“You studied, you tested, you planned, and your solution is to simply ask the magic for an exchange? Like you want a blue dress instead of a red one?”
Magic surges until it is swirling around us. It sparks and undulates. I realize it’s not mine. Not all mine, anyway. The storm was never mine—it has the same feel as the storm on Nik’s birthday. On Iker’s boat earlier that day. The storms are Annemette.
I am blind for the briefest of moments, and then I feel her cool magic welling up from the pit of my stomach, through my lungs, and clutching at my heart. When my vision returns, a cone of water surrounds us—shielding us from the beach.
They’re going to think I did that.
Annemette’s grip tightens as she leans into my ear, as close as Nik just minutes before.
“You know what I think? I think you didn’t really want to save me. You didn’t want to save me any more this time than you wanted me to survive four years ago.”
A gasp escapes my lips. Anna. My Anna. But there’s a knife twist in her words that my Anna didn’t have.
Between Nik’s love and Anna’s resentment, my heart stops beating for a moment.
It thuds back to life, tears stinging my eyes as I try to grab for her face, her hair, my friend. I’ve missed her for so long. Even with all my personal loss, I can’t imagine her pain. But her grip only tightens more and I can’t touch her. “Anna. Oh, Anna, I wanted you to survive. I did a spell that day, but I—”
That smirk twists into a sneer. “Failed. You failed because you didn’t understand, and you wrecked that too.” Her teeth are bared—I don’t recognize her face anymore. The torque of her grip on my hands is cutting off my circulation. “Instead of protecting my life, you caused the black plague with that magic.”
The T?rhed. The minnows at my feet, faceup and inked black, flash in my mind. Dead by my tears. My black tears. The look on Hansa’s face as she saved me. The T?rhed didn’t just start that summer; it started with me that day.
I did it.
She’s right. I know she’s right. I’ve known it deep down for a while now.
“I tried to fix it. This year, the sea life has returned—”
“The sea life you’ve ripped from where they truly belong? The spells of abundance you unleashed on the sea, killing faster than the black death? If they aren’t dying in nets, they’re dying of famine. Because there are too many.” Her hands grip tighter, her cool magic ringing my wrists along with her fingers. “The sea can’t take more of your kindness, witch.”
“Let me try—”
“To fail again? Oh, no. No. Tonight is about success.” Despite the cone of water, a swimming soldier gets a hand on the sandbar, but with a lift of her arm, Anna sends him back into the deep. We can’t see the rest of the guards, but I can feel her magic surging forth, pushing them all back and out of striking distance with a mere word under her breath. She doesn’t even break eye contact. Her eyes flash, and the cut of her teeth finally resembles something of a smile.
“Tonight, Anna Liesel Kamp reclaims her life.”
I try to move, try to touch her, implore her, but she’s done something, and I can’t move my arms. My feet. Anything. Even my magic won’t budge, frozen in my veins. My heart begins to sink, the only thing Anna cannot control.
“Anna, please!”
“Oh, no, you will get no pity from me.” Again, she laughs. The sound is guttural, mirthless. “You stole my life. You stole it with your dare. You stole it with that stupid hold you have over Nik. He chose you. He saved you. He failed me. Because of you.”
“Anna—”
“Nothing you can say will give it back. Nothing you can do will give it back.”
She removes a hand from my shoulder and thrusts it out behind her in the direction of the rock that divides the cove. Though only one hand remains, I’m still powerless to move. My magic feels like sludge under my skin. If only I knew more about how it all worked. If only I’d studied harder. Practiced more. I’d felt so powerful moments ago, and now I’m completely helpless.
The wall of water surrounding us parts, and something bursts through into our space. Not a guard, no . . . it’s misshapen, gray, bloated, a dark hole through its middle.
But then in a blink I recognize it. I gasp and start to fight against Anna’s restraints. I need to touch him. I need to make sure. But I know when she starts laughing again that the nightmare before me is real.
The thing before me is my father. Was my father.
“While your solution was an exceedingly juvenile spell, the idea was right. A life for me to be here, a life for me to stay.”
I see it all so clearly now. True love was never going to save Anna—not with what she’s become. If it was even a solution to begin with. There’ve been so many lies.
There’s a rumble from somewhere in the clouds, and something surges deep within the water surrounding us. And I know my part in her revenge before I can see the outline of the wall of water.
Our sea didn’t claim me that day, though Urda’s choice was there. Now, Anna is giving the water another chance.
“And I’m to be the life you take to stay.” I force myself to look at her as I say it. My father paid the price for Anna’s vengeance and now I must do the same.
She smiles—the most soulless thing I’ve ever seen. “Oh, no. Your life isn’t valuable enough for that.”
Anna’s grip releases. Suddenly, I’m aloft, next to my father, floating. I’m still immobile. My muscles, fight, magic, all useless.
With a twist of her hand, a gust as strong as a cannonball strikes me in the chest. Father’s body and I shoot back through the wall of water, arcing toward the stormy churn of the cove.
As I fall, I inhale my last breath. Close my eyes.
And then I am one with the sea.
ON THE SURFACE
The little mermaid was smiling. Smiling and crying—salt water was the perfect cheat for tears.
She would be crying real tears of joy soon.
“Hold your fire!” the boy called as the guards raised their rifles to the little mermaid splashing past the footstep islands on her own two feet. Behind her somewhere, Evie had taken her last breath. The approaching guards, too, dead in the deep; she couldn’t let them ruin this next part. She didn’t have much time, but there wasn’t much left to be done.
She just had to hold on for the final piece of her plan.
“Nik! Nik! She did it! She did it!” The little mermaid crashed onto the beach—the princes and the remaining guards were the only ones nearby but at the mouth of the cove was an entire ball’s worth of gawkers. An audience. This was perfect. “She did it, and I remember!”
The little mermaid grabbed his hand. Pointed her practiced smile at his stunned face. “I’m Anna. Anna Liesel Kamp. I’m Anna!”
From the sea lane above, the little mermaid heard her batty old oma, right for once. “Anneke. My Anneke—you’re sopping wet! Out of the water with you! Out!”
A few titters came after the old woman’s outburst, but then Iker’s voice thundered over them all. “Cousin, step back. She’s no better than a witch and you know it. She’s worse. Move away.”
“Not this time, Iker,” Nik said, touching the little mermaid’s face. Reading it. Confirming the suspicions he should’ve had since the moment he set eyes on the “traveler from Odense.”
“If you’re really Anna, tell me this: What happened on Lille Bjerg Pass when I was ten?”
The little mermaid didn’t blink; rather, her answer brimmed with joy and urgency. “You bashed your right leg on a rock, you’ve got a scar as long as your shin bone. Evie and I had to carry you down the mountain.”
Those dark eyes of his widened and he grinned. “It’s you—it’s really you.” But then he broke her gaze, his eyes searching the waves for the girl she would never be. He couldn’t even give her this moment of attention. Yes, he deserves this.