Page 70 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“Sis.” Minha furrowed her brow, her finger coiling around my arm.

“Remember the arena and the boarox.” I held her stern gaze. “I’m going to do the same.”

Minha’s expression shifted, understanding replacing worry as she released her hold.

I moved one step at a time, pulse loud in my ears, each footfall feeling like it took a lifetime. The eel’s head lifted as I drew closer but didn’t swing away. It was listening. Waiting.

I pulled my dagger and drew the blade across my palm. The pain bit sharp but I pushed the thought away. What mattered was the blood, catching the light of the stream as it dripped onto the dirt. A few drops fell into the water at the eel’s head, and instead of clouding the surface, they dissolved into it, the same color, the same blue.

The eel went still.

Its head turned toward me, then lowered the whole impossible length of its body, sinking down into the depths, and stayed there.

Bowing.

My plan worked.

Behind me came the soft footsteps of the three people I trusted most in the world. We crossed a narrow bridge, nearly invisible from a distance, and passed behind the waterfall into another cavern, smaller than the one we’d left behind.

The rock had been carved—by a pick or something sharper—into figures worn soft by age, stretched across the wall. A woman with a fishtail for legs rested on a boulder, waves crashing below her. A man with no shirt, black wings spread wide from his back, reached a hand toward her from above. Beneath the carving were two names: Yeri and Calroy.

I didn’t know why my chest ached, my heart hollow. I didn’t know why some small, stupid part of me wanted to reach out and touch the wings. Touch him. Perhaps it was the torment etched onto his features, or the way his hand and hers seemed close enough to touch but never quite did.

“Look at this one,” Jina said, tracing the indent with a finger, Ranis beside her examining the same wall sculpting.

I followed where she pointed, and once I saw the first sketching, I couldn’t stop seeing the rest. The whole wall was a story, carved in sequence, the way Nam used to draw animals, flowers, and things we’d never seen, back at the cavern fire.

Seven figures stood evenly spaced, each cradling a different sea in their hands. I recognized Yeri at the center, her fishtail catching the carved current beneath her, and beside her, a man with wings spread wide.

The next panel showed only the kingdom of Caelum, its walls glittering with carved gems, its citizens winged. Barrels filled with gemstones of emerald, ruby, and sapphire.

Then the story turned.

A new figure entered. The Seelie queen I loathed with every fiber of my being. She bargained with the god of earth, and whatever she offered him, he gave her something in return, small enough to vanish in a closed fist. A blade, like the ones Minha made with an oyster shell.

The panel after that made my stomach drop. Five gods, their faces twisted into shapes that didn’t belong on anyone divine, turned on Yeri and Calroy—hands tearing at Yeri’s light, at Calroy’s wings—a violence the carving made unmistakable.

At last in that sequence, a figure, his face carved with sorrow, reaching toward Yeri and Calroy—not to hurt them, but to send them somewhere else as they fell.

“I think… the god of the afterlife sent the two gods away to be reborn,” Minha whispered. “He couldn’t just end them.”

“He still played a part in killing them,” I said.

The next panel was Caelum burning. Winged figures knelt, their wings struck from their backs. Many were bound, herded, marched toward the sea to drown.

Anger blazed through me.

The final panels showed gods seated at a long table in the cavern beyond this waterfall. The queen, smiling, poured a pale liquid into each cup. Then the etching showed the gods slumped, unconscious, the queen moving between them with the dagger the earth god had forged for her.

Each god’s chest was carved hollow where the shell’s calcium had taken root and stopped them cold. Then the queen, alone with the earth god—his hand against her face, his eyes admiring her—his own blade, turned back on him, driven into his chest by her hand.

The carving showed his power leaving him in jagged lines, flowing into the blade, then the blade dissolving into her open palm, as if it had never existed at all.

“That’s how,” I said, lowering my voice. “That’s where the Seelie queen’s power comes from. Not her blood. Not her crown. From him.”

“Him?” Jina’s brow furrowed, glancing between me and the carving.

“The god of earth.” Minha frowned. “He was tricked. Stupid male.”