Eva
Feet pounded down the stairs. Rough hands tore Eva from Lina, jerking her around to face a second set of merciless, storm-gray eyes. “What in hell are you doing, you ghoul? She came to help you.”
A voice hoarse and low and trembling with fury, yet liltingly familiar. As the rest of the boy’s features were painfully familiar. Those eyes, those cheekbones, those strangely square brows.
Lina’s brother shook Eva so hard it felt like her teeth would rattle.
“Finley! Wait, Finley!” Lina had fallen back, a hand to her throat, coughing. Her other hand stretched out in anxious appeal.
Lina Kirk, always putting other people before herself.
“Finley!” Another voice. Yara was flying down the stairs after him. “E, thank God, I thought—”
“Finley.” Lina pleaded with her brother. Her brother, who had come for her, to save her, like Natalia had once saved Eva.
The emptiness inside Eva’s chest expanded. Her left hand clenched around steel, around the sharp spikes of her bloodstained crown. When the water from the sea cave had flooded in and the magic had wound around her like chains, dragging her deep into the dark, she’d wondered: Would she see Natalia before the end? Would she dream of her sister?
How badly she had wanted to. People said it happened, that they spoke to the dead as their own deaths drew near. That their loved ones came to offer them peace, forgiveness. That they urged them to live, to love, to follow their dreams.
Funny how what the dead wished for was always what the living most desired.
Natalia had not visited Eva, had not come for her as Lina’s brother had. There had been nothing but the icy bite of the water and darkness. And she’d decided then that if she came back, she would offer no one forgiveness. She would wish for no one to live or love. She would haunt them all. Every last one.
Thomas Lin, whom she had trusted with her sister. Lina Kirk, who had left her to drown.
To be eaten by her own pet sea serpent. Only it hadn’t eaten her.
Her loyal monster, the only creature she could trust.
Eva’s gaze slid away from Finley, a tiny crease forming between her brows as she soaked in details her mind had not registered earlier. A tight, deathly stillness stole over her, constricting her chest and making her voice a hiss, a whisper.
“Who did that to you?”
This was not the Lina she remembered lowering her to the floor, welcoming in the tide. The deep bruises blooming below those eyes, across the bridge of her nose; the blood crusting above her lip, down her chin; the bedraggled, sodden sun-gold hair—Eva would murder whoever had done this.
“Marcin,” Yara said quietly, tugging on Finley’s sleeve, trying to make him release his grip on Eva’s arms.
“He wore my face.” Lina’s eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. “I—” Guilt pinched her features. She forced out the words. “Thomas came for me. Marcin stopped us from escaping. He forced me to jump from one of the balconies. He said you wouldn’t have to know I was gone. I don’t know what happened afterward. Finley brought me back so I could warn you. I don’t know what—I don’t know if Thomas—” Her voice cracked, gaze darting past Eva as if she thought she might find Thomas Lin lurking in the curves of the ballroom’s staircase. As if it might not be too late. “Were you going to give him to Marcin? Were you going to let Marcin feed him to your serpent as soon as I was gone? Even though I…I thought we…”
Eva stared. A bolt of lightning-hot irritation shot through her, head to toe. Did that really matter right now? Was that really the question to ask right now?
Marcin.
The name slid between her ribs like a blade, sinking through tender flesh to puncture something vital.
Marcin, who had spat into his silver hip flask and offered it to her. Marcin, who had spoken those nonsensical words.
I can’t watch this island destroy you. Can’t you see what it has done to you?
You made me do this.
Marcin, who had brought her to the island as a witchling, who still tugged her braids even though she was all grown up, even though she was queen. Marcin, who had raised her alongside Natalia, who was more truly her family than anyone she had left.
Betrayal cut so much deeper when you loved the hand that held the knife.
A part of her refused to believe it. Couldn’t.
And Lina kept staring at her with those eyes, waiting, searching for an answer to her question. An answer Eva did not want to give.
An apology she did not want to give.
A thousand words balanced on the tip of Eva’s tongue, but she didn’t know how to say any of them. She had never been good at apologizing or explaining herself; a queen never had to.
And a part of her did not think she had anything to apologize for.
Eva’s face was a mask as she withdrew into herself. Chill air and shadows wrapped around her like a cloak, nipping at anyone who dared come close.
Finley finally released her. Yara darted in to sweep a supportive arm around Eva’s waist. Finley stepped back with one final warning.“You hurt my sister again, and, witch or not, I will kill you.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.” A lie. Eva wanted to hurt her. She wanted to hurt him. Right now she wanted to hurt the whole world. She wanted to find Marcin and tear him apart. She wanted to rip him into tiny pieces and shred those pieces into tinier pieces. She wanted him at her feet bruised and bleeding. Begging.
Lina’s face shuttered.
Behind Eva, someone moaned. Jun, cracking open his eyes. Still cowering, still curled in on himself.
More witches were arriving, exclaiming, surging through the empty archway at the top of the staircase, spilling down it in a living black tide. Echoes bounced strangely off the water and the walls. The scene unfolding with a slow, surreal, almost dreamlike feel. So many voices ringing and melding into one.
“Eva! Thank all the gods. Yara said Marcin attacked you?”
“The doors were sealed. We couldn’t find you. Marcin said—”
“Where is he?” cut in Lina.
They ignored her. “Are we really leaving the island? Cyla says we’re heading to St. Casimir’s Square, that we’re performing the sacrifice now.”
At the mention of St. Casimir’s Square, Finley surged forward. “It’s not a full moon. You can’t do the magic without the full moon. And Yara told me how you tried to find another way to calm the tide.”
The words cut like a second betrayal. A betrayal from Yara this time, giving away Eva’s past, her secrets, her failure. Yara, who wouldn’t meet her eyes. Yara, who’d maybe been walking the same path with Finley that Eva had with Lina.
Another way. Eva slowly replaced the crown on her head as Finley babbled on, as the rest of her witches stared at him blankly. “Where did he come from?” someone muttered.
Another way with no blood price.
“What if we all gave something?” said Finley. “Each of us folk from Caldella. A tithe taken from every person, young and old. One of our treasures. Something it hurts to lose. The dark tide has a taste for suffering. So we each give it a small bite to sate it. We just need to gather offerings. We just need time to convince people.”
There was no time.
A shock of icy black water splattered the backs of Eva’s legs. Her serpent stirring, churning white water from black. A strange hunger seeped into her bones along with the wet and the cold, a craving she didn’t think was her own.
She could hear it again, that drumming, that ravenous heartbeat. And she knew that if she left the ballroom, stepped out onto one of the palace’s countless balconies and looked toward the city, she would hear flood sirens threading through the storm.
There was no time.
She could not afford to fail.
There was no guarantee the tide could be satiated with anything but the life of the queen herself or the person she cared about.
Another way.
When had she stopped fighting for that? When had she bowed her head to the tide? A queen should answer to no one. When had she decided to give the sea anything more than what she wished to give it?
“Then where did you see Marcin last?”
Eva turned. Lina had a hand fisted in the fabric of Omar’s coat. The sight might have surprised her once; Omar was well over six feet tall with muscles to rival a pirate’s. But this was Lina, the girl who had stormed her palace, who had faced down a sea serpent and offered up her own life to save the boy she loved.
The girl who had danced magic on the bloodstained deck of Eva’s ship, who had made her feel things she hadn’t thought possible for someone without a heart. The girl who had come back to warn her, save her, even knowing Eva had deceived her, instead of seizing on her one chance to escape being sacrificed.
Foolish, infuriating Lina Kirk.
“St. Casimir’s,” Omar huffed. “Okay, lass? Marcin heard our talk and said he’d go ahead to check that everything was all right.”
Of course he had.
It had probably amused him: Eva out of commission and Thomas in his hands, everyone talking about performing the sacrifice.
The bells in Cyla’s silver locks jingled as she came to stand with Eva and Yara, something like understanding passing between all three in a glance. Because they too knew where Marcin would go. He wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to perform a little sacrifice of his own in Eva’s place, to drown Thomas Lin as she had promised they would at the start.
Lina’s head swiveled toward Eva.
Cyla draped a heavy coat—black, as always, with a fur collar and cuffs—around Eva’s shoulders, then handed her several braided lengths of hair: brown and blond and black, rich red and palest silver. Eva could see the magic in the strands. A blink and you’d miss it glimmer. A thread of cobweb catching a slant of winter sunlight. A ghostly gleam.
Tithes from her sisters to help with the magic, to bolster Eva’s own as she offered the sacrifice, to help cast the spell that would calm the dark tide without the full moon’s sway over the sea.
“It can’t wait any longer,” said Cyla. “Take Lina with you. Save the island first. Deal with Marcin when it’s done.”
Yara cut a glance to where Finley was arguing with Omar now, lips parting, looking anxious. “E, what Finley said—”
Cyla shoved a small, poison-green bottle into Eva’s palm. A chill raced through her, a hint of frost blossoming on her skin, a sense of what magic lurked inside. “To hold her still if she makes trouble.”
To hold Lina still while Eva chained her to the pillar.
The chill carried through to her marrow.
Perhaps, in the end, she was more like Natalia than any of them had thought.
“You’re all to wait here. I’m going ahead to deal with Marcin.” Eva’s voice held an order that carried through the flooded ballroom, then dipped too low for anyone but Yara to hear.
Yara’s lips formed an O as Eva whispered in her ear. Cyla’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m coming, too!” said Lina, pushing closer.
Finley burst into protests. But Eva took Lina’s hand, unable to resist lacing their fingers together for the first and final time.