Page 63 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“You want me to tame it.” I said it flatly. “Like the boarox.”

She gave a smile, one that was not genuine. “Tame whatever guards them and give me what I want. Do that and I will release you, your sisters, and the boy you came with.”

I looked at Minha. She was still on the floor, watching the queen with narrowed eyes.

“All of us,” I said. “Every Seaborn.”

The queen’s features hardened and released me. “Don’t push your luck.”

I had no idea if there were any Seaborn prisoners at the castle. Whether she knew it or not, she answered my question.

I didn’t trust her. Not for a single breath. But the mountain meant distance from this castle. Distance meant room to move, to think, to find answers about what had been done to my people and the history of our world. And answers were worth the risk.

Minha and I exchanged glances as I held her hand. I wasn’t going to make this decision without her. When she nodded, I said. “Minha, Jina, Ranis, and I go together. They can help me.”

I had to say anything to keep us together. We were separated once. That was not going to happen again.

The queen smiled, and it didn’t reach her eyes. She waved a hand to the guards. “Get them ready and prepare the transportation.”

Chapter Twenty

The carriage rolled on through the night, the soldiers’ torches casting long shadows between the trees. Every rut in the road sent a jolt through the carriage, hard enough to rattle my teeth.

Jina had fallen asleep against Ranis’s shoulder. He snored softly, undisturbed. Minha’s head drooped against the carriage wall. I wished I could sleep. My thoughts wouldn’t quiet.

I looked up through the small window at the stars scattered thick across the dark sky. They reminded me of the night on Theron’s ship, all of us around the barrel, Fraya snorting, the ale burning my throat as we toasted my name. It was the first time I had laughed since I had left Jeju. I’d almost forgotten about Barron.

I missed Fraya. I wondered where Theron was now. What the queen had ordered him to do. Look for more creatures, likely.

When the lead soldier called a halt, we climbed out into the dark. The soldiers laid out bedrolls near the tree line. Someone had already built a fire at the center. Another soldier handed us blankets—rough wool, better than nothing.

We spread ours on the ground, the three of us huddling together the way we always had every night in the cavern. Jina between Minha and me, while Ranis leaned against a tree trunk.

Some things didn’t change, no matter where you ended up.

I shifted onto my back and looked up at the stars through the canopy, just as I was about to fall asleep—somewhere in the trees something called low and soft—a single note, then silence, then the same note again.

Nam had drawn land creatures in the dirt once, everything she could recall, and made their sounds to go with them. I’d never seen an owl before, but I recognized the same hoot.

A light flickered between the trees. Not a torch. Had I imagined it? I pushed up onto my elbows. The green light flickered in the dark, drifting between the trunks, then stopped. A figure stepped out, as if to let me see them clearly.

A woman, wrapped in a dark cloak, silver hair loose around her shoulders. She stood at the edge of the camp and looked directly not at the soldiers dozing by the fire, but at me.

“Star.” Her soft voice drifted to me on the wind. “Come.”

She didn’t have a menacing voice. But I stiffened anyway.

I didn’t move. No way would I go to a stranger. I was new to this world. The queen had magic and this woman obviously had the same. Her voice hadn’t come from the tree line. It had come from inside my head.

That alone should have kept me still. Whoever she was, she’d already crossed a line the queen hadn’t—slipping into my mind without asking. That wasn’t friendship. That was power, wielded without permission.

“I won’t hurt you, child. Nam is my friend.”

The name hit me like home.

Nam, who raised me in that cave. Nam, who never explained what I was. If this woman knew her—really knew her, not just a name overheard somewhere—then she might know things Nam never told me. Still. Minha slept three feet away. Jina and Ranis beside her. If this was a trap, I wouldn’t just be risking myself.

But… if she was truly the person she said, then perhaps I should hear what she wanted. I rose carefully, stepping over Minha’s outstretched legs, my hand brushing the hilt of the dagger beneath my suit to confirm its position.