Wayward Children 07 - Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

PART III

THE DOORS THAT OPEN, THE DOORS THAT CLOSE

10 A CROWBAR OR A KEY

THE DROWNED GODS CAME for her as soon as she fell asleep.

They came as she had seen them in the Moors, unspeakable towers of tentacled flesh, suckers pulsing, surfaces bristling with eyes in a thousand shades of sunset, their pupils like sine curves against fields of red and gold and pink.

“You belong to us, little mermaid,” they whispered. “We gave you back your legs. We gave you back your voice. You belong to us.”

“I do not.” In dreams, Cora had her fins and her scales again, and the lashing of her tail held her upright, as freed from the bonds of gravity as the Drowned Gods themselves. “I fell because you designed the bridge to fall. An animal that falls into a trap may be caught, but that doesn’t make it a possession.”

“We flushed you out of hiding. You are ours.”

“I am not. I refuse.” The water was sweet. Cora inhaled deeply. “The gods of the Trenches and the gods of the Moors aren’t the same. You don’t belong in these currents. Be gone.”

“Not alone.” A tentacle lashed out, wrapping tight around her waist, trying to drag her forward. Cora shook her head, silently refusing to be moved, and try as the Drowned God might, it couldn’t budge her. She hung in the sea like a star.

“I will not,” she said. “I am not yours to cling to or claim. Go back to your own waters.”

Her time at the Whitethorn Institute had weakened their hold on her. She knew that now. In the months of resisting Whitethorn’s pressure to transform her into something else, she had somehow built up her strength to resist the Drowned Gods’ attempts to do the same thing. And their desperation was growing, or they wouldn’t have approached her so directly. She was stronger than they were, here in this familiar sea.

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