Eva
Splashes, and the soft wind-chime jingle of bells reached Eva before Cyla hurried into view. Black water was bleeding under all the closed doors on this level of the palace, one of its lowest. Puddles blooming darkly, eating up the floor. Amber lantern light glimmered off their glassy surface.
The tide licked at Eva’s heels, at the glittering silver dancing shoes she had yet to kick off. She’d warded this floor, hadn’t she? Sealed these doors? Come down here only minutes ago? Scattered salt, poured sand mixed with her siblings’ blood in deliberate circles, pushing the sea back with sheer savage will as it fought to take over the fortress the third Witch Queen had raised from the depths and made their home.
She’d been at it for hours and hours. The anxious rush of water lived within her now. It was all she could hear, that cursed susurration, that drumming of waves pounding on a far-off shore.
“We need to hold the ritual. Perform the sacrifice.” Cyla’s face was pinched with worry. She scooped her silver locks over one shoulder, splashing through the puddles, coming closer.
“It’s not yet the full moon.”
“It will not matter. The tide is ravenous, Eva. Marcin has half the palace packing to leave. If you want us to stay, if you want us to follow you and not him—”
A surge of irritation set fire to Eva’s blood. She’d told Marcin they were not abandoning the island. She’d told him to ward the doors against further flooding. And yet, when her next words escaped, there was no real heat or conviction behind them. Her arms and legs were leaden, heavy anchors weighing her down. Her crown was a band of pressure growing tighter and tighter as it circled her brow.
She was so bone-achingly tired.
“To offer a sacrifice without the full moon to draw on, without a natural amplifier, without the moon’s sway over the sea,” she started. “It would take too much from me.”
Magic wasn’t inexhaustible. You had as much as you had, you were as much as you were, and when a witch used herself up, she faded from existence like the wisps of a dream upon waking. Jun, who was of course on Marcin’s side, had protested loudly when she’d ordered him to send the storm away, saying it was too violent, too vast. “Magic of that size and scale? It would burn me up to banish it all. I can calm parts of it, maybe, with help. I’ll need everyone to weave ladders for me.”
Eva, too, had used too much magic of late, had been reckless with it. She had always been reckless with it, refusing to take tithes because she was vain enough to think she had so much magic she didn’t need to steal from others.
She’d been using it constantly to impress Lina. Because she liked the way Lina looked at her when she did magic, like she was pure magic. It was so terribly easy to get addicted to eyes that looked at you that way.
Eva glanced down at the sand she’d been scattering, as if trying to read its lines for portents and signs. For the thousandth time, she tried to forget Lina. Every time she thought of the other girl, her body reacted as if she were caught again in that moment on the balcony, fire falling like rain all around them, skin coming alive wherever they touched, Lina’s heart beating so fast, so hard she could feel it. A shared thunder that filled the hollow inside her chest. As if Lina’s heart were beating for them both.
“We can help you,” said Cyla. “Lend you our strength, our magic. Take some of the burden. We used to, with Natalia. It’s you who never lets us help you.”
Cold sweat dripped down Eva’s back. The puddles lapped at their shoes. She could see Lina suddenly in that eerily undulating water. Those storm-gray eyes eaten by crabs, that sun-gold hair tangled with eelgrass and oyster shells, reams of old fishing line. Lips painted a cold corpse blue.
She blinked, and the vision vanished.
“A sacrifice must be made to appease the tide,” said Cyla. “Choose rightly. Do not make the same mistake your sister did.”
Eva flinched. She wouldn’t. She would never make the same mistake. She would do as all Caldella’s queens had done for centuries: sacrifice her heart to save her city. Pay the blood price to protect her home, protect her family, her subjects.
It doesn’t matter what I feel, Natalia had often said. I am the island’s queen. I have a duty.
A duty to sacrifice one life to save thousands of others.
Eva had always known it would come to this. Hadn’t Lina known it, too? Hadn’t she brought this on herself?
Hadn’t she been desperate to find another way? Hadn’t she said she didn’t want to die?
Eva had a very strong feeling Lina was going to find some way to come back and haunt her. But that, at the very least, would make life interesting.
Even bearable.
Eva swallowed around the swell of emotion in her throat. “Ask Yara if she will come to me.” Her voice wavered. She suddenly needed Yara. Needed her badly. She did not know if she could do this alone, did not want to be alone when Lina…
It shocked her, because she always wanted to be alone. Preferred it. Eva did not like people.
But there was also a small part of her that ached to be known, that ached for company in small lapses in between months of contented solitude. It would burst upon her like sunshine after a storm, this sudden fury of longing.
What was Yara doing? Where was she? She’d sent her to deal with Lina’s brother, to turn his broom boat back, to remind him that what he was attempting was treason. A sacrifice was necessary. Lina had offered to do this.
Eva pressed a thumb to her bottom lip, biting down hard. Hadn’t Omar said the islanders were turning on the witches? If Lina’s brother had dared attack Yara…or was Yara merely distracted by his handsome face?
Cyla laid an insistent palm on Eva’s forearm. “Make the right decision. You know what’s at stake.”
“I know. I will,” Eva snapped.
This, all of this, was why she had cast away her heart. Because despite her best attempts not to let anyone in, irritating people kept sneaking through the cracks somehow. She still cared, still loved.
Still hurt.
“Natalia made you queen for a reason,” said Cyla.
Because her sister must have believed her strong enough to do this. She had entrusted Eva with the island she had loved.
Yet a part of Eva couldn’t quite believe Natalia had willingly trapped her in this cage she’d been so eager to escape herself.
Eva moved to the closest door, gripping the handle deathly tight, giving a single sharp nod. “Gather whatever is necessary, whoever is necessary. Prepare to leave for St. Casimir’s Square. We’ll perform the sacrifice early. I won’t let our home sink. I’ll bring Lina Kirk myself.”
Relief showed plainly on Cyla’s face.
Eva opened the door, stepping through with a little gush of water, heels clicking on the cold marble floor, ignoring the agonizing ache in the hollow where her heart had been. Her gaze lifted unwillingly, skipping past amber-and-gold-leaf screens, skating over the empty daybed. Noting the bottled spell shattered on the floor.
A wave of uneasiness washed through her.
Cyla checked the balcony. Returned, the bells in her hair chiming in her wake. Chiming like funeral bells. “She’s not here. Where would she go?”
Eva bit the tip of her thumb again. “I don’t know. Just find her.”