He shakes clear of the pain and zooms over the crowd. “What you are seeing isn’t the truth; it’s a lie twisted into the light.”
“I’m not lying. I’m dead, Father. I have nothing left to lose. You have so much to lose that you just murdered your own mother before my very eyes.”
There’s a commotion as heads swing around in the crowd, eyes searching for Ragn. The remaining eight princesses all react in mirrored shock, clinging to each other’s hands, shoulders, waists.
“No, it’s not true!” the sea king screams, and shoves Alia away, knocking her into a polypus general. “The sea witch’s magic controls thisimitationof Alia and the rest of the ghost soldiers! She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
He wheels on me, a powerful spell coming within him, rumbling and at the ready.
“She knows exactly what she’s saying.” I grit my teeth. “You were minutes away from bringing your people to war. I intend to stop you.”
I call to Anna. “Anna!Bresta! Sjálfviki!”
Anna’s body jerks, her lips dropping open. She pauses right where she’s been hovering around a mine, prepared for the order to detonate. She glances at her palms—free to move on their own. And then her white-marble tail sweeps in a flowing arc, moving away from the mines, toward us.
The sea king reels back again, eyes squeezed shut.“No!” He wrenches his eyes open, looking only to me. “Stop!”
I point my hands to the nearest guard.“Bresta! Sjálfviki!”
At the same time, the sea king unleashes a spell on my unprotected side.“Villieldr!”
The magical wildfire hits my side straight on, a blistering burn immediately clustering on my skin. My tentacles aren’t spared—three of them singed, immediately curling and misshapen.
My vision goes black with white-hot pain. But I’m successful and I know it—another cord cut. I blindly aim for other polpyi generals as my vision spirals back from total darkness to gray tones.“Bresta! Sjálfviki!”
Several more bonds break, and with each one, the king thrashes more violently.
As my vision returns completely, he gathers all the breath he has left and erupts with the spell that murdered his mother.“Mor∂vig, sea witch!”
I throw a shield, and with everything I have in me, I yank the remaining cords of his magic from the polypi at once, ripping them from the root.
“Bresta! Sjálfviki! Allr minn polypi!”
Magic bursts out of me in a sonic wave. The soldiers jerk back, stunned. They slip and freeze and shake their heads—each reaction as different as when they were men in Øldenburg blue, not marionettes of one mind.
With each and every bond severed, the sea kingwrithes as if struck by a bullet. One, and then another, and then another, until, finally, he is all too still. His eyes are wedged open in pain, his mouth hanging agape.
“Morna... herfiligr... kvennali∂... ,”he slurs, but there’s no magic in it.
Agony haunts the last of his voice as it peters out. Then he falls. Tumbling, hurtling, barreling, with the brutish grace of a cannonball, straight toward the sea floor.
And as he goes, Alia ascends to me and grabs my hand—Eydis, Ola, and Signy clutching at her other hand, joined together in a wreath—and watches, free as a bird with a song on her lips.
“Come away, come away—”
38
Runa
IWAIT FOR MY FATHER ON THAT WALL OF STONE, STANDINGtall against the beating wind, the hail, the downpour. Staring out at the teeming waters, I can’t see below the surface, but I feel every inch of what he’s created.
Hysteria from Alia’s death.
The desire for revenge.
A belief that there’s no other way.
If I had never come here, I would believe it too. If I hadn’t seen for myself what Alia had tried to do, and if Father had sold me that story, I would be down there, learning to fight. Ready to get revenge. I’d probably triple our stash of ríkifjor, fortifying Father. Driven by blind faith and misunderstanding, but mostly by fear.
