Page 101 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“You knew,” I said. “This entire time you knew who I was.”

“I have always known.” It straightened. “The god of the afterlife paid me with gemstones to guide you to one wish in this realm, to ensure you would recall who you are.” He opened his cloak apart. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“No. Oh, gods, no.” I covered my eyes. “For the love of gods, don’t show me—”

This pervert was going to flash me. Show me his… show me what? If he didn’t have a face, did he still have a body? I lowered my hands, laughing to myself. He didn’t want to show me his man or ghost hood, he carried gemstones.

Emeralds, sapphires, and rubies were hovering all over the dark hollowness of his chest.

“I was waiting for you, My Lady. Took you long enough.” The keeper was oblivious of my thoughts and actions.

My laughter faded as fast as it came. Because underneath the absurdity of gemstone-clad spirits and pervy jokes, something heavier took root.

I didn’t know what to say. This revelation, of me being Yeri, released something heavy I hadn’t known I was carrying. Somewhere between the absurdity and the weight of it all, a full belly laugh broke loose anyway, half joy, half disbelief.

If my memory served me right, Nam knew who I was. Nam, who had taught us the names of animals from drawings in the dirt, who had shown us how to endure. Who had told us stories of the gods by firelight in the cavern.

And The Priestess, who had looked at me the moment I walked through that grass like she’d been expecting me. Not the group. Not the stones. But me.

And Sable, the one the king had called a witch, hiding somewhere in a forest, had known too. Nam and her sister protected me all those years. They knew I would be reborn.

I pressed a hand to my own chest, half expecting to feel something different underneath—a second heartbeat, maybe, or the absence of the one I’d always known. But it was just me. Star, who had cracked oysters until her fingers bled. Star, who had buried a dagger in a man’s throat and cried after. Star, who didn’t know how to be anyone’s goddess, only how to survive as herself.

Yeri was supposed to be ancient. Powerful. Worth an entire war. But when I searched myself for her, I only found the girl I had always been—just with a much longer memory I hadn’t earned yet, and a name I hadn’t chosen.

Maybe that was the answer. Maybe I didn’t have to become someone else to be her. Maybe Yeri had always just been Star, waiting to get her memory back, waiting to believe in herself.

“My Lady, we’re here,” the keeper said.

Too caught up in my thoughts, I hadn’t realized I was moving.

The fog and the bone-white trees dissolved around us, replaced by a gentle waterfall catching what little light existed in this place, a garden spreading out beneath it, flowers in every color of gemstone.

Theron, Minha, and Ranis stood at the water’s edge, staring at me like I was the one who’d come back from the dead. Their expressions were different. Not the hollow look of people who’d been through hell, but more like a door had opened somewhere inside each of them.

Theron said nothing. Just watched me with those beautiful knowing blue eyes.

Ranis’s grin broke. “My Lady.” He dipped his head. “We know.”

“Just to be clear,” Minha added. “We know what you know.”

Then they dropped to one knee, heads bowed low. The gesture so unexpected it knocked the breath from me.

And Theron, tears cut silent tracks down his face. My mate. My love. How he had suffered, searching the seven kingdoms and seven seas, never given a date, never given a name, never given anything but a promise made by Palto, who had condemned us.

I couldn’t stop my own tears at the sight of him, at the memory of our final moments, experienced as if it had just happened. I ran and jumped into his arms.

The moment we collided, an invisible force wrapped around us both, warm and electric, threading through my body like gentle lightning finding its path. I felt it move from my fingertips to my chest, settling somewhere deep. From the way Theron went still, the sharp intake of breath, the tightening of his arms, he felt it too.

Powers coming back. Finding their way home.

“I found you.” His voice was rough against my hair. Then he pulled back just enough to look at my face, the way he had on the ship that first night, like he was memorizing every detail of me, and kissed me, like a promise kept across years.

He spun me once, my feet leaving the ground, and I laughed… laughed in the land of the dead despite myself.

Calroy put me down, raking his fingers through my hair, his eyes finding mine with a softness that melted my heart.

“I’m sorry you had to endure Russo.” His thumb brushed my cheek. “But I had to save Minha from Zenito, the pirate who took her. She could handle herself, but not a boat full of men. They would have tied her down and each man would have taken her.”