Widow is still on guard. “All right, but you still aren’t a god.”
“Not in this form.” Ari stops trying for the regal look and hunches over again, coughing as she goes.
“Wraith told me about you,” I say quietly.
Ari’s gaze snaps to mine. “Telling our secrets, was he?”
“He told me he loved you. He still loves you.”
Her cackle is even louder this time, and the lightning from the Neverstorm lights her face in eerie hues of silver and shadow. “If he loved me, he’d have let me go. He never would’ve come to the sea all those times, never would have promised to marry me, never would have left me alone to wonder what had become of him.” The bitterness in her seeps out like dark water in a stream. “And when I found him … He’d already claimed another.”
“He made a mistake.”
“And I bore the curse for it!” Her voice snaps like a dry twig.
“He asked me to help you. He made me promise I would try so that you two could be together again.”
“To assuage his own guilt. That’s all.” She uses her gnarled hand to pull back the cloth she wears draped over her head, her gray hair spilling out in a wild tumble. “He never cared for me the way I cared for him.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Doesn’t matter what you think. None of it matters anymore.”
“Then why are you here?” I ask.
“I want to go home.” She looks past me at the sea. “I want to return to where I belong. Never again do I want to walk this island.”
“But Wraith loves—”
Widow puts her hand on my arm. “You have to let her choose, Moira,” she says quietly. “Love isn’t love unless someone chooses it for themselves.”
I take a breath. She’s right. It’s the same way I chose Hook. But I never gave him a chance to truly choose me. He thought I was his without needing any proof. My eyes water as I turn to the ocean, toward the storm that forever churns just past the horizon. He’s there. He has to be. He’s too strong to die, to drown, to do anything except stomp out of that ocean and kiss me so hard I have no doubt of his devotion.
But the waves keep lapping, the surf low and gentle as the wind barely creates breakers out beyond the sand bar. He isn’t there.
“Girl?” Ari asks.
I turn back to her and wipe the tears from my cheeks.
She glances at the ocean, and she doesn’t say anything, but somehow, I know she knows.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” I don’t know why I ask her. Perhaps because her heart is already broken. Maybe she can shatter mine with the least amount of pain. Maybe she knows how to more than anyone else ever could.
“The ocean never gives up her secrets.” She gazes at the water. “Or her dead.”
I close my eyes, more tears seeping from them as I try to hold myself together. She did what I wanted—broke me into a million pieces with the softest touch. But somehow it doesn’t hurt any less. My knees give way, and I sink to the sand. How can I survive this? I don’t think I can. “I don’t know what to do.” I speak to the sand, the sea, the air. I speak to Hook, who can no longer hear me. “What do I do?” I whisper through my tears.
Ari drops to the sand in front of me. “You go on.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” She swipes the sand between us, making a flat surface, then drags her index finger through it in serpentine lines. “I’ve wandered this island for what must be eons. I wanted to die a thousand times. I wanted to kill that faithless man who stole everything from me. I wanted to burn the island to the ground. I wanted so many things. None of them good.” Her finger still makes the serpentine tracks. “But all those steps led me nowhere. Led me right back to where I started. Until I let go. Until I let myself feel the heartbreak and the betrayal. Until I realized my destiny wasmine. Wraith’s love didn’t force me to make that deal. I chose it the same way I chose him. And now I choose freedom.” Her finger stops. “I won’t go another step on this island. I won’t be held hostage by a bad bargain or by a path laid out for me by someone else.” She points at me. “You shouldn’t either. No matter whose boon you are.” She sits back and folds her shriveled hands in her lap.
I try to think through everything she said, but I can’t focus. Not on her or her path. My mind, like my heart, is with Hook. I shake my head. “Ari, I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”
“Of course you do.” She presses her fingertip to my forehead. “It’s all up here, girl. All the magic you need.”
“I don’t feel very magical.”
