Page 124 of Between Fear and Favor

At this, her bony fingers clenched around my wrist and dragged me closer. If we were above water, I would have felt her breath on my lips, but now, I could feel the smallest of bubbles escaping as she spoke.

“Iemis allowed his children freedom, and what happened to them?” Her voice shook as she spoke, dipping low and quiet. “The Myriad slaughtered the forestborn.”

“It was more defeat than slaughter, was it not?”

“The Myriad schemed and manipulated their loss in the Great War. It is slaughter if those responsible were coerced into their beliefs by power hungry zealots,” she snapped. “The forestborn are dead because Iemis could not protect them.”

I could only stare at her. Emma and Rainier had known the Myriad masters in Astana were up to something, but that had only been a select few. Hadn’t it? Could what Estri said be true? Could the Myriad have orchestrated what happened during the Great War?

Those who survived were the ones who passed on their stories. But those who didn’t? Were they left to be forgotten? Had we only seen the forestborn’s eradication as a consequence of their own involvement because of the Myriad’s vile influence?

“What would you have me do? Would you allow my seaborn to roam and meet the same fate? If I keep them here, I can protect them,” she said, sounding far more human than she ever had.

Still shocked by what she’d revealed, it didn’t change my feelings. “I understand that you’re scared. That you want to keep them safe. But what you do isn’t protection. It’s control. You control who can leave, who can learn about the rest of the world. You don’t even tell them the truth of it. The truth aboutyou.”

Estri bared those fearsome teeth at me, and her skeletal hand wrapped around my throat. I was certain the light of the moonpearls through the window flared with her rage.

The surrounding water began to heat. Shimmering and swirling around us, her touch grew searing, and I thought she was going to kill me. I silently screamed as the water started to boil around us. I was certain my skin was going to slough free from my body as her grip on me tightened.

“Stop!” I shouted, though I wasn’t sure if any sound came from me. Screwing my eyes shut against the pain, I grew queasy. I was about to vomit, nausea bubbling up my throat, when everything stopped.

The pain, the sound, the water.

I opened my eyes, and we were no longer in the spire. The water felt lighter here, almost as if I wasn’t weighed down by so much pressure. And it was warmer. At first, I thought it might have been because of my heated skin, but the pain was gone—as if that torment had never happened.

“Look,” Estri said, using her grip on my neck to adjust my line of sight. Behind and above her, there was only open water, but when she turned me, I grew confused. We were deep below the surface, but pouring out from a cave within a tall cliffside was a torrent of water. Rushing downward to the seabed, it resembled a waterfall, and I couldn’t fathom how it existed.

“How?” I whispered, awestruck.

“The waterfall is far colder, so it sinks to the bottom. It’s from a deep well just below the surface. Do you feel it?” she asked, and I frowned.

“Feel what?”

“Your power?” she hissed.

It wasn’t until she drew attention to it did I feel it. Warm and light and bubbly, my divinity had returned—in excess. I wasn’t sure what good it would do; it wasn’t as if I could compel a goddess.

“Do you know where we are, Princess?”

“No.”

The black film over Estri’s eyes lifted, and she looked down toward my chest. Toward my pounding heart. She gave a faint smile, almost sad, before she looked me in the eyes once more. “Off the coast of Lamera. Tell me why you feel your divinity so profoundly, treasure.”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” she demanded, deadly soft. Her sharpened teeth caught her lip and broke the skin. “You cannot be more tender-hearted than you are intelligent. You will not survive.”

“The font?” I guessed, wondering how it was possible. Was there an underwater spring connected to that divine blessing? Was this how the seaborn had their power?

“Aonara gains her power from the sun and Ciarden from the blackest night. Hanwen’s power comes from war and vengeance. But mine? It comes from the water. I am strongest within its embrace. How can I protect them if I let them leave?”

“But that isn’t fair,” I said. “You have to give them a choice.”

“Why?” she asked, and I was surprised to see genuine curiosity lift her brows and soften her features. “I do not wish to be a tyrant, but there is no other choice. Without my seaborn, I will cease to exist. I have seen what happens to a god if they become worthless. I will not allow myself to suffer that fate.”

Foreign fury crept over my flesh, and I grabbed her arm. “If what you say is true, why didn’t you stop the Myriad? Why did you allow the forestborn to be slaughtered?”

“That battle belonged to the antler god, not me. It is not my fault he was in no position to fight.”

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