Page 7 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

Chapter Three

The wind came strong, whipping my hair across my face as Mac led us through a passage that opened onto a ledge. Below, the ocean crashed against the base of the cliff, the sound I’d heard my entire life.

Minha dug her heels into the rocky ground. “Where are you taking us?”

“Keep moving.” Mac didn’t slow.

“You heard what they said.” Jina’s voice was barely above the wind. “See if we can swim.” She tapped my shoulder. “He’s going to throw us over. Isn’t he?”

“I’m not.” Mac looked at each of us in turn. “Nam trusted me with your lives. I intend to carry out her request. And I need you to trust me too, for your sake as much as mine.”

“Why should we?” Minha stepped forward. “You handed us to the king. You called us killers in front of the throne.”

“I kept you alive.” His voice sharpened. “There’s a difference. It was the only way, or we would be running for our lives.”

Out in the sunlight, Mac looked not much older than us. Sweat beaded on his forehead, despite the cool air. He had been distressed in the throne room. I supposed anyone would be, lying to the king’s face.

“Fine.” I crossed my arms. “But if you’re lying, I’ll finish what I started in the throne room before you stopped me from drawing my dagger.”

Mac held my gaze a beat longer, then headed toward the cliff. We followed.

“What are we doing here?” Minha swept her arm toward the horizon. “Waiting for a boat?”

Mac said nothing. He scanned the sky, the ocean, then us.

“You have to trust me.” He halted and placed his hands flat against Jina’s and Minha’s back. “Look down there.”

When they leaned forward, he shoved both at once, then me before I could pull back… before I could tell him exactly what I was going to do to him for his betrayal.

My world tilted and then the ocean swallowed me whole, driving the breath from my body on impact. I clawed for the surface, but my limbs had never learned how. None of us had.

I fought. Kicking and pushing my arms, I thought of Nam, her effort wasted on Mac. I should have known he would betray us.

The weight of the water pressed in from all sides. My lungs burned and I could no longer hold my breath. Peace moved through me like a gentle tide.

So this is how I end.

All my life the guards had said, see if they can swim, and I’d understood his words as a death sentence. No one came back from the water. I had believed it so completely that I never questioned whether drowning was the only possible outcome.

I surrendered, weightless as I floated upward. Then… air filled my lungs. Impossible and undeniable, moving in and out as naturally as it ever had above the surface. At the same moment fire streaked along my neck and chest, a burning that should have terrified me but instead felt like something waking up that had been asleep a very long time.

I opened my eyes. The water shifted from icy black to luminous. The world below the surface was dim and vast and nothing like the cavern I had stared at my whole life. I spun, searching, and found Jina and Minha, suspended in the water above me, their eyes wide and locked on mine with the same stunned disbelief.

You too, their faces said. You too.

I pressed a hand to my throat where the fire stopped burning. Whatever I was, I was not what I had always been told. Something older lived inside me, and it had just woken up. I didn’t know what yet, but I got the feeling I would find out.

The peace didn’t last long, a massive dark shape hovered above us, blotting out the fractured light like a storm cloud. I had no word for what it was, only that it was enormous, trailing ropes and kelp, and it was approaching us.

“Watch out!” My warning came too late.

An object slammed into us from above and the sea fell away. We were hauled upward, caught in a web of thick, knotted rope that bit into my skin. For one breathless second there was nothing but open air. Then I hit wood when the massive entrapment released us and knocked the air from my lungs.

I lay on my back with Jina and Minha, staring up at the sky, gasping and soaked, disoriented.

The wind hit my wet skin like a blade. I locked my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering. I only knew we were on a ship, swaying from side to side, a lullaby that could put me to sleep if I felt safe.

We helped each other to sit upright, our heads through the hole, but the rope still tangled around our bodies and we couldn’t get up.