Page 37

“Your loyalty is commendable, Mrs. Ferreira,” I state. “But threats are unnecessary. She is safe, and you have my word that no harm will come to her.”

Marta glares at me. She searches my face, perhaps waiting for an arrogant smirk or some sign that I intend to retaliate. I offer her neither.

Behind the counter, some of the color returns to Hattie’s face.

“Marta, let him go,” Hattie mutters, reaching across the gap to grip the harpy’s forearm. “He isn’t fighting back.”

Marta hesitates. Her eyes dart from my hands to my face before she finally lowers her arm. The talon drags against my jacket as she steps back. She’s keeping her guard up even while she retreats.

Hattie takes her place at the edge of the stall and abandons her coffee. She grabs a damp notepad from the cutting board, then presses the tip of a pen against the paper.

The ink barely marks the wet surface. Hattie bears down harder, the metal tip scratching across the fragile paper. When she finishes, she rips the note from the wire binding, folds it, and holds the small square out to me. “If she’s staying with you, can you give this to her?” she says. “So she knows we’re okay?”

I look down at it. Human things have always seemed fragile in my hands. One clumsy twitch of my fingers could crush the paper into pulp or smear the ink into illegibility. I tore Valerie away from her life. Right now this small, damp square is the only piece of home I can carry back to her.

“I’ll deliver it personally, Miss Nunn,” I reply, accepting the note with care.

I slide it into the slim waterproof transit canister I keep in my breast pocket for surface documents. Then I leave the chaotic aisles of the fishmarket and walk toward the edge of town. Behind me, the din of the market disappears beneath the roar of the surf.

The coastal wind whips freezing spray against my jaw, but I barely register it.

“Finally,” I mutter to the churning gray water.

I take a slow breath of the frigid air. I need a few minutes of silence before I descend again and face Lotan’s court alone.

My phone vibrates harshly against my thigh before I get them. I pull the device from my pocket. Rakan’s name flashes across the screen beneath the raindrops blurring the glass.

I press the phone to my ear. “You have terrible timing, Rakan.”

“How is Valerie?” Rakan asks. Static crackles over the roar of the wind. “Iris has been worrying since you sprinted out of the hall.”

“She’s recovering,” I reply, pacing a slow line across the wet concrete. “Ysra is caring for her. She is safe in the fortress.”

“And you?”

The question catches me off guard. I tighten my grip on the phone until the casing groans softly beneath my thumb.

“I manage the logistics,” I answer, keeping my tone flat. “How is the basin?”

Rakan lets out a long, distorted exhale. “It will take time. A djinn cannot simply boil the ocean, Sigurd. You know that. Heating the basin puts a massive strain on the environment, and I have to draw the latent magic carefully. I have my work cut out for me.”

It’s not the answer I wanted, but it’s the one I expected. We are running out of time. If Lotan loses patience before Rakan finishes his task with the basin, the leviathan will move to claim Saltweather. I’ll have to step in personally, and the truce will fall apart. Every human ship on those routes could become collateral damage.

“I understand,” I reply over the crashing surf. “I didn’t expect it to be easy. I’ll stall Lotan. Thank you, Rakan.”

“No need. Just…” Rakan pauses. “Take care of yourself, Sigurd. Be careful with the leviathan.”

“I’m always careful.”

Rakan scoffs. “That is demonstrably untrue. But this time, I’ll take it as a promise. You have Valerie now.”

He hangs up before I can correct him. She is not mine, and perhaps she never will be.

But my conflicted feelings don’t matter. I slide the phone back into my pocket and reach for the buttons of my damp suit. The sea churns below the breakwater, dark and familiar. Lotan is waiting somewhere beneath it. It’s time for us to meet.

I sit at a stone reading table in the center of the grand Abyssal Library. Towering stacks of ancient, spell-sealed tomes create a barricade in front of me. I trace my fingertips over the pale vellum of an open ledger while Solveig Haraldsdóttir paces behind my chair. Her obsidian cane strikes the stone floor with a sharp, rhythmic clack.

I thought being trapped at the bottom of the ocean was terrifying enough. But sitting in a room alone with Sigurd’s mother is arguably worse. The cold that follows her through the archive makes the place feel less like a library and more like an interrogation chamber.