“You’re oversimplifying a complicated situation.”
“I’m just telling the truth.” My words were razor-sharp. “I’m fine with this situation, just so long as we’re clear about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I might be human,” I said, even as the words tasted strange on my tongue, “but I’m not stupid. I know I’m a pawn in your greater plan. You’re trying to save your island, or something noble, and that’s wonderful for you. But if I mightdieplaying this role, then we break your curse on my terms.”
“What are your terms?”
“The first is that you don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” I said. “I’m here as a transaction for you, and I can see that. Let’s be up front and call it like it is. A deal.”
“Alessia.”
“Also, I want straightforward information, and I want your support,” I said. “I trusted you enough to come here. I have no clue why I made that choice, but I did, and now I can’t unsee…this.” I gestured to the wild and wonderful world surrounding me. “Don’t keep secrets from me. When I ask questions, answer them honestly.”
“You’re not here as a transaction.”
“Look me in the eyes,” I said. “Tell me I’m not here because you believe—for some reason that I can’t fathom—I am the only person who can break the curse that is killing your people.”
Silas looked at me, his gaze heavy. Then he looked down at the forest floor.
“That’s what I thought,” I murmured. “So we’ll do it on my terms.”
I took his silence as reluctant agreement.
It was another twenty minutes before he spoke. Like he was extending an olive branch. A nod to the fact that he’d heard my terms and was willing to accept them. Of course he was—I was beginning to understand that Silas would do anything for the people he cared about.
“Only a person with truly evil intentions can drain a mermaid’s blood,” Silas said. “They arecreatures of sunshine and joy, and to take one’s life force and create a monster is true horror.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For trusting me.”
Silas looked straight ahead as our horses pushed onward. “Mermaid’s blood is extremely valuable for many reasons. I don’t know all of them, but it’s rumored to have incredible healing qualities. It may be able to slow or prevent aging. It can enhance powers or be used in elixirs and potions, and much, much more. I don’t know the extent of it because it’s a banned substance, and I have no interest in associating with it.”
“I see.”
Silas surprised me by extending a hand in reply, gesturing to our surroundings. “We’re here.”
“Where is here?” Even as I looked ahead, I could sense something was off. I just couldn’t tell what was wrong. “I don’t understand.”
Silas didn’t speak, just waited. He gave me time, space, to figure it out for myself.
I slid off my horse, feeling Silas tense with each step I took forward.
I eventually came to a stop as I realized that I was staring at a portion of the island that had been completely overtaken by the curse. I lifted a hand and extended it, feeling a vibrating wall of energy. It shimmered in the air, almost invisible to the naked eye, more of a sensation than a visual.
“The wards?” I dropped my hand to look at Silas.
He nodded.
“I expected something different.” I glanced through the wards like they were a fun mirror, distorting the lands beyond.
I’d expected a black wasteland, a land where nothing lived, nothing thrived—a land of death and destruction. Beauty choked out by an awful enchantment.
Instead, the land before me looked as lush and green and filled with shadow as the rest of the forest, but something about it wasn’t right. It was too still, too quiet, too lifeless.
The forest behind us was built on small details: the flutter of a bird’s wings, the slither of a snake, the crack of a branch. Ahead was filled with nothingness. An emptiness that made my heart feel hollow and my body weak with desperation. A land of hopelessness and endings. There was no life, no beginning, only a flat nothingness.
“Who did this?” I asked. “Why?”
