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.
The ship stretched in both directions, with two tall masts rising into the sky, dark sails hanging loose. Ropes ran everywhere in patterns I couldn’t follow. The wood beneath my hands was rough and swollen with seawater, black in the grain.
Dozens of men lined the deck on both sides, their eyes tracking our every move. Some watched with open curiosity. Some with hunger. Some with a flat disinterest.
A face with dark, curly hair replaced my view. That satisfied gaze, the kind a predator gave prey after the capture, sent adrenaline surging through my blood. I jolted up and slammed back down.
Damn rope! I had forgotten about the rope.
Minha set her jaw, eyes sweeping the deck for anything she could use as a weapon. Jina had gone still and pale, her lips moving. She always counted when she was afraid.
I felt for my dagger and the pearls and sighed with relief.
“Look what I’ve caught.”
The same man looming over us was broad through the chest and shoulders, arms straining the fabric of his shirt, belly round and hard as a barrel.
A strip of worn leather covered his right eye.
When he grinned, the gap where a canine should have been made the smile worse, the remaining teeth dark with rot.
“We belong to the king.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “We’re his servants.”
A voluptuous woman with long red curls marched down the stairs from the upper deck. She swung sideways when the ship rocked hard, then approached me.
“You’re mine now.” She smirked. “And I do with you as I please.”
I loathed those words. We had just escaped one prison. I would burn this ship before I let someone put us in another. For now, I had to keep us safe, so I’d see how our time here played out.
“Mac betrayed us.” Jina shoulders slumped, her head lowering.
“I’m going to kill him.” Minha dug her nails into the wood.
The woman crouched to examine us. “You’re a fighter.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “I like that.” Then she peered up over her shoulder. “Brando, tell Kit to reel the net.”
“Will do, Captain Resse.” He cupped his mouth, tilted his head back, and bellowed, “Kit, reel the net!”
Resse rolled her eyes, groaning. “Go to him next time.” She narrowed her eyes at Minha. “Actually, I betrayed Mac. He paid me with pearls to rescue you.” She juggled a cloth sack in front of us, the contents clinking. “But he didn’t say I couldn’t sell you.”
Mac had no idea. Somewhere back in the castle, he believed he had saved us. And Nam too.
Brando chuckled, a sound caught between a snort and a gag.
My nostrils flared. Not if I could help it. But what did it mean to be sold? I had no experience from outside the cavern. Perhaps that was a good thing.
“Thank you,” Jina said, wiping her tears. “Perhaps you can help my sisters if I gave you some per—”
I covered Jina’s mouth. She must have hid some pearls in her pants too. Until I knew what the deal was with them, I would not spill our secrets.
Brando and Resse shared a glance and laughed. What was so funny?
Whatever passed between them, it didn’t look good for us.
“Kit! The net.” Resse hollered, stomping toward the stairs. “Now!”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” came a deep voice from the upper deck.
The net lifted and we jolted to our feet. I gripped the railing to keep from pitching over the side, Jina and Minha doing the same beside me.
“Don’t just cling to the boat.” Brando tossed us rags. “Clean the floor, then head to the kitchen and help the cook. You’ll earn your stay on this ship.”
Before we could lift a finger, a lean, shorter young man dropped from the upper deck, sliding down a rope with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times, and landed beside Brando without a sound.
“Looks like a rough ride to Juno.” He squinted at the horizon, reading something in the sky I couldn’t see.
“When isn’t it?” Brando smacked his back, humor in his voice.
Kit stumbled, whether from the ship or from Brando, but he didn’t care. His tender gaze settled on Jina. Jina’s eyes lifted to meet his, and for a moment she forgot to count.
“Snap out of it.” Brando’s tone turned sharp. “You don’t get to keep this one. But one night, yeah?” He winked at Kit, then turned to Minha. “And I just might take that one for myself.”
“Touch me and I’ll gut your fat belly like a fish.” Jina’s voice came out low and flat.
Brando snarled, the leather patch over his eye doing nothing to soften the ugliness of his twisted features.
Protectiveness shifted in Kit’s expression. He stepped forward, putting himself between Brando and Jina. “Don’t touch any of them.”
Brando studied him a beat, then glared and threw up his hands. “Get cleaning, Seaborns!” he barked, and walked away.
Seaborn. The word landed strange. An insult maybe? I didn’t ask. The less I engaged with Brando the better.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on our knees, dunking rags into buckets of seawater and wringing them out, scrubbing the deck in long strokes until our hands went raw. This was no better than prying the oysters.
When the deck satisfied Brando’s inspection, he let out a grunt and waved a hand, then sent us below to the kitchen, a low-ceilinged room that smelled of woodsmoke and grease, where a stout man with a gray beard handed us knives and pointed to potatoes and carrots.
Jina held her knife the wrong way. Minha nearly took off her own finger. I did no better. The cook corrected us each time, then went back to pulling mussels from the bucket.
The lobsters were another matter. None of us had ever seen one, nor cooked. The sound they made in the pots stopped us cold.
While the crew ate together on the deck, the three of us took our bowls and sat in the kitchen doorway, backs against the frame, looking out at the open water, watching the sun go down the horizon streaked with pink and purple.
I had never seen a sunset over the sea before. In the cavern, color had meant the pink of a rare pearl, the gray of stone, the dull brown of the guards’ uniforms. But nothing like this.
After dinner we washed the dishes the way we had learned everything else that day, by watching the cook first, then doing it ourselves.
When the last bowl was dried and stacked, he pointed to a small room by the kitchen, three thin blankets folded in a pile beside a table with a lantern burning low.
Jina spread one blanket on the floor. Minha dropped onto it and we took our places the way we always had in the cavern. Jina on one side, Minha on the other, me in the middle.
I stared at the low ceiling and listened to the ocean on the other side of the wood. The same sound I had fallen asleep to my entire life.
Jina sniffed. “Do you remember when we were little, we used to fight over who got to sleep next to Sis?”
Minha snorted. “I always won.”
“You grabbed her leg and wouldn’t let go.” Jina snickered, her hand covering her mouth.
“That’s called staking your claim.” Minha shrugged. “If you don’t fight for what you want, you don’t get it.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“You always watched out for us.” Jina snuggled closer. “We feel safe with you.”
“Not me.” Minha waved a hand. “I just wanted to win.”
We shared a small laugh. The silence that followed sat heavier than the one before.
“Do you think our sisters are… well?” Jina wiped her eyes.
She couldn’t say the word she meant. Neither could I.
“The king needs them.” I kept my voice steady. The reassurance was as much for me as it was for her. “Don’t worry yourself.”
Easier said than believed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Nam, Bora, Sohee, and all our sisters left behind in that cavern. The absence of them settled over me like a thick cloud.
I swore one day I would set them free. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. But I would if it was the last thing I did on this earth.
Minha’s body went rigid. “And if they’re not, I swear on the goddess of the sea, I’ll shove my dagger through the king’s throat.”
Nam had mentioned the goddess of the sea in her story.
Was there such a thing as gods? And if a goddess of the sea existed somewhere beneath all that dark water, where was she?
Why had she not freed us? Perhaps they were just a myth, a story of passing long forgotten. I let that thought sink back down.
We had gone from one prison to another. The cavern had bars and guards and Agusto’s whip.
This one had open water on all sides and a woman who intended to sell us.
I didn’t know what that meant, not really.
I had no frame for selling. That word belonged to the world outside the cavern.
But the way Resse had said it, told me enough.
The ship rocked steady and relentless beneath me like a slow breath. My eyes grew heavy. The events of the day pressed down: the cliff, the water, the net, the ship, the kitchen, all of it stacking one on top of the other until my body simply gave out.
At least Jina and Minha were beside me. Whatever came next, we would face it the same way we had faced everything else.
Together.