Tide

by Lacy Sheridan

  I brought my arm up with every last bit of strength I had and drove the blade through the roof of the seal’s mouth.

  Blood spread through the water like a storm cloud. Teeth caught my wrist and tore, and my closed lips parted on their own.

  I couldn’t see. I couldn’t feel. The pain faded as the blood dispersed, the selkies swarming off through the water and leaving their dying companion behind. There was just the endless blue, and the darkness overtaking it.

  It felt like a dream. Something was nudging me, pushing me away from the dirt and rocks and weeds, but I couldn’t find what. I didn’t move to look. No thought crossed through my head, except for some distant, floating question of whether I was alive.

  Maybe this was death. It was peaceful, at least. The quiet and the strange weightlessness of the water.

  Something nudged me again, harder. Shadows passed across my vision.

  No, not shadows. Another dark form.

  Another seal.

  Some tiny, faded part of me fought to bring life to my muscles, to defend myself, but I couldn’t. One hand drifted up to push, but it was useless.

  Dark eyes, soft, not vicious, met mine. The seal was a sleek, mottled black ghost in the lake. My hand rested against his nose, and Aven pushed against my palm. Brushed along my arm. The warmth chased away some of the numbness, and I thought I might have smiled.

  He didn’t waste time, though part of me wanted him to stay there and swim around me. Let me watch him before I died. He dipped beside me and pushed at me again, up into the water. I couldn’t make my limbs move.

  Another push, more insistent, and I looped one arm over him. My eyes fell closed, and I felt the rush of water past me and the firm warmth of him pressing against one side. Always there. He’d always be there when it counted.

  The water broke, and rocks and dirt and grass hit my knees and then the rest of me as I collapsed onto the ground. The summer air was like ice and it felt as if I fell through it like crashing through a wall. I knew I was out of the water, I knew there was air, but I couldn’t draw a breath. I couldn’t move.

  Somebody was talking. I didn’t know who. I didn’t know what they said. Something was pushing at me. Again, harder.

  Water bubbled up my throat and I coughed, gagged, and vomited. My arms trembled as I shoved myself up, gasping for breath. They held for a few seconds before I rolled onto my back so they wouldn’t give. Goosebumps rolled over me in waves, frost snaking through my veins. I couldn’t draw in enough air.

  I closed my eyes against the blurred, spinning world and the pain from my wounds came crashing onto me at once. A long, cracked groan escaped.

  “You were not given permission to bring a weapon,” Marassa commented.

  I pushed myself up to look at her, shaking head to toe and fairly certain I might vomit again soon, and responded. “I wasn’t told not to, either.”

  Her gaze flashed to Aven, who shook water from his pelt and hauled himself to his feet with the fluid rippling of shifting forms. “Kolarr?” she asked.

  Aven’s blue eyes met mine and held them. “A knife through the roof of his mouth. He’ll die soon, if he hasn’t already. She did some damage to the others, as well. More than expected.”

  “Get up, girl.” I wanted nothing more than to lie down, but I dragged myself to my feet. “What were you doing with a windsbane knife?”

  “A what?” I looked at Aven, but he said nothing.

  Raeth was the one to answer. “Windsbane poisons selkies. It’s unlikely any selkie you struck with it will survive if they aren’t returned to the Eyes very soon.”

  “I know what windsbane is. I didn’t know the knife was poisoned. It was in the water—”

  “Windsbane knives are bound with the poison,” Aven murmured. The expression in his eyes cut through me, some horrible combination of relief and dread. “They’re illegal, considering they’re used most often in skinning.”

  I couldn’t reply. I didn’t want Aven’s people to die. Even if they’d been ordered to kill me. They were his, his warriors, and to poison them…

  Marassa kept staring me down. “Who did you steal it from?”

  “Nobody. It was a gift.”

  “From?”

  I swallowed and cast Aven another careful glance. There was no lying a way out of this. “Moray.”

  Quiet fell over the High Court and Marassa nodded to my waiting asketi. “Take her back. We’ll begin the third Trial tomorrow.”

  The guards ushered me to the mare, and I glanced to the High Court, seeing Marassa too close to Aven. “I suggest you have a talk with your sprite, love,” she said, “and figure out where its loyalties lie.”

  I turned away, fought down the anger rising in me at her tone, and tried to revel in my victory.

  It was a lot harder than the last one.

  I stared at my bare legs. They were covered in scrapes from the selkies’ teeth. Deep wounds encircled my ankle where the one had dragged me down. One puncture had only stopped bleeding when a Court doctor had stitched it closed, on Aven’s sharp command. Where my skin wasn’t shredded it was dotted with bruises. They travelled up my stomach and chest, and I felt them down my back, too. My arms. The fresh, shallower bite stung alongside the day-old one.

  Every movement hurt. I could hardly walk—I didn’t know how I’d fight tomorrow.

  I sank deeper into the warm water, hoping it would ease the ache and tension in my muscles. Submerging the wounds sent extra little needles of pain through me, but I didn’t care.

  Two more Trials. I was halfway through and felt like my body would give out on me any second.

  But you’ve survived two, Kieras would have said had she been here. I wasn’t sure it was enough.

  I closed my eyes as tears leaked out yet again. I wanted to be home, at the farm, where the worst danger was being caught by brambles or stepping on a barn cat’s tail and getting swatted for it.

  I could not cry over it. I would not. I was sick of crying.

  I rubbed my tired eyes and let my head fall against the rim of the tub. I had a few precious hours to relax and recover. I needed to take them. All that circled through my mind was what was coming next—Loyalty and Honor, the two I felt sure would be the hardest. What I’d already done. If I could make it through more.

  I had to. Failing wasn’t an option.

  I wracked my mind for what would tell me I could do it again tomorrow. Any encouraging words my brain had stowed away in the flurry that had been the four days since I’d agreed to the Trials. My grandmother’s voice whispered through my head.

  Anything they say your brother needs to learn, you’ll learn too. You’ll need it every bit as much as him.

  My mother’s sigh. I’ve gotten along fine without the lessons you’re giving her. She’ll have a good husband, I’ll make sure of it; she won’t need them.

  Trust me, Lora, Grandmama had said, tilting my chin so I was looking straight into her warm, crinkled eyes, this girl of yours is going to do something amazing one day, and it’s going to be her victory, not her husband’s.

  My victory. Maybe convincing Aven to help me had been a victory of its own, and maybe getting this far was, as well. But I hadn’t won yet. This was something I had to win on my own.

  And I would.

  I hauled myself out of the water before I let the warmth lull me into doubt again, before the fiery determination sparking under my skin cooled. I wasn’t sure if it would last the night, but it was there now, and that was something. I stretched my battered, aching muscles and dressed, then went to meet the guards who would ensure I returned to the Nest for the night. As always, they escorted me away from the baths without a word.

  We walked for over half the time it took to reach the Nest before I knew I didn’t recognize the path we were taking. They often changed it, as if I could memorize much of the maze that was the Eyes, but this was wrong. I slowed, but one shoved me forward. “This isn’t the way to the Nest,” I said.

 
No response. They kept walking.

  “Where are we going?” Nothing. “Tell me.”

  A faint smirk swept across one’s face. “You asked to be tested like a warrior,” he said in an ice-cold, gravelly voice that sliced through my confidence like a knife. “Warriors are not to have company in the last half of their Trials.”

  No company. I was to be isolated for the rest of the Trials. The thought made my stomach knot itself, but I forced my expression to stay neutral. Forced my feet to stay steady. Calm. Marassa had thrown me into the dark and I’d come out in one piece. I could do it once more.

  I tried not to flinch when we came to the steps I’d hoped I’d never see again. The memory of the smell—the pungent stench of waste and illness—already assaulted me, and my feet stopped of their own accord. Only for an instant before I forced them onward again. It was only two nights. Easy compared to the Trials.

  And there was always the chance I’d die tomorrow and not have to come back, something in the back of my mind pointed out with grim humor.

  I took a last breath of clean air before I stepped down, one guard in front of me and one behind, and kept my chin raised as we descended into the dark.

  A third guard was waiting for us at the foot of the steps, lantern in hand, and guided us to one of the many waiting sections along the walls. I tried not to look at the other prisoners we passed. One moaned softly but quieted with a kick. I didn’t struggle as they fastened chains around each wrist, taking a seat on the stone floor with as much grace and dignity as was possible. I didn’t speak. Something like annoyance flashed across one guard’s face; he must have expected an opportunity to beat me into submission. As if I would give him the satisfaction of seeing me squirm and beg.

  It wasn’t until they were gone, their light vanished and leaving behind a dark so pressing it crushed the air from my lungs, that I let the tremor start in my hands. I leaned my head against the rough wall and struggled to draw every breath of foul air.

  Down here, in the dark, there was nothing to distract from my thoughts and Marassa knew it. It took no more than a few minutes for the doubt to creep in again. The fear. The gnawing dread of what was to come. There was no sense of time but the beat of my heart and the shifting cold. I didn’t know how long I managed to wrestle the worry down every time it tried to claw its way up. When exhaustion weakened my resolve I dared to hum, one of the old, soothing melodies my mother and grandmother had hummed in the evenings years ago. It dragged the fire back, but then a rattling of chains and hoarse voice barked at me to be quiet.

  I wanted to sleep. I wanted to escape the Trials and the Court and the truth of what would happen if I lost. But there was no sleep in the dark except when your body demanded it so adamantly there was no staying awake. I sat against the grimy wall and stared out into the pressing, suffocating black, and counted my breaths until I lost track.

  And again.

  And again.

  Anything that kept me from breaking.

  Marassa wanted me to walk into the third Trial shaking with exhaustion and hunger and fear. I wouldn’t let her see me like that, not again. Throwing me to the wolves had made me stronger, and I wanted her to see it. I wanted to see the fear in her eyes when she understood I was no little plaything to entertain her Court with.

  I was a threat.

  I was the one her betrothed chose over her.

  I was the friend of the siren Lord.

  I was the favored of the Court’s sprite.

  I was the blood of Lenairen. As royal as her.

  I repeated it like a mantra. The one her betrothed chose. Friend of the siren Lord. Favored of a sprite. Blood of Lenairen.

  Aven’s arms around me. His lips on mine. The sun flashing on sealskin and dancing with Moray. Water-droplet fangs and the sprite’s voice like the sky. Raeth’s eyes, his soft and heartbroken song sung under his breath. The scars Tobin would bear for the rest of his life. Kieras’s unshakeable smile.

  The way Marassa’s eyes had narrowed slightly when I’d survived the lake, bloody and weak but alive.

  My victory.

  When the first wisps of distant lantern light burned in my vision, my eyelids were stone-heavy and my bones felt like they’d turned to lead. But my mind was sharp and clear, and I met the guards’ icy looks as they unchained me and led me to the halls of the Eyes. I didn’t let my feet drag even when my knees wanted to give out. I didn’t let my spine weaken with relief at the first breath of fresh air. I kept going.

  Two more Trials before I won. Just two.

  I’d survived two already. I could survive two more.

  They didn’t take me to change; we marched straight to a room I knew well, though I’d been in it once. It would be burned into my mind forever, and I swallowed as we pushed through the doors.

  The same towering hall where Marassa had brought my people to die, lined once again with nobles staring down at me from above, their noses wrinkled delicately as I passed. I didn’t look at them. I fixed my gaze on the High Court at the head of the room, watching and waiting. Some little thread of tension in Aven’s face loosened when I met his eyes, chin raised, and he dared the beginnings of a smile. I dared to return it. Marassa’s stormy gaze caught mine and I turned the smile to her, if only to see the way her lips tightened.

  No pausing even to let me eat this morning: we were going straight to the Trial. I’d play.

  We stopped before them, and I didn’t kneel. Not after the way I’d spoken to Marassa after the last Trial, and not after the way Aven had looked at me walking through the room now. One of the guards shoved on my shoulder but I shook his grip off, teeth gritted against the ache the movement brought on, and kept my attention on Marassa. “What’s my third Trial, my Queen?”

  I let the barest hint of sarcastic bite slip into my voice at the title. Even Raeth’s lips twitched.

  She smiled and stared at me like it was nothing. Like my blatant disrespect didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t. It made me feel better either way. “You came close to cheating your way through your last Trial,” she told me—not just me, but the entire Court. A wave of whispers passed around. I blocked them out. “A windsbane knife slipped to lovely Hania here by our very own sprite. It’s only by my mercy that you stand here, Hania.”

  I clenched my jaw. It was only by her mercy that I stood anywhere, and the glint in her eyes said she knew how the reminder stung. “Yes, my Queen,” I agreed flatly.

  “Now, I’m quite curious. Moray says you hold its favor, but does it hold yours?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  She flicked one hand, a silent gesture, and a guard stepped from beside the dais. He grasped a covered box in both hands. I didn’t understand for a terrible moment, but then heard the faint sound of something banging from beneath the white cloth. A fraction of my resolve weakened.

  “Let it go,” I demanded.

  I was ignored in favor of the guard sweeping the covering off and letting it fall to the floor, revealing Moray encased in glass. The sprite was frantic, crashing into the walls. I knew even from this distance that every inch of the box was sealed tight, flickering with faint magic. Moray spotted me and stopped, eyes too wide, hands pressed against the glass. I thought it rippled, like Moray’s magic had done to the window, but it stopped before I could be sure. The same magic that had sealed me in the maze to stop it from escaping?

  “What did you do it?” I aimed the question at Marassa, but it was Aven my gaze found. He didn’t hold the look for long.

  My pulse pounded in my fingertips at the way she smiled again. “Moray will be assisting us with this Trial, silly girl. Since it was so eager to be a part of them.”

  I cast Moray another look, struggling to swallow past the tightness in my throat. It stared at me.

  “I won’t hurt it,” I said, though the waver in my voice made the words lose their authority. “I don’t care if it broke your rules. I won’t.”

  “I suspected not.” She waved another
hand and a second guard stepped forward, dragging a figure with him. It took me a second to recognize Tobin, no longer dressed up in the cloak and pearls; he wore the plain, worn clothing of a servant, golden hair limp and dirty, and kept his head bowed as he halfheartedly struggled against the guard’s hold. He collapsed to his knees beside the guard holding Moray, and I looked between the two of them again and again. Each passing second my body grew colder.

  “What do you expect me to do?” I asked. My voice came out hoarse.

  Marassa’s eyes lit up, cruelly delighted. “We have before us two criminals of our Court: the kin of Lenairen, and our very own traitorous sprite. Criminals must be punished, mustn’t they?”

  Arguing about their status as criminals wouldn’t do any good and neither would panicking; I steadied my breathing. I had to figure out what this Trial was about, and fast. “I suppose you expect me to punish them?”

  “Oh, no, Hania. The guards will carry that out; I can’t possibly trust you to raise a hand or weapon against your own blood, can I?” I wanted her answer to be a relief, but I stayed cold. “I expect you to choose their punishments.”

  Worse. So much worse. All thought vanished, chased away by the numb shock of the statement.

  Choose their punishments?

  How could I choose how my brother and friend would be tortured? Nothing I would choose would be good enough for Marassa, and it would only make things much worse for them.

  Guilt was already ripping through me, tearing down the numb walls, and my breathing escalated. I struggled to control it as Marassa continued, gesturing to one guard and then the other. “Now, we have two choices prepared, of course. The first is simple—a lashing for every life their crimes have taken.”

  I winced before I could stop myself. I didn’t know how a whip would affect a sprite, with that rippling watery skin, but I had no doubt that Marassa knew of a way to make it do as much damage as it did to regular flesh. And Tobin…he was already so bruised and thin and bloody.

  “The second?” I managed.

  “Did you know that Lenairen had quite a sense of humor? Those tidespeople he took captive often did not return home, and his preferred method of execution was drowning. We may feel the sea in our blood, but we can drown in it as much as any human.” The way she spoke sent a fresh wave of chills through me. The edges of my vision blurred. “And, of course, there’s the matter of the warriors who perished in your last Trial. Can you imagine the death they suffered? Poisoned, wounded, unable to move as they sank into that lake.”