The Dark Tide

by Alicia Jasinska

  “Let it.” Marcin’s clipped words carried an echo of Thomas’s from earlier. “This city is cursed. It can all end right here if only we let it.”

  Lina kicked at Marcin’s shins, making him stumble and fall half on top of her. “Eva won’t—”

  “Eva doesn’t even have to know you’re gone,” finished Marcin for her.

  A terse knocking sounded on the door that had closed behind him. Lina opened her mouth to shout.

  “Don’t speak,” whispered Marcin.

  Her palm burned like a brand. A hundred tiny hooks sank through her lips and sealed them tight.

  “Don’t fight.”

  The order slithered through her ears, burrowing deep into her marrow, tugging at every fiber of her being. Like when he’d stolen control of her hand, yanking her fingers backward; a will that wasn’t her own pulled on muscle, on blood, on bone.

  No.

  Lina craned her neck. Thomas was sprawled on the carpet but was dragging himself up.

  Marcin spat into his own hand and clenched his fist.

  Thomas’s lips parted, pressed together, formed the shapes of words, but no sound escaped. His eyes turned frantic. A hand flew to his mouth, his throat.

  “Look at me,” said Marcin.

  And Lina did, something inside of her snapping, stretched to the breaking point. She turned her head.

  The terse knocking came again, hammering in time with her heart.

  The scene swam, rippled, changed, the way it had at the revel after Eva had worn her face and kissed Thomas. The hard edges of Marcin’s features softened. Smoothed. The violent welt blooming at his jaw vanished. Pale lips blushed pink. Pale cheeks warmed to a sandy hue. Hazel eyes turned a cold storm gray, red fading from short hair until there was only gold.

  Blood bubbled from Lina’s nose, dripped from her horrified lips, her chin. Deep crimson speckled the creamy carpet, blossoming like flowers. His face was a mirror of her own, minus the blood and anguish.

  “Coming!” Marcin called, and his voice was hers now, too, high-pitched and lilting. His black suit was transforming. He leaned in close, breath hot and wet against Lina’s ear. “See? No one will know you’re gone. That balcony over there? You’re going to crawl to it. And then you’re going to cast yourself off of it, into the sea. Understood? Now nod.”

  Lina nodded, and when Marcin let go of her arm and turned toward the door, turned to smile sweetly at Thomas, she started to crawl toward the balcony.

  27

  Eva

  Where had she vanished to, where had she gone? Eva had told Lina to stay put. Had told her to stay safe in the salon with the balcony where they’d… She’d thought Lina had returned to her room, but she wasn’t in her room.

  Was she hiding?

  Was she running?

  A part of Eva was almost glad.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Cyla, looking back up the wide curving staircase they’d just climbed, then retreated down after finding the double doors at the top locked tight.

  It was rare for any room in the Water Palace to be locked to Eva. She half wished she hadn’t told her siblings to seal the doors in the flooded sections of the palace. It meant taking detours now. It meant the doors themselves were confused and couldn’t usher her through their usual passages.

  The doors at the top of the staircase sighed softly now as they swung open; Lina spilled out in a sea-green dress and gloves, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with mischief.

  “Where?” Eva burst out, and the word was like a dagger thrown, exploding out of her, flung at the closest target. She was at the foot of the staircase in an instant, brushing past Cyla, splashing through the dark water swilling an inch deep across the floor. “Where did you go? Why didn’t you stay where I told you to?”

  Lina blinked. “What’s got you in such a mood?”

  You.

  Always you.

  Since the night of the revel. Since the day you stormed my palace.

  Natalia had spelled Eva to sleep when she’d sacrificed herself, and it had always felt to Eva as if she’d never entirely woken from that spell. It had held her here in stasis, paralyzed with fury and drowning in grief. The whole world had gone down with her sister, sinking into the deep, and Eva had lain there dreaming ever since, coming apart like a shipwreck slowly rotting into pieces.

  Until Lina had forced her way in and started the story moving again, a prince dashing into a castle to break a curse. Ripping Eva from her slumber, making her remember, flinging the blankets back and dragging her hissing and flinching into the light.

  Lina came down the stairs, pausing on the bottom step, dipping a toe into an inky puddle with a distasteful expression. “It’s very wet in here, isn’t it?”

  Eva clenched her teeth, twisting her hands in the fabric of her dress just to have something to do with them. Water weeped from the ceiling, dripped saliva-like down the mirrored walls. “Cyla,” she called. “You can gather the others now. Tell Marcin he is to stay behind and stem this flooding by himself.”

  “Marcin,” said Cyla.

  “Marcin?” asked Lina. “That’s the handsome one, right? Where are you all going?”

  Handsome.

  Eva’s eyelid twitched. “The useless one, you mean.” She’d told him to ward the doors, told him they weren’t leaving the island. Why did he have to fight her? Why was he making their family panic, using their fear to turn them all against her? Convincing them to leave because he wanted to leave? This was why Natalia had not left him in charge—because he did not love the island the way she had. He could not be trusted to protect their home the way Eva would.

  “Tell him if he doesn’t, I will take such a tithe of magic from him that he’ll have nothing left.”

  Lina stiffened.

  Eva would snip off the tips of his remaining fingers. She would shear off the strands of his fire-red hair. Take pints of his blood to drip into bottled spells, as Natalia had done to the witches who made trouble for her. She would take all his magic. She raised her chin toward the ceiling and shut her eyes. No matter how much she loved him, she would punish him this time, even if it killed a part of her to do so, even if it killed another part of him.

  Cyla murmured something inaudible and left, hurrying up the staircase, disappearing through the doors at the top.

  Eva let out a long breath, recoiling as cold fingertips dusted her cheekbone, swept a strand of dark hair away from her face.

  Lina tucked the strand behind Eva’s ear, fingers brushing her crown. That heavy thing of scorched steel and spikes that Marcin had once laughed at her for choosing. He’d given her braid a playful tug and pinched a spike, lifting it off her brow. “Why would you wear a crown someone could so easily rip off your head?”

  “Because I’d rip it off my own head first,” Eva had snapped, slapping his hands away, “and stab them with it if they even thought to try.”

  Lina dropped her hand. In the other she clutched a silver flask, lifting it now to her mouth.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “This? Didn’t you give it to me as one your gifts?” Lina took a long sip before offering it to Eva. “You look like you could use a pick-me-up.”

  Eva’s nose wrinkled. “Did you just spit into it?”

  “No. Why would I do that?”

  Eva took the flask and savored the heat as malt whiskey burned her throat. She willed herself to be stone, made her face a mask.

  You can do this. You have no other choice.

  She’d already sent Cyla ahead to gather the others. “It’s almost the full moon…”

  Maybe it was because they were alone in the cold and dripping ballroom, surrounded by icy mirrors, the high ceiling soaring into shadow, but the words seemed to echo with an awful finality.

  Like last words.

  Eva took a second sip from th
e flask, biting her lips together. They were tingling. Her skin prickled, flashing hot-cold-hot-cold with nerves. She was suddenly afraid that she’d say the wrong thing, that she’d tell Lina to go, to run, afraid that she would decide to let the world drown to save the girl in front of her.

  She shoved the thought down. There was no time for this, for grief, for regrets. “It’s almost the full moon and the tide is… You have to understand, I can’t, there is no other way…”

  Eva swayed. Staggered. Her tongue was numb. The world was tipping, tipping, tipping. “What did you—”

  What was in the flask?

  She dropped it, metal hitting the floor with a crash. Lina steadied her, an arm around her waist, holding her upright with surprising strength.

  How long had she been planning this?

  Eva’s legs buckled, knees striking the floor with a crack she didn’t. The puddled water soaked her dress, soaked through her sheer silk stockings as Lina helped to lower her and laid her at the foot of the staircase.

  She took Eva’s face in both hands, a grip that was almost painful. “I would have taken you away from all this. I wanted to so badly, but you are so stubborn. I tried to steer you toward the right choices. I tried to hold you up. But I can’t take your weight any longer, Eva, not if it means keeping my own head above the water. Not if it means keeping all of us from drowning. I can’t watch this island destroy you. Can’t you see what it has done to you? It’s eaten you alive like it did Natalia.”

  Cold lips pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You would even have taken my magic. Cut pieces from me willingly. Do you know what it feels like to have your magic stolen from you? To watch as your bones are ground down to dust and sprinkled into potions? You made me do this. You gave me no choice.”

  Eva’s eyelids fluttered, the words not making any sense. Consciousness was a guttering candle. Yet she couldn’t help but smile, a last bittersweet twist of her lips, a strange triumph singing through her veins as she slipped slowly into the dark. Hadn’t she said from the very beginning that caring only got you hurt, that caring got you killed?

  There was a certain savage satisfaction in knowing she was right, even now, at the very end.

  Because it was the end. Lina crossed the floor, wrenching open the doors at the opposite end of the ballroom, letting in a great gushing wave of black water, pausing to welcome in the tide.

  Eva could smell old seaweed, old fish. The tangy scent of the sea cave. The door must have opened into it. Her vision dipped in, out. She focused one final time on Lina as she rushed back past, chased by the water that was now crashing over Eva, escaping up the staircase, leaving her to drown.

  28

  Lina

  Lina couldn’t fight it.

  That balcony over there? You’re going to crawl to it. And then you’re going to cast yourself off it, into the sea.

  Marcin’s will was like a weight pressing heavy on her body, rough fingers forcing their way into her mind, wrenching control of muscle and bone, commanding her to crawl, forcing her to keep going.

  She couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t stop her body. She was a prisoner inside of it, screaming herself hoarse. Terrible things were happening to Thomas, to Eva, and there wasn’t anything, anything, she could do to stop it.

  Why are you so weak? Why are you letting this happen? Fight it. Fight.

  Lina’s dress dragged across the rain-slick stone, knees and palms scraped raw. Why couldn’t she stop this? Why wasn’t she as strong as the girls in the stories?

  But this wasn’t a story. This was really happening, and she was too damn weak.

  Her nails splintered and bled as she fought to dig them into the floor, to claw them into some crack, trying desperately, fighting every inch of movement as her body dragged itself to standing and clambered onto the slippery, icy balustrade.

  For the space of a breath, she halted there, seated astride it, as if she’d merely skipped outside to idle and kick her legs over the storm-dappled sea. Wet hair plastered her cheeks. Every nerve screamed no. Rain slipped between her lips as she swayed, tilted, buffeted by the wind. She looked down and knew, knew she was going to shatter when she hit that roiling liquid darkness far below. Knew she would feel it, hear it, that terrible wet crack as she broke across the waves.

  Please. Don’t.

  Her body didn’t listen. There was no one there to help. Lina tipped forward, legs and body sliding, slipping off the balustrade with a whisper, a regretful sigh of silk.

  She fell like a star, faster than the rain, plunging, plummeting toward midnight-black water.

  Moments passing in rapid heartbeats, wind shrieking in her ears. Plummeting down, down, down. The sea rushed up to meet her, the inky surface separating into white-crested waves, each tiny individual ripple cast by the rain.

  The tide rose up. Eager. Hungry.

  From the depths, two great watery arms shot skyward, slim and elegant as waterspouts. The outline of wrists and hands shaped from water and sea foam, delicate half-moon fingernails etched in sea lace. Two giant palms cupped, catching Lina as she had once caught flame.

  She pooled in the liquid curve of those palms for an instant, another agonized heartbeat. The strangely solid sea was cool and alive against her bare skin, pulsing as if blood raced through it.

  The dark tide was so eager to taste her that it hadn’t waited for her to fall but had plucked her from the sky like some ripe fruit.

  But it didn’t swallow her, didn’t gulp her down. The hands gently lowered and dropped her with a small wet smack into the bottom of a familiar red-and-gold broom boat. A puddle pooled beneath her shocked body, saltwater washing the tears from her eyes.

  “Well, now,” said Finley shakily. “Don’t you look like absolute shit.” But his voice broke. And his eyes were glassy.

  The water puddling beneath Lina swirled and gathered itself, receding over the broom boat’s rail as if from a sandy shore. Her body was her own again. The vile weight of that twisted will had finally let her go.

  And Finley, Finley was here. Her brother drew her into the warm circle of his stupid strong arms, crushing her to his hard chest so tightly that all the air squeezed out of her lungs and her throat burned with the scent of that awful overpowering perfume he poured on by the bottle. Vanilla and smoke and spicy cedar. Because he thought it made him irresistible to girls.

  Lina started to cry. Not tears of frustration or fury, not one or two tears escaping to slip silently down her cheek, but rasping, strangled, full-body sobs. Wrenching and raw and aching. Her nose was a tender mass of swollen flesh. It felt like someone had taken a hammer to her face. Pain throbbed through her when she tried to breath. Everything hurt so, so much. She’d been so, so scared.

  Finley held her tighter.

  “What was she thinking?” A husky voice was asking him. “Was this your plan to rescue her? What happened to her face?”

  Lina blinked rapidly, the blurred shadow looming over her and Finley spiraling slowly into focus. Darkly painted lips against brown skin. Black hair set in perfect finger waves, sculpted to frame a questioning face. A long black dress fluttering in the wind.

  A witch.

  Lina’s chest constricted. Paralyzing fear turned her entire body to ice, vomiting up her throat before recognition clicked. Yara. Yara, who’d said her brother was handsome, who had made sure no harm came to him at the palace.

  “Why in hell would you jump from there?”

  Finley tensed. “Don’t you yell at her!”

  “I’m not yelling.” Fat drops of rain spat from the sky, trailing down Yara’s neck like tiny diamonds, dripping from the end of Lina’s nose.

  In one white-knuckled fist, Finley clutched a length of braided hair and twine, knotted and threaded through with mother-of-pearl and bone. The witch’s ladder he’d won all those nights ago at the revel for Mama and Ma, a c
harm for sailing safely through storms.

  The broom boat rocked as he struggled out of his raincoat, draping it over Lina like a blanket. A small white puff of a dog wormed between his shins—Auntie Van’s dog, Tam, shoving his icy wet nose into the crook of Lina’s knee, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.

  “I just want to know what happened?” Yara’s voice, that voice that pitched at the end of every sentence, making every phrase sound like a question, didn’t fit with the intensity in her eyes, the anxious rigidity of her spine. She perched at the prow like a mermaid figurehead, both fierce and fragile. “You said Thomas went in to get her.”

  Cold fingers squeezed Lina’s throat. Tears blurred her vision. “Marcin. It was Marcin. He wants the island to sink. He wore my face. He said Eva—he took—” She choked on the words, on Thomas’s name.

  Yara’s face was grim. Her black hair melted into the rain-shrouded shadow of the palace beyond, its wicked spires crowning her. She cursed loudly, fluently, then bent to rap her knuckles urgently against the side of the boat, attempting to steer it, to urge it forward.

  But the little skiff was enchanted to follow Finley’s orders, spelled to listen to him and Lina and Ma and Mama alone.

  Shouts and sharp staccato barks, louder than thunder, trembled in the air. Lightning scorched the scene into Lina’s eyes: Tam scampering from one end of the boat to the other, tail wagging madly. Yara beating her fist on the wood, shouting at Finley that he owed her for the magic she’d just done, for saving Lina. Finley shouting back that Yara owed him for his saving her from Eva’s sea serpent. Amber lantern light winking in the palace windows ahead like guttering candles.

  “We’re not going in there,” Finley bellowed. “I’m not taking her back there. Lina, Uncle’s evacuating. Don’t worry, we’re not going back.”

  Lina did not want to go back.

  The broom boat rolled on the waves, the sea sloshing against its sides. Water slapped the hull, burst over the bow. She could fall asleep to that familiar cadence. Wanted to so very badly. She wanted to curl up here in her brother’s strong arms, blanketed by the oilskin raincoat, and let Finley sail her home. She wanted to let her eyelids flutter shut and sink into peaceful blackness, to not think, to forget everything, to imagine it had all just been a bad dream.