Page 96 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

Jina looked between them, then at me. She said nothing but I saw the wanting she swallowed down.

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Someone has to stay and make sure Fraya doesn’t do anything reckless.”

“Excuse me.” Fraya snorted. “I think it’s the other way around, right princess?” She winked.

Jina almost smiled as she handed her stone to Theron.

The Priestess lifted the four small cups she’d already prepared and set one in front of each of us. The liquid was pale and thin, almost colorless. It smelled of lavender and something bitter at the same time.

“Drink,” she said.

I looked at the cup. Then at Theron. He met my gaze and gave the smallest nod. I brought it to my lips and drank.

The lavender hit first—almost comforting. Then the bitterness spread through my chest like warm water finding every corner. The cups landed with a thud around the table.

The Priestess disappeared behind the bed, and returned with four folded blankets, laying them on the floor in a circle pattern.

“Lie down,” she said. “Heads toward the center.”

I took the blanket closest to me, Theron to my left, Ranis across, Minha to my right. We lay back, heads pointing inward like the spokes of a wheel, the stone floor cool through the thin blanket beneath me.

“Put the stone in your left hand.” The Priestess moved around the circle, checking each of us. “When you cross, it goes with you. Don’t let go of it. So does anything you take with you. Now take the left hand of the person to the right of you.”

Theron’s warm and steady hand closed around mine. My fingers found Minha’s hand and the stone, gripping tight.

“Do not break the chain,” the Priestess said. “And when you’re on the other side, no matter what you see, no matter what you hear, stay together. You might be tested. You might forget who you are and why you’ve come. No matter what, stand your ground.”

She looked at each of us in turn as she circled around us. “I can speak to you from here. But you will not be able to speak back to me.”

My eyelids grew heavy. Too heavy to fight.

“Don’t let your thoughts wander,” Theron murmured beside me, his voice low enough for only me to hear. “Don’t go dreaming about what I did to you the other night.”

Gods. Even now.

“Shut up, Theron,” I managed.

I felt more than heard him laugh, a low rumble through the hand still holding mine.

The ceiling blurred. Minha’s grip held fast on my other side. Theron’s hand tightened around mine, then as the dark pulled us deeper, their holds begin to loosen, fingers going slack, not from letting go but from the same current dragging us all under at once.

The Priestess’s calm voice reached me one last time. “Let the stones guide the way.”

Then the dark took me.

My feet hit solid ground before my eyes adjusted not to darkness, but twilight. No moon, nor stars. Not even clouds. Just an endless gray, stretching in every direction.

I stumbled forward and my foot connected with something that skittered across the pebbles with a hollow clatter. A skull stared back at me. I yelped and lurched backward, nearly colliding with Theron. I grabbed his arm for balance, then let go.

I slipped my free hand into my pocket. The stone warm against my fingers hummed. Good. My other hand dropped to my waist, the dagger still sheathed and solid against my hip, next to the bottle Nam’s sister, Sable, had given me, and the pearls I had taken from the cavern.

The thin fog moved across the ground in slow curling ribbons, sliding between our feet like something alive and curious. The trees, if they could be called that, rose on either side of the path like sentinels. Their trunks pale as bone, stripped of bark. The roots clawed up through the ground, sharp-edged and grasping. The branches twisted upward and outward into long jagged points, each one fine enough to pierce, angled like they were waiting for someone to fall into them.

In the distance, through the fog, the gate. Black iron, tall enough the top vanished into the gray, its shape barely visible through the darkness from the fog.

Enter the gate.

The Priestess’s voice echoed somewhere inside my mind. So it must mean the others heard her too. She’d said she could speak to us. I hadn’t fully understood what that meant until now, finding me across whatever distance separated the living from the dead.