Drew forced himself to watch as Emma shoved an unidentifiable thick, putrid slop into Kelia’s mouth. Kelia flinched. Judging by the way her shoulders hunched and her eyes watered, it was taking all of her willpower to keep the liquid down.
Emma kept a tight grip on Kelia’s mouth, placing her hand over her lips to keep her from spitting even one drop out. “You must finish it,” the earth witch said, her voice strained. “Or it won’t work.”
Kelia mumbled something, but Emma’s hand and the concoction in her mouth made her words unintelligible.
Guilt slithered across Drew’s insides and twisted around his gut, squeezing it until it was difficult for him to breathe.
This is your fault.
The words repeated in his head. He should have known something like this was going to happen. He’d forgotten something as terribly important as not feeding on Sirens because he’d viewed Kelia how he wanted
to see her rather than for what she really was.
Kelia was fierce, stubborn, and prideful—and that was before
he transformed her into a beast. How had he failed to prepare her for the right and wrong ways to find sustenance and satiate her new primal hunger?
Perhaps it was because he’d done something he had sworn he would never do: turn someone into a Shadow. As such, some part of him still wanted to view Kelia as human, to deny the gravity of what he’d done. His unadmitted denial meant he hadn’t prioritized preparing her for this new world. And that had now proven a costly mistake.
Drew Knight was the simpering fool; so scared she would be taken from him again that he forgot he could not keep her to himself. She would not let him. And, more than that, he would not want to prevent her from being free. The Queen had done that to him. He couldn’t—wouldn’t
—do the same to Kelia.
Her pained groans tickled his ears, and the snake of guilt squeezed him even tighter, to the point he had to clear his throat in order to acquire air.
“Have you swallowed it all?” Emma released her hold on Kelia’s mouth only to grab her cheeks and force open her mouth to inspect the inside for herself. “Good. Get on the bed. If you do not vomit it up—and you best pray you do not—you will fall asleep quite quickly as the concoction works through your system. This is only temporary. We need to get you a more permanent solution once we hit the Island of the Damned.”
Kelia furrowed her brow. It did not appear as though she was following half that conversation, let alone all of it. She took one step, and then another, to the bed. Her shoulders hunched forward, and she bent at the waist like a cat ready to pounce. Emma took her arm and gently helped her the rest of the way.
“What if…” Kelia swallowed as she lay back in the bed. She had gone pale—paler than a Sea Shadow typically appeared even after decades without the sun. “…if I vomit?”
“Then we’ll have to do it again. Until it takes,” Emma said, covering her with the blanket as her eyelids fell shut. “You have poisoned your system, and you need to clear out that poison before it consumes you. Do you under—?”
A loud snore interrupted Emma, making the earth witch jerk back a little. Kelia had already slid into a deep unconsciousness.
Emma’s gaze flashed to Drew. She opened her mouth, but he cut her off with a snarl that even he, himself, was not expecting.
“I know,” he snapped, striding across the room until the desk was between himself and Kelia. His fingers tapped against the wood. He was afraid if he was too close to her, he would reach out and touch her like she was some sleeping infant he needed to assure was still breathing. “I know.”
“No. You don’t.” Emma all but stomped over to where he stood, grabbed his elbow, and whirled him around so he was not holding the curtain away, looking out the window, out to sea, out at the midnight blue sky and the low half-moon hanging in the sky. “She can still die, Drew. And your pride—”
“My
pride!” he interrupted, flaring his nostrils and narrowing his eyes.
“Your pride,” Emma repeated without hesitation. “You changed her, Drew. You changed her from being a human to being a—”
“Monster?”
“A Shadow.” Emma pressed her lips together, catching Drew’s gaze. There was a firmness—a stubborn, unflinching glint—in her deep, brown eyes. But there was also understanding. “Now stop feeling sorry for yourself. You made a choice. Was it the right one? I won’t say. But it’s done now, and you have to make your future choices based on that one. Moping about, treating Kelia like she’s made of glass, is not going to help.”
Drew clenched his teeth and looked away. He hated when Emma was right about things. Hated being wrong. But he needed to let that go and focus on Kelia and how he could help her. Not
hide her from the reality of what she was.
“What do I do?” he asked finally.
He had not expected his voice to break or his fingers to curl up and his nails to dig into his flesh. He did not expect to drop his gaze to the wood beneath his feet.
He cleared his throat and traced the outline of a painted atlas on a wrinkled parchment at his desk. “I’ve never turned anyone, Emma.” His voice came out harsher than he intended. “I never thought I would do that. Not after I’d endured. This just happened. I didn’t have a chance to think about it, and now, I am at a loss. I do not know what to do to care for her.”
“How would you
want to be cared for?” she asked.
Drew lifted his head, tilting it to the side. “What do you mean?”
“When you were turned, how would you have wanted the Queen to treat you? How could she have made you feel safe? And before you claim she couldn’t, just think.”
“Just forget it,” he said dismissively. “How much time do we have?"
Emma glanced over at Kelia. “She’ll be out for the next hour or two. That should give us enough time to get to the Island of the Damned. The winds are picking up.”
“What?” Drew yanked on the curtain so it fell from its place and cut his gaze back to the sea. While he could not exactly see the wind, he did notice an overcast sky. Grey surrounded them like a scratchy wool blanket. “Wind?”
“Aye.” Emma headed toward the door, her footsteps light and barely audible. “Does that mean something to you?”
Drew shook his head, a strand of hair falling into his face as he did so. “No,” he said. “It’s just a superstition I never cared for.”
“Superstitions are truth to someone.” Her fingers caressed the door handle, but she did not open the door. “What is it?”
“A sudden change in wind means a curse is upon you.” A stillness came over Drew. “The Siren. Sirens bring bad luck. But to kill that Siren? A curse is placed on the ship. You don’t think that means…”
“Women onboard are supposed to bring sailors bad luck because men cannot seem to control themselves around vaginas.” She rolled her eyes, but they were not as careless as he had hoped to see. Wariness resided in the irises. “However, I do believe that disrespecting God’s creatures—
“A Siren is not God’s creature,” Drew all but spat. He pushed from the desk to pace the small gap between his chair and the wall. He still did not trust himself to get too close to Kelia. Not yet.
“A creature who lives on this earth nonetheless,” Emma said, sneering at him, perhaps to express her distaste at his interruption. “We cannot simply take something without giving back in some way.”
Drew bit back a grin and turned so his back was to her. “Before I opened my mouth, you would not have known anything regarding this superstition,” Drew pointed out. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What has you worried?”
“I’m not worried. I just want my feet on solid ground,” Emma all but snapped. “I want to make sure Kelia is all right. I need more ingredients, and I cannot get them from a boat that’s been at sea for days. And now you’re telling me the wind does not bear good fortune, not after the Siren.” She swallowed. “I want the Queen dead, Drew. And I want Kelia well.”
“I want the same things,” Drew said, stepping toward her. “Certainly, you understand that?”
Kelia groaned. Drew lifted his leg as though he was ready to go to her, but he stopped himself.
“Things have been set in motion,” Emma said. “The Queen is not dead. She will be back for revenge. Who knows how she’s going to respond when news breaks of Kelia’s transformation.”
“I will not live my life based on how she may or may not respond.”
At that moment, the wind pounded against the window.
Kelia twitched in her sleep, but she did not wake. Drew wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Emma said. Her voice had risen, which was unusual for her. “All I am saying is that the Queen is still a threat. She is out there, and knowing you turned Kelia…something I am certain she did not think was possible…is not going to bode well for the two of you. Originally, she wanted to punish you for betraying her and wanted to punish Kelia for stealing you away. But now? Surely things are much worse. It’s not just about getting you back now, Drew. She’ll be after revenge. She’ll want you both
to suffer.”
Drew took another, bolder step toward Emma. “You think I’m afraid of her.”
“No,” Emma whispered. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Because you should be," she said. "Perhaps you do not care what she does to you, but the Queen will burn Kelia to ash just to spite you, and then force you to do wicked, unspeakable things. Until the Queen’s ashes fly across the damned sea, she will continue to come after us. All
of us. We have to destroy her Island once and for all.”
Drew shifted his weight. He had been so caught up in saving Kelia, he hadn’t considered the risk to everyone else aboard the ship. It wasn’t just his life or Kelia’s life on the line here. But destroy the Queen’s Island? He couldn’t be understanding that right.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Destroy the Island? We already set it aflame.”
“Not near enough,” Emma intoned. “Any damage we did was repairable. We need to get rid of the island completely
. Leave the Queen with no where else to go.”
“How does destroying the Island accomplish that?” He stepped to close the distance between himself and Emma, but another whimper from Kelia stopped him in his tracks. Every fiber of his being wanted to go to her, to hold her in his arms and feel her breath across his skin. To know she was still alive, even as a Shadow. But there was something pressing him about what Emma was saying. “Why are you obsessed with the Island? Why do you think this island has so much power?”
“Think, Drew.” Her voice was on edge. “She’s tied to that island. She can’t leave it. Destroy it, and you destroy her
.”
Drew took in a breath. He felt the sweep of the blankets pass his thigh as he walked past the bed. He closed his eyes. Too many thoughts swam around in his mind.
“But how do you know the island can
be destroyed? We already tried that, and failed,” Drew asked. Something tickled in the back of his mind. There was something Emma was not revealing, something important.
Kelia whimpered once again, but because Drew was so focused on Emma, he did not feel that same desire to run to her. Now, his focus was solely on Emma and what she was not telling him.
Emma turned her back on him and placed the back of her hand so it rested on Kelia’s forehead before dropping it to the column of her throat and then on her collarbone.
“No fever, which is good.” She reached behind Kelia and started fluffing up the pillows under her head.
“This is completely unlike you, Emma.” Drew dragged his fingers on the parchments on his desk. “Evading questions? Unburden yourself and confess your sin.”
“Sin? I have committed no sin.”
The corner of Drew’s lip flipped up. “Then why avoid me?” he asked. “Why busy yourself with trivialities such as fluffing pillows, which did not concern you mere moments ago?”
Emma heaved a sigh and slowly turned around. She tilted her head to the left and then the right before focusing her gaze on Drew. She locked her jaw and, for a moment, he thought she would not say anything.
Finally, she licked her lips and spoke. “A powerful witch cast a spell on that island, bewitching it so the Queen can live there; so any
Shadow can live there,” she said. “That’s the only reason the Queen is able to stay there, when usually they would die on land during the day. And only because the East India Company needs a prison to trap her to.”
“And you happen to know the witch who cast that spell,” Drew said slowly, taking his best guess.
“Not exactly…” Emma said. “The reason you found me on Port Royal all those years ago, Drew, was that I wanted to be found. By you. I felt guilty because, in a way, I felt responsible for what happened to you.”
Drew furrowed his brow. “It’s not your fault, Emma.”
“Perhaps not directly.” She fiddled with the folds of her skirt. "But I am
the reason for that island,” she said finally. “I’m the reason she has a place to live.”
Before Drew could respond to Emma’s confession, a loud knock sounded on the door. Drew turned his attention to it and was about to tell whoever was disturbing them to go away, but before he could say anything, the door burst open.