For one heartbeat, he looked like a child listening to a seashell for the first time, expecting to hear the ocean’s secret, expecting wonder.
Then his brow furrowed.
He shifted it. Pressed it tighter. Turned it slightly.
Nothing.
His eyes narrowed.
He pulled it away and stared at it, confusion sharpening into disbelief. He ran his thumb along the crack.
And then his face changed.
Anger rose up in him like a storm—sudden, violent, ugly.
“It’s cracked,” he said, voice low.
My stomach sank even though I’d known. This was the part that I didn’t know how it ended.
He looked at me, eyes bright with fury. “What did you do?”
I opened my mouth—
But Dilly stepped forward first.
It was a small movement, but brave. Her shoulders were squared, rain darkening her scarf. Her freckles looked like bruises.
“She didn’t do anything,” Dilly said. Her voice trembled, but she didn’t back down. “Not like you mean.”
Edmonds’s gaze snapped to her. “Who are you?”
“The person who paid attention,” Dilly shot back. “The person who listened to the pieces you ignored because you were too busy wanting the ending.”
Seas, I was so proud of her. She stood there strong and sure of herself in a way that would have made even Val tear up with pride.
Edmonds’s nostrils flared.
Dilly lifted her chin. “When the Atlanteans bound the Leviathan and created the conch, they weren’t just making a tool. They were making a choice.”
Edmonds’s grip tightened on the shell.
Dilly continued, words tumbling faster now as if fear had finally found a direction. “A conch like that isn’t just a weapon. It’s knowledge. Power. A call. A command. But if you could use it to destroy the Leviathan, then—then you’d have to lose the ability to use it for anything else.”
Edmonds stared at her like she’d spoken blasphemy.
Dilly spread her hands. “It makes sense. Atlantis didn’t chain the monster because they liked having it chained. They chained it because it couldn’t be killed. And if they built a conch to end it, they’d build it so whoever held it had to choose: destroy the Leviathan… or keep the power.”
My throat tightened.
Because I remembered the moment on the deck—the song in my bones, the Leviathan rising, the sea screaming, Inu’s body between me and death.
And I remembered what I had chosen without even thinking.
Not knowledge.
Not power.
An ending.
