Page 94 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

I glanced at Jina, Minha, and Ranis. They all carried a stone. Minha carried two. So why me?

“We are all bearers,” I said carefully, “except for Fraya and Theron.”

The Priestess said nothing. Just waited.

I decided to do as she asked and placed the stone I’d been protecting on the table in front of her.

“We’ve come for answers,” I said. “We need help bringing the Seelie queen to surrender. To strip her of the magic she stole so she can never use it again.” I paused, gathering what I knew. “She killed the gods. All of them. Poisoned them, then used a dagger made from a seashell the earth god had forged to stop their hearts, where their powers were housed. I assume you already know this, so forgive me if I’ve said too much.”

The Priestess didn’t move. Didn’t blink. When she still said nothing, I took this opportunity to speak my mind.

“Why were Yeri and Calroy handled differently?” I asked. “The wall showed five gods turning on them. Not the Seelie queen.”

The Priestess drew a deep breath. “The queen wanted Caelum, the wealthiest of all the kingdoms. But to take it, she had to remove Calroy, its guardian. And removing Calroy meant removing Yeri too.” She folded her hands on the table. “Yeri would never have stood aside. She loved him. She would have fought beside him without hesitation. No other god could match them in battle. Not even five of them together.”

“I assume the dagger was too weak,” I said.

“No. Yeri and Calroy were the strongest of the seven. Had she driven that blade into either of their hearts, the power released would have been beyond anything she could contain. It would have destroyed the dagger and likely herself.” Her pale eyes moved around the table. “So she did what the powerful do when they cannot win. She corrupted what she couldn’t defeat. Turned the gods of fire, wind, earth, life, and the afterlife against them through bargain and manipulation until five stood against two.” She paused. “Gods cannot kill one another. But they can break each other.”

Theron’s knuckles went white on the table. “And once Calroy and Yeri were removed. Caelum had no one left to protect it.”

Theron thought I’d been asleep when he spoke to his mother. But I’d heard his father was poisoned, his crown stripped, everything taken from him before he ever had the chance to fight for it.

“Precisely.” The Priestess smiled somberly at him, the kind that said I know what you’ve been through.

The fire burned low in the hearth.

“The god of the afterlife sent Calroy and Yeri back into mortal life, right?” Minha asked.

“Yes. Stripped of power, stripped of memory, placed back among the people they had once protected. The queen believed the two were dead. She didn’t know what the god of afterlife had done. The god of afterlife thought two gods with no power and no memory of themselves were no threat to anyone.”

“He was wrong.” Minha smirked.

I stared at the stone on the table. The five gods who died in the cavern, their power bleeding into the water, into the calcium, hardening into pure stones. And Yeri and Calroy walking somewhere in the world. Mortal. Unknowing. Separated for who knew how long.

My chest pulled tight.

“The queen knows they were reborn now,” The Priestess continued. “She has been searching. She knows they carry no memory, no power. But she also knows that love has its own memory, and if they found each other…” Her pale eyes settled on mine. “That terrifies her more than anything the dagger could have done.”

Theron went rigid beside me. “Because when they do, they will take her down.”

The priestess nodded. “And the rightful ruler will take the throne.”

Theron dipped his head in reverence as his answer, then he stiffened as if he’d been caught. No one at the table knew who he was. At least I didn’t think so. Fraya was harder to read. She never gave anything away.

“What can we do to help?” Fraya spoke for the first time since we arrived. “How do we find the reborn Calroy and Yeri?”

The Priestess looked at all of us in turn. “You must take the pure stones to the land of the dead to speak to the gods. There you’ll get your answer.”

“Land of the dead?” Ranis’s voice rose. “Like go to where people are waiting for judgment?”

“Exactly what I said.”

Ranis opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Ranis, you left a kingdom you believed had no place for you,” The Priestess said.

The color drained from his face.