But it wouldn’t eat her. Not yet. Eva’s pet liked to play with its food.
“I’d sleep better if I wasn’t worrying the sea was about to gobble up my home. I may as well use a life buoy as a pillow. Don’t you want to save it? Natalia’s city? Our city? You said you did.” Yara’s shoulders were rigid.
Eva’s gaze tiptoed past her to the rippling black water. Lina’s scream still lingered on her skin, giving her gooseflesh.
“She didn’t leave it to you,” said Yara, “for you to watch it sink.”
Eva stiffened.
A cyclone of wind and shadow whipped the water into spray. Eva raised a hand to shield her eyes. When she could see clearly again, Yara had vanished.
She made a half-hearted attempt to go after her.
But then Lina broke the surface.
Gasping. Trembling. Retching up brackish water. Obvious terror on her face as she thrashed her legs and arms. Her fingers brushed the jagged edge of a stepping stone and she clung to it for dear life. The water was deep where she’d surfaced. The stones floated atop the water by magic.
Eva followed the slippery path they carved through the cave, stealing closer, stopping a step away from Lina. “Did you enjoy drowning?”
Lina’s head snapped up. Her eyes were wide as saucers.
“I did hear you screaming—”
“Did you enjoy listening?” Lina spat into the pool, gaze darting this way and that, searching anxiously for the sea serpent.
“A little,” Eva said, smiling.
“I can’t swim!” Lina shuddered, and once she started shaking, she couldn’t stop. Her teeth chattered—from cold or fury, Eva couldn’t tell.
“Evidently not.” Eva crouched and dabbled her fingers in the water, stamping down an odd pang of guilt.
But Lina Kirk had brought this on herself by storming into the palace uninvited. She’d brought out this side of Eva, made her sink to childish pettiness and spite. There was something about Lina that got under her skin.
There was something about her that reminded Eva of Natalia.
They didn’t look alike. Lina resembled a drowned rat right now, and Natalia had looked like Eva—or, rather, Eva looked like Natalia. But there was something, some undefinable quality that reminded her of her sister. Something that had driven both girls to dive headfirst into danger to protect the boys they loved.
A seething and sick kind of envy snaked through Eva. Because deep down, she knew that although she might indeed love, she was not capable of such a love. Not a love like her sister’s. It was not within her. She would always, always put herself first.
And why was that so terrible?
Envy mixed and melted into a teeth-grinding frustration. She did not understand. Could not understand. What made another person’s life more precious than your own? Why would you throw yours away? And if the other person truly loved you back, would they even want you to? If that was love…
The scaly edge of a spine cut the surface of the water. Lina kicked frantically, trying to climb onto the stone she had hold of. Words puffed out between each breath. “Where’s my brother? What did you do to him? Where’s—”
“Your brother? What did you do to my palace? To my sisters who were dreaming peacefully in that tower the doors first took you into?”
“I didn’t—” Lina let out a shriek as the sea serpent dove beneath her. “I never meant to hurt anyone. I only wanted—”
“And yet by coming here and trying to take Thomas Lin away, you’re hurting everyone. All the people on the island. Everyone in Caldella. Your friends. Your family. A sacrifice has to be made to keep the island from sinking, Lina Kirk, but you would steal mine away and damn us all to save some boy you like.” Eva straightened.
Color flooded Lina’s cheeks. She hauled herself onto the stone, dripping, panting on hands and knees. “That’s not true. You can give someone else to the tide.”
“Oh? So you’ve come here to offer me someone else? Your brother, maybe?”
Lina stilled.
Eva tilted her head to one side. “He came here with you. He joined our revel.”
“He only joined because you tempted him,” snapped Lina. “Because you promise anyone who does the chance to win free magic and undying love and—”
“Of course we do. You force us to. It was originally meant as a reward, to honor those brave enough to volunteer themselves. Like the money we pay to the families for the loss of their sons. But every year, more and more of you grow reluctant. More and more of you forget your duty. Now we have to bribe and trick and cajole you into joining the revel, even when you all know a sacrifice is necessary. And now you dare to come here, dare to attack my home, my family, make demands of me. One life a year is all that is asked to keep Caldella safe. That is the deal you islanders struck with the first queen.”
“It’s hardly a deal if you’re not holding up your end,” Lina shot back. “We gave you a life last year, and the city’s still flooding. The dark tide’s been rising since you were crowned queen. Your magic isn’t working.”
Eva’s composure slipped, her hands balling into fists at her sides. She spoke stiffly. Lied. “The sacrifice will work this year.”
Lina scoffed. “Forgive me if I won’t gamble Thomas’s life on that one-off chance.” She rose, wobbling, feet slipping on the moss. “Why him? You could have taken anyone. He already… She was your sister, wasn’t she? Your blood sister? Our last queen?”
All witches considered themselves family. But it was a rare thing indeed to be related by blood. “And?”
“And? Don’t you care? Your sister loved him, gave up her life for him. She sacrificed herself so he could live. And that doesn’t mean anything to you?” Lina looked ready to leap the gap between their stones in order to strangle Eva. Her eyes burned with all the fury of an unleashed storm.
Eva tensed.
“I care,” said Lina. “I was there that day. I watched them chain her to the pillar. It was the first time Ma ever let me watch. I’ll never forget it. Your sister wasn’t afraid. Not even a little. Not even when the tide rose or when the black water bubbled up through the cobblestones. Not even when the waves came crashing down. She looked so, so…” Admiration softened her voice, lurked in the bittersweet curve of a sudden faint smile.
Now Eva wanted to breach the gap between them and commit violence. “You speak as if you admire her. As if she did something astounding, some wonderful thing. As if she didn’t make a foolish, selfish choice. As if she didn’t throw her life away for nothing.”
“Nothing? She protected the person she loved. You’re the one throwing away her life, her sacrifice, by taking Thomas. She—”
“Would you do it?” Eva interrupted.
Water beaded above Lina’s top lip, glinted like glitter at the ends of her lashes. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.
Eva leapt on that hesitation. “Would you take his place? Would you trade your life for his knowing exactly how it feels to drown?”
Lina’s chest stilled. For a second she didn’t breathe, and in that second, Eva knew Lina would give anything, trade everything and anyone, for the promise that she’d never have to go through it again. That she’d never feel the briny scrape of seawater on her tongue, choking her throat, burning her lungs. That she’d never feel so utterly, entirely helpless as she fought and fought and fought and failed to reach the surface.
Still, she wanted to hear Lina say it aloud. She wanted to hear her admit Thomas’s life was not worth her own. Eva’s voice dipped low. “If you say yes to taking his place, I give you my word I’ll let him go.” She offered the promise like one would a bribe.
Lina made no move to accept it. She stared, and her fingers twitched against her thigh, but that was all.
Eva smiled. “Not such a romantic vision, is it?” The water slapped, the sea serpent swimmi
ng a restless circle around them. “You value yourself more than you think. No boy was worth my sister’s life. No boy is worth your life.” The words flooded out of her. It felt so good to say them, these things she’d never had a chance to say to Natalia. “My sister is not some example to live by, some lesson to emulate. She is not a storybook character to idolize and hold up and romanticize. You should be grateful I’ve taught you this lesson, Lina Kirk. I won’t punish you for attacking my palace. I won’t feed you to my pet, and I will even let you go home,” she added with an air of great magnanimity. “You can return to the rest of your family. Live a long and happy life.”
Tell everyone how generous their new queen is.
Icy trickles of water dripped down Lina’s neck and past her collarbone. One of the straps of her dress was slipping off her shoulder.
“Aren’t you going to say thank you?”
Salty air whispered through the sea cave. Emerald light danced over the craggy walls.
“My brother.”
Eva cocked her head.
“What about my brother?”
Eva didn’t answer. She couldn’t let him go, too. Either he or Lina would have to be punished for their storming the Water Palace, otherwise the islanders would start to get ideas.
Lina probably knew it too. Her gaze had dropped to the water. She gave a tiny, infinitesimal nod at Eva’s silence, consoling herself perhaps. Then she looked up.
“I’ll do it. I’ll take Thomas’s place. And my brother’s. Let him go, too. It’s enough to punish one of us, right? I’ll stay with you and be the sacrifice, so please—” Lina bowed her head. “Please. It’s my fault they’re here. Thomas joined the revel to help me. You’ve left him alone before. I’ll stay with you instead, I promise. Please.”
A wild disbelief flared through Eva. It felt like losing, like they’d been playing a game Eva hadn’t known they were playing, and she had somehow lost.
Why did people not have the same love for themselves that they did for others?
She stared at that bowed blond head, speechless, the hollow space where her heart used to be aching, expanding into an emptiness that threatened to swallow her. And it hit her: the sacrifice might actually work this year if it was Lina.
It wasn’t love she felt. It wasn’t even like. But Eva would suffer, and for the dark tide, that might just be enough. It would hurt to watch this foolish life snuff out and know that Thomas Lin had somehow managed to steal another girl’s soul.
Someone else seemed to take possession of Eva’s body then. Her arm reached out and a voice that was no longer her own whispered, “Very well.”
If Lina Kirk was so keen to embrace death, then who was she to stop her? And perhaps this was a better kind of victory; she would take someone from Thomas the way he had taken someone from her.
12
Lina
Lina heard her brother before she saw him, angry shouts carrying around the next bend in the corridor.
She hurried toward the sound, strands of wet hair sticking to her cheeks as she glared at the witch walking next to her. “If you’ve hurt him—”
“I already told you we haven’t. I think someone’s gone and told him you’re taking Thomas’s place?”
Lina’s steps faltered. A scratchy wool blanket hung from her shoulders, enveloping her still-damp clothes. Soft pink petals drifted down from the cherry blossom branches painted on the corridor’s ceiling, and one brushed the tip of her nose.
Steam curled from the mug she clutched in one hand. A mug of homey, smoky-sweet fish soup that she’d been shocked to recognize as the local fishermen’s favorite Caldellan Stew. If she shut her eyes right now, she could almost tell herself a story, make believe none of this was happening, that she was back on the island, standing at the edge of the North Shore amidst town houses painted pastel shades of orange and blue. A briny breeze banging lemon-yellow window shutters. Silvery bells tinkling as a stooped and scarf-muffled figure shuffled out of the tea shop on the corner that sold egg tarts. Black water lapping at the rickety boards of the wooden walkway people had erected so they wouldn’t have to wet their shoes.
“I thought you were desperate to see him?”
Lina’s eyes snapped open. She met the gaze of the witch who had given her the blanket, who had insisted that she drink the steaming mug of stew. You’re the sacrifice now; we can’t have you dying from a chill before the full moon.
Yara. A girl with a husky, questioning sort of voice. The kind of voice that stayed in your memory long after you’d heard it. She swayed closer, her long, glittery black dress swishing with a sound like waves washing the shore. Her short black hair was set in the most perfect finger waves. She was draped in pearls, and coral bangles climbed her arms, shining bright against her soft brown skin.
She looked like someone the sea had fallen in love with.
The Witch Queen—Eva, Yara had called her—had left Lina with her. Dumped her like an unwanted puppy in the middle of the sunny music room where Yara had been picking out a frustrated tune on a gleaming grand piano. “You told me to take someone else as sacrifice,” was all she’d said before she’d stalked off, skirts and shadows licking at her heels, leaving a flabbergasted Yara staring at a dripping-wet Lina and an equally flabbergasted Lina staring after Eva, a small, outraged puddle forming at her feet.
“Where is she going?” she’d burst out. Very possibly Eva did have some other queenly business to attend to, some prearranged appointment to ruin someone else’s life, but how dare she just walk away? After all that?
“Oh, that’s just how she is,” Yara had said. “People tire her out. I’m so glad she changed her mind. She probably needs some alone time.”
“Right now?”
A scowl tugged at Lina’s lips at the memory. But beneath her frustration, her fury, and even her uncertainty, a savage triumph sang. She’d found a way to save Thomas. She’d gotten him into this, and she was getting him out. Getting her brother out. Saving them both. It was the same elation she felt when she nailed a brand-new sequence, that explosion of pride when she received a curt nod from the Conservatoire’s strictest instructor.
So much more satisfying than if Ms. Czajkowska had simply gibbered praise.
Yara reached out to steady Lina as she took a limping step forward.
Lina shied away. “I’m perfectly capable of walking by myself. I don’t need a nurse. You didn’t have to walk with me.”
Yara blinked. “But I did? The doors here like to make mischief. Marcin says we’ve fed the palace too much magic, and now the doors have minds of their own. They like to spit you out in the strangest of places.”
A small, dark head poked round the bend ahead. A little girl like the two Lina had glimpsed before. Another witchling. She looked a lot like Lina’s cousin Ivy. The same cheekbones and overly solemn stare, the same blunt black bangs Auntie Van always cut an inch too high above Ivy’s eyebrows.
How old was this girl? She must be one of the last witchlings they’d found. It didn’t happen often now, but the queen used to test the island’s children for magic, as well as those children who came to Caldella as refugees before the borders closed. Lina had never told anyone, not even Finley—and she told her brother most things—but when she was little, she’d secretly wished the queen would come for her.
Come and tell her she was special, that she could do magic, that she had to come and live with her in the Water Palace. She’d left her window open so the queen would have no trouble visiting even in the dead of winter, because some inner voice had sworn that if she didn’t, the witch definitely wouldn’t come.
Lina cringed. What an absolute fool she’d been.
“I never thought of picking a girl for E,” said Yara, half to herself, long fingers fiddling with her skirts, frowning at the witchling, who quickly ducked out of sight as if she’d been caught doing something she sh
ouldn’t.
“Does it matter who it is,” said Lina bitterly, raising the soup mug to her mouth, “as long as someone is fed to the tide?”
Yara’s eyes were wide. “Of course it matters. The queen has to fall in love with the sacrifice.”
Lina choked on a swallow of soup. “What—”
Ahead, Finley’s voice railed like thunder. Lina winced. A half apology, half excuse spilled instantly from her lips. “He’s not usually like this.”
Yara raised an eyebrow.
Lina’s cheeks heated. “He’s a good brother. He just gets a bit worked up sometimes. Wouldn’t you be worked up, too, if you’d been locked in here since the revel?”
God, but really, did he have to be so loud? Why did he have to embarrass her like this? Why did he have to shout so? Why did everyone in her family? Uncle, even Ma, sometimes. She hated how incredibly small their anger always made her feel, how it made her heart pound, how it froze her feet to the floor.
Lina pulled the wool blanket tighter around her shoulders. “You should have let me tell him.”
Would it have made much difference, though? And maybe, just maybe, a tiny terrible, vicious, and vengeful part of her enjoyed the fact that he was clearly panicking about her being named the sacrifice. Let him have a taste of all she’d felt on St. Walpurga’s Eve. Let him wallow in fear and guilt. Let him explain it all to their family, explain how he hadn’t listened to her.
A light breeze twirled the petals falling from the enchanted paintings on the ceiling. Yara lifted a hand to catch one, crushing it between her first finger and thumb. “I’ve been taking care of him since I caught him. I had him locked in my room. I gave him dry clothes. He was my pick at the revel. He’s very handsome.”
Lina cut her a sidelong glance, suspicion starting to niggle. It would be just like Finley. Her brother couldn’t go anywhere without some girl simpering over him. He might even have encouraged the attention, tried to charm Yara the way they said Thomas had the last queen. What a bloody hypocrite. Lina took an angry slurp of her soup.
The Dark Tide Page 8
