It was nothing to slip through the ragged hole between decks. Easy to find where the mast was broken clean in half. Claiming the end of her leash, Kore wrapped the length of her chain around her forearm and let herself sink further still.
Lungs not yet burning enough to force her final, soggy breath, her knees buckled when her feet struck the ceiling of the rowing deck. Blindly sweeping, she found the next gaping maw the mast had chewed through the ship and stepped through.
Her feet touched sand.
Sharp, uneven stone.
The squish of human flesh no longer warm with the fight for life.
A corpse.
Priestess or slaver, she couldn’t guess and couldn’t see. But they were all the same in death.
She pushed the body aside and crouched. Slender enough to slip through the gap between the ship and ocean floor, she kicked and fought. Clawing her way free of the ruined vessel.
The pressure changed around her in an instant.
The ship.
It was shifting.
Rocking with the force of the waves above.
Moving while she was still pinned between a sandy reef and what was left of the hull.
Panic bled through her veins, and with one final, mighty effort, she kicked and clawed. Scratching her way free?—
It rolled in the sand. Unmoored. Refusing to let even one survivor escape this watery grave.
Kore was crushed.
Screaming, agony splintered through her legs and belly. The crack of her pelvis echoed in her ears from inside, the sound distorted and too loud beneath the waves. It rumbled through her bones, inside her skull, and drowned even the sounds of her screams.
She was doomed.
Lost, where no one would ever be able to look for her. Lungs empty, body broken, Kore’s lips parted on that final breath at last.
A flash of lightning struck.
Her world was ignited by Zeus’ might for a single, glorious instant. Enough that she saw.
Bodies, everywhere. The men who’d burnt Delphi and desecrated Apollo’s priestesses now floated all around her. Some caught in the mooring, others torn to bits among the remains of the mast. Still more swept away by a relentless, ravenous current that would scatter their remains across the sea floor.
All of them dead.
The ship that had been her prison for weeks had been obliterated. Torn asunder when she’d struck a reef with fatal force, the Athenian trireme was broken in two uneven halves. Her remains already spread as far as that split second allowed her to see.
Darkness returned in a flood, and despite the agony of her horrific, imminent death, Kore summoned a smile.
Because she was grateful to Zeus for such a gift. To see her enemies brought low before she went to Hades for her final journey through the mists of Eberus to be judged.
Giving herself to the waves, Kore’s eyes fluttered closed, one last time.
The cold no longer chewed at her marrow.
She was warm, as if submerged in a bath. Engulfed in delicious pressure that touched every ache, soothed every wound.
Dying was hard, but…
