Crown of Coral and Pearl

“Is that...?”

“It’s a rose,” she said, stooping to pick it up. The flower was as red as a blood coral, its head bowed under the weight of so many petals. She pressed it into my hands. “The kite seller gave it to me.”

I held it up to my nose, inhaling the delicate scent. It wasn’t just a flower. It was a symbol of everything I had dreamed about for so long, and everything I’d been willing to give up for that dream.

I looked into Zadie’s warm brown eyes. “You know, it’s not half as beautiful as a seaflower.”

And then, at the exact same moment, we burst into laughter, howling until our tears became tears of joy, and the world made sense once again.

* * *

I told Zadie everything as we headed back to our family’s boat, which she’d hidden in a small cove near the market. We stood on the shore together, looking out over the Alathian Sea, stained gray and orange by the setting sun. Staring out at the horizon, I realized that my world had never been small. It had been as boundless as my love for Zadie, stretching out before me as far as the eye could see and beyond.

Perhaps I had needed to leave to learn how precious it really was.

Talin would come for me, and we would all find Sami together. I would finally get to see the rest of the world like I’d always dreamed, but I wouldn’t take Varenia for granted ever again.

The waves crashed on the sand at my feet, and below the roar, I heard something else, like the murmur of a mother’s voice to her child, and I remembered the verse I had left out when I sang that lullaby for the king—the secret verse sung only by the young and hopeful, by those who believed that Thalos did not choose our destiny any more than a spoiled prince in a faraway kingdom.

I raised my voice and shouted it to the wind, singing the blessing that would carry me home:

Can you hear the ocean humming?

See the blood go sweeping past?

The child of the waves is coming.

To set our people free at last.

* * *