What had changed?
No time to puzzle over it now, not while they were stared down by the most powerful Old One left, not while her mind felt as if it were starting to winnow away at the edges as she was scrutinized by something so massive, so unknowable.
Solmir’s arms tightened around her. “Whatever you’re planning to do,” he snarled at the god, “do it.”
“As you wish,” the Leviathan said.
In an instant, the water rose, closing over their heads, drowning them in black and cold. The current rushed around them, trying to pull them away from each other; she clawed into Solmir’s back, held on to his hair. His arms felt stone-hard from the strain of his muscles.
Neve held her breath until it felt like her lungs would burst. They couldn’t die here, not ensouled as they were, but it still felt like death when her mouth inevitably opened, finally took in a drowning throatful of the dark, endless sea.
She choked on it, and knew nothing.
Neve came to with her head propped against Solmir’s bare shoulder. His skin was wet, made sticky with drying salt, enough to make it hurt when Neve peeled herself off him. Though he’d lost his shirt in the maelstrom, she’d kept her nightgown, kept the dark coat. Her hand delved deep into the pocket, heart in her throat. It only migrated back down to her chest when her fingers closed around the god-bone and the branch-shard key. Neve let out a thankful breath, tipping back her head to see where they were.
A cavern. Huge and salt-pale, ridged with coral on the floor and the wavy lines of erosion on the walls, but mostly dry, and full of breathable air.
But whatever relief she might’ve felt was eclipsed by the sight of the Leviathan at the front of the cavern.
It had changed—partially, at least. Made itself something easier to comprehend, something that didn’t tear at the border of her brain to contemplate. Before them, a figure on a throne, beautiful in the way a shark was beautiful, all paleness and sharp edges. Its black, flat eyes watched them with something like curiosity, though the emotion wasn’t quite so human as that. Like an animal trying to feign interest, imitating things it didn’t really understand or care about. The flesh, though pale, looked leathery, like it had been embalmed.
The Leviathan’s lover, she realized in a rush, remembering what the Seamstress had said about how the Old One had made the corpse into a puppet. The knowledge made the creature on the driftwood throne even more awful to look at.
Though it was still better than looking directly at the massive being behind it—the thing she’d seen peering into the castle, the thing that had spoken with the terrible voice. Vaguely sharklike, but large enough that Neve could still see only pieces of it at a time, flickering in and out of view like something hidden behind a gauzy curtain.
She was thankful for that.
The entire cavern was bathed in a pale glow that made both shapes hazy, and if she focused on the man-figure, the monster behind it faded to nearly nothing but occasional flashes, shadow and light seen from fathoms below the surface.
Strings of seaweed, leached of color like everything else here, wound around the man-figure’s ankles and wrists and neck, snaking backward into the haze. The leash by which the vast, sharklike thing manipulated the marionette it had made of its former penitent.
Neve fought down a shudder.
The stone of the cavern was damp; barnacles clung here and there, shells scattered, holding tiny pools in shining upturned centers. Spikes of glittering rock thrust up from floor and ceiling, still speckled with waterdrops. Neve glanced behind her—the back wall of the cavern was open, and beyond was the black ocean, glassy and endless. The water stopped right at the cavern’s lip, held back by some invisible force.
She thought of drowning, swallowing cold water. The Leviathan could snap its hold so easily, let all that immense sea come rushing in on them.
Next to her, Solmir pushed up on shaky legs. He didn’t look at her, blue eyes fixed on the man-monster-god, but when he held out his hand, she took it, let him pull her to standing beside him.
“Welcome.” Still that reverberating, terrible voice, but softened somehow. Forced through a throat that had once been human, and thus made easier for her mind to comprehend. “So pleased to have the pleasure of your company.”
“You didn’t exactly extend an invitation we could refuse,” Solmir said drily.
Strings of seaweed tipped the corpse-puppet’s head back, unhinged its jaw. Laugher rolled out, a slithering tone that hurt Neve’s ears. “Come now, once-King, you didn’t think you could sail through my kingdom without my knowing? I may be diminished, but not so much as that.” The thing rose from its seat, fluid as a current despite its seaweed articulation. “I assumed you knew I would call on you.”