Epilogue
I walked down to the sea alone at sunset, the water moving in and out around my ankles. I peered up at the cliff to my right, the same one where Minha, Jina, and I had been thrown into the water all those weeks ago, not knowing what we were, not knowing what waited for us below the surface.
How much had changed since then.
I missed Nam. Her hugs. Her stories. The sound of her voice in the dark telling us about gods who loved each other and found their way back.
She had known who I was from the very beginning and had loved me anyway—had chosen me, had stayed, had given everything she had to make sure I became what I was always meant to be.
I pressed my fist to my chest and held it there until the ache subsided. The grief of losing her would never go away. But I would rather carry it than not, because the weight of it meant she had been real, and I would never forget her.
I walked farther in. Knee-deep. Waist. Chest. The cold closed over my shoulders and I breathed in the sea the way I breathed air, the water opening around me like a welcome home.
My legs tingled, warmth spreading downward, scales rising iridescent as they covered my legs and bound them together into a tail, my shirt dissolving.
I dove in and swam with the dolphins we had seen from Theron’s ship, weaving through schools of fish that parted around me without fear, moving beside a whale that turned one ancient eye toward me and continued its way unbothered.
Then a large animal rose from the depths—eight arms spreading wide, enormous and pale, the size of a ship.
My muscles tightened. I remembered those arms that had wrapped around Russo’s hull, the sound of splintering wood, the terror in my soul.
But it didn’t come after me. It dipped its head and lowered all eight arms together. A bow.
The oclego made a low mournful sound that moved through the water like a song. I know you, it seemed to say.
I swam toward it and pressed my palm against its face. It closed its enormous eyes, then opened them again.
It hadn’t been trying to destroy Russo’s ship. It had been trying to reach me, the goddess of the sea, trapped on a ship with a man who had no right to her. The true monster had never been the creature in the water.
“Thank you, my friend.” I pressed my lips to its skin for a kiss, cool and smooth beneath my mouth. “For finding me before I knew I was lost.”
It nudged me gently with one tentacle and lifted me until I sat perched on top of its head. Then we moved together, gliding through the water, fast and effortless, the way flying must feel to Calroy when the wind was right and there was nothing between him and the sky.
Then it slowed, rose toward the surface, and delivered me gently onto a boulder at least a hundred feet from shore before it slipped back beneath the water and disappeared.
My tail caught the last of the sun, hair loose around my bare skin.
The underwater city lay below the boulder—Jina learning her queen’s role, Minha arguing with someone about fortifying the gates, and Yong with the surviving Seaborn settling the defenses and rebuilding homes for their people.
So much to do. But I wouldn’t intervene unless they needed my help.
They were capable. They always had been.
For now the sun was setting. The sea was still. And for one moment I let myself just breathe in the salt air and take a moment of peace.
I heard the wings before I saw them, the slow powerful beat of someone enormous descending, the air moving against my face, my hair lifting off my shoulders.
Then his shadow fell across the sea.
Calroy descended, wings spread wide against the last of the light, dark feathers catching the gold. He looked at me the way he had across the cavern wall carving in Mount Kael—two figures reaching toward each other, forever falling short.
Except this time, we weren’t carved in stone.
He reached out his hand.
I reached back.
Our fingers met—warm and real. Not almost. Not falling short. Just the way it was always meant to be.
He pulled me up to him, his wings folding around us both like walls against the world.
“I found you,” he said against my hair.
Not across lifetimes. Not through kingdoms or seas.
“You always do,” I said, my arms sliding around his neck, my tail re-forming into legs.
The first stars appeared above us. Then more. Until the sky was full of them, scattered thick and white the way they had been the night he gave me my name on the deck of his ship, a girl with no history and not yet knowing what I truly was.
He offered that sly smirk. “My Little Star. Let’s go home.”
To his pirate ship, where we would travel the world until duty called.