Salt Crown
The drowned knelt like a loyal dog, saltwater pooling beneath its knees.
Mireya didn’t move. Her entire body had gone cold. The sky above was dim with stormlight, but she wasn’t afraid of the clouds anymore. She was afraid of herself. Of the strange, growing certainty that this moment—this exact kneel, this obedience from the dead—had been written into her blood before she was even born.
Bastian raised his weapon slowly—a shard of sharpened driftwood tied with fishing line. “Mireya, say something. Say we burn it. Say it’s a trick.”
But her voice had gone hollow. “It knew my name.”
The drowned’s head tilted, water dribbling from its eyeless sockets. “You have walked the trench. You have tasted the silence. Your lungs no longer belong to air.”
“Shut up,” Bastian barked, brandishing the weapon. “She belongs to herself.”
The drowned didn’t even flinch. “She belongs to the Deep.”
Mireya stepped forward.
“Don’t,” Bastian hissed, reaching out. She slipped past his fingers like fo
