“You picked the wrong ship,” she snarled.
In one fluid motion, she drew the long, wickedly barbed harpoon we kept lashed near the bow—a relic from another hunt, forged from dragon tree sap-hardened steel and tempered against a sea wraith’s bone. She planted her feet against the ruined rail and, using the last tilt of the ship for momentum, drove the harpoon up with every ounce of strength in her body.
The point sank into the glowing scar.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then the world broke.
The Leviathan screamed. It was a sound beyond pain, beyond rage—a tearing, world-ending cry that made the sky itself seem to flinch. The glow along its body flared blindingly bright, then shattered—literally, the light breaking into shards that spun away like falling stars before winking out.
The shell in Rose’s hands cracked.
She gasped as a line split down its side, light pouring from the wound. Sebastian Jr. scrambled away with an indignant squeal, launching himself to the safety of Rose’s shoulder.
The song cut off mid-syllable.
The binding, the shell had called it. The thing Atlanteans had woven into the Leviathan’s flesh to chain it.
Val had just ripped it open.
The Leviathan convulsed. Blood—dark, thick, almost black—gushed from around the harpoon buried in its jaw. It thrashed, slamming into the Wraith. The impact sent us airborne for a breath before gravity reasserted itself. Men and women were thrown like ragdolls. The already-damaged hull screamed.
Val lost her footing.
“Val!” Rose and I shouted together.
She clung to the harpoon embedded in the Leviathan, but the creature’s violent motion tore the weapon—and her—away from the ship.
She fell with it.
For a heartbeat, I saw her suspended against the dark sky and darker sea, hair whipping, eyes wide but not afraid. She wrapped her arms tighter around the haft of the harpoon, refusing to let go even as she and the dying Leviathan plunged together into the churning water.
Then the waves swallowed them both.
“Val!” Kit’s scream sliced through me. He broke free of Emille’s grip and lunged toward the rail, but the ship pitched hard, sending him sprawling again.
The Leviathan rolled in the water, massive body bucking and twisting. The light along its scars guttered and went out. Slowly, impossibly, the great bulk began to sink.
We’d done it.
We’d killed it.
The cost hit me like a fist. Inu is gone in a single bite. Val dragged beneath the waves with her killing blow still buried in the beast. Koinu somewhere below, Morwenna bleeding fromthe nose, Oscar shaking at the helm, Kit keening like his heart had been ripped from his chest.
Val. Fuck, Val.
She’d been there with me since that first trip to the Glass Sea when we made our fortune and made a name for the Sea Wraith. She’d never wavered in her loyalty. In many ways, she was my greatest friend. Now she lay at the bottom of the sea.
Even in this grief that clenched my heart until I was sure I would die, I knew she’d finally found it. Something worth leading for, something worth dying for. She loved Kit, and it was that love that led her to choose herself over him.
Rose swayed in my arms, the cracked shell smoking faintly.
“It’s done,” she whispered. Her voice sounded wrong. Empty. “The shell says it’s… quiet now. The deep. It feels… quieter.”
“Is that good?” I asked roughly.
“I don’t know.” Tears tracked down her cheeks, carving clean lines through the salt and grime. “It feels like a grave.”
