The door slammed shut behind her.
Lina jumped. “Finley?” She grabbed the door handle, dropping the knife to grip it with both hands.
It wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t open, wouldn’t give.
She thumped a fist on the wood. “Finley? Finley!”
Someone groaned. Lina whirled, the door handle digging into the small of her back. She snatched the knife off the floor.
A fallen cabinet against the wall opposite shuddered, throwing up a cloud of dust. Someone was struggling to crawl out from under it, fingernails scrabbling at the carpet. Their blond hair was matted with blood from a deep gash on their forehead.
Lina’s heart stopped. Oh God. Had they been in here when she’d brought the storm down? Had anyone else?
“Don’t move!” Her slippers squelched as she picked her way through the chaos. She felt like she was going to be sick. “Don’t move. I’m coming. Hold on.”
“What have you done?”
Her head jerked up at the familiar voice, mouth falling open as she squinted at the dusty, blood-streaked face. “Thomas?”
“What have you done?” The words were rasping, thick with pain and accusation.
“I didn’t—God, I’m so—” Lina’s breath hitched. She slipped on a leather-bound book and her ankle buckled as her weight shifted suddenly. She crumpled, landing hard, the carpet grazing her palms raw. The knife jolted out of her grip.
She gasped, gritted her teeth, and looked up. “I’m okay. Just…hold still…”
There was no one trapped beneath the fallen cabinet. No one struggling to crawl out of the ruins on bleeding hands and knees. The space Thomas had occupied was empty save for dust.
The hair along the back of Lina’s neck rose. “Thomas?” It came out as a whisper.
The air shifted. The slightest gust of wind ruffled the pages of another book, muffled the soft patter of raindrops. Lina struggled to her feet. She was suddenly acutely aware of something, someone, moving somewhere behind her. A whisper of silk. A cat-soft step.
She swallowed hard, steeled herself, and slowly turned.
There was no one. Nothing, save a fading twist of night-dark smoke.
Lina willed her heart to stop racing. She reminded herself of the black pearl she’d swallowed minutes before. She layered her words with the same soft, syrupy sweetness she’d used to compel Finley. “I—I know you’re there.” She bit her cheek, cursing herself for the stutter. “Why don’t you come out? Where’s my brother? What have you done with him?”
No answer.
Lina licked the parched surface of her lips. “My name is Lina Kirk. I’m here for Thomas Lin. I’m here to take him back.” Her voice grew louder. “But you knew that, or you wouldn’t have conjured that…that illusion, that thing.” Fresh anger stirred to life in her stomach, burning away her nerves. “You can’t pick the same boy twice!”
The smoky air seemed to pulse with half-heard laughter, as if whispering back: Who says I can’t?
“Why don’t you show yourself?” Lina coaxed, stressing each syllable. The pearl’s magic had worked to charm Finley. It worked for the sopranos at the Conservatoire. Why wasn’t it working now?
She tried forcing the lock on the door with Finley’s knife but only succeeded in blunting the blade.
He was going to be very angry about that.
If he was still alive.
If she ever saw him again.
If the Witch Queen hadn’t already fed him to her sea serpent.
In a fit of pure frustration Lina hurled the blunt knife across the room. A panicked tear singed a stripe of fire down her cheek, and she swiped furiously at the wetness.
“Are you still there?” she tried again. “I just want to talk. I—”
There was the softest snick, a key turning in a lock. A drawn-out groan of rusted hinges.
Lina jerked back as the door swung wide, but no one stepped through. The open door merely waited, patient, golden glyphs glinting over its polished wood, the shadows beyond beckoning in silent invitation.
Lina hesitated. Where would it take her this time? Unlikely that it led anywhere good…
But what did she have left to lose? They’d already taken Finley, stolen Thomas. Both were in danger because of her. She wasn’t helping either by staying put.
She crossed the threshold. And again, the Water Palace’s doors, like doors in a dream, took her elsewhere, somewhere she least expected. It was a chapel, hushed as church. Cold and smelling strongly of incense, its holy walls were decorated with human bones, a chain of skulls grinning above the altar.
Still no sign of anyone.
The next archway—double doors this time—opened into a ghostly salon, pale light falling through thin windows, furniture hiding beneath fluttering white sheets. The door after that led into a crypt where soul cages—lobster pots that sea devils placed along the seabed to lure in the souls of drowned sailors—lined every shelf.
Turning, Lina caught the quickest gleam of two pairs of cat-curious eyes. A flash of two little girls in little black dresses—two witchlings with gold swirls painted on the apples of their cheeks.
Their bare feet pattered. Their black skirts swished.
And then they were gone again.
Lina’s heart danced a furious beat. Were they playing games with her? Was this all some twisted form of hide-and-seek? Did they think this sort of thing frightened her? Lina was an islander, raised on breakfasts of charms and curses.
She flung open the next door. And the next, and the next, and the next.
For hours, days, maybe an eternity, she searched the palace for Finley and Thomas, for glimpses of a girl made from smoke. There was no keeping track of the time. With each step she grew wearier and wearier. She hadn’t slept since before the revel, and there was something hypnotic, nightmarish, to this endless sequence of doors. The rooms all melting together. And her ankle—God she was just so tired of hurting. Every day she woke up hoping, and it was still there—this weakness, this stubborn ache.
She was so scared the pain would always be there now, that it would never go away. And she knew she was making things worse by not resting, but she couldn’t rest, couldn’t stop now.
“Is this the best you can do?” she called out. “I’m not giving up.”
She forced herself to push through yet another door, feet sinking with shocked splashes into ice-cold water.
Lina hissed, eyes taking a beat to adjust to the sudden darkness, tongue suddenly tangy with the taste of salt and old seaweed. She was standing knee-deep in the shallows of a flooded sea cave rippling with emerald and sapphire light.
Still water stretched in front of her, craggy fissures in the walls where sea-worn statues stood guard. Moss-covered stepping stones jutted like jade teeth, forming a slippery path through the spill.
Uneasiness curled inside Lina’s belly, her mind filling instantly with all the stories Finley had terrorized her with when she was small: Tales of the sea serpent the Witch Queen kept as a pet. The giant monster that snacked on the island’s criminals and swallowed mainlander ships, that slept in a cave carved into the flooded foundations of the Water Palace.
But it wasn’t like the monster ate just anyone, right? It protected the island, the islanders. She wasn’t a criminal… Was it a crime to break into the palace?
Lina started to turn back, twisting to find the door she’d just stepped through. But her attention caught.
Held.
Visions and images chased each other across the still surface of the water, flashing like fish scales. On the island, too, puddles sometimes reflected skies different from the one overhead.
Lina caught a glimpse of skirts whipping like whirlwinds, dancers spinning around a crackling bonfire in a field with mountains beyond. A view of the mainland. They celebrated their own grotesque version o
f St. Walpurga’s Eve, burning black-clad effigies and sometimes, when they caught them, real witches.
Next came a shimmery vision of Caldella, the island’s winding water roads and pastel rainbow of tightly stacked town houses, its cobbled squares and secret gardens. Longing stole Lina’s breath. Her beautiful enchanted city. The setting of her love story. She wanted to focus the image, to pinch and poke at it until it revealed her front door, until it showed her family, her brother, showed her where Finley was now.
Before she could do anything, the image changed.
Now, the water showed the Conservatoire, its mirrored walls and polished floors the rich, intoxicating color of melted caramel. And a figure, Lina herself, twirling, nimble feet dancing over two crossed swords, performing one of the island’s traditional dances, one staged on the eve of battle, that foretold triumph or loss depending on whether your feet brushed the naked blades.
Would she dance like that again? Would she be able to? Her cousin, a doctor, had said she would, but there was always this lingering fear at the back of her mind.
Every injury took its toll. Limited her. Even before she’d broken her ankle, it had been stiff from scar tissue; she couldn’t count the number of times she’d rolled it. It was her weak ankle. It was going to take so much work to get back to where she’d been. It had already taken so much hard work to get there, and it was hard work, not talent, Lina knew. Hard work and always picking herself up again.
She gave herself a shake.
You’ve been through this before. You’ll get through it again. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Focus.
She searched the cave, the shadows, voice echoing across the water as she shouted, “How long are you going to keep hiding? Aren’t you tired of this game?”
The visions the water had shown faded until the surface reflected only her anguished face.
God, she looked awful. Like something broken and brought in with the tide. Hair matted in knots, kohl smudged under eyes red from lack of sleep.
And then that image vanished, too, the water shivering like someone had stroked a single finger down its back.
Lina opened her mouth to speak again.
It went for her legs. A slick tail lashed out, coiled around her calves, and ripped her from the shallows. Black water swallowed the sound of her screams as the serpent dragged her under.
Lina thrashed and fought and clawed and kicked. But its tail coiled tighter, dragged her deeper, and the black water was everywhere. Behind her eyes. Filling her throat, her nose.
She spluttered, choked, inhaled, choked again. Bloated faces and swollen flesh swirled in a great tide of bubbles. The ghosts of drowned boys come to accompany her to a watery grave.
No.
Strength leached out of her limbs.
No.
Her arms chopped weakly at the current. Her kicks were feeble. A numbness was creeping through her fingers and toes, stealing into her chest. Lina’s vision flickered. She saw the bubbles drifting up. Her last breath floating to the surface.
No, please.
11
Eva
“You had the doors lead her into the sea cave? You’re going to let the serpent eat her?”
“I don’t remember dictating what you had to do with the boy.” Eva paused in front of the salon door, casting a glance back over her shoulder.
“I locked him up.”
Boring. But Eva didn’t say so aloud.
Yara caught up. She wore a frown of undisguised judgment, and it looked so much like one of Marcin’s that Eva made a mental note to cut down the time they spent together.
“The boy you gave me?” Yara pressed the tips of her fingers together. “I think he’d make a much better sacrifice. Much better than Thomas.”
Eva raised her eyes to the ceiling. Would Yara never stop sulking, never be content that Eva had chosen for herself this year? “You don’t agree with my choice.”
“I think you’ll find it difficult to make yourself fall in love with Thomas.”
Eva shrugged, a miniscule lift of her shoulders. She took gentle hold of the door handle, smiling faintly as she imagined Lina Kirk’s terror as she stumbled into the sea serpent’s cave, ignoring the irritating fact that Yara was right.
“Finley’s very handsome. And he could play his violin for you.”
“You think I will fail,” said Eva flatly. “You think the sacrifice will fail again this year.”
Because it would. The spell that would calm the dark tide was burned into Eva, listed like the ingredients in a cookbook or an old grimoire: Take the life of the one you love and mix with the tears you shed for them. Add three drops of blood, three strands of hair, and feed it all to the sea by the light of May’s first full moon.
The very first Witch Queen, the girl painted on the Amber Salon’s ceiling, had given the boy she was to marry to the sea to save the island, and the tide had developed a taste for such sacrifices. It was only satisfied when given someone the queen suffered to lose, someone she cared about.
It hadn’t been a problem for the queens who had come before Eva. They’d loved easily, fallen instantly for the boys they chose, keeping them in the Water Palace until the full moon rose so they could grow more and more attached to them.
But Eva wasn’t the type who got attached easily to people; at best, they grew on her in spite of her continued efforts to keep them at a distance. She could feed a hundred islander boys to the tide, one each dawn, each dusk, and it wouldn’t matter, because they did not matter to her.
Thomas Lin did not matter to her, not in the way that counted. She would not suffer to lose him. She would enjoy chaining him to the pillar and so the magic would fail, and the tide would continue to rise.
“Marcin didn’t—” Eva paused. Of course Marcin hadn’t objected. Not about this. He wanted to see Thomas drown, and he’d already confessed that he wouldn’t mind seeing the city sink.
A part of Eva suspected he liked it when she failed. Preferred it. She used to think it sweet, how he always needed to be the one who took care of things for her, how enthusiastic he was, coming to her with advice. He never seemed to know what to do with himself when she actually succeeded at something without his help.
Yara shifted impatiently, the fabric of her dress rustling like shore weeds.
Eva pushed through the door, starting down a flight of rock-hewn steps leading into darkness. A dull and distant thudding filled her ears, the faint beating of a lost heart, the crash of waves heard from underwater. She felt it more as a force than a sound, the dark tide pounding on walls that glimmered wetly with ravenous, insatiable hunger.
How she despised it, this curse that plagued their island. A queen should answer to no one. Not the heavens, not the earth, not the sea. Especially not to something so temperamental as the tide.
Natalia had, of course, laughed the first time Eva told her this. “A queen,” she’d corrected primly, “answers to everyone. First and foremost to her family, to her fellow witches. And then to her people, her islanders. What is a queen, after all, without her subjects? A queen of nothing and nowhere.”
Eva would be a queen of nothing and nowhere if she lost Caldella, if black waves swallowed the city her sister had entrusted her with. But what was one more year? Surely Caldella could survive for one more measly year. They’d lose parts of the island, yes. Edges. Corners. Some of the islanders would lose their houses and businesses. But the whole city would not be lost.
Or so she told herself. And it would be worth it to see Thomas Lin chained to the stone pillar in St. Casimir’s Square like he was supposed to have been two years ago. Would have been, if Natalia had not taken his place.
She could hear Yara’s steps behind her. She could not expect Eva to just let him go. She had honored her sister’s memory all this time, hadn’t touched a hair on his head. But
he’d taunted her, waltzing into the revel with Lina Kirk. It was a slap in her sister’s face. Had her sacrifice meant so little to him? How dare he forget her and move on when they were all still grieving? He hadn’t cared for Natalia at all, had deceived her from the first. He was out there making her sister look a fool.
Eva pressed a thumb to her bottom lip and bit down hard, then quickly lowered her hand, closing her fingers into a fist so she wouldn’t see the nails already gnawed to the bloody quick. Death was almost too good for Thomas Lin. She wanted to take from him as he had taken from her. “It would be weak to change my mind now,” she told Yara.
“It wouldn’t though!”
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs now, where a dark arch waited to lead them into the sea cave. Eva moved through it, and a bloodcurdling scream greeted her, cut short by a great splash and plume of spray as something scaly and sinuous dragged something smaller into the inky water.
Air caught in Eva’s lungs. She stepped down onto a mossy stone. Yara grabbed her arm, leaned in close. “It’s not weak to listen to a friend, especially when you know I’m right. You’ll show everyone you’re a queen who will listen, that you’re willing to listen.”
Eva eyed her sidelong, noting the anxious set of Yara’s jaw, the tremble of her lush lips, the ragged hem of her long, glittery black dress dipping into the water. The same dress she’d worn to the revel…
There were times when Yara got so fixated on an idea, so obsessed with a painting or potion or spell she was working on that she forgot to sleep, to eat, to change clothes. She burned so brightly sometimes that Eva worried her friend would burn out. Use up all her magic and fade from existence like a dream upon waking. The way all witches eventually did. There was a reason so few of them grew old.
“Marcin said you haven’t been sleeping—” Eva started, tugging her arm free, trying not to let impatience bleed into her words. Trying not to picture Lina wrapped in the sea serpent’s coils, her short blond hair fanning out around her head, her blush-pink lips slowly turning blue.
The Dark Tide Page 7
