Some instinct of mine is screaming in the back of my head that something is not right. I look from Vesuvius’s face to Aurelius’s—both incredibly calm. It’s as if they’re holding their breath. As if they’re anticipating. As if far more rides on this decision now than my own happiness or the fates of two good men.
I glance to Okeanos, too, but his face is set, his eyes squeezed shut, and his breath rasps in his lungs in an uneven rhythm.
“Why would you offer me back my husband?” I ask, but I know he won’t tell me the truth, I’m simply trying to grasp at strands of time while my mind races to think it through.
I turn my face to Lieve, agonized. He is still shaking his head, his eyes seeming to plead with me. And I know he saw me look to Okeanos first and I hope it doesn’t sting for him like it does for me.
“We simply don’t want you to bring the sea god back to life with the culmination of your five tasks. We want you to loosen your grip on godhood and his grip with it. Is that so terrible?” Vesuvius says, and there’s a dangerous gleam in his eyes as he speaks. “You were, after all, the one who killed him in the first place. Surely you are not so fickle that you have changed your mind?”
Aurelius almost seems bored when he adds, “We are gods. We are not monsters. With one hand we might take, but with the other we give. Let us give you what you want most. Your old life back. Your husband. Your crown. Your mortality. Godhood never suited you in the first place.”
And now my heart is thundering, because of course he is right. I never wanted to be a god. I am terrible at it and all I ever wanted isexactly what they’re offering me. Why would I not take it if I could?
I look long into Lieve’s frantic eyes, and if I thought my heart was broken before, it is pounded to dust now. I wish hecould speak to me. I wish even more that I could fall into his arms and he could make everything bad disappear. But he has never had that power.
And even if I could save him, and bring him back to life, what then?
When the two of us are cast living and mortal upon the shores of the Crocus Isles, will the people turn their prayers to Aurelius? They will go unanswered. My folk will be swallowed by storms and sea with no one to save them, plunged into a war that chews them up hundreds at a time, lashed by grim tides and the machinations of gods with no stronghold to which they might flee. But they are nameless, faceless people. Why should I sacrifice everything in my heart for a chance they might be safe? It’s too much to ask from a person.
And what would be the result of bringing Lieve into that? Would he not also become nameless and faceless? His mortal life might be spent in a year or a day or an hour in the turmoil of the world in this god war, and I would have thrown aside everything Oke saved up to free his people only to buy Lieve a scant breath of time.
These two enemies of mine have ignored the third option. That I have not the power to save either husband. I can only walk away just as Okeanos pleaded for me to do and finish the tasks somehow. For I have only four: the vow of a god, the marriage of the drowned queen, the dead collected to serve, and the filled thimble. I didn’t succeed in healing the Crown of the Sea. No wonder Oke called me betrayer.
Betrayer.I close my eyes and let the word hurt the way it should.
Wait. My eyes snap open again.
It is as if I have stepped on the trigger of a trap and felt it click. I swallow hard and try to disguise what I have just realized, what he was trying to tell me with his last breath. “Turn the betrayer’s heart” is our fifth completed task.
I speak quickly, trying to make them talk while my mind races.
“Why offer me this chance at all? Why not kill me now if the tasks are so great as to threaten you?”
“We are not so cruel,” Aurelius says with a benevolent smile, but his smile is brittle and I know I’ve struck a nerve. Somehow, they do not think it would work simply to kill me. Or there is some nuance I am missing that makes my death unpalatable to them in this moment.
I swallow again and try to think, but my frantic brain can only see one way this can work and I know my time is running short.
I smile at Lieve and pour into my smile all the love of my heart, and I hate how it makes his expression shift from earnestness to something bleak.
Gritting my teeth, I hold out my palm, but I keep my eyes on Lieve, trying with all my might to be his anchor.
“I’ll take the pearl, then,” I say to Vesuvius. “I can hardly give Lieve back his life without freeing him from captivity. Though I think I’ll need to seek instruction on how that’s done.”
Vesuvius smirks, but I can see the tension going out of his shoulders. I’m making the choice they wanted. I’m following their plan. It’s only a matter of the details now. It galls me to bring him joy like this.
“Only the one who put the soul into the pearl can take it out again.” Vesuvius hands the pearl to Aurelius. “If you’d do the honors.”
Aurelius holds the pearl up between thumb and forefinger, looks me in the eye to be sure he has my attention, and then breathes delicately on the pearl. As he breathes it melts away as if he is blowing away dust.
My breath catches in my lungs and I shift, moving to turn my back to them so that my whole focus can be on my Lieve as we do this part. They have guessed—correctly—that I could never leave him to suffer. That I could never bear to watch him kept from his life. I’m memorizing his dark hair and the lines of his face. It’s like I get to make this terrible decision all over again but better this time because this time he doesn’t have to go drown beneath the waves far from the arms of the one he loves.
I lean over him and press my forehead to where his should be, but my tears fall right through him and he’s fading now that the pearl is gone. I must act quickly before he drifts to the Nightwaters.
“Do it quickly,” Vesuvius snaps. “Or he’ll fade and it will be too late. Once he’s mortal again you’ll be able to rip my tentacles from him. Mayhap I’ll even be able to reattach them.”
“Unlikely,” Aurelius opines.
I whisper so quietly that I barely hear the words myself, “I love you forever.”
