Not to mention, he’s about to be married.
“That kiss didn’t do it? Didn’t appease the deal? You must earn his love,” I confirm. Alia nods and I continue. “It’s not the kiss that does it; it’s the love behind it.”
Alia squeezes my fingers and then makes our sign for human—two fingers walking. Human love.
“Or Øldenburg blood?” I whisper. Alia’s face blanches, and she shakes her head violently.
No. No. No, Runa, NO.
It’s the only other way to satisfy the spell. We know this from Annemette’s story too.
A kiss of true love or Øldenburg blood.
But this path isn’t one she’s entertained—not yet. In fact, given the look she gave Niklas, it’s the last thing she’ll entertain at all.
“Alia, listen to me. You may not have a choice. His brothers and father died in the storm where you saved him. Everyone in the sea knows that.” I think of that other boy, Phillip, but his relation to Niklas is on his mother’s side. His blood will not satisfy Urda. “His might be the only Øldenburg blood available. And if that’s what it’ll take—”
Alia shakes her head violently again, pointing at me, then her ear, then toward the door where the king made his exit. She points to herself, and through the force of her hands, the signs she’s using, the fury on her face, I understand her.
You heard him. He knows down deep I rescued him. He loves the mermaid who rescued him. That’s me. He loves me.
“Alia,” I say, hooking the pole with one arm and swirling my tail around the bottom so I don’t slide. I grab her trembling hands, trying to still them. I’ve always been the one to tell her the truth when her dreams push the boundaries of reality. “He loves the idea of you—this girl he plucked from the same sea he survived. He hasn’t said he believes in mermaids, has he? Or that he believes one rescued him? Or that you look just like her? No, he hasn’t.”
I reset my grip, harder, stronger, as she shakes her head. “You can’t hang your hopes—your life—on a boy like that. The only person he’s in love with is himself. He loves the idea that Urda swept him up and saved him while his inferior brothers sank to the deep. You were just the courier.” The words feel like darts pouring from my lips, but I have to make her see.
Alia’s shaking head gains speed, and she grits her teeth hard, a red flush gathering under her eyes.
She points to me, and I know what she’s going to say before she signs it. I know her nearly better than I know myself.
You don’t know him, Runa. You don’t. You’re wrong. That’s not true.
It’s then that Alia surprises me, breaking my grip on her with such strength that I teeter back, holding on by only my tail, curled around the balcony base.
Then she signs a single word.
Leave.
“No, I won’t leave you. Are you crazy? You have, what, three days? And he’ll be married by then. Alia, won’t you—”
Leave!
She stands, red in the face, so angry she mouths the words.
I don’t want to see you again. If I am to die, let me die in peace.
Then Alia turns, because if I won’t leave her, she’ll leave me.
And she does, not even looking back, disappearing through the nearest set of French doors and into the castle.
I slip beneath the water. All the panic I’ve pushed down rises, galvanizing within my chest, setting my heart a-skitter and my fingers trembling. The sudden need to do something holds tight to my skin, bones, heart, and tail.
I have to stop this. This can’t happen. It can’t. There has to be a way to undo this. To save Alia from herself. I can’t have Alia fail. I can’t lose her twice.
I must visit the sea witch.
THE LIGHT FILTERS IN SLOWLY, MY WORLD GOING FROM a sky with no stars to one with a rising sliver of moon. Beneath that weak glow, my body is a pile of lead, the casing of a ship sunk to this place, rusting and rotting as the urchins gut it out. The only energy I have left goes to trying to open my eyes further to see what, if anything, is left.
“Oh, good, you’re alive,” comes a voice.
It takes me several moments to realize it’s not a voice in my head. I’m still so unused to company that it’s nearly impossible to remember the sound.
I’m conscious of my lungs working, drinking in thin breaths of murk. As I work to test my faculties, the voice continues. “If you’d listened to me, I would’ve told you that what you need isn’t in those books. That magic is for the witches above—the sea people are magic. You can’t solve a problem like this with only land magic, you have to know the magic in the sea.”
Oh, Anna. Always with the suggestions.
“I’ve been here just as long as you,” I say, my voice sallow in my ears—nearly as dead as the rest of me. “I know what you know.”
“But you don’t,” she responds back with all the energy I don’t have. “You forget that I was Annemette for four years, squid.”
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”
Her time as Annemette is the reason both of us are here, in the dark. Her “father” all but confirmed that when he nearly killed me in my home. If I had the energy right now, I’d shut her up yet again.
I wedge one tentacle into the sand, trying to leverage myself up and around from where I landed. The pewter grind of it coats my skin in a gray rash, embedded so deep it may never come out. The tentacle gains traction, and I’m able to add two others to fortify it and push until I’m on my side. I sit up too fast, my head spinning as I screw my eyes shut and fall back onto the sea floor with a soft whomp.
“I know a spell that might help,” Anna offers, clearly peeved I didn’t jump at her hint of knowledge before.
“What is that?” I say, as I try once again to sit up. I’m more successful this time, but my head still spins horribly, my ears clouded with bells.
“Festa.”
If it wouldn’t hurt, I’d nod. This was a spell Tante Hansa used when she’d gained the nickname Healer of Kings. It’s not anything new, and I’m unsure whether it will repair the depletion I feel down to my core. Especially if I, the depleted one, am the witch commanding the magic for strength. It’s not a spell I’ve ever tried on myself; it’s
