And so, if she would not grasp for it, if she would not fight to remain, then I need not bear the weight of guilt for taking what she had already abandoned.
I squeezed so hard, I expected to feel her spine pop. Lyla’s eyes slowly began to close, rolling back in her head, but I kept on, listening to her slow heartbeat until its rhythm ceased completely.
I slowly lifted my hands from her pale neck. The imprints of my bloodied grip remained on her ashy skin. Her mouth fell open like a dead fish, her eyes half-closed and stagnant.
She looked so much like me, and my hands trembled with the awful recognition as though, in ending her, I had ended some version of myself. She was the echo of who I might have become, had Akareth completed his cruel design.
The thought hollowed me, filling every breath with a grief I did not ask for, a regret that burned where liberation should have lived.
I remained on top of her, my hands at my sides. The bandage had all but been ripped off my palm, filling the air with the coppery scent of my own blood and the sweet odor of hemsbane from Lady Mary. My fingers throbbed and burned and that fire was starting to sizzle up my veins into my arm, but that pain was almost a comfort compared to what I’d just done. I had killed my sister. It was not the first time I’d done so, but it felt as if it was. Ripping off Ligeia’s head did not weigh nearly as much on my conscience.
I cocked my head down at her, watching the stillness of her peaceful, dead face with a kind of jealousy I wished never to feel.
And then it hit me. She was dead. Lyla was dead.
The screams I had been hearing my whole life from the day of my birth echoed in my ears, clear as if it was happening in that very moment.Lyla’sscreams. The screams of a babe being ripped from the light. Ripped from her mother. Her twin sister.
“Lyla?” I whispered. I leaned forward, patting her cheek with my fingers. “Lyla. No. Lyla, wake up.” I raised my head, scanning the now fully awake camp, but their faces were blurred. “Aleksi!” I called out. “Aleksi, please. Please help me.”
The pirate ran out from the masses and knelt beside me as I moved off my sister’s body.
“Bring her back,” I said. “Like you brought me back.”
“Dahlia, perhaps this is for the best,” Meridan said.
“Bring her back!” I screamed, the tones of my voice crashing together, weaving words that made every silentium in that clearing vibrate. “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please. I didn’t mean to.”
Aleksi stared at me, wide-eyed. Everyone did like I’d become the monster they first thought I was before I joined the crew.
“Aleksi, please,” I pleaded.
He gaped into my eyes for a beat and then finally, he turned to Lyla, leaning over her dead body. I watched him press his mouth to hers and breathe into her. Her chest expanded. Once. Twice. He breathed again and again… but she remained deceased. Lifeless. He continued, pressing his knuckles against her chest a few times before repeating it all. And finally, when I thought my actions could not be undone, she stole breath on her own with a ragged gasp. Aleksi rocked back, wiping his lips with the back of his wrist as he moved away. Were it Meridan on the ground or Vidar, I would have scooped them up in my arms and celebrated their return.
But it was Lyla. I watched her writhe and wheeze for air and still, I could not touch her. I could not comfort her. I just… could not let her die.
She slowly turned her gaze on me and I watched as the inky darkness began to fade, making way for a pale gray hue to come through. Gray like mine but not quite the same. She blinked up at me like she was seeing me for the first time. Like she was seeing everything for the first time.
Before anything could be said, two men hoisted Lyla off the ground and threw her back into her cage. She landed like a carcass, rolling onto her side only when the gate was closed and locked. I stared at what barely looked like the same woman. Her gaze peered outward, but not at me. Not at anyone.
A warm hand rested on my shoulder. I looked up to see Vidar standing over me. I rose to my feet, my bandages a mess of tangled fabric drenched in blood.
“We need to stitch you up,” he said.
I shook my head. “I just need the water.”
Dragging my feet to the small pool on the other side of the clearing, I gradually stripped out of my clothes. The moment my feet touched the cool wetness, I felt my legs aching to change. I felt the pull ripping me off land and into the water, eager to cleanse me of the poison I’d forced into my veins. I sunk deeper, letting the change take me, ridding me of my legs and replacing them with a tail. My head slipped beneath the surface and I sank all the way to the bottom of the pool where the sounds from above were barely a whisper. There, I closed my eyes and I let the water drown everything out. Their gossip. The fading dreams. All of it.
The water healed. It always had. I welcomed its mercy, alone, hopingfor a better morning.
You may face the light
But a shadow will never leave you
~ Neve Everette
The light came and went. I watched it move across the sky, slow and steady. Unbiased. And then I watched the moon follow, arching over the island, a white crest smiling down on all things. When it was at its peak, I forced myself to the surface of the pool and emerged from its depths, my palm healed of all infection left by the hemsbane and bronze. I shifted quietly, wading out of the water as gently as I could so I did not draw more eyes to me. The camp was quiet save for a few men talking and the sound of a hammer slamming against metal somewhere nearby. I could smell the coal and hot flames in the air as I walked across the clearing toward the treehouse.
When I arrived, Vidar was nowhere to be seen, but my clothes were laid out on the bed. A fresh blouse and some drawstring pants with my leather belt and dagger. I slid everything on over my damp body, carefully tucking everything into place before I braided mywet hair over one shoulder, tying it off with a leather string. When I stepped back outside, Meridan was at the bottom of the steps, one foot up like she was about to ascend them.
