Hot. Insistent. Dark daydreams that twisted her stomach into knots and left her feeling flushed and a little ashamed. There was a deep and ravenous hunger inside of her. Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss him or eat him whole.
His hand closed over hers. Warmth seeped through her glove, and she wished she hadn’t worn it, wished she could feel his skin pressed against hers. “Finley’s lucky. When I…I didn’t have anyone who cared enough to come after me. Who would’ve held on to me.”
Lina swallowed.
Thomas smiled, the action undoing her like it always did, every bone in her body melting to mush. Because Thomas was the boy from her daydreams, the only boy the Witch Queen had ever let go, the boy at the center of Caldella’s most famous love story, which was a feat in a city brimming with love stories. From the girl who’d held on to her lover through enchantment and fire, to Laolao and Grandpa, who’d sailed from opposite sides of the globe so they could be together, to Ma, who had smuggled Mama onto the island just before its borders were closed.
Stories filled the witches’ island until it overflowed.
But to Lina, it often felt like everything exciting, everything that meant anything, had happened before she was old enough to take part. The stories were over, the books closed, and she was stuck living in somebody else’s happily ever after. A boring background character. She wanted more. She wanted to be something more. She wanted to change someone or save someone. She wanted a love people told stories about.
Thomas’s smile promised she could have it.
The song changed, and he withdrew his hand from hers to carefully copy the boy beside him, pressing a fist to his heart and dipping at the waist as the steps of the next dance demanded. A lithe figure with ash-colored hair elbowed Lina aside, shoving her suddenly into the arms of another reveler, stealing her place as Thomas’s partner.
She cried out in protest at the same time as Thomas did. She stumbled and lost her balance. Her new partner picked her up by the waist and twirled her through the air, the world smearing into a dizzying blur.
“Wait, wait!” Lina looked back but only caught the flash of Thomas’s blond hair vanishing into the dark.
4
Eva
The day her sister died, Eva sealed her heart inside a bottle and cast it out to sea.
But sometimes, when she put an ear to the cold stone walls of her palace, when she tossed and turned at night instead of sleeping, she swore she could still hear it: a faint and steady beat. A drumming as she crossed an empty corridor, pounding up through the balls of her feet. She could hear it now in the rhythmic crash of the black waves at her back, a rushing in her ears as she trailed a hand through the fire.
Flames licked at her fingers, tickled the elegant curve of her palm. The air bent and rippled, smoke snaking up to meld with the star-studded sky. The thirteenth bonfire stood at a distance from the others, at the edge of the square leading into the tide, in the shadow of the great stone pillar where, a month from now, Eva would chain the boy she loved and leave him to be swallowed by the sea.
She liked it here, where it was not so crowded, away from the endless rush of revelers and dancers, away from the people she instinctively disliked for no other reason than that they were people and Eva did not like people. Here she could wait and watch her reflection change in the puddles at her feet. Could watch herself grow tall and thin or short and fat, young and old, in turn.
Her hair twisted into thick mermaid curls, tumbled sleek and straight down her spine. Skin paling and darkening in turn. She wore a thousand faces, but never her own.
And when the dancers stumbled near to catch their breath and warm their hands, she could listen, listen to what the city had to say about her.
“They say she has no heart.”
“They say the witch is cursed.”
“Frigid.”
“I hear she’s made of stone.”
“She’ll fail again this year, you’ll see. Soon.”
The last speaker smacked his lips as if the prospect pleased him. He stood on the opposite side of the bonfire from Eva, half-hidden by the flames. Thinning hair fading to gray. Leathery skin tanned by sun and sea. The end of his cigarette glowed red as he dragged in a ragged breath.
The men on either side of him echoed the action, each as timeworn and salt-flecked as the sunken ruins that filled Caldella’s harbor. Smoke rose like ghosts between their gnarled fingers.
“The island will sink, and all of us with it.” His voice was gravel grinding. The tide lapped at the city’s edge, spilling over and pooling at the pointed tips of Eva’s shoes. “It’s not a sacrifice if she doesn’t care. She has no love for us. No love for the boys she takes.”
“If it’s loving she needs…” The shortest of the three had a blue anchor tattooed on the side of his neck.
“You going to bed a monster, then?” The last man dug elbows into his companions’ ribs.
“Better a monster than your wife.” Snickers burst above the scuffle that broke out. “The witch’ll look like whoever I wish. Good thing, too, if she’s as hideous as they say.”
“Still, bit hard to bed a girl made of stone.”
Eva unwound one of several bracelets tied around her wrist. Threadbare twists of her black hair and bloodred string. Every charm required a little piece of the witch who cast it. Every curse took a little bite out of you until you had no magic left. She looped the strings around her thumbs and the tips of her fingers, as if she were playing cat’s cradle, what the islanders called the Witches’ Game.
“Oh, I’m sure I can get her going. A couple of pokes and she’ll be begging for more.”
Eva shaped a net and then a fish. A wave struck the edge of the square, and spray burst through the air. Ice-cold needles sank into her skin where her dress dipped low to show her back. The rest of the droplets seemed to freeze, sparkling. She’d formed a second shape, a third, strings glowing hot, before the world came rushing back.
Water soaked the cobblestones. Cigarettes dropped from gnarled fingers, sizzling as they hit stone.
Eva stepped out from behind the bonfire. Three seagulls stood where three men had once been, peering up at her with the gaping, slack-jawed expressions common to old men confronted by girls who stood up for themselves.
One coughed, a sound that morphed into a caw. The second flapped its wings in a panicked sort of way. The third took off, screeching, turning angry circles above her head.
“You look like you’re having fun.” Boots scuffed as Marcin seeped out of the shadows to Eva’s left. His hair as deep a red as the bonfire flames, a smile tugging at his generous mouth. “But if you keep turning every islander who irritates you into a seagull, we’ll soon have no one left.” He leaned his shoulder into Eva’s, tugging playfully at the braids crowning her head. “I found a good one for you. Brown curls. Tall. A real charmer. You’ll like him.”
Eva relooped her bracelets, pulled the sleeves of her black dress down over her fingers.
“Unless you’d prefer to let the city sink.” Marcin’s tone was mild. It held no judgment, no accusation. It was almost…a suggestion.
A second wave broke against the city’s edge.
It’s not a sacrifice if she doesn’t care.
No magic in sacrificing someone you cared nothing about. No sacrifice if it didn’t hurt you to give that person up. No power without a price.
Eva could feel the dark tide’s rage in every lash it made against the stone, a hunger that hadn’t been sated for almost two years. It gave her a kind of savage satisfaction. It was a petty sort of revenge.
You took my sister. Why should I give you anything?
“All great cities fall eventually.” Marcin twisted the thick silver ring on his thumb. “It’s the way of things. You can’t always fight fate.”
“But not this city. Our city won’t f
all.” The words cut through the dark, but they quavered with a note of uncertainty. Yara had a way of speaking that made everything sound like a question. With dainty steps, pinching her long, glittery skirt so it wouldn’t drag on the ground, she slipped into her usual spot on Eva’s right. Firelight played off her soft brown skin, glinting where it caught the coral and pearls twining affectionately around her arms and wrists.
“It would only be temporary,” said Marcin. “We could rebuild someplace else.”
“Where?” said Yara.
“Somewhere across the sea.” Marcin shrugged. “The mainland. One of the coastal cities. Things are different there now.”
“You can’t know that.” Eva cut Marcin off before he could outline the entirety of his plan. She’d heard it a thousand times before. And she didn’t take it seriously; Marcin liked to pretend he didn’t care about the island, about anything or anyone, when in reality he cared more than most. “I won’t abandon Caldella. I won’t abandon Natalia’s city.”
Because it still felt like Natalia’s city. Not hers. The misty water roads and slick cobbled streets, the pastel-painted town houses pressed too tightly together, the hidden gardens tucked into darkened squares, lit by amber lantern light and smelling of roses after the rain. They all belonged to her sister. There wasn’t a place on the island that didn’t make the hollow in Eva’s chest ache.
She caught a flicker of emotion in Marcin’s hazel eyes. He had been her sister’s closest friend, had helped her flee the mainland when Natalia was a child and Eva even younger, no more than a witchling, barely old enough to walk. Long before they’d all been adopted by Caldella’s then-queen.
Yara placed a gentle hand on Eva’s arm. “The sacrifice will work this year. You just need to let go, let yourself care.”
Let yourself care. But what she meant was: Let yourself hurt.
Natalia’s ghost settled over Eva’s shoulders like a shawl. The first rule of magic was never to give away too much of yourself. Never to trade away more power than you could stand to lose. Never to love a person more than you loved yourself.
Eva would not make the same mistake her sister had.
Safer never to care at all.
“For two witches so desperate to save this city,” drawled Marcin, “I seem to be the one doing all the work. The one finding boys for Eva to pick as her sacrifice. What have you been doing?” He looked from one girl to the other. “Turning men into seagulls? Stuffing your face?”
There was a dash of sugar below Yara’s lush lips; she’d always had a sweet tooth.
She scrubbed at her chin, frowning, as Marcin’s smile turned malicious. “There was a boy who baked pastries in the hope of winning some magic.”
“So kind how they do that,” said Marcin. “Show off their talents so we can pick the most appealing ones.”
“A redhead,” Yara continued, ignoring him. “You can pretend he’s Marcin when you chain him to the pillar. But the most handsome one of all is playing violin by the third bonfire. I told Omar to keep an eye on him.”
“Mine has curls,” said Marcin. “The brunette I told you about.”
“Mine has dimples,” said Yara. “And winter-gray eyes and bed hair. Black.”
“No blonds?” said Eva dryly. The words slipped out before she could think better of them.
Marcin and Yara exchanged a look.
Eva quickly decided she preferred it when they were squabbling. “I danced earlier. With many boys.” And found not a single one appealing. She smoothed her dress down. “I can choose for myself.”
Another look. Another wordless exchange that cut her out completely. Not so much distrust as a lack of faith in her. Climbing anger crept into Eva’s voice. “I let you choose the last one. And look how that turned out.”
“Because you put absolutely no effort into it,” said Yara. “You didn’t even try to fall a little in love with him, E. You didn’t even try to try. I always choose the handsomest ones. For Natalia, too. There’s not an endless supply.”
“Kiss the boy with brown curls. Or the one with the violin. You like music,” said Marcin, as if that settled it.
Eva had liked music and musicians, once.
“I can choose my own sacrifice,” she repeated, and started forward, falling once more into the rush of the crowd. It wasn’t hard to lose the others amidst the revelers. Eva wrapped the shadows around herself, and when she moved it was as if she dragged the night behind her. Her reflection flashed by in puddles, in the lovelorn eyes of twirling dancers. Ever-changing.
She was a witch. An islander. A boy.
Young. Old. Middle-aged.
Long hair. Short hair. Black hair. Brown.
Blond.
Eva paused with one foot frozen in the air. The puddle at her feet shattered as a reveler swept by, but the second before…the second before, it had shown a ghost.
Dancers streamed by in an endless chain.
Eva stared at the rippling water, at her trembling reflection, holding on to her current form. She raised a hand and traced the familiar jawline, shuddering at the roughness she found there. The faintest stubble. The soft mouth. The dark brown eyes. She stared at her hands, sun-tanned and calloused from repeated plucking at guitar strings. Earlier she’d caught a glimpse and she’d thought she was seeing things. She’d been changing so quickly, switching from one set of arms to another, spinning, spinning, spinning.
She spun now, searching for whoever had caused her to change, caused her to take this form of all forms.
She shut her eyes and listened, sorting through the sounds, filtering out the music, the loud crackle of bonfire flames, the laughter. She’d thought she’d heard his singing too. That voice like a lilting whisper, like a lullaby as it coaxed you into sleep. A song that tucked you in before it slit your throat. She’d ignored it, dismissed it as fancy because Thomas Lin wouldn’t dare join the revel in St. Casimir’s Square. Not tonight. Not while she was here.
The nearest bonfire spat, red hot sparks summoning cries of pain from those they scalded.
Eva snaked through the crowd in search of a voice, in search of a ghost, two questions in mind: Whose face would she wear when she found him? And, would the dark tide still accept her sacrifice, if she drowned the boy with her own two hands?
5
Lina
“It’s wrong, that song.”
Lina glanced sideways, startled. She’d backed away from the bonfires and the revelers, retreated into a dark arch between the columns of the surrounding arcade to catch her breath. The air was cooler in front of the line of closed shops. She hadn’t realized her dance partner had followed her. A tickle of unease raced down her spine.
“The one you were humming just now? ‘Hide him, hide him, out of sight. Hold him, hold him, hold on tight’?” There was a soft scritch-scritch as the witch scratched his stubbled cheek. He looked about Ma’s age, but you could never tell. Did dreams and nightmares even age?
He used a sleeve to wipe the gleam of sweat off his pale brow. “Personally, I prefer a song where the heroine doesn’t burn to death at the end.”
“She doesn’t burn to death,” Lina protested.
“Oh, she does. Did. The lass who held on to her lover and never let go? She let go. When Queen Jurata turned the lad into fire, her heart failed her. It wasn’t spite, you see, but a test. Love can break a spell, but in the end, the lass didn’t love him enough to keep him. She lost herself to fear and forgot what she was holding. She and the lad burned alive. Burned until there was nothing left.” The witch’s teeth cut a crooked crescent. “But none of you lot sings that part.”
He shuffled closer, smile growing when Lina tensed and took the tiniest step back. Witches only smiled when they wanted something, because they knew they were going to get it.
Lina’s heart was pounding, but she raised her chin in defiance. “E
ven if that’s true, the queen still lost. The girl still won.”
“Is death winning, then?”
“The queen didn’t get what she wanted. She couldn’t steal the boy away.”
“And now you know why none of us likes the song.” The witch dipped his head. “You should tell the lad that, the one who played it just now.” His eyes flicked past her. Lina followed his gaze, looking out at the crowd, eyes widening. “It won’t win him any magic. Thought I’d mention it in return for the dance. You look alike, the two of you. Same eyes and—”
Lina didn’t catch the rest, because she was already moving, charging toward the nearest bonfire and the figure silhouetted by its curling flames. Had that been a threat? Was the witch trying to warn her? A warning in exchange for a dance instead of a charmed trinket or lock of hair?
Someone had painted a gleaming band of gold across her brother’s eyes like a mask. Dimples appeared in Finley’s flushed cheeks as soon as he spotted her. Drinking always turned him red as a tomato. “And this here angry-looking bird’s my wee sis,” he informed the girl at his side. An extremely pretty girl in glittery black whose long chestnut hair rippled like waves.
Finley waved his violin bow. “Come and dance with your brother, Lina. We’ll soon put a smile on that face.”
Lina did smile, at the girl in glittery black. “He has a girlfriend. I know it’s hard to tell, because he flirts with anything that moves and can’t keep his hands to himself, but—”
Finley let out a choked sound. The girl’s expression soured like she’d sucked on a sea plum. “Now, hold on!” said Finley as she turned to walk away. “She’s making that up. Don’t listen!”
Lina grabbed his sleeve. “We’re going to Uncle’s. Right now.”
The Dark Tide Page 3