Page 3 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

He straightened, then walked away.

We didn’t work any faster. The grip on wet shells was nearly impossible to find.

I reached for Nam’s hand and held it for just a moment. Her thumb moved once across my knuckles.

I’m all right, she said.

She wasn’t. None of us were. This torment had to stop, or we would all die before our time.

When I pushed away from Nam, she shook her head without meeting my gaze. Her silent way of telling me I shouldn’t have protected her.

Nam was our eldest. The others before her had died from abuse, or the king had taken them as retaliation for whatever small act of defiance had caught Agusto’s attention.

I wasn’t that little girl who needed protection from her. It was about time to do the same for her.

“Are you okay, Sis?” Jina’s fingers moved as fast as her words.

I nodded, tossing a gray pearl into the basket. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But we’re not dying here. I’d rather die swimming in the ocean.”

“Same here.” She glanced behind her at the guards, talking among themselves.

When Agusto left, no one paid us any mind. We never gave them trouble.

I reached for another shell and popped it open. The inside was nacreous and faintly iridescent, catching the firelight. Grief held me captive for a moment, then rage.

The shell cracked in my hands. I had pressed too hard, splitting along the hinge into two pieces, edges sharp enough to cut. A thin line of blue opened across my thumb. I wiped it fast before anyone noticed. Everyone else bled red. I had always bled blue and my wounds healed fast. I didn’t know why that pertained to only me.

We worked until moonlight dimmed the cavern. Jina and I dragged our feet side by side, Nam ahead of us. We gathered around the firepit and roasted clams, mussels, and seaweed. On nights we met our pearl quota, the soldiers rewarded us with seaweed soup with rice.

My favorite time of the day. No guards watched over us.

I stretched out on the dirt, the earth cooling my achy legs, and popped the mussel meat into my mouth. Jina did the same beside me. Sohee, tall and lean, a few years younger than Nam, gathered moisture from the wall with a cloth and dipped into crushed pearl we had stashed under a makeshift hiding place. She helped Nam loosen her tunic. The whip had left marks across her shoulders, visible through the torn cloth.

A lump moved in my throat, but I had no tears left to shed. I’d run out of those early in my youth. Sohee dabbed on Nam’s wounds. Nam never winced or gave any indication of pain. Then Sohee approached me.

“Next time, you don’t take the hit for her.” She untied the back of my tunic and let the shirt fall around my shoulders.

I didn’t mind since I’d healed fast and no one saw my blue blood.

“Hmmm.” Sohee rubbed at her temple. “He never hits you with a full force. No bleeding as usual.” She leaned closer. “You’re like a daughter to her so it hurts her more to see you take her hit. Next time, stand down.”

There better not be a next time, or I might do something I wish I’d done many times in my dreams to Agusto.

I nodded to ease her heart. But I would always take the hit for Nam. I would do it for anyone here, the only family I’d ever known.

“Tell us a story.” Bora, the youngest among us, nestled her messy, curly head on Nam’s crossed legs.

Nam set a wooden bowl down after taking a sip of water, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening as she inhaled a deep breath. “Gods once ruled everything. Water and sky, life and death. Every feeling you’ve ever had—grief, rage, love—there was a deity who owned it.”

“What did they do with that power?” Bora shifted and peered up, her beautiful green eyes catching the firelight.

“They kept the balance.” Sohee chimed in, tossing wood into the pit. “Each held their piece of the world in check.”

“But the balance tilted,” Nam added, “when goddess of sea and god of sky fell in love.”

“A forbidden love.” Jina sighed as if it were romantic. “Don’t tell me the other gods intervened.”

Nam split a large piece of seaweed, then handed the half to me. “Their reunion caused chaos. Hurricanes. Tornados. The kind of havoc that swallowed whole villages. They became indestructible.”