Page 78 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“What is your kind?” I hated how much I liked his caresses.

He flinched like he’d made a mistake, like he’d said something he shouldn’t have. He narrowed his eyes. “The kind you should stay away from.”

His eyes had gone fully dark, no blue left at all, and his mouth lowered toward mine, closer, closer, my blood roaring loud enough to drown out everything else. I pushed back and ran.

I didn’t stop until I hit the wall at his blind spot, out of his line of sight, my palm pressed flat against my chest like I could hold my heart in place. Breath after breath, my chest rising and falling too fast for me to keep up with it.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, like how Jina did when her anxiety took her over. Counting worked. My pulse finally slowed to normal. But when I took a peek out at him, he was nowhere in sight.

He hadn’t come toward the lower deck. I would have seen him. I checked the upper deck by the wheel. Empty too. No sound, no Theron under the moonlight. Just a crew member steering the wheel, the creak of the hull, and the wind pulling at my hair.

Where had he gone?

I inhaled a deep, cool breath and turned to head below. That was when something dark crossed the scatter of stars, blotting them out as it passed. Too large for a bird, wings beating slow and heavy against the night.

I went still.

Theron? No—it couldn’t be. The carving in the mountain had shown every winged person stripped of their wings. Unless the queen had spared some. Unless some of them still served her.

Then the memory surfaced. Theron’s voice, hoarse and defeated, as he spoke to his mother. I don’t know where to look for our people.

And Nira’s answer, soft as a prayer. In the sky, son. Where else?

My stomach dropped.

There was more, wasn’t there? A detail about a sister, a fragment of what Nira had said in my fevered blur. I wanted to ask him if what I’d heard was correct. If so, I wanted to know her name, what had happened to her, whether he’d demanded answers from Prince Pierre about his sister’s whereabouts, or what he’d done to her. But some things weren’t mine to ask. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Was the creature with wings I’d seen once before the same one? Did Theron already know it was out there? Maybe it was Selene, the one who came and went and never talked to anyone.

I shook my head, hard, like that might dislodge the thought. I was exhausted, half-convinced I was imagining things that weren’t there.

Go to sleep. Stop thinking.

But I already knew I wouldn’t do either. Not until I knew exactly what, or who, was flying over this ship. Just as I headed to Jina and Minha, a shape dropped quietly onto the upper deck, somewhere in the darkness behind me. Not one, but two.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The children spilled out onto the deck as dawn broke through, the air sharp with the smell of eggs and ham cooking below. They chased each other between coils of rope and barrels, their laughter echoing across the ship.

In the crow’s nest high above, Ranis was deep in conversation with Jimin, the two of them pointing out at something on the horizon I couldn’t yet see.

Hellena and the elders, still unsteady from the rocking through the night, stayed close to the edge, hands gripping the rail, eyes fixed on the sea like that alone might settle their stomachs.

The children pressed in close around me, restless and curious, when Theron’s voice cut across the deck.

“Whale! Dolphins!”

Jina grabbed my arm with one hand and Minha’s with the other, dragging us both toward the side of the ship.

Nam drew these animals on the dirt with the stick back in the cavern, telling us stories of creatures that lived in the sea and never meant anyone harm. I never believed her. Not until now.

The whale broke the surface first, a great dark shape rolling up out of the water, unhurried, mist sheeting off its back before it slipped under again, barely a ripple to mark where something so massive had been.

A whole pod of sleek and gray dolphins, leaped in arcs alongside the ship, chattering in clicks and whistles that almost sounded like laughter. They kept pace with us for a long while, diving and surfacing, never once seeming afraid of us.

“Just like Nam said.” Jina’s eyes were wet. “She always said they were gentle.”

Something about watching them—so large and unbothered, so at peace in a world that had never been peaceful for any of us—settled warm in my chest.