Chapter 53
LAVENIA
Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I knew I had to do as Smokkar said. If I didn’t confront Estri, her daughters would die. Without water, their gasping sounds filled the silence and tugged on each raw nerve in my mind. My leg still dangled into the hole while water rushed down over my thigh, and I did my best to stay put. If I stopped fighting against it, the current would drag me down with ease.
“Go on, Lavenia. There’s no sense in fighting it,” Smokkar drawled. His pale body appeared godlike—and with a deep sense of dread, I realized he nearly was. With long, glowing hair and lean muscles, he could have been Aonara’s child. But it was another who had birthed him. Estri was a goddess with unimaginable power, and I was about to face her wrath.
Despite selfishly planning my own escape, I’d ended up trying to save Mairin instead, and this was where it had gotten me. But did I regret it? Perhaps I deserved more from those around me, but I could not change the fundamental part of me that cared. I didn’t need to be useful to feel needed as I’d once thought; I behaved as I did for me .
Because I cared so deeply for others and wanted to make their lives easier. Who was I if I didn’t adhere to my morals? During my time here, I’d been considering changing that aspect of myself. I could have forgotten Vesta or my brother—everything but my own needs. But that wasn’t right either. I prided myself on my loyalty and care for others.
Yet I didn’t hold myself to that same standard—putting myself after everyone else. And it had only been to my detriment.
I couldn’t think of that while I mulled over my decision. No matter what happened next, no matter what Estri would do to me, I couldn’t sacrifice the ideals which had formed me as a person.
I would face Estri to save the dying seaborn around me. I would face Estri to protect Mairin. Not because I missed her or because she deserved me; because it was right .
Swallowing hard, I nodded. The sting in my nose was my only sign of fear, and I promptly dismissed it with a sniffle. If I met my end today, I would do it with my head held high. There would be dignity in it.
But what if she offered me a choice? What if Estri sought to take my dignity by making me her bed servant? Would my pride be worth my life?
It was almost worse to think she’d offer me options. If I died to help Mairin, then so be it. Though I doubted the merrow and everything the two of us had shared, I didn’t doubt my character. I was reliable in my honor and would not forsake it. But if the goddess made me choose between death and serving Estri? It would be a difficult decision. I might have told Mairin in the beginning that I’d fuck her mother to get what I wanted, but the words echoed hollow in my ears now.
Regardless, I had a choice: face the Sea Queen with composure, or allow her to drag me before her for judgment.
My eyes met Smokkar’s icy blue ones. His throat bobbed, and he nodded. Despite what he’d tried to do, harming me to force Mairin into action, in one thing we were united. The Sea Queen was unmatched in power aside from the gods who no longer walked our lands. She was certainly angry with me for leaving my chambers, for finding out she was a goddess, for denying her; I would be lucky if my death was swift.
I stopped fighting against the water.
Slipping through the stone hole, the water’s force made my hips glide through with ease. I fell for a moment before landing in the water below me. My hand clenched Rhia’s comb tightly, pressing the sharp tines into my skin. It hurt, but the sting was an anchor to my racing thoughts.
“My jewel,” Estri murmured as I sank toward the scattered pieces of shipwreck below. She was in her merrow form—or so I assumed. The Sea Queen had mentioned it before, but I’d never seen it. Her tail was nearly black, its opalescent gleam barely visible by the moonpearls’ light, and it was far longer than any of the other merrow’s tails. Like a serpent, it wound in a circle beneath her, carefully moving over the sharpened planks of wood and discarded treasure littering the ground. Her sharply angled face was contorted into a frown, and her eyes were covered by the black protective membrane. Estri appeared fearsome, and my skin prickled despite my comfortable temperature.
“Please do not call me that,” I said, attempting to match her stern tone. I was still a guest in her realm, and though I hadn’t been expressly forbidden to leave my chambers, it had been implied. There had been a guard who stood at my door, after all, but perhaps I could feign ignorance.
“Why are you out so late?” she asked, and her head tilted unnaturally to the side. The worst part about her eyes was that they never seemed to blink. There was no need, so I could only stare at their dark gleam and hope for mercy.
“Where is Mairin?”
“You braved the waters alone to find the woman who betrayed you?”
“Yes.”
“The woman who turned you over to me in exchange for her pendant?”
“I am aware of what she did.”
I could feel the water shift around me, Estri’s influence on it dragging me closer. Though parts of my dress had torn off during my struggle against her current, it was mostly intact as it swirled around me. I could feel the water caress my thighs, my stomach, my ass, and I flinched at Estri’s divine assault. The current tugged at my dress, and with a detached horror, I knew my time was up. I would have to take a stand, and worse things than death might await me. When the water started to feel colder near my breasts, I crossed my arms.
Vile, the Sea Queen clearly did not intend to treat me with dignity. She watched me with a predator’s gaze, using her power to bring my body level with hers. I refused to avert my eyes.
“You forgive her,” she said.
“I made no such claim.”
“But you wanted to help her.”
“Yes.” In the end, that was what I’d intended. Did it matter if I’d started out planning to use her guilt to my advantage?
Estri reached a long, pale limb towards me. When her fingertip lifted my chin, forcing me to look down my nose at her, I wasn’t surprised by her skin’s texture. Rough, it was like that of a shark. I wondered what advantage it offered such creatures. Impenetrability? Speed? It didn’t matter. Estri smiled, and I felt as if a shark’s maw would have been preferable.
“This is why I need you here, my treasure.”
“To trap me like the rest of them?” I snapped.
At this, her bony fingers clenched around my wrist and dragged me closer. If we were above water, I would have felt her breath on my lips, but now, I could feel the smallest of bubbles escaping as she spoke.
“Iemis allowed his children freedom, and what happened to them?” Her voice shook as she spoke, dipping low and quiet. “The Myriad slaughtered the forestborn.”
“It was more defeat than slaughter, was it not?”
“The Myriad schemed and manipulated their loss in the Great War. It is slaughter if those responsible were coerced into their beliefs by power hungry zealots,” she snapped. “The forestborn are dead because Iemis could not protect them.”
I could only stare at her. Emma and Rainier had known the Myriad masters in Astana were up to something, but that had only been a select few. Hadn’t it? Could what Estri said be true? Could the Myriad have orchestrated what happened during the Great War?
Those who survived were the ones who passed on their stories. But those who didn’t? Were they left to be forgotten? Had we only seen the forestborn’s eradication as a consequence of their own involvement because of the Myriad’s vile influence?
“What would you have me do? Would you allow my seaborn to roam and meet the same fate? If I keep them here, I can protect them,” she said, sounding far more human than she ever had.
Still shocked by what she’d revealed, it didn’t change my feelings. “I understand that you’re scared. That you want to keep them safe. But what you do isn’t protection. It’s control. You control who can leave, who can learn about the rest of the world. You don’t even tell them the truth of it. The truth about you .”
Estri bared those fearsome teeth at me, and her skeletal hand wrapped around my throat. I was certain the light of the moonpearls through the window flared with her rage.
The surrounding water began to heat. Shimmering and swirling around us, her touch grew searing, and I thought she was going to kill me. I silently screamed as the water started to boil around us. I was certain my skin was going to slough free from my body as her grip on me tightened.
“Stop!” I shouted, though I wasn’t sure if any sound came from me. Screwing my eyes shut against the pain, I grew queasy. I was about to vomit, nausea bubbling up my throat, when everything stopped.
The pain, the sound, the water.
I opened my eyes, and we were no longer in the spire. The water felt lighter here, almost as if I wasn’t weighed down by so much pressure. And it was warmer. At first, I thought it might have been because of my heated skin, but the pain was gone—as if that torment had never happened.
“Look,” Estri said, using her grip on my neck to adjust my line of sight. Behind and above her, there was only open water, but when she turned me, I grew confused. We were deep below the surface, but pouring out from a cave within a tall cliffside was a torrent of water. Rushing downward to the seabed, it resembled a waterfall, and I couldn’t fathom how it existed.
“How?” I whispered, awestruck.
“The waterfall is far colder, so it sinks to the bottom. It’s from a deep well just below the surface. Do you feel it?” she asked, and I frowned.
“Feel what?”
“Your power?” she hissed.
It wasn’t until she drew attention to it did I feel it. Warm and light and bubbly, my divinity had returned—in excess. I wasn’t sure what good it would do; it wasn’t as if I could compel a goddess.
“Do you know where we are, Princess?”
“No.”
The black film over Estri’s eyes lifted, and she looked down toward my chest. Toward my pounding heart. She gave a faint smile, almost sad, before she looked me in the eyes once more. “Off the coast of Lamera. Tell me why you feel your divinity so profoundly, treasure.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Tell me,” she demanded, deadly soft. Her sharpened teeth caught her lip and broke the skin. “You cannot be more tender-hearted than you are intelligent. You will not survive.”
“The font?” I guessed, wondering how it was possible. Was there an underwater spring connected to that divine blessing? Was this how the seaborn had their power?
“Aonara gains her power from the sun and Ciarden from the blackest night. Hanwen’s power comes from war and vengeance. But mine? It comes from the water. I am strongest within its embrace. How can I protect them if I let them leave?”
“But that isn’t fair,” I said. “You have to give them a choice.”
“Why?” she asked, and I was surprised to see genuine curiosity lift her brows and soften her features. “I do not wish to be a tyrant, but there is no other choice. Without my seaborn, I will cease to exist. I have seen what happens to a god if they become worthless. I will not allow myself to suffer that fate.”
Foreign fury crept over my flesh, and I grabbed her arm. “If what you say is true, why didn’t you stop the Myriad? Why did you allow the forestborn to be slaughtered?”
“That battle belonged to the antler god, not me. It is not my fault he was in no position to fight.”
“So you only act if it affects you,” I spat. “And even then, you would force your people to live a half-life, bound to you and the sea? To protect your power?”
Her grip on me tightened painfully, but her face remained eerily still. “If I could permanently bind them to their seaborn forms, I would. To protect them.”
“It is not protection!” I shouted, knowing that the words I spoke might be my last. To defy the gods was suicide, and yet I could not stop the words pouring out of me. “The sea might be endless, but it is a prison of your making if you force them to stay. You say you do not wish to be a tyrant, but you are worse.”
“That is quite enough,” Estri said, her voice changing as her face appeared to shift. The angles of her cheekbones grew sharper, her chin leaner, and I couldn’t move as the black scales of her tail creeped up her torso. She spun me in her arms, holding a strong arm around my waist, while the sharp-tipped claws of her other hand traced the line she’d torn in my throat. Dipping her mouth close to my ear, she whispered, “You intrigue me, treasure. You are this indignant over people you do not know. I don’t understand it, and yet I covet your passion.”
“I respect that you want to protect them,” I bit out through gritted teeth. “But if they hate it, I don’t think it’s fair to keep them here.” I could feel her scales against my back, and I was afraid of what she was turning into. I’d already seen one of her monstrous forms the day she plucked Hy?e out of the sky. It would not be a shock if she turned into a vast sea serpent and swallowed me whole.
“They will stay either way, but I’ve begun to see the benefits of having their cooperation. My people have taken a liking to you.”
“I don’t know how. You’ve kept me locked away from them.”
“I admit it isn’t a vast number, but the impact you’ve made has been on those of influence. Smokkar, Mairin, Foxglove? Even Old Telemern risked his life for you.” There was something unsettling about her tone. Though she clearly held my life in her hands, and she was not pleased with me, Estri seemed to view me as a curiosity. I intrigued her, and that was why I was still alive. I had to use that to my advantage.
“And you want to use that favor, don’t you?” I asked. Her fingertip idly played with the broken skin on my neck, and I tried to steady my frantic breathing.
“I do not enjoy punishing them,” she said, and I swallowed the sound which bubbled up my throat. How could she say that after what she’d done to Foxglove? To her daughters? “And you’ve made them curious about the land. That must stop, and you’re going to help.”
I didn’t bother asking why I should. The answer was obvious. If I wished to live, I would do as she said. But at what cost?
“How?” I questioned.
“You’ll demonstrate your preference for the sea. For me .”
I took a steadying breath, all too aware of how strange this all was. The fact I could breathe underwater, speak underwater, was not even the strangest or most distressing aspect of my life at the moment. “Do you think your people are so impressionable that what I say will be enough?”
“If you are convincing, yes.”
“I don’t know if I can?—”
“You can.”
At this, she waved her hand, spinning me toward the vast expanse of open ocean. Hundreds of fish in a stunning array of colors appeared—almost out of nowhere. Multiple schools merged and twined and created a stunning scene. Almost like a painting, but so realistic that only a goddess could have made it, the fish formed a horrifying image.
Mairin, with her plump stomach and fiery hair, laid bound on the ground. I couldn’t tell where they were, but her curls floated above her. The tiny body of a seahorse laid beside her. Where the fish adjusted faintly to account for Mairin’s breathing, I could not tell if Foxglove was alive.
Estri’s message was clear. If I didn’t convince the seaborn and turn their attention away from the land, she would kill the merrow and the shifter.
With a sudden and damning certainty, I knew what I needed to do. My lips parted, and hope fluttered in my chest. I did my best to tamp it down.
“Turn me then. Use the abilities you attempted to hide from me all along.”
The Sea Queen spun me to face her, and for the first time, I saw emotion flicker across her features instead of amused detachment. Pleasant surprise turned her fearsome features into something of horrifying beauty.
“Make me one of your seaborn,” I said, and dread made a permanent home in my abdomen.