The Wraith groaned. Whatever temporary reprieve we’d earned, the sea still wanted our ship. Water surged from the midships hatch. The deck canted alarmingly to port.
“Pumps!” I shouted. “Patch what you can! Move!”
The crew sprang into action, running on habit and adrenaline and a desperate refusal to die now, not after all that. Emille dragged Kit bodily away from the rail, clamping him against his chest as the boy thrashed and sobbed.
“She’s gone!” Kit wailed. “She saved me! She—she—”
“I know,” Emille said hoarsely. “I know, lad. Breathe.”
Oscar stumbled down from the helm, eyes red, face hollow. He looked like a man who’d been emptied from the inside.
“Inu…” he rasped.
Rose stepped out of my arms and went to him, reaching for his hand.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
He stared at her for a long, terrible moment. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d pull away, find someone to blame harder than the sea. But this was Oscar. He’d always known we sailed on borrowed time.
He reached for Rose and buried his face into her neck, shoulders shaking.
Below us, the sea swallowed the last visible trace of the Leviathan. The surface was smoothed, unnaturally calm after such violence.
The Wraith floated, wounded but stubbornly alive.
For now.
I looked around at what remained of my crew. Fewer faces than there had been an hour ago. Too many wide eyes, too many shaking hands. The ghosts of two of the bravest among us are already settling into the spaces they’d left behind.
I thought of the epigraph Dilly had read aloud before Rosamund jumped into yet another doomed plan.
Among sailors, it is said that the sea keeps the dead, but the living pay the tithe.
The sea had claimed its due.
Now we had to find a way to live with what it had left us.
Chapter forty-one
On Deals and Devils
Rose
Atlantis did not fall in a day—it knelt.
When steel and sorcery failed to slay the Leviathan, the Atlanteans forged chains thicker than temple pillars and bound the beast to the ocean’s heart.
Not in triumph, but in surrender.
For even the greatest empire learns, too late, that some monsters cannot be killed—only endured.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
Such a small thing for such a high cost. I sat at Bash’s desk staring at the once bioluminescent shell with a beautiful song. Even though it had been mostly quiet days ago, I could still hear its whispers in my ears. I ran my finger over its crescent shape, and Sebastian Jr. crawled from beneath my hair where he liked to be these days.
Almost like he believed I was responsible for his shell’s demise, and so I was going to pay the price and be his new home. We’d tried several different shells, but none of them met his standards. We weren’t likely to find more mythical shells any time soon.
Sebastian Jr. crawled down from my shoulder and towards the broken shell. He stared at it mournfully. I understood his loss. He’d lost a home, but we–we lost so much more.
