POV: Beth
The sea felt different after the Trial.
It watched me.
Not with suspicion this time, but with a kind of predatory curiosity—like a great beast deciding whether to devour me or crown me.
Behind me, the crew moved more quietly than usual. No crude jokes. No unnecessary shouting.
Alaric stepped up beside me. He didn’t touch me, but his presence pressed against my skin like heat.
“You’re pale,” he said softly. “More than usual.”
“I just spoke to the ghost queen of pirates deep under the sea and watched illusions of my father dying,” I answered. “Forgive me if I’m not radiant.”
His mouth twitched. “Still charming, though.”
I glanced at him sharply. “Are you trying to flirt with me before we potentially die?”
“Trying?” He smirked faintly. “No. Succeeding? Maybe.”
I hated that my lips almost curved in response. Almost.
He sobered, gaze returning to the swirling trench. “Are you sure you want to do this today?”
“No,” I said honestly. “But waiting won’t make it easier. And Rowan doesn’t have time for me to be afraid.”
His jaw flexed. For a moment, something vulnerable leaked through the cracks in his arrogance. “I hate this,” he muttered.
“What part?”
“The part where I can’t control it. The sea. The sword. You.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Especially you.”
“Good,” I said lightly. “Get used to it. You don’t own me, Alaric.”
He leaned in, voice low and rough near my ear. “I know. That’s why it terrifies me.”
Before I could answer, Kaine called from mid-deck, breaking the moment. “Captain! Lines ready!”
Alaric stepped back, pulling his mask of command back on like armor.
“Gear up,” he ordered. “We go down together. We return together.”
“Hopefully alive,” Clove muttered.
“Preferably with all limbs,” Karn added.
The crew chuckled—strained but real. I strapped on the breathing charm again, checked the knife at my thigh, and tightened rope around my waist. The Maelstrom below churned, the sound like distant thunder underwater.
My mark burned faintly on my wrist, runes shimmering under skin.
It’s time, the sea seemed to whisper.
“Ready, Stormborn?” Alaric asked.
I met his gaze. “Always.”
We jumped.
***
Cold swallowed me, but this time it felt familiar—like stepping into a home that still scared me. Light bled into darkness as we sank, lanterns flaring weak blue in the black. Ruins rose from below like a drowned city remembering it once stood beneath the sky.
She remembers you, the water hummed.
We surfaced inside the air cavern once more—dripping, panting, breaths echoing against stone.
The place hadn’t changed—and yet it had.
The runes along the walls glowed brighter now, casting the smooth bones in eerie teal light. The pillars looked taller. The silence deeper. The altar-like stone at the center was empty—no sword—but the pull tugging at my insides told me it lay just beyond the ribbed gate.
Kaine whistled low. “If hell had a church, it would look like this.”
Clove elbowed him. “You’re going to make the ghost queen mad.”
“She’s already mad,” Karn grumbled. “She picked Beth.”
“I heard that,” I said dryly.
They tried to laugh. Fear braided with humor; it was the only way they knew how to survive.
We moved forward, steps sloshing through ankle-deep water pooled on cavern floor. The Leviathan rib gate before us towered three times higher than the mast of a ship, curving inward like a ribcage meant to cage something vast.
It hummed as I approached—a low vibration that I felt in my teeth, my bones, my mark.
Alaric touched my elbow gently. “We’re right behind you.”
He didn’t try to take the lead. Didn’t try to shield me from the front. He knew this door wouldn’t open for him.
Only for me.
I lifted my hand and rested my palm against the nearest bone.
The world exploded.
Light shot up the ribs like lightning, streaking across each curve in blinding blue-white. My body jerked—it felt like being struck from the inside. The mark on my wrist flared so hot I thought my skin would split. My vision turned white, then black, then something in between.
I heard nothing—not Kaine’s curses, not Clove’s gasp, not Karn’s alarm. Only Morwenna’s voice.
Daughter of Drowned King. Do you bleed for sea and sky? Do you claim the weight of ruins and crown?
My throat worked. I didn’t know if I spoke aloud or only in my head. “Yes.”
I stumbled forward. Alaric’s hand brushed my back for half a second then dropped. He followed closely, but no one else dared cross until I did.
The chamber of Leviathan was smaller, more focused. The walls were lined with bones, shelves of vertebrae and ribs arranged like relics. At the center, a single stone pillar rose from the floor.
On it lay the sword.
It was bigger than I remembered from my shattered glimpses—longer than my arm, forged not of metal but bone and storm. The blade shimmered blue-white, veins of darker color winding through it like frozen lightning.
Clove simply said, “We’re all going to die.”
Alaric said nothing.
I hovered my hands over the hilt. The first time I tried to take it, it had almost killed me. My palm still carried a faint scar from where the magic bit.
“You’re sure?” Alaric’s voice cracked behind me.
“No,” I said. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
And I wrapped my fingers around the hilt.
The world split open.
Power slammed through me like a tidal wave breaking the world in half. I screamed—I think—but I couldn’t hear my own voice over the roar. The sword’s magic poured into my veins, boiling, freezing, tearing. My knees buckled but my grip wouldn’t loosen. Couldn’t. Something had locked us together.
“Beth!” Alaric’s voice finally broke through the storm. Hands grabbed my shoulders. “Let go!”
“I can’t,” I gasped, teeth chattering. “It’s choosing—”
Light blasted outward from the blade in a shockwave. It surged across the chamber, slamming into bone walls and ceiling.
Kaine and the others were thrown to their knees.
My mark burned like a star. The pain peaked—then snapped.
Everything went quiet.
The sword’s glow dimmed from blinding to steady, a constant blue-white pulse that matched my heartbeat. My muscles trembled, but I stood. I was still alive.
And the sword was in my hands.
I lifted it, slowly. It felt heavy and light at once—weightless in grip but impossibly significant. When I swung it, the air itself seemed to flinch.
Behind me, I heard something I never thought I would:
Kaine, Karn, Clove—hardened pirates with blood on their hands and salt in their souls—dropped fully to their knees.
Not from force.
Not from fear of the blade.
From something like reverence.
“Sea save us,” Kaine whispered. “She did it.”
Clove blinked up at me like I’d become a legend. “That…that’s ours? Our… queen’s?”
The word hung there, trembling.
Queen.
My throat tightened. I turned slowly. Alaric was the only one still standing—but just barely. He looked at me like a man witnessing a miracle.
A terrifying one.
His lips parted. For a long moment, no sound came out.
Then, very softly, with something raw in his voice that stripped all smugness away, he said:
“Beth.”
Just my name. A prayer. A curse. A confession.
His gaze flicked from the sword to my face, then back again.
“You… you actually did it.” A hoarse chuckle escaped him, half-disbelieving, half-admiring. “You took the sea’s hungriest weapon and lived.”
“Barely,” I muttered.
He stepped closer, slow, as if approaching something sacred that might bite.
“Do you feel different?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I feel like the ocean is inside me. Like if I breathe wrong, I’ll drown the world.”
His eyes darkened. Not with fear alone—with awe. And something painfully tender.
“That sword will make kings kneel,” he murmured.
I swallowed. “And what about pirate kings?”
His jaw clenched. He looked at me for a long, long heartbeat.
Then, without breaking eye contact, Alaric slowly went down on one knee.
The sound his boots made against stone echoed through the chamber.
My heart stopped.
“Don’t,” I said hoarsely. “Don’t kneel to me.”
He lifted his chin, gaze burning into mine from below. “Too late, Stormborn. I already have—long before this.”