Signy was all joy the next day, asking Ulla to sing her a dress for the ball, laughing that she cared for mortal clothes no longer.
Ulla prayed Roffe would make Signy happy. Though he might not make a great king, he would at least be a cunning one. Besides, she would be there at his right hand to make sure he kept to their bargain. Now she knew she was not just sildroher but something else too. She had witch’s blood in her veins. Roffe would make Signy a queen and treat her as such, or Ulla would bring the roof of his palace down on his kingly head.
Signy brought one of her mortal dresses to Ulla’s room. They threw open their trunks and chose the best pearls and beading from their wardrobes and sang them together into a gown of copper fire that made Signy look like a living conflagration. A good reminder for Roffe. When they were done, there was little left for Ulla, so she plucked a clutch of irises from the garden, and from them and a slender scrap of silk she sang a purple gown hemmed in gold.
They ascended the great stairs and passed the landing where the clever mirror had been set to entertain the guests, who were already clowning before it. Their reflections waved to them, then preened in their fine clothes.
Up to the grand ballroom Ulla and Signy climbed, and there they joined the celebration.
Ulla danced with anyone who asked that night. She had not bothered with slippers, and her nimble feet peeked from beneath her skirts as she whirled and leapt on the marble floor. But she took no pleasure from the perspiration on her skin, the rapid keening of the fiddles. For all its wonders, she’d grown weary of the human world and the constant press of mortal desire. She longed for the sea, for the mother she knew, for the barely broken quiet.
She would have been happy to return now, before midnight struck, but there was still work to be done on land—work that would secure all their fortunes.
Ulla saw Roffe disappear from the crowd. She saw his brothers drinking and dancing on this the last night. And then the clock was striking the eleventh hour.
She found Signy in the crowd and pressed her palm to the damp small of her back. “It’s time,” she said.
Hand in hand they left the ball and went to meet Roffe outside Ulla’s chamber.
When Ulla pushed open the door, she could already feel the wrongness that had settled there. The chamber had become familiar to her, dear to her in its own way despite her homesickness. She was used to its smells, stone and wax and the pines far below. But now there was something—someone in her bed.
In the moonlight, she saw the body laid out upon the covers.
“I do not wish to do this here.”
“We’re out of time,” said Roffe.
Ulla drew closer to the bed.
“He’s young,” she said, a sickness growing in her gut. His hands and feet were bound. His chest rose and fell evenly, his mouth hanging open slightly.
“He’s a murderer. Sentenced to hang. In a way, this is a kindness.”
This death would be painless, private. No wait in a prison cell, no walk up the gallows steps or crowd to jeer him. Could that be called a kindness?
“You drugged him?” Signy asked.
“Yes, but he’ll wake eventually, and the hour of return comes on. Hurry.”
Ulla had told him they would need a vessel of pure silver to capture the flame. From a case by the window, Roffe drew a square silver lantern. Into its side, the symbol of his family had been cut—a three-pronged triton. There was little other preparation to be made.
Ulla had worked the spell again and again in her mind, practiced snippets of it separately before she would try to piece together the whole. And if she was honest, she’d had the sound of it with her since she’d first made the suggestion to Roffe in the garden. He had pushed her to this moment, but now that they were here, some shameful part of her thrilled to the challenge.
She knelt to face the hearth and set down the silver lantern. Signy settled beside her, and Ulla lit the white birch branches that she’d lain in the grate. The night was far too hot for a fire, but the flame was required.
“When do I—” said Roffe.
Without turning, Ulla silenced him with a raised hand.
“Watch me,” she said. “Await my signal.” He might be a prince, but tonight he would follow her orders.
She kept her hand in the air, her eyes on the flames, and slowly, she began the melody.
The song built in easy phrases, as if Ulla was stacking a different kind of kindling. The melody was something new, not quite a healing song, not quite a making song. She gestured to Signy to join. The sound of their twined voices was low and uneasy, the striking of flint, the hop and crackle of sparks.
Then the song jumped like fire catching. Ulla could feel it now, a warm glow inside her, a flame she would breathe into the lantern and, in one bright moment, make a future for them all. The price was the boy on the bed. A stranger. Little more than a child. But weren’t they all children really? Ulla kept to the melody, pushed the thoughts from her head. The boy is a murderer, she reminded herself.
Murderer. She kept that word in her head as the song rose higher, as the blaze in the hearth leapt wild and orange, as the discord sharpened and the heat in her belly grew. Murderer, she told herself again, but she did not know if she meant the boy or herself. Sweat broke over her brow. The song filled the room, so loud she worried they might draw someone’s attention, but all were below, dancing and feasting.
The moment came, a high crescendo. Ulla dropped her hand like a flag of surrender. Even above the sound of their voices, she heard a horrible wet thunk, and the boy cried out, woken from his sleep by the blade piercing his chest. She heard muffled moaning and knew Roffe must have a hand on the boy’s mouth as he cut.
Signy’s frightened gaze flicked to the bed. Ulla told herself not to look, but she couldn’t help it. She turned and saw Roffe’s back, hunched over his victim as he did his work—his shoulders too broad, his gray cloak like the pelt of a beast.
Ulla turned her eyes back to the fire and sang, feeling tears slide down her cheeks, knowing they had crossed a border into lands from which they might never return. But there was nowhere else to look when Roffe knelt beside her and slipped two fresh, pink human lungs into the pyre.
This was what the spell required. Breath. The fire demanded air just as humans did. It would need to breathe for itself beneath the sea.
The flames closed over the wet tissue, fizzing and spitting. Ulla felt the magical heat within her bank, and for a moment she thought both fires would simply go out. Then, with a loud snap, the flames roared up in the grate as if they had a voice themselves.