Lazar chased after Nepenthe as she fled the palace, catching up to her on the marble foyer steps.
“I am sorry, Nepenthe,” he said solemnly.
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t do this. It was all him.”
“If you and your mother hadn’t helped me, she would still be alive.”
“But it’s not your fault,” Nepenthe reassured.
“Then where are you going? Why are you going?”
“Because you are free to marry Ora now. It’s what you want. Your father was right. Once a witch chooses the River, she never changes her mind.”
Nepenthe knew what love was now. She had thought hers was different from Ora’s and different from Lazar’s and different from her mother and father’s. The water didn’t cheat. It didn’t steal. The water didn’t ask you to be more or less of yourself. It also didn’t kiss like Lazar. But Nepenthe stuffed the memory down.
She put the kiss away. She vowed not to remember it or cherish it or pull it out again and again to relive it.
She was strong enough to give him up, but not strong enough to forget him. Especially when Lazar was standing in front of her like this. Looking at her like this.
“You cannot let this be the end of us,” he said.
“There is no us. You are betrothed to my sister. Contrary to what you believe, you cannot have everything.”
“Why not?” His voice was light, but he was sure. Nothing in his life had ever said that the Prince could be denied.
Nepenthe wondered if he even thought he had to choose between the two of them.
Anger rose in her and so did the water. She felt her tentacles stretching out. She felt herself losing control.
“How would you like this for a queen?” Nepenthe asked.
Would he want me to change? Would he want me to do what my mother had done for love? Traded herself for someone else.
Lazar looked at the River Witch. “I wouldn’t want you to change for me, Nepenthe. We can make the world change. With my Snow and your water, we would be invincible.”
But the thing was . . . The thing was that she would want him to change. She would want him to control his Snow. But she felt like he was just beginning. He was just starting to explore his power, and he had no plans on stopping.
“We are infinite. Our power together? We would be unstoppable.”
He looked out across the land with a faraway look.
Was Lazar daydreaming about his power combined with mine? Nepenthe felt drawn in and repulsed simultaneously.
“Could you promise not to hurt anyone?” The words stalled on her lips. “Could you promise to only use your power when it was necessary?”
“The beauty of what we are is that we don’t have to promise. That we can do anything. That anything we think, we dream, is possible. We can be gods.”
Is he in love with me or in love with my power? Being the River Witch wasn’t about the power exactly. It was something else. A conversation with the water, perhaps. A lifelong conversation that never, ever let her down.
Nepenthe tried to make excuses again—for him, for the way that he was raised. For the education he missed. His Snow was new, and that was why and how he was so different from her. His relationship with his power was at the blush of it—the excitement—the heady rush of having power for the first time. It was a new romance, one he just needed to come down from. But then again, Nepenthe still had not come down from feeling what she was feeling for him. Perhaps neither of them ever would.
“I don’t want to be a god. I never have,” she countered.
“I don’t think you hate what I did. I think you are looking for an excuse to run away from this. From me.”
Lazar was right. But she wasn’t going to admit it. And she wasn’t going to stand here and listen to another word from him. Because every word made her want to stay.
She turned and walked away from him toward the water.
“Don’t walk away from me, Nepenthe. I can’t bear it.”
She saw the Snow drifting toward her, a determined stream of flakes like what she’d seen right after the ball when the Prince had made that guard his puppet. It was coming for her now. It entered her ears and her eyes. It rattled around inside her. It was trying to take hold. It spoke to her. Like the River did, only his Snow was inside her head.
Nepenthe wanted to cry out. To scream. But she could only listen.
You want to stay.
Lazar, the new Snow King, had shown her this trick before. But this was different. This was a violation.
And he didn’t even see it.
She used her arms and pushed him down.
A second ago she had been so close to betraying everything she believed. Her sisterhood. The water. But with a few flurries—he had changed everything again.
She ran for the River, his Snow, his voice still rattling around in her head.
You’ll be back, the voice said.
The River Witch didn’t stop until her body hit the water.
She knew they would meet again. She was as sure of it as she was of the waves in the water. The first part of the prophecy had been fulfilled. Would the fates play out the rest of their story as it had been foretold? There would be a child of Snow, and she would change everything. That is what the oracle said. But how and who were questions that only the stones of time held the answers to.
With every passing minute underwater, Nepenthe felt herself grow stronger, more determined, readying herself for what was to come. She was the new River Witch. Her place was in the Coven. This was where she belonged.
It was like she had said to the Witch of the Woods: sometimes it was love, but she had to drown it out.