“We’ll reconvene in the morning,” Kisa is saying, rubbing a circle on the baby’s back. “Tomorrow, we’ll split up. Look for witnesses, return to the stairwell. Figure out a motive. Get some alibis. Hajun and I have shifts in the med bay—you can meet us there.” She hesitates. “Until we’re sure Hwanin was the only target, we need to be careful. Somebody on board this ship is a murderer. They killed a god. Don’t let your guard down, not even for a moment. They can’t kill us, but you…” She glances at Seokga, who grits his teeth. “You have a lot to lose.”

“I hope the murderer comes after me,” he half-snarls. “It would save us a lot of time and investigation.”

Somi laughs at that, walking past them down the I-95. “With your rotten luck,” she calls over her shoulder, “I’m sure they won’t be striking again tonight. Good night,” she adds in a kinder, more hesitant—maybe even shy—tone to Kisa. A few moments later, after a quiet farewell between himself and Kisa, Hajun leaves, as well. Soon, it’s just the three of them in the abandoned corridor beneath the mammoth ship.

“You have a way with children,” Seokga says carefully as he and Kisa hesitate there, the red thread swirling between them, his baby brother snoring on her shoulder.

Again, there’s that wondering. There’s so much he doesn’t know about Yoo Kisa.

Kisa’s shy smile is small and almost sad. “When I was alive, my goddess was Samsin Halmoni. My father’s side of the family have been her shamans for centuries. My mother wasn’t involved in the Korean pantheon in any way. Although sometimes I wonder if other pantheons exist, if she was connected to the Anglo-Saxon one…Have you ever met Woden, perhaps? Or—”

“Samsin Halmoni?” Seokga grinds out. “Did you say Samsin Halmoni?”

Kisa blinks. “Yes.” She’s swaying slightly, soothingly rocking Hwanin. “Her patronage allowed me to heal mothers and deliver their children, as long as they were creatures.” A funny expression crosses her face, and her voice becomes pinched. “Only creatures. I wished…I wished I could help humans, too. My mother, she, well, she died delivering me. There’s a certain irony in that, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry,” Seokga says quietly, anger at the goddess banking in the face of Kisa’s hesitant vulnerability. He knows the pain of losing a mother well. Although Mago is alive, she has slumbered for near an eternity, lost to her sons.