Page 65 of A Curse of Salt

Four pairs of eyes slid over to their king. I glared up at Sebastien, standing stoically at the end of my bed.

‘It’s the sea, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘She’s angry at you, right? Now she’s trying to kill us – kill me.’

I could feel them shifting under the weight of my words, but I looked only at Sebastien, daring him to deny it. I watched him, waiting for his guard to waver, but it never did.

‘When you betray a god,’ he said finally, ‘you lose. We’ve spent the last three centuries learning that lesson.’

My stomach turned. What kind of god was the sea, if her actions had done nothing but spill chaos across the continent for three hundred years? Petty, Sebastien had said. I was beginning to think he was right.

‘That’s the reason you’re trapped here, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘She – Nerida – took your kingdom.’

‘Aye.’

I held his gaze for as long as I could, unnerved by the weight of it, of everything around us. I’d never asked for this. Not for the blood pulsing in my veins, nor staining my hands. Not to be an enemy of the sea I’d only ever loved, nor filled with this unfathomable desire for the man who reigned it.

So Nerida had frozen time and woven her magic into the timber of the Blood Rose. Into Sebastien. For all the longing she’d etched into my soul, now it was her – that very sea – turning against us.

I thought of the spirits I’d spotted in the waves that day on deck, their human-like features soft, friendly – the same ones I was almost certain had pulled Leviathan from the bay. They were different from the beasts that had attacked us. Not the same as the sea they came from, the one that seemed to want me dead.

If all this was true, then there was nowhere to hide. No way I’d be safe again if I’d unwittingly made an enemy of the very thing keeping us afloat.

I swallowed. Great. Just one more thing to fear – a god.

The crew filtered out, leaving me to recover, but Una lingered behind, her hand still warm on my forearm. I watched Sebastien duck out into the hall, not sparing me so much as a glance. Disappointment sank into my aching bones, making my stomach flutter uneasily.

‘What’d ye do to him?’ Una asked as the door shut behind them. When she looked at me, her eyes sparkled.

I blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s different,’ she said, raising a thick brow.

I didn’t need to ask who she meant. I snorted. ‘He is not. You said it yourself, he hasn’t changed in three hundred years.’

Una shook her head with a frown. ‘Ye didn’t know him before. The last few weeks . . .’ She chewed her bottom lip. ‘It’s like he’s wakin’ up.’

I hugged the sheets to my chest. Kiss me – my own words echoed through my mind. Heat crept across my cheekbones as I remembered his breath on my lips, his fist in my hair, the trace of salt on his tongue.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I lied, hoping my racing heart didn’t give me away.

Una smirked, stretching out on the bed beside me and tucking a pillow beneath her head. ‘If ye say so. But I’ve never seen him show his face in the open, in front of the crew. It ain’t like he’s in short supply o’ cloaks.’

I rolled my eyes. There was a small, quiet part of me that felt pleased, but another voice spoke in the back of my mind, one slick and sharp as steel. You think you can take him. Who else could the creature have meant?

Maybe the crew was right. Maybe it wasn’t just about revenge.

‘Do you really think the sea sent those monsters?’ I asked.

‘Aye.’ Una drummed her fingers on the mattress. ‘The sea . . . she’s restless, angry. Feels us gettin’ closer.’

I turned to look at her, dark braids splayed out across the pale silk, hazel eyes soft beneath her pinched brows. ‘Closer to what?’ I pressed, feeling my chest tighten.

Una rolled on to her back beside me, staring up at the winding rose vines overhead as she mulled over her answer. ‘The end,’ she said eventually, waving a hand at the room around us. ‘To all this. Time moves on. At some point, so must we.’

I reached down and grabbed her wrist, making her look at me. ‘Don’t be cryptic. Just tell me what you know,’ I begged.

The corners of her frown twisted, tugged by something wistful, something weary. She slid her wrist from my grasp, fingers threading through mine. ‘He’d kill me if I did,’ she joked softly. ‘S’taken me eight years to know as much as I do. He trusts ye, just give him time.’

Eight years.

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