The captain’s hair is plastered against his forehead as he looks up and takes a huge inhalation. He dives beneath the water, his hands fumbling to search for the cuffs. I feel metal jabbing at my hands and wrists. He can’t find the keyholes. He comes up for air, gasps a few times, and dives down again.
Another wave crashes over us, and I’m under the water. The whole ship lurches hard, so hard. This time, it doesn’t right itself, and the metal groans like a sick whale. I feel the captain’s hands still fumbling against mine. Suddenly, one of my wrists is able to pull free. There is a faint snitch against the metal around my other wrist, and it too is released. He grasps my hands to pull me up, but I don’t know which way is up anymore.
Suddenly, his hands are yanked away.
I try to open my eyes, but all I see is boiling water, bubbles and confusion. I can’t see the captain. I’m being pulled down with the ship as it recedes beneath the furious waves. Pressure squeezes painfully against my eardrums.
The captain is gone.
My uncle is gone.
I try to look above me, but there’s nothing to see. So I shut my eyes, even as my heart wants to burst inside me.
Chapter Fifty-Six
ANDA
The two crew members are bobbing on the waves, bellies full of water. Already their lungs have liquid deep within their spongy recesses.
It has begun.
There is an unmeasurable momentum in the storm, and it’s beginning to escape my grasp. Mother’s energy anchoring it all, making it solid and unstoppable. Hector’s uncle floats where the boat took its last gasp of life before sinking. He claws at the water, so desperate to stay afloat. He screams for no one but himself.
Hearts bleed their oily whispers of truth when I’m near. As victims die or face its dark mirror, their dreams infect me. So here is the truth. I have tasted all flavors of terror before, including the bright flashes of sweet regret, but his is nothing but acrid and corrupt.
Deep in the waters, Hector is still trapped within the ship. The captain has lost consciousness, his body cradled against the ceiling of the cabin. One more minute like this, and his mind will be beyond retrieval. But Hector is still alive. Barely. He’s waiting for something.
Thunder rumbles and forces its voice into my head.
Anda. Why do you pause? Finish it.
I reach out with my hands, feeling the full power of the water, the wind, the sky, the air. They throb in my temples and heart, begging me to bring this to fruition.
End it.
Hunger and craving war with another sensation, raw and pulsating within my chest. The lighthouse. My father. Hector. All these have nudged this facet alive. Life, and the worthiness of the fight. The lighthouse had opened me to the thoughts and hearts of those I’d taken for so many years. It was always easy to smother their wails for mercy under the insistence of my own hunger. I hear them now with a clarity I never could. I feel them. It makes me cry out in agony.
Mary, one of them thinks. Mary. I wish we could have had more time. I wish we could have had one more day.
The other weeps for his captain. Joe. Please be okay. Where are you? Let’s have that one last beer, right? Joe. Joe. Joe.
Hector’s uncle slaps the water away from himself. It’s over. He’s gone. He’s gone. It’s better this way. But his father. Oh God, his father.
And the last one. Hector. At first, he’s silent. Even his silences are exquisite. And then, finally:
Go ahead, Anda. What are you waiting for?
He is anger and despair all at once, daring me to claim my birthright, what I do best. But no—it’s not just a challenge. It’s a question.
What am I waiting for?
Chapter Fifty-Seven
HECTOR
The need for oxygen is excruciating, clawing at my ribs. The water buffets my body, even as I fall deeper and deeper. My throat constricts and spasms, refusing to let the water into my lungs. The pressure threatens to implode my eardrums. I curl my fingers into my palms and squeeze.
So this is what it’s like to drown. It’s far worse than what I imagined.
Is it, Hector?
My eyes fly open.
I would gasp if I weren’t almost dead already. Even though blackness etches at the edge of my mind and my heart wants to burst from my chest, I can see her. She hovers in front of me. White hair, barely swaying in the water. The same pixie face, the same honeyed skin clouded by the swirling water. And yet I hardly recognize her.
Her eye sockets are black and gruesomely void, a complete absence of light or humanity. Her lips are closed, and black tendrils snake from her onyx fingertips, up her arms, to her neck, like some terrible disease has rotted her from the outside in. Her feet are black too, as if dipped into tar. She’s terrifying. There is a purpose to her terror, too—she’s showing me what she is for a reason. There is no poetry here, nothing vaguely romantic about this side of her, no matter what I’ve thought or understood. But I’m not afraid.
Go ahead, I say in my head. Whatever I have, whatever was worth anything—it’s yours. Some good can come out of this. You can have me.
Anda’s thoughts claw their way in, a razor scraping against steel.
Yes.
Her black eyes remain vacant. I can’t see what’s in their depths. Her hands extend toward me and wrap oh so gently around my neck. They’re burning hot and sear my skin. She comes closer, and I see oblivion in her features.
The darkness of her eyes seems to expand, becoming larger than both of us. It fills my vision until there is nothing but nothing.
Yes. It’s over.
I smile as the darkness fills me and annihilates my last thought.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
ANDA
I know what has to be done. It is nature. There is no choice, and there is no judgment.
My hands thrill to be around his neck, to feel the waning of his pulse. His eyes are half closed. He’s lost consciousness. I salivate, wanting to consume what’s left fluttering inside his body.
Distant memories shake within me. A palm against my skin. A kiss that tastes of chocolate. Cool scissors against my scalp. Scraping a razor against a sculpted male cheekbone, too beautiful to endure. An invitation to be hurt, offered willingly.
Hector.
I withdraw my hands to my chest. The ship above me is already half consumed beneath the waves.
Hector.
I scream so loud that the sky shudders with fear and the sisters cower, dissolving into infant swells.
What have I done?
But my heart. Oh, my heart. I miss him already, and he’s right here.
I see him with more clarity as darkness drains from my eyes. The tar-like, lifeless color recedes in my fingertips, and I recognize with full understanding where we are.
Hector.
I yank his arms toward me, and will the water to settle so I can ease us through the flapping door of the sunken ship. But it is hard. Even with my ability to change the pressure and waves around us, the boat continues to roil with anger at being taken. The deepwater surges don’t respond to my command.
Let go of that boy.