“Free?” I offer. I understand. She should be debuting in society. I got to experience the rush of dancing, locking eyes with a stranger, buzzing with excitement at the touch of gloved hands on the railing of a staircase. She only heard the stories in the early hours, rushed and slurred by me from the sherries and chocolates. She’d been claimed by the man who should’ve been my burden to bear before her turn ever came.
“Equals.”
That hits me harder than my fall down the stairs. She’s young, beautiful, and kind. Easy to laugh and easy to cry. Tender, while my edges cut at anyone who gets too close. Liney is worth more than me; that’s a given. She’s everything I should’ve been.
“Sit up,” I say as soft as I can manage around the lump forming in my throat. “You’ll undo the braid.”
Thomas should’ve kept to my path. I’d have been his dutiful wife, playing along in public. Never giving the game away.
We’d never have come here. Liney could have kept a life safe from men, both suitors and monsters.
I tried praying. In church pews. In bed. On strolls between sunflowersin the back garden, glaring at the oak trees. I prayed for Thomas to become good, for Liney to escape his gaze, for my parents to see reason.
Nothing answered.
Instead, Thomas turned those terrible golden eyes to my sister.
“Don’t ruin your own happiness,” my mother advised. She’d ushered me out of my father’s study after I’d aired my suspicions that Thomas may have the wrong intentions. It was barely a fortnight before our wedding day. “We love Thomas. He’s already part of this family.”
So am I,I kept from saying. She brought me up to my bedroom, scolding me for my paranoia the whole way.
“We’ve always been gentle with you.” Sharp and still as stone, her dark eyes glinted in the candlelight. Liney has her eyes, though they’ve never looked like my mother’s did then. A woman peering into my future and her own past. “Too gentle, I fear. You believe the world should grant you utter safety, a fairy tale forever. That’s not the way of things.”
I mustered the small, fragile strength I had left. What Thomas had broken apart piece by piece. “I think he may hurt me.”
“They hurt us all, darling.”
6Elle
To Bargain
It will be a long night.
The rotating light jolts me awake whenever my head droops. The mirrored beam is hundredsfold stronger than the candles we use downstairs. On a normal night I’d occasionally roam downstairs, but tonight I need it to keep me awake.
Normal.The concept is bizarre considering the circumstances that led me here. Yet when I focus on the rhythm and patterns of our life, the mundanity itself is precious. Mornings lolling in bed while Liney combs the beach. Afternoons preparing meals and swapping barbs with Douglas. Him promising it’s not my fault I can’t cook—I’d need an intact soul to make anything palatable. Me shooting back that he’s welcome to try some if he’s able. Him looming over the stove and threatening to bleed into the meal. Washing up after supper while he quizzes me on the names of the sailors of the last wreck I caused. Evenings rotating between cranking at the gears and gazing out into the dark waves.
The winds aren’t kind to the ships that enter our harbor. We are thefirst piece of land sailors spot after days or weeks at sea. And for some, the last.
A few ships here and there are easy to make disappear. With no report to the mainland from the lighthouse’s logs, they’re assumed to have been lost at sea. That vastness can swallow any depth of sin.
Theywerelost at sea. In a sense. Closer to shore than anyone knows.
Those nights of sacrifice haunt me as much as my ghost. Douglas questions me endlessly after every sacrifice.Why this ship? What right do you have? When will it be enough?
What will you become when it ends, girl?
It’s been months since my last offering. A small fishing boat during a summer thunderstorm. Barely a nibble to satiate the hunger below. Delaying an offering had been a test. How far can I push this before he takes notice?
The beam sweeps across me again. I straighten slower this time. I can see the ocean when the light shines out the opposite end. Otherwise, the night is eclipsed by the crimson glow.
I cross my aching arms. I forgot how it feels to siphon the island’s power. His power. The pure capability is addictive. I’m no longer a young woman fearing capture. I am what captures men.
If I shut my eyes, the howls of the wind and the pelting rain against the glass panes behind me could lull me into sleep. They used to frighten me, as they still do Liney. But when you endure enough storms, you make a friend out of fear. My eyelids flutter as the light moves on.
I run my tongue over my top row of teeth. There’s a heaviness, the kind felt upon waking. Did I doze off? Nothing has changed. The mirrors still spin. The sky is still a maelstrom of swirling ink. My heartbeat stays slow despite my bleary-eyed panic. A bad sign.
A harsh rush of wind shudders the glass pane beside me, but I don’t stir. My head falls to the shoulder of Douglas’s wool coat.
