The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea(35)

She starts laughing, a terrible high-pitched sound. “Where did you get this boat, girl? Do you know how old this prayer is? Months old. Years old. This girl is dead. Her child is dead. Her prayer was never answered. This is just a memory, one forgotten a long time ago.” Lifting her hand in the air, she flings the paper boat into the fire.

“No!” I scream, lunging forward. My hand rips through the flames. A terrible sound comes from my throat, an agonized cry that has less to do with my burning hand and more to do with my breaking heart.

Shin grabs me from behind, pulling me back. He drags me from the room, the sound of the goddess’s laughter ringing loudly in my ears.

Outside on the street he releases me, ripping a piece of cloth from his sleeve and forming a makeshift bandage. “We have to get you back to Lotus House,” he says.

“How could she? How could she not care? She’s the goddess of—of children!”

He reaches for my hand, but I back away. “Mina,” he says carefully, “we need to treat the wound or it will fester.”

“What is wrong with this world? What is wrong with the gods?” I can’t stop shouting. Tears stream down my cheeks, and my heart beats wildly in my chest. Shin manages to catch my injured hand. With the torn cloth, he wraps the wound. I feel nothing, a strange numbness having overtaken my body.

“They love them,” I whisper. It sounds like an accusation.

Shin ties the knot, looking up. “They…?”

“My people. Everyone. My grandmother. Every day she goes to the shrine to pray, kneeling on the floor for hours, though her joints ache and her back hurts. My sister-in-law. Even when she lost her child, she never blamed the gods, though she walks in silence and cries when she thinks no one is watching. The people of my village. The storms may blow away their crops, but still they leave offerings to the gods of harvest. Because the world may be corrupt and broken, but as long as there are gods, there is hope.”

If I’d found pity in Shin’s eyes, I might have turned away from him. Indifference would have been even worse. But there’s something in his gaze that strikes through the numbness until I feel it—the pain, the ache. There’s compassion there. “Mina…”

“I love them.” It sounds like a confession, and I realize—haltingly—that it is. Whenever I ran through the rice fields, the long-necked cranes billowing their great wings as if in greeting; whenever I climbed the cliffs, the breeze urging me onward; whenever I looked out to sea, the sunlight on the water like laughter, I felt love. I felt loved.

How could the gods abandon those who love them?

I don’t realize I’ve spoken aloud until Shin releases my hand, looking out over the desolate canal. “There’s nothing you can do.”

He’s said these words before. In the garden, he said there was nothing I could do to help the girl. He said a similar sentiment when we first met, that I would fail like all the brides before.

He was right, in the end, but while it gained him nothing to be right, it costs me everything to be wrong.

“You’re as much at fault as the rest of them.”

Shin laughs harshly. “You would compare me to a goddess who takes bribes for prayers, who laughs at the pain of others?”

“No. You’re worse than her.” His shoulders tense, and I feel a pang of regret, but my pain makes me want to lash out. “You make false promises. You give me hope with one word and despair with the next.”

“I’ve given you a place in my home to keep you safe, servants to provide for your every need, my people to guard you—”

“With orders to keep me from leaving.”

“Because there’s already been a threat against your life! Thieves have never attempted to steal the soul of the Sea God’s bride before. When I went to confront Lord Bom of Tiger House this morning, he’d fled the city. Until I discover who’s behind the threats, you have to be patient. Give me time. It hasn’t even been a day.”

“One day in the last month of my life.” I know I’m being dramatic, but I feel the rage and pain burning me up inside.

“What do you want from me, Mina?”

“I want nothing from you.” I curl my burned hand, wincing at the pain. “Only the Sea God can help me now.”

Shin narrows his eyes. “What does he have to do with this?”

“Because once the curse is lifted—”

Shin scoffs, a cruel sound. “You don’t get it, do you, Mina?”

“What don’t I get?” I point back toward the gaping door of Moon House. “You didn’t see her, the girl in the memory. She was suffering. She was crying. All she had left was her hope, and in the end, it wasn’t enough. When will it be enough?”

Shin turns abruptly, his eyes a mixture of fury and despair. “It will never be enough! Don’t you see, Mina? There is no curse upon the Sea God. He chose to seclude himself because he couldn’t face his own grief. He’s the one who abandoned your people. Who abandoned all of us!”

Shin breaks his gaze away, trembling. There’s a tic in his jaw, and a slight redness at the corners of his eyes.

“You hate the Sea God,” I whisper.

He closes his eyes. Unconsciously, he moves his hand to his chest. “The Sea God. The Goddess of Women and Children. All of us are unworthy. All of us deserve to be forgotten.”