. The Seelie queen had used it for sport, and it had only acted to protect itself. Animals were like us. They fought back. So why wouldn’t this one?

I understood better than most what it meant to be caged and called dangerous for wanting out.

Its black marble eyes found mine one last time, then it moved past us, slow and massive. I held Calroy’s hand as we watched it disappear up through the tunnel toward the garden, where Fraya awaited to guide the animal into the forest.

We stood there a while after it was gone, the tunnel quiet again, just the drip of water somewhere in the stone. Calroy didn’t let go of my hand.

“Why do I bleed blue?” The question I’d carried since the cavern floor finally found its way out. “The Seaborn, the boarox, the oclego. Why all of us?”

Calroy traced a slow line along my wrist, where blue ran beneath my skin. “Because the sea is yours.” He turned me to face him. “It always has been. You didn’t just rule the water, Yeri. You also ruled over the animals. They bow to you, and you alone. You were their maker.”

I thought of the boarox in the arena, the oclego thrashing against Russo’s ship—both of them bleeding the same color that had marked me my entire life. Not a curse. Not coincidence. Mine.

All those years in the cavern, I’d thought my blue blood meant something was wrong with me. Nam had never told me otherwise, and maybe she hadn’t known how, or maybe she’d been protecting me from a truth too big for a child to carry. Either way, I’d spent my whole life ashamed of the one thing that had always belonged to me most.

Not anymore.

I smiled at the revelation that I had created these animals. I was sure there were more creatures out there to find, and I couldn’t wait until I was ready to explore the world and discover them.

“You ready, my love?” Calroy unfurled his wings.

He would fly me to Jeju. Jinha and Minha were already there, thanks to Oscan.

I wasn’t ready to bury Nam, but it had to be done. Before I could answer, Calroy scooped me up and launched into the bright, sunny sky.

Chapter Forty

Yong and some of his men brought Nam’s body in a wagon. Calroy wanted to stay and support me, but I told him I needed this time with my sisters. He understood. Instead, he would gather his winged soldiers and those not too wounded to travel and positioned them near the Jeju castle and wait for my arrival.

Bora and the others stayed at Caelum to be cared for by Nira. They were thin to the bone, their bodies bearing the cost of everything they’d been through. It was best for them to be fed, hydrate, and get well. That was what Nam would have wanted.

We wrapped Nam in white cloth and put her on a pyre before carrying her to the shore. Jina, Minha, Sohee, and I stood one at each corner, our steps slow. We laid her where the water could reach, the pyre of driftwood resting at the waterline, the tide moving in around our feet.

“She never let us forget who we were.” Jina’s voice came out barely above a breath, her hand pressed flat against her chest. “Even when we didn’t know ourselves.”

Minha pressed her fingers to the white cloth. “She was the one who had taught me how to make the dagger. But she said to keep it between us.”

Having Sable with us would have been nice, but she was somewhere in that forest, still not knowing her sister was gone. There hadn’t been time to find her, not with the war, the wounded, the miles between here and wherever she’d hidden herself. Nam would have to be laid to rest without her.

Word of the war’s end would reach her eventually, one way or another, and when it did, she would come looking for Nam the way she always had. I would be the one to tell her.

I looked at Nam’s face one last time. So peaceful. Whatever burden she had carried over the years from the cavern, the secrets, the weight of watching over us without being able to say why, her job was done.

“I never told her how much she meant to me.” Jina wiped her face. “I thought there would be more time.”

“She knew.” Minha’s voice was flat, but her eyes were bright. “She always knew everything.”

“Rest now,” I said. “Thank you for being our strength. Our hope. Our mother.”