Chapter Seven
The lock turned. Ranis stood in the doorway, face unreadable, a thin line of light from the passage catching his green eyes and lighting them like gemstones on the Jeju queen’s crown.
“I’m so—” Ranis began.
I cut him off with a sharp look as Jina and I walked out. I didn’t care if he felt guilty for how the captain treated us. What could he have done anyway? He’d have been punished just the same.
Ranis directed us back to the workroom. Of course. Where else would we go? What else would we do?
On the table, a pile of oysters and two bowls of porridge sat waiting. Cold likely. Jina sniffed at it, grimaced. Neither of us touched it. The cup of water coated with white deemed unsafe to drink.
Ranis crossed his arms and leaned against the wall in the same spot he’d occupied the day before. “You should eat, or drink at least to keep hydrated.”
“When did you start caring about our well-being,” I snapped.
I got to work in silence and shut down all conversation with Ranis. My stomach grumbled from hunger, but I dismissed it and pushed through. I’d gone days without eating when Agusto punished me for speaking out of line. So this was nothing in comparison.
Time passed. The door opened without warning.
Captain Russo filled the frame, two of his men behind him, each carrying an empty bucket. When his eyes went straight to the pearl pile, he crossed the room in three strides, snarling.
“This.” He picked up a single pearl between two fingers. “This is what you produced?”
“The shells are sick,” I said, the boldness in my tone steady. “I’ve told you—”
He swept the pearl pile off the table, scattering across the floor like rain. Jina flinched beside me.
“You’re Seaborn.” Russo’s nostrils flared. “You don’t need quality shells. You need to do what you were made to do.”
“We don’t know how,” I said. “I’ve told you that before.”
He moved so fast. One moment he was at the table, the next his hand connected with Jina’s face, and she hit the wall hard, the back of her head slamming against the wood. She crumpled, sliding down to the floor, one hand pressed to her skull.
“No!” Anger ignited.
My hand found my dagger and I held it out, the tip leveled at Russo before I’d finished the thought. Find the hinge. Press. Twist. I had opened a thousand shells. I could open him the same way.
Russo’s eyes grew wider. “You are out of your mind if you think you’re escaping.”
“And you’re out of your mind if you think I can’t.”
One of his men grabbed for my wrist. I twisted before he caught me and the blade caught him across his stomach.
He stumbled back clutching himself, staring at his wound. Blood dripped to the floor and then he screamed, a sound I had never heard a person make. He clawed at his stomach like he could reach inside and pull out whatever was burning him.
I stared at what I had done. No. What the blade made from shell had done.
I had known the oyster’s touch made them recoil as if burned.
But sliced into flesh, it was something else entirely that spread and consumed from the inside out.
The soldiers Mac had killed in the cavern came to mind. I had forgotten about them until now.
That half second of distraction was all Russo needed. His hand closed around my throat and the wall hit my back, his other hand crushing my wrist against the wood, the dagger still in my grip.
I gasped for air.
His nose was inches from mine, snarling. “What did you do to him, Seaborn? What’s that dagger made of?”
That word again.
“The same thing I’m going to do to you, but worse.”
He didn’t choke the life out of me, so I knew he wanted to keep me alive. To pry more pearls, of course. I didn’t know what he would do to me. But I had taken Agusto’s whip more times than I could count. Whatever Russo had in mind, I could handle it.
What I couldn’t handle was watching him hurt Jina again.
Russo tightened his grip, fingernails digging into my flesh. So hot and painful he could draw blood. Before he did, my fingers opened. The dagger dropped. Russo looked at it on the floor. Then at me.
I wasn’t about to let him see my blue blood if he dug harder. Being classified different from him was bad enough, mixing in the color of my blood wouldn’t be good.
“Ranis.” He didn’t raise his voice. “Take her dagger. Then throw them overboard.”
Ranis didn’t move. “Sir—”
“I said throw them.”
The bells rang, a deafening sound—frantic and urgent. Russo backed off me to cover his ears while I scrunched my shoulders and Jina curved into a ball.
Why did someone ring the bells?
Russo’s eyes moved to the ceiling. The ship lurched.
He looked at me once more, giving me a look that said this isn’t finished—then took the stairs three at a time, his men scrambling after him.
The screaming soldier lay dead on the floor, his skin blackened like a dying flame where I had sliced him, seeping like something poisoned from the inside out.
Ranis stood in the doorway, his mouth fell open. “Just… stay here.”
I rushed to Jina, helping her up. She groaned, one hand pressed to the back of her head. Her fingers came away with no blood. Good! I took her face in my hands, checking her eyes. Both focused.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure. Stay here. You’ll be safe.”
The bells continued to ring, somehow louder, and he ran off.
The ship lurched hard to the right. Jina and I grabbed the table, shells sliding, scattering.
The porridge bowls followed. Above us the deck continued to erupt.
Boots running, ropes snapping, Russo’s voice cutting through, orders lost in the roar of water and the groan of wood bending under pressure.
I picked up my dagger and said, “I change my mind. You’re not staying here. It’s our chance to escape.”
It was the craziest plan, but I’d rather die escaping than in the hands of that captain.
“What if the sea monster?” Jina swallowed.
“Sea monsters don’t exist.” I lurched, slamming into Jina against the wall. “Shit. Sorry.”
“We don’t know how to swim.”
I recalled what happened when we were tossed into the sea. Mac knew more than he shared.
“Yes, we do,” I said with conviction. “We were safe inside the water until the net came for us. The water is the only place we’re safe until we find land.”
I couldn’t think too much or I would stand down. I had to make a decision since Jina was always indecisive. Someone had to look out for us.
I grabbed her hand and rushed up the stairs. In the chaos, they had failed to lock the door to the mid-deck.
The ship banked hard and we caught each other. Water began to seep down the floor we just came from. The ship rocked violently from side to side. The wind found the ship all at once, pressing against the hull like something alive and furious.
“This way.” I led Jina toward the side, the area empty of the crew.
“Oclego!” a crew member shouted.
The word meant nothing to me but the terror behind it did.
I looked up at the sky. No clouds. No lightning. No rain. But the gale was cold and sharp. Not a storm for sure.
The ship lurched again, harder this time, not sideways but up, lifted from below, the hull groaning with the pressure of something underneath it.
I grabbed the railing and looked over the edge, Jina doing the same.
A wave crashed over the bow without warning, hitting and soaking us before we could brace.
I gasped from the shock of the impact and held on.
Something the size of the ship moved about the surface.
Chains clanked and reeled somewhere above, a mechanical grinding that shook the upper deck, and then a long spear shot from the bow with a sound like a crack of thunder, disappearing into the churning water below.
A beat of silence.
“We missed!” someone shouted.
“Again!” I heard Russo’s voice somewhere from the upper deck.
Something inside the wave rose. It came up slowly at first, the way a nightmare arrives, giving you just enough time to understand what you’re seeing before it’s too late to look away.
This had to be a dream. Because that creature couldn’t be real.
“There it is!” Someone shouted. “Fire the arrow!”
But it was real.
The oclego, one of the crew members had called it, was the size of the ship.
“Holy gods,” I murmured.
Eight arms spread from a body as wide as the hull, each one thick as a mast, the skin a deep bruised purple that shifted to black at the tips. Rows of pale suckers lined the underside of each arm, large enough to swallow a man whole.
Two dark sets of giant eyes set on me, ancient and utterly aware. One arm rose from the water and wrapped around the bow, the wood groaning and splintering beneath the grip, and the ship tilted hard to the left.
“The sea monster.” Jina’s voice was lost to the wind and the sound of chaos.
“It doesn’t want us. Don’t worry.” I didn’t know how I knew, but I did.
I grabbed Jina while holding on to the edge, finding the right moment to jump.
A second spear whooshed overhead, then a wet crack as it drove through the center of the arm wrapped around the bow.
A sound rose from beneath the water, older and deeper than a scream.
The arm convulsed, splintering the railing where it gripped—blue blood trailing into the water where the spear had pierced—then recoiled back into the water taking the spear with it.
The same blue as mine. I didn’t have time to think about what that meant. Perhaps nothing at all.
The ship swung hard in the opposite direction, and the sea came over the railing in a sheet, taking my feet out from under me. I went down hard on the slick deck, Jina’s hand keeping us connected. Water filled my mouth and I spit out as I stood upright.
“We’re jumping,” I said.
I had no idea if this was the right decision. The ocean was dark and the oclego was somewhere beneath the surface. I had no plan beyond the next ten seconds, but Jina and I couldn’t stay here.
Whatever waited in that water was at least a choice I was making. Russo was not a choice. The empty oyster shells, the cold porridge, and his hand at my throat—none of that had ever been a choice.
This was.
I pulled Jina toward the railing. Before I got the chance to throw us both over, arms wrapped around me from behind and wrenched me back, along with Jina. I fought with everything I had, but there were two of them. The deck was tilting and my footing gave way beneath me.
I wrenched my dagger free, only for the man holding me to knock it from my hand. No!
“You don’t throw yourself overboard. You do it on my terms.” Russo’s words were the last thing I heard before his fist connected hard with the side of my face.
The pain reeled through me before darkness took me under.