Page 65 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“She’s strong.” I nodded, wiping the corners of my eyes. “She tells us stories by the fire.”

My heart squeezed, not just from missing her, but for the two of them, for being apart from each other so long. Each taking on a role in this quiet battle, neither knowing if the other was still alive.

Jina and Minha were everything to me. I couldn’t imagine my life without them. I had barely held myself together when we were separated from Minha.

Sable’s eyes glistened. “Good. That’s good.” Her voice softened even more. “Thank you for telling me.”

A moment of quiet passed between us. Then her expression shifted.

“There’s something else.” Her voice dropped lower. “The king grows impatient. He’s searching for another willing to finish what I’ve started.” She glanced back toward the camp where the fire crackled low. “And the queen’s deal, taming the creature for your freedom…” She grabbed my shoulders, her grip firm, eyes locked on mine. “Don’t trust it. Don’t give her what she wants.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” She stepped back toward the trees. “The creature at Mount Kael, it knows what you are. It won’t harm you. But the soldiers she sends with you will try to take whatever you tame. Be ready for that.”

“How do you know all this?”

She smiled, small and tired. “The forest tells me things.” She glanced up at the stars, then out somewhere far away. “And the sea whispers louder than people think.”

She stepped back into the darkness and I could no longer see her. I stood alone at the edge of the camp with a warm vial in my fist and more questions than I’d started with.

The fire had burned lower while I was gone. The camp was quiet except for the soldiers’ snoring and the owl somewhere in the trees.

I settled beside Minha, tucking the vial beneath my suit next to the dagger and the pearls.

Jina stirred. “Where did you go? I almost woke up Minha to help me find you.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I had to relieve myself.”

It was lame, but the best excuse I could come up with.

A dagger, pearls, and a vial that could end a king’s life, were pressed against my side. Jina settled against me and closed her eyes, and I did the same.

So Sable was the witch the king had spoken of.

I thought back to the that throne room, the king’s voice carrying across the polished stone. Once the forest witch figures out a formula, your kind will all be dead. He had said it as if our deaths were certain, merely a countdown he was waiting to finish.

He had no idea Sable was the reason it never would. And I couldn’t wait to see him again. I dreamed of driving my dagger into the flesh under his chin and watching him burn from the inside out.

Chapter Twenty-One

The forest thinned the farther we traveled, the carriage wheels grinding louder against pebbled roads. The air shifted colder and thinner, carrying something mineral and sharp that sat at the back of the throat.

Mount Kael rose from the earth like a giant fist, its peak lost in low cloud, its face streaked with veins of deep red, green clinging to patches of shrubs covering some of the lower surface.

Beautiful. And yet dangerous.

The carriage slowed and stopped. The soldiers formed up around us, hands on weapons.

“Out,” the lead soldier said, pulling the carriage door open.

We climbed down. The ground beneath my boots was hard and cold, the wind cutting through our path. Jina pulled her arms around herself and shivered. Minha squinted up at the peak, her jaw set. Ranis did the same, but his face paled.

The soldiers led us to a wide opening in the mountain’s base. Above the opening, carved into the stone, was the queen’s symbol—the same circular design from the castle gates, the layered roses at its center.

The passage sloped downward, torchlight throwing long shadows across walls. I reached out and ran my fingers along the cold and rocky wall as we walked. The passage opened into a vast underground chamber, the air growing warmer.

The rhythmic strike of tools against stone reached my ears. The scrape and shift of rubble, and the low voices, stopped when they heard our footsteps.