Distractedly, I drag strands of seaweed from my hair and shoulders.
I have killed a god and now I am one. I can’t say that I like it much. But this was never about what I liked.
I drag myself up onto the shore of Oke’s island breathless and gasping. This shift feels worse than the others, as if something is being ripped from me. I do not care that the jagged rocks bite my palms and cut my flesh.
I have abandoned the Resurgence before dawn. I don’t know what that means. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I know only that I am cold to the bone and not just because I shiver as I pull myself up the shore in the midst of a pounding rain, a triumphant laughing Vesuvius dragging himself with me. Has he been with me all along? It felt like I was hours in the sea, but perhaps it was mere moments. I blink at him in stunned silence.
“You did it, you ragged mortal wretch,” he calls over a crack of thunder. He’s kicking his tentacles out in celebration. “You killed a god. Are you proud of yourself? Does your heart dance now?”
My heart does not dance. My heart feels as if it is dead by drowning, bloated and pale, adrift and abandoned, a thing washed up with the tide to dry in a crust of salt upon the sand.
I killed him.
Oh gods, I killed Okeanos.
I heave out the contents of my stomach onto the rocks, feeling again the shudder of Okeanos’s body around thespear I kept firmly in his ribs. I’m a weeping, heaving mess, my hair sticking to my face like seaweed.
The rain washes away my filth as quickly as it comes up. It’s as ashamed of me as I am.
“You are a god now,” Vesuvius crows. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking around him and his eyes are hungry with greed. “You have no limits.”
I laugh, harsh and bitter. I have no limits? Does he jest? Surely my conscience has had no limits. And what is there to brag about in that? I sit heavily on the rock and turn my face up to the black sky and torrents of rain.
“Where’s the pearl you took from him?” Vesuvius asks.
“There was no pearl.”
He looks at me, aghast, but I do not care about pearls right now.
I am a god. What a terrible joke. A drowned god, just as I was a drowned queen. Puddles fill around me and little rivulets trail around my feet. I lie in them limp as a sodden cloth.
I had not really considered what it would be to take Okeanos’s place. It was obvious, if I’d stopped to think, but my mind was on justice and revenge, not on seeking power. I had thought only of protecting my people, of grasping the opportunity to be a better ruler for them.
I wish I had thought of what came next because there is no happily-ever-after at the end of my story. No magic to pour down like rain and wash away all the tangled mess of revenge and bitter resentment. If this is a fairy tale and I haveslain the villain and freed the slumbering kingdom, then it is all wrong.
In the end, I do not have the strength to find my way back to Oke’s cottage. I do not even have the strength to determine where I am on the island. Instead, I use the last of my energy to drag my body farther up the shore, through the streams and puddles, and to collapse at the feet of one of the looming statue guardians. This is one of a mighty warrior whose beard whips around him in a dreamed wind and whose eyes watch for far-off threats. I make out his features in the flashes of lightning, set a cheek against his cold foot, and wish the rain could wash me clean or wash me away entirely.
Vesuvius follows me, sliding across the rock with sinuous grace. “What will we do first, Queen of the Sea? Shall we raise a palace for you and fill it with mortal slaves? Shall we draw up riches and glories, command armies, and engage in a great campaign? I consult your wishes.”
I shove Vesuvius’s pearl back into my pouch roughly.
I’ll have none of that. I did not do this for power and glory.
I murdered a man who trusted me. He put himself in my power because we said vows together and bound our souls and futures into one. I broke those vows tonight. He gave me the ultimate gift between man and woman—complete vulnerability in every aspect of life—and I returned it with violence. I can never wash the guilt of that away.
I lean on the feet of the statue, a dull malaise settling overme. I grip his ankles as if he might have the power to absolve me. I am too tired to even weep. I drift into something troubled that is not exactly sleep but not exactly conscious thought, either.
I keep seeing Okeanos again and again as I drift in and out of darkness, and the look in his eyes when he said he thought better of me stings like salt in a deep wound.
Eventually I weep. It’s quick and harsh and then it is gone, a storm across the waters of the sea.
But there’s no changing what has happened. You can’t put a soul back into ruined flesh, and shouldn’t even if you could. And if killing Okeanos was meant to save my people, then the job is only half done.
I take hold of myself and force myself out of melancholy. I have work to do.
The storm is easing, the torrents have calmed to a drip, and I shiver uncontrollably as the rain slithers down my back. Becoming a god has not shielded me from discomfort or pain. And I am almost certainly a god.
But there is work to do whether I am a god or not.
