It knew I carried what it wanted.
And it would not stop until either I returned to it—
—or the sea claimed me for good.
Chapter forty
The Cost
Bash
Among sailors it is said that the sea keeps the dead, but the living pay the tithe. Loss is a current without mercy, dragging even the strongest hearts toward darker waters.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
She was alive.
Impossibly, beautifully alive.
Dilly kneeled before us as Rose fought to catch her breath, clutching a large bioluminescent shell to her.
“You did it!” Dilly practically shrieked.
Rose snorted.
“Yeah, and it almost killed me. Do you want it?” she asked.
Everything about Dilly, from her posture to the light shining in her eyes, said that she had never wanted anything more than to hold that shell, but she shook her head.
“Only you should touch it,” she said.
Something crept out of the shell slowly, as if unsure of itself. I don’t know what I expected from an ancient artifact, but a crab that appeared half-traumatized and half-angered was not it.
It reached out and snipped its claw at Rose’s soaked-through shirt.
Unsurprised, Rose laughed.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re pissed at me,” she said. “This is Sebastian Jr. He’s very grumpy, just like you.”
Dilly blurted out in a roar of laughter that seemed out of place as my broken ship attempted to speed out of these waters at Val and Oscar’s orders.
A roar that would haunt my dreams sounded in front of us, and I stilled.
“It won’t stop,” Rose said. “We either kill it or die.”
“Morwenna said–” Dilly began.
“Do not quote what you do not understand.” Morwenna snapped. “You have what you did not have before. If you want to kill it, then all you need to do is ask.”
“Except every time she listens, she will want to listen more, and my guess is the reason we are still alive is that she’s already listened once,” Dilly said with more bite than she usually had.
“It’s fine,” Rose said. “I’d rather go insane than watch you all die.”
“Rosamund,” I chastised.
Ignoring me, she lifted the hole of the shell to her eyes where the creature watched her with unveiled contempt.
“See, that’s who you were named after. Two peas in a pod.”
