There she is. Watching our defeat with a tiny smile on her face. She’s enjoying this.
I grit my teeth and swim as hard as I ever have. I can see the wall of light that separates the witch and her boats from our peril. Only a few yards away. Before she even knows I’m there, I will lunge up from the water and slice her legs. As she falls, I will plunge Thyra’s blade into her gut. Let’s see her make it rain when she’s drowning in her own blood.
These happy, savage thoughts drive me through the water, every muscle alight with determination. I am barely aware of the cold until a burst of warmth encloses me. The darkness peels back, and I am in her column of light. The water here is smooth, no waves to slow me down as I am coming at her flank. Her skiff is three strokes away, and she doesn’t see me.
A bald, black-clad man in one of the other skiffs shouts, “Valtia!”
I jerk around to see him raising his arm, his chubby finger pointing straight at me. My eyes water as the air around me warps with heat and the lake turns scalding. Hissing with pain and twisted up with confusion, I kick away, desperate again for the icy feel of the storm. This water is cooking me. I face the sky, my legs pumping.
The witch turns and looks down at me as I wriggle like a speared fish. Her brow furrows. Her face is oddly cracked, the whiteness chipped away in places to reveal rosy skin beneath. The sight reminds me of my purpose, and I lunge for the hull of her skiff even as my flesh begins to blister. It doesn’t matter, as long as I take her down before I die.
My raw, red hand clutches at the bow of the skiff. With her copper-decorated arm still raised to the sky, the witch stares into my eyes. She doesn’t look scared. One corner of her mouth is still quirked up in a tiny, victorious smile, but I swear, there is a completely different kind of war within her pale blue gaze.
Another bald, black-robed man sitting at the stern lazily swishes his hand at me and speaks to the witch in the odd, trilling language I recognize as Kupari. He sounds undisturbed. Like I’m no threat, merely an inconvenience.
Hate is my fuel. My right hand raises the blade above the surface of the lake as I strain to escape the searing water, to heave myself into the boat and draw blood.
But the witch merely considers me as I struggle, looking pensive. “You’re wrong. She’s not a boy,” she says softly, almost to herself.
I am caught by the sound of her voice—and the fact that I understand what she said. Like her gaze before, her voice reaches inside me, and this time, I feel when it takes hold, when it squeezes. My chest is filled with a feeling I cannot name, so powerful that it robs me of my will. I cannot possibly kill her. I cannot harm a hair on her head. My mouth drops open and the dagger falls from my upraised fist.
The black-robed man barks at her, trilling words gone harsh and hateful, lips pulled back from his teeth. I think he’s telling her to kill me.
The witch looks over her shoulder at her dark companion. “I . . . can’t.” She sounds as puzzled as I feel.
He spits a few more words from between his bared teeth, and a ball of flame bursts from his palm.
I don’t have time to be surprised. The witch whirls around again, and before I can blink, she pushes her palm toward me. A cold wave rises beneath me, ripping me from the side of the skiff and bearing me upward, away from the boat. I catch one more glimpse of her pale face and the glimmer of her crimson-copper cuff before I am plunged back into the jaws of the storm. A bitter wave crashes over me, sending me tumbling head over feet, helpless and lost and sure of only one cruel thing.
I have failed.
CHAPTER THREE
I am tossed up, sucking in a gasping breath, to see ships aflame and sinking, bodies all around me, emptied of the noble spirits who once resided there. The lake pulls them down, aided by the weight of their axes, their helmets, their cloaks. When I am forced deep by another swell, the lightning above reveals a lake full of thrashing arms and legs.
And me, clawing for air, battling the storm and my own despair. Surrender is weakness. I swim for one of the few longships still floating, only to watch a thick bolt of white lightning cleave it in two, sending warriors flying into the air with flames to cushion their fall. Another wave hits me, this one square in the back, pushing my face into the water and drawing my legs up, sending me into the depths yet again. Something hard slams into my head, a splintered mast or a rowing bench, maybe, lacing the water with my blood. My mouth opens in a gasp, and I inhale the Torden, which burns my lungs as my entire body revolts. Blackness rims my vision and then closes in.
The thought flashes in my head—Give up. It’s done.