Eva
“What in hell was that?”
Eva jolted awake to the shock of Yara’s voice, a sharp ringing in her ears, a choked tightness in her throat. The feel of sand and saltwater scraping her lungs, as if she’d spent the last hour drowning instead of dreaming.
“How…” said Yara. There was a sharp crash of porcelain shattering.
Eva sat up, squinting, the scarlet chaise lounge dipping beneath her.
Early-morning sunbeams poured through the Amber Salon’s arched windows, light painting falling dust motes in a thousand shimmery specks, glinting off the coral bangles climbing Yara’s brown arms.
The other girl was still at the sideboard, where she’d been when Eva had dozed off, mixing enchanted cocktails in fat-bellied teapots and sulking because Eva hadn’t kissed the boy Yara had picked for her. Marcin was on the other side of the room, a flame of red hair lolling in an armchair, a long thin cigarette holder dangling from his pale fingers, crackly old maps spilling off his lap and onto the carpet as he planned imaginary mainland conquests.
There were other witches crowding the room, too, in various states of consciousness, still dressed in all their glittery black finery from the revel. Bodies slumped over coffee tables and low chaise lounges or twined together like rope. Other witches were still dancing, hips swaying gently to a record someone had smuggled over from the mainland.
Last night, upon their return, a sense of giddy euphoria had seized the Water Palace. Its amber walls had lit up with a bright honey-gold glow. The air itself was syrup-sweet, scented with jasmine and rose.
It irritated Eva that she hadn’t noticed how damp and gloomy her palace had become in the days since her sister had died, in the time since her first sacrifice—a boy with raven-black hair and a dusting of freckles—had failed. A witch’s house reflected those who dwelled within it. It was a mirror held up to their souls.
Eva decided her soul must be a very black and twisted thing, because she missed the cold silence, the dark and its merciful shadows.
She stood, head pounding, one stocking foot catching on a discarded feather boa. Her ears wouldn’t stop ringing, and the carpet seemed to have come alive and was currently trying to slither out from under her. She stumbled sideways, reaching a hand to the gold wall for support. She hadn’t drunk that much, only one teapot.
And then she realized it wasn’t her. The Water Palace itself was quaking.
“What in—”
A forked tongue of blue lightning struck the tower outside the Amber Salon’s windows, burning her vision white. Stone cracked. Sparked. Split, flying through the air. Glass shattered, and someone shrieked. There was a great earsplitting boom of thunder.
A second fork of lightning struck the tower they were in. Eva staggered as the walls shook, dust raining from the ceiling. The chandelier swung perilously from side to side. A candlestick flew off the marble mantel by the record player, bouncing, rolling. Vases splintered, spilling water and moon blossoms over the carpet.
Marcin sprang to his feet, maps and cigarette abandoned. Eva ran to the windows. Wind rattled what glass remained unsplintered, howling, screaming to be let in.
“An attack?” said someone, shrill and high pitched.
“They made it past the anchors! A fleet from Skani?”
“Whoever they are, they won’t make it far.” Marcin’s voice was lethal, a blade scraping bone as it thrust through flesh to pierce the heart. Everyone’s heads snapped toward him, eyes aglitter with fear. “And if they’ve come for our magic they won’t get it.”
His face was the pale heart of a fire. The Amber Salon darkened at the edges, folding into shadow. Other faces flashed with relief, then hardened into resolve. Witches around the room turned to Marcin for orders, for reassurance.
Not to Eva.
She had the sudden pressing urge to hurt something, someone. “Don’t be ridiculous. Skani has no reason to attack us. If it’s anyone, it’s mainlanders.” She kept her voice low. She didn’t need to raise it in order to be heard; a queen’s voice made its own silence, Natalia had taught her that. A queen never panicked. Even when she had no damn idea what was happening or who was attacking her home.
The hollow in her chest expanded.
She raised a hand, gave a rapid series of orders. No prisoners. No mercy for mainlanders.
Mainlanders who boiled witch bodies down to the bone.
Her sisters dissolved into smoke, twisted into chill salt winds, grasped each other’s anxious hands dashing out of the room to gather and hide the witchlings. There were still those who hesitated, too many who whispered and cut glances at Marcin for permission first. Eva pinned each whisper to a face and each face to a name, filing them away to be dealt with later.
If there was a later.
Stay calm. Keep your head.
A boy with silver-dyed hair tumbled out of the press of bodies at her back, blinking and rubbing crusty sleep from his eyes. Jun had a witch’s ladder already in hand: skeins of his hair tied around a length of cord, ratty gray gull’s feathers and shards of shell and bird bone tethered to seven large knots.
Like Eva, he worked magic the island’s way, mixing small pieces of himself with sand and salt and seashells, tying sailor’s knots and playing string games like those who had taught them. Although he, like Eva, also mixed in old, half-remembered charms from the places where they’d been born, like Eva’s red string, a nod to the red ribbon Natalia had tied to her wrist as a child to ward off wicked spells. Caldella’s magic was a tangle of traditions carried here by people who had fled from all across the world.
Jun’s arm brushed hers. Eva waited the briefest second, watching his tanned fingers thread a loop, his furrowed forehead press to a pane of window glass in concentration. More witches joined him, ready to banish the storm, ready to bend its wrath to serve their own purposes. Eva forced herself to return to the scarlet chaise lounge. To sit with ankles crossed. A queen took command of the battlefield, devised a strategy; there was no point in lashing out blindly, not knowing where to aim or where to sink your knife. What was her enemy’s weakness? Was the city under attack, too? Should she release the sea serpent? Had the attackers already breached the Water Palace’s walls?
“Yara.”
Yara rushed forward with a tray, a teapot, and three delicate teacups rimmed with sugar. She set the tray on the oval table in front of the chaise lounge. Rain was thrashing the windows, and the Amber Salon grew murky and glacial as unnatural roiling clouds rolled in to engulf the palace. It took every ounce of Eva’s self-control not to snap at Jun and the others to hurry, not to rip another red string bracelet from her wrist and seize control of the storm herself.
The walls shivered with each fresh crash of thunder. Wind battered the tower with angry fists.
Yara sat on her right. Marcin on her left. Yara filled the trembling teacups, handing them out on pastel-painted saucers. “Sour cherry liqueur. For clarity. I already added a few of my tears, so you don’t have to”—Yara grimaced as Marcin spat into his cup—“do that.”
People claimed witches were nightmares, dreams, but Eva felt they were closer to plants; wild magic grew inside of each of them, waiting to be harvested in the strands of their hair, their salt tears, their spit and blood.
She stirred the concoction with the tip of her finger and watched the cherry liquid ripple.
Yara licked a dash of sugar from her teacup’s rim.
The rain and wind cut off abruptly, leaving behind a quiet so deafening it seemed to sing.
“That was fast,” said Marcin.
“I am just that good,” called Jun from the window.
“Shh,” shushed Yara.
Clouds continued to shade the salon. Eva shut her eyes and concentrated. Yara and Marcin did the same, all three going perfectly still. When the liquid in all three cups was also still, mirror still, Eva opened her eyes. Three teacups reflected three different skies. Night, day, and dusk. Starry, stormy, clear.
Yara let out an irritated huff. Eva leaned in next to her to peer at Marcin’s stormy-skied cup. He had always been able to conjure the clearest visions—Eva told herself it was only because he was older. Thirty-two to her nineteen years. Ancient, practically.
Jun shuffled across the room, peering over their bent heads. “Children?”
“Oh.” Yara clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, that’s him.”
“You know them?” demanded Marcin.
“The boy was my pick at the revel. The one I told you about, that I found for E.”
“What’s he doing here? How did they get here? How did they conjure a storm?” Marcin looked at Eva, a lock of red hair falling across his brow.
But Eva didn’t respond. She was too busy watching the girl from the revel. The blond whose face she’d worn when she’d stolen Thomas away.
She leaned closer to the image in the teacup. The girl and boy were in another tower, far below the Amber Salon, in one of the lowest levels of the Water Palace, one half swallowed by the sea. Their battered broom boat knocked against the bottom of a wide stone staircase flanked by faceless statues, steep gray steps climbing up and up and up.
They were drenched. And they were arguing. The girl’s lips were white and pinched, her shoulders hunched defensively, making her body small. The boy was shouting and waving his fists.
“Islanders,” said Jun with so much relief it sounded like a sigh. “Ordinary islanders.” A beat passed in silence. “Do you think they’ve come after Thomas? It’s been a long time since anyone tried to save a sacrifice. At the spring regatta, wasn’t it? That mother who begged for her son’s return. No one’s ever breached the palace before though.”
“They can’t have him.” The acid, the anger in Marcin’s tone startled Eva so much that she almost dropped her teacup. Its contents sloshed from side to side, and the dusky sky it had shown vanished in a flurry of ripples.
“How I am going to enjoy watching that boy drown.”
That was what Marcin had said when he’d learned who Eva had chosen as this year’s sacrifice, gifting her a genuine smile of his rare and treasured approval.
And it was strange how that enthusiasm, that savage eagerness, had put a damper on her own. Before that moment, all she’d felt was triumph. This was revenge. This was justice. This was what Thomas Lin deserved. This was the boy who had taken Natalia from them.
This was also the boy Natalia had given everything to save.
Eva set her cup on its saucer, memories and unease surging through her veins.
“I want him to live. I want him to be happy. I’m so tired, Eva. They all leave while I remain. I don’t know if I can be the one left behind again.”
And yet Natalia had been content to leave her behind.
Tiny pinpricks of fury danced across Eva’s skin. Thomas was happy, happy enough with someone else. With this girl stealing through the palace like a rat. How dare he disrespect her sister’s memory like that? Was Natalia so easily forgotten? Was she merely a thing to be used and discarded?
And how dare this girl disrespect her by coming here? How dare she attack Eva’s home?
“You can have the boy,” she told Yara.
Yara let out a breath she might have been holding, breaking into a catlike smile that would send any sane creature scurrying fast and far in the opposite direction.
“Mar—”
“I’ll check the damage and calm the others. See if anyone was injured. Jun, take Omar and check what state the East Tower is in.”
Eva’s lips pressed together. She’d been about to give that order. There were times when Marcin still treated her like a witchling, acted as if Natalia had made him queen.
“And then I’m going to have some fun with our visitors.” Marcin drank the tempest from his teacup and smiled with storm-stained teeth. “If you don’t find them first.”
Yara immediately pushed off the lounge, hips swishing to a beat only she could hear. She downed the contents of her cup in a single quick gulp. “And you? What are you going to do, E?”
Eva’s gaze strayed to the ceiling, where a giant mural in gold leaf depicted figures from two hundred years ago. The very first Witch Queen kneeling on a rock-strewn shore, her long hair streaming out behind her, her face hidden as she tied stones to the ankles of the boy she loved, as the great ravenous waves of the dark tide bore down on them both.
It’s a bit morbid, isn’t it? Natalia had whispered to her once when they were younger. Macabre.
Which was exactly why Eva liked it. She placed her cup and saucer on the table in front of the chaise lounge with a soft clink. “I’ll take the girl.”