Then I turn and walk back toward the safe house, Katrine’s shoes and stockings in one hand, the other holding tight to the bottle in my pocket.
As I come to the little hill that leads down to the beach, voices whisper across the wind. Intuition bends my spine and crouches my legs, until I’m pressed to the dune, listening over thethump thump thumpof my heart pounding in my ears.
“When do you strike?” asks a man or boy, it’s hard to tell. He speaks in an accent that reminds me of Sofie’s father.
“Broad daylight,” I hear a girl’s voice or maybe a woman’s say, low enough I don’t recognize it. “The warehouse will be up in flames before supper.”
I press my face to the damp sand to stifle a gasp.
Our plan is out.
28
Runa
ISTAY ON THE BEACH UNTIL THE VOICES AND FOOTSTEPSare long gone. Betrayal lays a thick track in my lungs, like an oil slick atop the sea surface, suffocating everything in its reach, as I stay motionless, tucked against the sand.
I slip into the safe house at midnight, the firelight dying, as a traitor sleeps within.
Though the door is tightly shut, Katrine’s snores echo from her bedroom. In the main room there’s just enough of a glow from the last embers to see the outline of the girls asleep on the floor. They lie side by side as they’ve done before, only Sofie’s books between them, the nightgown folded on top of her latest read.
Will attempts to sleep, shoved up next to the door, waiting for my return. He shifts as I walk in, exhausted eyes following my movements across the room. The quilt I claimed as my bedroll last night is draped over a chair atthe table. Throwing it around my shoulders, I go to him, sliding down the wall to the floor.
There’s no surprise in Will’s eyes. He’s been expecting my good-bye. He thinks he knows what I’m going to say before the words are out—some excuse of being from other worlds, not belonging,it’s better this way.
What I say instead is, “We need to talk.”
Sleep does not come easily. It barely comes at all. Yet I wake before dawn, the sky still smoky with clouds but the light changing just enough beyond the shutters to prove the time.
I put the kettle on, as Katrine has taught me to do, brewing water for tea. Mug hot and fragrant in my hands, I crack the shutters just enough to watch the sky change. Charcoal to iron to ash. It shifts like the tide, slowly, slowly, until suddenly it’s undeniably closer. In moments, the sea witch’s spell will no longer rule me.
Tea finished and fingers shaking, I set the mug on the sill and fish a hand into the folds of my dress. Niklas’s ring, the ríkifjor seeds, and the glass bottle are mingled together in the same pocket, the amethyst lonesome on the other side. Fingers wrapped tightly around the cool glass, I draw it out.
Even in the low light, it’s easy to see the line that delineates blood from air. Where one life ends and another begins. Or—where one journey ends and the old life returns.
I stand there, sure in my legs, watching the sky changefurther. It’s now or never.
I could run for it. Use these legs while I have them. Over the pasture, down the dunes, offer my spell and spill blood onto my feet with my toes in the sand. Testing Urda’s forgiveness, I could go home. Sow seeds. Do my part in making Father the most powerful being on the planet, hopes high that I alone could stave off a war.
Or I could stay here. Make my own decisions. Do my part in another fight with people who need me for more than just what I can do for them—working together to end one war and halt another before it even begins.
The ivory promise of day slips into a candlelight glow, breaking through the clouds, reaching for me. Calling me home.
Across the room, Will stands.
If I look at him now, my heart will rip right down the center and fall to the wayside, defunct. I don’t know how Alia made this choice so easily. How she could see her future clearly enough to leave us, knowing she could never return? Knowing what she was risking.
Sunlight streams into my eyes, brilliant and blinding. I close them, letting it wash over me in painted lines through the shutters. The fire and fury I felt when drinking the witch’s brew returns. It blazes a scorched path through my skin, cauterizing every cell, the magic that once built me seared shut. Scar tissue collecting. Each inch of progress hollows me out, scrapes me clean, reforms what and who I am.
When I open my eyes, I am a mermaid no more. A human made of blood and bones, no magic. But I can still wield it. Of that I am sure.
“Runa?” Will takes a step toward me, tone unbelieving.
I steel my heart, willing it to hold together. And then I look him right in the eyes and slip the bottle of blood back into my pocket.
He comes to me, wraps me in close, and draws me into a cocoon of strong arms, soft cotton, a beating heart.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
