“Did you care about her at all? Natalia?”
Did you love her? Did she kiss you? Did you like it?
Or am I the only strange one, having all these confusing feelings for a witch?
Thomas’s face shuttered. His gaze dropped to the floor. He was silent for a long, long moment.
A moment in which Lina could hardly breathe.
“I don’t know.” Thomas scraped a hand over the back of his head. “Truly. But what else could I do? I thought if I made her care enough for me, she wouldn’t go through with it, and I quickly realized I could make her care. I know what girls like. I know girls like me. And she was easy. Even though she was the Witch Queen and people said she was wicked. She was quiet and a little shy.”
Something inside of Lina splintered.
“At the beginning, I hated her. At the revel, I thought I was kissing this girl I liked, and then Ula’s face changed, and then I was here. Trapped. Waiting to die like all those other boys. I think… I think hated everyone then. Everyone just lets this happen year after year, and no one tries to stop it. They just accept it, celebrate it, like we have no other choice. But later…” Thomas’s expression was pained. “When you’re acting like you’re in love all the time, it’s impossible not to…to…it all starts to blur, what’s true and where the lie ends.”
Play a part long enough, and it starts to turn real.
Lina swallowed past the lump in her throat. She knew the truth of that from dancing, knew it from the fantasies she spun for herself, when she stole courage from the image of Natalia holding strong against the tide, when she hummed the song of the girl who’d held on to her lover through enchantment and fire, pretending she was brave until she was brave.
She knew the power in pretending.
Thomas breathed out. “They said they wanted it to stop, too. Eva tried to find another way to calm the tide so I wouldn’t have to be sacrificed, so I could stay with Natalia. We all tried, Natalia and Eva and another witch called Yara and I. It tied us together, that desperation, more than anything else could have. But Eva’s different now. Colder.”
Because of you, Lina wanted to say, but didn’t. It sounded too much like an accusation.
And maybe it was.
“I never expected—I never thought things would end the way they did. I thought if I made Natalia care for me, she’d let me go. That was all I wanted. I tried so hard to be strong, but God help me, I was so afraid. I didn’t want to die. And when nothing was working, I thought if I told her… Those books said so many things. She promised she wouldn’t let me…” Thomas’s voice cracked.
The ache started somewhere deep in Lina’s marrow.
Thomas stepped closer, clasping both her hands in his, calloused palms warm through her gloves. “I know I’m not a good person, Lina. Not like you. And when it happened all over again with you, I was still a coward. I still didn’t want to die. I couldn’t make myself move. I let you take my place like she did. But I want to change. I failed you at the regatta, but I won’t fail you now. Finley has a boat—”
“Finley?” Lina put a hand to her mouth.
Finley in his broom boat sailing desperately round and round the Water Palace.
Because her brother was just as stubborn about not giving up as she was.
For a flicker, Thomas’s expression turned rueful, and the slight discoloration beneath his left eye suddenly looked a lot like a fading bruise. “Your brother has quite the temper. But he wasn’t going to refuse the help. I know the palace best. He’s distracting Yara while I fetch you.” He tugged on her hands. “Come, we have to hurry before the storm picks up. It’s almost a full moon.”
Lina’s feet were rooted to the floor. “But the island.”
“Sacrificing yourself won’t solve anything. Saving Caldella only means another sacrifice next year. And the year after, and the year after that. More innocent lives. This island is cursed. It will never end. Do you really want to be a part of that?” Thomas’s cheeks darkened with color. “Come with me. At the revel you said you would hold on to me. I know we’ve never… I didn’t have the courage to say how I felt before. But I need you, Lina. You came after me, didn’t you? You were willing to give up everything for me.”
Lina’s heart pounded. “I—” For a second she saw it, dreamed it, lived it, a version of the world where she took his hand and left the palace, escaped the wicked witch and the hungry tide, the cursed island, and sailed away with the boy she—
Loved?
The words stuck in her throat.
Oh, why hadn’t he come sooner? Why hadn’t he come for her before things had gotten all confused?
“Lina?”
A distant rumble of thunder saved her from answering.
Thomas shot a wary glance over his shoulder. “We need to go now.” He crossed to the daybed, rummaging through her gifts. “They gave you presents, didn’t they? Magic?” He threw a dress on the floor. A spell bottle crashed after it, shattering. The little reef snake let out a scathing hiss.
Thomas jumped and flung a pillow at it.
Lina flinched. “Don’t!” There was something violating about him tearing through all the things Eva had given her.
“Here, we’ll take these.” He snatched up a palmful of the black pearls and caught her hand again. “They’re good for charming the doors. Here.” He handed her a wooden oar he’d left leaning against one of the amber screens. Broom boats didn’t need them; had he brought it as a weapon?
“Come on, your brother’s waiting.” He smiled softly then, so proud and so full of hope. “We’ve come to rescue you.”
Lina couldn’t make herself say anything as he pulled her across the room and out the door.
25
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.”
26
Lina
The doors weren’t cooperating.
It didn’t matter how Thomas pleaded with them while Lina stood mute by his side. It was as if the Water Palace knew what was happening and was rearranging its rooms to stop its guests from escaping. As Lina stepped from an empty tea room into a familiar balcony-lined corridor, her gut pinched with the tiniest hint of guilty relief.
But isn’t this what you wanted?
She clutched the wooden oar to her chest, trying not to imagine what would happen if Eva caught them running away together. Trying not to feel guilty that they were running away. She shouldn’t feel guilty. Eva was the one who had told her to be more selfish, more terrible, to put herself first. This was what Eva had wanted.
Doors dotted the wall opposite the line of balconies. Thomas reached for another brass handle, but it tore from his grip, yanked open by someone on the other side.
Lina could not have said who looked more surprised, Thomas or Marcin.
A bolt of lightning flashing outside lit his red hair, glinted in his wide hazel eyes. “Well, this I was definitely not expecting.”
As the door clicked closed behind him, Marcin’s gaze flicked past and then between them, his lip curling. “But I suppose I did tell you,” he said to Lina, “to focus your energy on getting away from here. And Thomas Lin, you really cannot stay away. This is good. No, excellent. I would have hated to leave the island without giving you the goodbye you deserve.”
Thomas tensed.
“Leave?” Lina moved in front of Thomas, pulse spiking. “What do you mean, leave? And you can’t touch him. Eva promised.”
“Eva promised you could take his place as this year’s sacrifice. Nothing more. Nothing less. And she promised me that I could feed him to her pet serpent as soon as you were dead.” Marcin smiled as the color drained from Lina’s face.
It wasn’t true. He was lying. Eva wouldn’t.
“Our lovely queen has no heart, little dancer. She tore it out.” Marcin flapped his hand, shooing her aside.
Lina didn’t move. Her grip tightened on the wooden oar. She reached behind her back with one hand, finding Thomas’s forearm, pressing an urgent message into his skin: Go.
He only needed to open another door. The next one down the corridor. She’d keep herself between him and Marcin, a shield. She was still this year’s sacrifice. They still needed her. Marcin couldn’t hurt her.
An exasperated sound rumbled from Marcin’s throat. Real anger crept into his voice now. “Are you really going to waste yourself on him? He isn’t worth it. He wouldn’t do the same for you. He left you here.”
“Maybe.” Lina drew a breath. “But he also came back, and ev
en if he hadn’t—” Even if he hadn’t, it didn’t matter. She was doing the right thing, protecting someone because she had the power to do so. It didn’t matter if he would do the same or if she was or wasn’t in love with him. “Do you really think I’m going to just stand here and do nothing? Do not insult me.” She pressed her fingers deeper into Thomas’s arm, irritation surging through her when he didn’t move.
Marcin’s gaze didn’t leave hers as he dug into his pocket for a hip flask, took a long swig from it, and swallowed. His motions were tight and controlled. Then he licked a finger and painted a shape in the air so quickly she almost missed it. Magic rippled through the air like heat. Reaching for her, reaching past.
“Lina.” The fear in Thomas’s voice tore through her. He let out a pained gasp and doubled over, knocking into her shoulder blades, throwing her forward.
She swung toward him, then back to Marcin, pivoting, spinning with all the fluid grace of dancer. Hitching up the oar, wielding it the way she would a blade in a battle dance.
The flat of it sliced the air, catching Marcin’s jaw with a deafening crack.
A grunt burst from his lips as his head snapped back. He staggered against the door frame, dropping the flask, cursing, blood staining his teeth. He caught the oar in a white-knuckled grip as Lina swept it up a second time. His other hand lashed out, catching her by the hair, slamming her face-first into the stone wall.
Lina’s vision exploded in sparks. Fire and agony burst through her forehead, her nose. Her legs folded under her, the world spiraling into black. Hot blood gushed furiously from her nose, over her lips and down her chin.
Across the floor, Thomas moaned.
“Just for that…” Marcin yanked Lina’s arm up, ripping her glove off and spitting into her hand. Drawing a symbol in the hot saliva, drawing magic on her palm.
Lina tried to roll sideways, to use momentum to wrench free, crying out as he twisted her wrist viciously. Blood filled her mouth. His grip was iron. “You can’t.” Her words were thick. Her face throbbed. “Eva needs me. It has to be me as sacrifice. The island will sink!”
The Dark Tide Page 18
