Eighteen
Raina
As Raina and Yvonne waited their turn for an audience with the queen, Raina’s hands began to sweat. She clutched the pouch around her neck, feeling the wedding rings through the sodden leather. Yvonne had calmed down after they’d gotten back to her underwater home the night before, but she still wasn’t sure if the rings would be enough to satisfy Queen Thalassa’s appetite for treasure.
“She’s like a dragon of the sea,” Raina had said. “She can’t even use all those jewels.”
Now, she wasn’t sure. Queen Thalassa sat on her throne, which was encrusted with jewels. Her hair was braided today, threaded with a million strands of diamonds and emeralds. Someone had painstakingly covered every inch of her skin with more jewels, so she sparkled like a chandelier when she moved.
“Does that mean she’s in a good mood?” Raina whispered to Yvonne. Though she’d gotten nothing but lies from the queen on her last visit, Raina wasn’t giving up yet. If only she could get around as easily as Yvonne, could communicate underwater, could find her way in the inky black sea. If only she were a mer like Yvonne. Like her brother.
At last, the mer and sea fae in front of them had finished their business, and it was Raina’s turn.
“Good luck,” Yvonne said, squeezing her hand under the water.
“You’re not coming?”
“You’re asking the favor,” Yvonne said. “She’ll respect your request more if you show her you’re competent down here.”
“I’m not sure I am,” Raina muttered, though she was now equipped with an undersea light, knowledge of the sea floor, and her enchanted bubble and suit.
“You definitely can’t get by without me,” Yvonne said. “But she doesn’t need to see that.”
Raina gave Yvonne a grateful smile and swam through the pool to the queen’s feet. “Your Majesty,” she said, dipping her head to the queen.
“What favor can I grant you today?” Queen Thalassa asked, sounding bored.
This was Raina’s chance. She was supposed to tell the queen she wanted to stay with Yvonne longer, that she needed more time. She was supposed to tell her how she’d made herself useful by going aboard the ship. But the queen hadn’t even looked up from admiring her pearl fingernails. She hadn’t even bothered to check who she was talking to.
“I want you to turn me into a mermaid,” Raina said. “Please.”
Queen Thalassa glanced up, and then back down to her nails. “No.”
“What do you mean, no? You haven’t even heard my reasons.”
“Mermaids are pretty, and romantic, and you’re in love with one, so you want to live on the sea floor with her forever,” Queen Thalassa drawled, turning her hand slightly to admire the light bouncing off her ruby rings.
“That’s not it,” Raina said through clenched teeth. Though of course, that was exactly it. “And I’ve seen you take a different form. You were a faery before. If you can do it, why can’t I? I can pay you.” She reached for the pouch around her neck.
“I’m a goddess,” Queen Thalassa said. “I can be or do anything I want. I have more treasure than I can keep up with, more than I can trade away. And I only trade with the most powerful beings, not simple water witches. What could you possibly give me that I don’t already have?”
Raina poured out the rings into her palm, her heart hammering with desperation. “I have these rings. I can climb on board ships that Yvonne sings in and search them. I can pass as human.”
“I could do that myself,” Queen Thalassa said, glancing into Raina’s palm. She scooped up the rings, studied them for about two seconds, and tossed them over her shoulder. They rolled across the floor, tinkled against the other gems spilling over the wooden planks, and were lost forever in the glittering chaos.
Raina’s throat tightened. The queen was a tyrant, like Yvonne said. She could have helped Raina, but she chose not to. Again, Raina pictured the image she’d seen in the mirror, when her brother disappeared under the water and left only the swish of his tail. Her heart clutched as her fingers tightened around the pouch with its one remaining treasure.
“I—I have something you might want,” she said. “Something precious and rare. There are only three in the whole world.”
“Is it your brother?” Queen Thalassa said with a wry smile.
“What? No.” Suddenly Raina regretted opening her mouth. She couldn’t give away the stone. If she did, she’d never find River.
“I cannot in good conscience make you a mermaid simply because you wish to be one,” Queen Thalassa said, obviously not interested in whatever Raina had to offer. “It’s not so simple as a shapeshifter changing forms. Once you were a mermaid, you could never go back. You would have to give up your very nature. You would no longer be a witch, no longer contain magic or the ability to use it. You would not be happy as a mermaid, I’m afraid. I suggest you return to your coven and learn to love yourself as you are, instead of dwelling on what cannot be.”
“But you said it could be,” Raina cried, almost seizing the queen before she remembered herself. “I don’t care if I can’t go back. I have nothing on land to go back to. Nothing to go back for. I’m a sea witch. All I’ve ever wanted was to be here, and now I am. Take all my magic, I don’t care. You can have it all. And my ring. I just want to stay where I belong.”
“You don’t belong here, child,” Queen Thalassa said, her eyes sympathetic. “No matter how beguiling you find your siren, it is only because she has bewitched you. As soon as you were a mermaid, your love would melt away like sea foam.”
“That’s not true,” Raina said fiercely. “And that’s not why I want to be a mermaid.”
“It’s not? Then you’d still love her even if you lived on land and she lived in the sea forever?”
“Yes.”
“So be it,” Queen Thalassa said. “I see no reason to change the natural order of things when you are already happy loving her from afar.”
Raina started to argue, but the queen held up a hand, and suddenly, her throat was frozen. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. If only she could speak telepathically, like the mer did. If only she could swim from the room the way they did, able to see underwater even in the blackest trenches on the sea floor. Instead, she kicked hard, hating the feet that let her walk the deck of the ship, that made her different from the mer. Hating the darkness and silence around her even as she followed the signal she saw flashing from Yvonne’s underwater home.
When she arrived, she popped up in Yvonne’s small pool and clambered out. Unlike the queen’s home, Yvonne’s was covered with simpler treasures. One wall was covered entirely in abalone shells, their pearlescent sheen lit by the same starfish lights the queen had. But otherwise, she had only pearls, which she called “throwaway jewels.”
“What happened?” she asked, coming to unzip Raina from her diving suit.
“She said no,” Raina said, ashamed of the tremor in her own voice.
“I’m so sorry,” Yvonne said, taking her hand and pulling her to the bed. “We still have five days to find your brother, though.”
“And then what?” Raina asked, looking at Yvonne’s kind eyes.
“And then we’ll find a way to be together,” Yvonne said, scooting closer to Raina and taking her hands. “There’s nothing on earth that could make me stop loving you, Raina of the Sea. I saved you that night because I knew you were the one I’ve been waiting for all these years. That as long as I lived, I would never love another the way I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Raina said, sniffling. The intensity of Yvonne’s dark eyes, the fierceness of her love, almost frightened Raina. But it excited her, too.
“I would do anything for you,” Yvonne said, winding Raina’s hair into a rope and squeezing water from it. “No matter what the queen asks, we’ll find a way to give it to her. I’d give up anything in the world to know you feel the same about me.”
“I do,” Raina whispered.
“Then there’s nothing that can keep us apart.” Yvonne leaned in, brushing her full, soft lips against Raina’s. After a minute, the kiss deepened and they lay back on the bed, their salty limbs entwined, their salty mouths joined.
No matter what the queen said, what they had was real. They would love each other forever, despite Thalassa’s nastiness and lies. They would find a way. At last, after a lifetime of wanting what she could never have, Raina had found a home where she truly belonged and someone who loved her as deeply as she was loved. This time, she wouldn’t bow out to anyone. She had found happiness.
And she would give anything to keep it.
nineteen
Sagely
When Sagely and Quill got back to their camp that day, Guthrie had gone, taking his boat and his owl with him. Gale was attempting to dry some grass and sticks with her wind magic, and Shaneesha was huddling next to her, warming her hands with a tiny fireball.
“You should save your magic,” Quill said with a frown. “You might need it.”
“You should come up and stay with our coven,” Gale said. “It’s further from the sea, but we’re up on the hill, so we can see everything that goes on down here.”
“I agree,” Quill said, to Sagely’s surprise. He hadn’t even met them yet, and he hadn’t seemed too fond of Guthrie during their brief encounter. When he caught Sagely’s look of surprise, he shrugged. “Safety in numbers.”
“Witches are weird,” she muttered as she picked through the sodden contents of her tent.
“Not weird,” Shaneesha said. “Lucky. We can tell if they have bad intentions by the shade of their magic. We know the Coastline Coven are good people.”
“I’m with you,” Fox murmured to Sagely as they gathered what they could salvage from the tent. “Faeries aren’t nearly so trusting.”
“I noticed,” she said, wiping her feet before sliding them into her boots, now a bit stiff from being wet so long the day before.
When they’d collected their few belongings, they set off up the hill. Halfway up, Sagely felt a tug at something deep within her. With a gasp, she spun around and bumped smack into Quill’s broad, muscular chest.
“Whoa,” he said, catching her elbow to steady her. “What’s wrong?”
“I…I felt something,” she said.
“Is it Raina?” Shaneesha asked, shielding her eyes and peering out at the sea.
“Did you hear the siren?” Quill asked, scooping his familiar from his shoulder and holding her to his chest, as if afraid she might fall under the siren’s spell and leave him.
Sagely liked how no one told her she was crazy or imagining things. Witches believed in trusting their instincts—and apparently hers, despite her frequent overreactions. Something as deep as her bone marrow was stirring inside her, under her sternum. She remembered the intensity of carrying all that void magic, the ache in that very spot. But this wasn’t an ache. It was a pull.
“Is it possible to feel your internal flame?” she asked.
“Viziri,” Quill growled, magic crackling up his arms, his ring glowing with magic.
“Not Viziri,” she said, glancing around at the low swells in the dunes, the sawgrass swaying in the morning breeze. “But someone…”
“Let’s get to our camp,” Gale said, hurrying up the slope, her gull circling above her. Sand slid under their feet, and every step they took seemed to leave them further than they had been when they started. That pull worried at Sagely’s flame and at her mind as they struggled up the dunes. Tiny white seashells, mostly clams and oysters, dotted the sand even far from the tide line. Skate egg casings and strings of seaweed occasionally caught in the grass, and tiny pink flowers bloomed close to the sand.
When they’d almost reached the trees, the tug inside Sagely grew stronger, and her ring began to pulse on her finger, sending bursts of cold into her. She shivered and scanned the woods, but she didn’t see anyone. Just as they stepped past a cluster of rosehip bushes, a familiar figure leapt at them.
Already on guard, Sagely delivered a spinning sidekick to the boy’s head before she’d even seen who it was. With a cry, he collapsed in a heap. Fox was already on him when he hit the sand.
“Eli,” Shaneesha cried.
“Don’t kill him,” Quill growled, sliding in the sand to get to them before Fox could finish him off.
“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Fox protested.
“Sure you weren’t,” Quill said, hauling Fox off their fallen comrade.
“Please tell me I just knocked him out,” Sagely said, dropping to her knees beside Eli. “If I killed Eli, you’re going to have to bind my magic, or put out my flame, or…”
“He’s alive,” Quill said, checking his pulse. “I think that was your faerie strength, though, not your magic. Nothing I can do about that.”
“What should we do with him?”
“We’ll bring him up with us,” Quill said. “We’ll have to turn his magic back to light, but it could take a while. Let’s get him up there before he wakes up.” With that, he tossed Eli over his shoulder and turned back towards the wind coven’s camp.
As they started up the hill, Fox fell into step with Sagely. “Can’t you all just turn his magic to the good kind while he’s passed out?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.
“Because then it’s not by his own free will,” Quill said over his shoulder, where Maude was perched. “We’d be as bad as Viziri.”
“Still better than having him wake up and try to murder someone,” Sagely muttered.
At last, they made it to the top of the hill to where the camp stood among the trees. Sagely glanced back over her shoulder at the sea, which looked far away now. She wondered where Raina was, and if she’d ever come back to them.
“What’s this?” Guthrie asked, appearing from the trees, his hair sticking up in a disheveled mess.
“This is one of our coven who got taken over by Viziri,” Quill said. “We need to get him back.”
“And you brought him here?” Guthrie thundered. “You’re luring the most powerful warlock in the world here, and you think we’re equipped to handle him?”
“He’s more like a messenger,” Quill said. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Just kick him in the head,” Sagely added with a grin.
Guthrie did not smile at her joke. “He’s dark,” he said with a curl of his lip.
“He was taken over,” Quill said, depositing Eli and drawing up to his full height, facing off with Guthrie. Guthrie was even taller than Quill, and barrel-chested so he seemed even bigger.
Just then, Eli sat up and looked around. Jumping to his feet, he clutched his head with one hand where Sagely had kicked him, and pointed at her with his other hand. “You,” he snarled. “You’re the one with the stone. The one who betrayed us.”
“What?” Sagely asked, stepping back in surprise at the venom in his voice.
“You could have come for us, but you didn’t,” he snarled. “You turned Ingrid against me. You turned them all against me!” He tried to leap forward, but Quill caught him around the middle in a bear hug and pulled him back.
“Sagely is not your enemy,” he said. “Viziri has been controlling you. I know there’s still some good inside you, Eli. You can fight the dark of your magic. It happened to me, too, and I came back from it. With Sagely’s help.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sagely said soothingly, stepping forward.
“Don’t touch me,” Eli said, holding up his hands as if warding off evil. “You poisoned our coven. You won’t poison me, too.” Suddenly, his legs seemed to give way under him, and he flopped over in Quill’s arms like a dead fish.
“Well, now that that’s taken care of,” Fox said. “How about some breakfast?”
“Shut up,” Sagely said, elbowing him. He grinned in response.
“You need to get him out of here,” Guthrie said. “If Viziri sent him here, he’ll expect him back. And when he doesn
’t return…”
“I don’t think he’s important enough for Viziri himself to come after him,” Sagely said. “He barely has any magic.”
Without warning, Eli’s head rocked back and his hand shot out, and a blast of smoky blackness exploded from his palm and shot straight towards Sagely.
Shit! She hadn’t been prepared. Still, she flung herself the ground, tucking her shoulder so she could flip over and roll back up. But she knew she wouldn’t make it in time. The void magic slammed into her, and she arched up, her heels digging into the ground as if she were being electrocuted. Fox sprang to her side, quickly joined by Quill, who had tossed Eli unceremoniously aside.
“You’re stronger than him,” Fox said, cradling her head in his lap. “Even I can feel that. Throw it back at him, Sagely.”
“Don’t fight it,” Quill said, taking her hand. “Remember when you received the magic from the fae. Open yourself and welcome it, no matter how counterintuitive that feels.”
“It’s attacking her,” Fox growled.
“I’m a warlock, I know how our magic works,” Quill growled back.
Fox glared for a second, then turned back to Sagely. “Be careful,” he said, stroking her cheek.
Every instinct in Sagely told her to spring up, to fling magic back at Eli, to make him suffer. To deny the magic that was attacking to her body. But her mind knew that Quill was right. Forcing herself to relax and be open to someone attacking her was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She’d spent her life building defenses, shutting people out before they had a chance to hurt her. Now she was letting someone in while he was standing there openly attacking her.
Well, not exactly standing. Guthrie was holding him a foot off the ground in a chokehold, his hands cuffed in one of Guthrie’s massive paws.
Sagely forced herself to feel nothing but peace and welcoming towards Eli, despite his blatant hatred and animosity. She relaxed onto Fox’s lap, looked up into Quill’s earnest green eyes, and sucked in the magic that was trying to destroy her.
She’d forgotten how void magic felt. A bit cold, a bit chaotic. A lot exciting.
Sister of the Sea Page 10
