Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  I kiss her hair with all the love and fierceness I hope she can see. “Alia, listen to me. I didn’t sacrifice my voice, no. But I did make a deal with the witch.”

  She pulls back and points a finger to her chest.

  For me.

  “Always for you. Without you, there is no me.”

  Alia shakes her head hard enough to rip free of my embrace. She falls against the wall.

  No. No. No—you shouldn’t have.

  “It’s done. I’m here.” I grab her hand and will her to look at me, not to get stuck in the weeds of guilt. “You want me to survive? You need to survive too.”

  Alia draws in a breath as big as the sun, closing her eyes as her lungs fill and then release. She opens her eyes, and they’re on mine—ice blue on amber, two pieces of one whole. Alia remains still long enough that I wonder if we’ll spend the next two days like this, in a silent showdown. Finally, she pushes my hair behind my ears, and I can tell she is distracting herself from this decision by focusing on my haircut.

  What must we do?

  And so I tell her. Of the knife. The ring. The blood. When I’m done, she raises a brow, still trying to make sense of the exchange. Of how what she gave equals what I did in the witch’s magical equation.

  It’s then that I tell her the rest. Of Father’s wrath. The injured witch. The ríkifjor seeds from her garden. Our sisters’ sacrifices—surely if I can’t magic my hair back, neither can they . . . and Father will notice.

  Your hair really does look stupid, she says, but it’s just a deflection.

  With each passing detail it all seems to sink in. The flush in Alia’s cheeks pales, her lip trembles. The cords of her neck tense and release. She signs a final question.

  If we fail, you won’t die, like me? Instead, you’ll be human?

  I thought Niklas’s rejection would hurt her the most—that I came because I knew she wouldn’t be enough to gain the love she wants so badly—but now my opinion wavers. By the looks of it, the fact that I will be human if I fail when she would be human if she succeeds is just as heartbreaking.

  “Yes,” I say softly. “If I fail, I’m doomed to be human. But if you fail, I won’t want to live—above or below, it will all be too painful.”

  When I’m finished, she’s looking me straight in the eyes. And maybe it’s because she’s realized now that we’ve always been together and always should be. Maybe it’s because she knows there’s no other way. Or maybe it’s just because she loves me. But she nods.

  King Asger Niklas Bryniulf Øldenburg V must die.

  11

  Runa

  WE MUST SATISFY VERY SPECIFIC MAGICAL CRITERIA. IF we do anything else, we’re murderers plain and simple. Maybe we are anyway. I don’t know.

  All I do know is, we don’t have a choice.

  Still, it’s not easy to think about. If I break it into its components—murder, blood magic, theft, fleeing the scene of the crime—it becomes hard to see the good in it. The point. The ends, justified by the means.

  If we fulfill the magic’s requirements, Alia will live and I will go home. But a man will be . . .

  I can’t—we can’t—think of it as anything other than what we must do.

  All that remains now is when the deed will be done.

  If I’d thought we could’ve gotten out alive, I would’ve grabbed Alia’s hand the second she nodded, marched into the castle, and made her end it. But that would’ve been a mistake—we returned to an impossible parade of banquets and teas and beach bonfires with literally everyone in the kingdom, witnesses all.

  Yet the longer we wait for just the right moment, the longer we spend with the people who will suffer once we’re successful. Each kindness, each smile, each minute seeing a little of ourselves in them curls at the edges of my determination.

  So we decide to wait until the sun goes down, take the king in his sleep that night.

  With any luck, his chambers will be bare beyond his beating heart, his ring will be close at hand, and an exit will be available.

  But that plan is scattered after the supper bonfire, when we learn something more about Havnestad culture. It’s tradition for the castle and all its rooms to be left to the bride the night before a wedding. Good luck or something. It certainly proved to be for the groom, who would instead board a motorcar with his groomsmen—Will, Phillip, and other laughing lads—for a property in the valley beyond Lille Bjerg Pass.

  In fact, because tradition insists, we won’t even see Niklas until the ceremony.

  So, now as the new morning turns into the afternoon, we’ve lost an entire day. Our only chance at success is tonight—the bridegroom’s wedding night. Mere hours before the sunrise that will take my sister if we fail.

  Despite what the sea witch thinks, I do believe in love—I’ve just never experienced the romantic kind. Still, I know Alia’s heart as well as my own. I know her love is intense, and so taking a knife to Niklas will undoubtedly be heart-wrenching, though doing so as he lies next to his new wife I fear will be even worse.

  But again, we have no choice. By the time the sun comes up tomorrow, the king must be dead, or Alia will be.

  I take a deep breath in front of the mirror in Alia’s room. I’m trussed up in a modern human gown—Havnestad blue, cinched by a rib-breaking corset, courtesy of our hosts. I might as well be yet another one of the decorations. The knife is still tucked against my breastbone, thin, cool coral pressing on my skin, and the ríkifjor seeds lie flat in their pouch against the small of my back.

  While Alia is dressed just as I, she wears her heartbreak heavily in the set of her shoulders, the line of her lips, her downcast eyes. Even her hair seems to droop toward the earth, her curls lying limp down her back.

  “We have to go to the wedding,” I implore her. “There will be too many questions if we’re not there.”

  Alia shrugs exaggeratedly and flops back on the bed, fully dressed thanks only to the maids assigned to each guest’s room. Her hands fly through a flurry of frustrated gestures. No translation needed.

  It doesn’t matter. Who cares if there are questions? We’ll murder him and then disappear. It will help us not to be around.

  “No. No. If—when—we succeed, you will still be on land. And when you disappear, you’ll certainly be a suspect.”

  No one will suspect a woman.

  “Are you kidding? Were you not paying attention during our lessons? No one fears a woman when she’s a docile, dancing object, but the second she’s scorned? She’s a hysterical danger to herself and others.”

  From her bed, she shrugs violently yet again. Let them think that.

  “They will see you as a girl so in love with the king that if you can’t have him, you don’t want anyone to have him. You’ll be suspect number one.”

  Who cares?

  “It isn’t a victory for you to live the rest of your days and spend them hunted.” I sit down beside her. “We need to ensure you’re safe.”

  Finally, she doesn’t shrug. But she doesn’t react at all except to shut her eyes.

  I place a hand on her leg. “What do you want to do with your life once you’re human?”

  I expect another shrug. Maybe some renewed blubbering about how there’s nothing to live for without Niklas at her side. Instead, she pushes herself up onto her elbows, and then shoves back against the headboard, freeing her hands.

  Again, she signs witch but points at herself. She’s not talking about the sea witch. She runs through gesture after gesture, more animated than I’ve seen her since I’ve been here.

  In a minute, I’ve got it.

  Alia wants to be a powerful witch. Under the sea, she’s the ninth daughter of the sea king. Something to be married off for an alliance—like Sofie. She wants the freedom to make a name for herself. For her magic to thrive in a place that’s been systematically stripped of its power for hundreds of years—the witch-hunter king; Sankt Hans Aften; burnings, drownings, banishments. For all the magic in every dro
p of sea water, there’s almost nothing above. She could change that.

  I smile down at her. “Yes, you’ll be a great witch. To do that, we must survive this first.”

  I don’t have the heart to ask her if she’s tried her hand at magic without her voice. To see if it affects her, if it only adds to the distance I feel—or if she can do it at all. I also don’t have the heart to remind her that Annemette lost her magic the second she became fully human again. Though perhaps that was because her true human form, Anna, was never a witch at all, and Annemette’s mermaid powers were not hers to keep.

  Alia takes a deep breath and swings her legs over the edge of the bed. Ready to go.

  Finally. We’re late.

  We quickly wind our way through the empty corridors. All the guests have surely already gathered on the beach. Alia points me down small hallway, a shortcut to the courtyard, when a voice rings out.

  “I don’t. I don’t have to. It isn’t necessary. You heard Father, it’s all set up anyway—”

  Sofie.

  Then another girl’s voice meets hers. “Dearest, they’re all waiting for you.” The hard-edged lilt to the girl’s consonants tells me it’s Agnata, one of Sofie’s hofdames. We were seated across from each other at the women’s feast yesterday. “You can’t disappoint them.”

  “The people won’t care if he marries me or anyone else. In fact, it might be best if I don’t show up. Then this is purely a financial transaction.”

  Alia’s eyes meet mine, and suddenly they’re shot through with glee. On her lips is a particularly human question: Cold feet?

  There’s some rustling, and a footman appears. Alia greets him with a wild smile, and I wave, and hope he didn’t see us standing there, still as stone, listening in. We burst out of the doors, all but running. Our hearts are pounding as we hit the cobblestones of the sea lane that leads down to the main beach. The wedding canopy comes into view, and the smile falls off Alia’s lips. She grabs my hand and repeats, almost as a silent chant: Cold feet. Cold feet. Cold feet.

  As guests of the castle, we’re placed on the groom’s side, in the very last row of the covered seating, new friends that we are. Around the edge of the canopy, thousands of citizens mingle as if they’re at a sporting match, the lot of them sprawling out onto the beach, seated on woven blankets and the sun-warm sand.

  Not two minutes after we’re seated, Niklas reappears, no worse for wear from his boys’ night. His hair shines dark and is styled with care, a crown fat with sapphires upon his head as he smiles from the altar, dimples flashing along.

  Alia spots him before I do, and everything about her goes still and rigid beside me. I know she’s seeing the boy she’s dreamed about for more than a year exactly as she hoped he’d be someday with her at his side. Again, she mouths her refrain, hope in her eyes for the first time since it died on the marble balcony. Cold feet. Cold feet. Cold feet.

  Niklas settles in next to the chaplain and turns to face the crowd. My breath catches as he immediately finds Alia in the crowd. Though we’re in the back and dressed in Havnestad blue like the majority of the groom’s guests, he can’t help but be drawn to her. To look at her. He meets her eyes, and for a moment, my heart flutters, just as it did that day on the balcony.

  Maybe there’s a chance.

  Maybe he really does love Alia.

  Maybe that love is enough that he’ll stop this wedding farce and bring Alia up there instead, marrying her with a kiss so fierce, the magic has no choice but to be satisfied.

  Maybe the only sad part of the story is that I will remain human against my will. If Alia is happy and survives, that will be enough for me.

  But then, as quickly as their eyes met, Niklas forces himself to look away. His gaze finds the tips of his polished boots. His hands remain crisply folded behind his back. And that swoop of hope in my heart crashes into the sand. He’s going to go through with it.

  As if in confirmation, Niklas’s eyes sweep up again, and he smiles. The whole crowd gasps, and we don’t need to turn to know what he sees. What they all see. Sofie has arrived, cold feet and all.

  At my side, Alia begins trembling hard enough that I grab her hand to steady her in her seat. Suddenly I hate Niklas so much that in that moment I wish we had time to make him suffer. To experience an ounce of what Alia feels in her heart right now. Alia’s whole body shifts toward mine, words ready to be formed without sound. Her eyes are big and round, purple shadows of her sleeplessness carving moons beneath her lashes.

  He loves me.

  I shake my head and force my voice to stay a whisper, hundreds of ears around us now. “If he loved you, he wouldn’t put you through this.”

  Alia’s mouth sets into a tight line, her brows pulling together hard and quick. She shakes her head and then her hands and lips and the entire hang of her body is throwing herself into what she wants to say.

  Look at how he watches me. Look at how he’s drawn to me. He. Loves. Me.

  “Alia,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Whatever he may think of you, it’s not enough.”

  Her lips quiver in response.

  “It’ll be all right, Alia,” I insist, gripping her cool fingers tightly. “We’ll be all right.”

  I hope I’m not telling her a lie.

  The band strikes up, and Alia’s eyes squeeze shut and she resets our hands so that she’s gripping me as hard as possible.

  Sofie sweeps down the aisle on the arm of a man who must be her father—Baron Gerhard—but who seems so slight that a strong gust might blow him all the way to Rigeby Bay. It’s hard to believe this man holds so much power over Niklas—his heart, his love, his life. But there he is, same moss-green eyes as Sofie’s twinkling in the salmon light of dusk, as he deposits her beside the young king.

  The ceremony is blessedly short. And then comes what everyone is waiting for. Niklas removes Sofie’s veil, pushing it over her hair to reveal her face. It’s polished with a smile, no ounce of the doubt and frustration we heard from her before. Then he bends down and, without hesitation, plants a kiss on her upturned lips.

  Next to me, all the tension in Alia’s grip fades. I tear my eyes away just as Alia’s body goes slack.

  12

  Runa

  “ALIA,” I WHISPER-BEG INTO HER EAR. “WAKE UP. YOU can’t do this. Hysterical woman, remember? Fainting is most definitely high on the list of hysteria symptoms. Please.”

  Her head knocks heavily on my shoulder. She doesn’t hear me. She doesn’t move. Everything about her has given out; that moment of hope made everything worse.

  The audience is standing, clapping—another dagger.

  The king and his bride turn, newly ringed fingers pressed together and raised aloft, as they present their union to the masses. I’m partially pleased Alia won’t see it and be completely horrified. Around us, everyone shoots to their feet. We can’t be seated.

  If someone hasn’t noticed her out cold by now, they soon will. I yank her up, wrapping an arm around her shoulder blades. Her head lolls into the crook of my neck. Niklas’s attention is shifting from Sofie to the crowd, and I know he’ll look for her first. He can’t help himself.

  He can’t see her like this. No one can see her like this—if a physician is called, Alia will be under observation all night. The king will see to it.

  I lean into her ear. “Vaka.” I whisper the spell softly, but deliberately. Wake.

  Alia’s eyes flutter open with a start. Her head jerks off my shoulder, and I plaster a smile on my face as an order to her. A veteran of moon plays, she knows exactly when to take a hint and improvise, quick wits and all.

  Her face mirrors mine just as Niklas’s eyes find hers.

  Yes, your foundling is still here. Still looking at you like that. Still wanting you.

  The boy king smiles, and next to him Sofie does too.

  They head down the aisle, and when they hit the last row, so close that Alia could reach out and touch the fine cut of Niklas’s suit, her
body grows light again. Liquid next to me, as if she might dissolve right there, taken by the sand into the other world.

  Yet my sister holds fast. Strong thing that she is. Brave thing. She meets his eyes with all her beauty and love and promise, and for a moment, he can’t look away. He watches long enough that Sofie’s gaze follows his. As they pass us, they’re both looking at my sister, holding her ground.

  Still here. Still in love.

  Per tradition, the bride and groom lead their wedding guests—the seated attendees only—up to the castle. The common people line the sea lane, pressing in thick layers against the progression. Even at a distance, the mass joy among them rattles my teeth as they sing old sailors’ songs that we know even under the surface.

  All the smartly dressed guests flow up the brick-lined paths and into the castle under the indigo of a new night, torches as old as the castle itself ringing the great stone walls of the place.

  But we wait them out. Though revived, Alia is still wobbly on her feet. When we’re finally ushered out of our seats, we split off through the masses and cut onto a lonely corner of the beach to sit for a moment under the stars.

  We face the sea. How I wish to be back there. Up here everything is too bright, too loud, too much. Even in the new night. Alia won’t look at the blue waters, shimmering against the falling night. She watches her hands instead. But I know she smells the brine and life. She makes a sign: Can’t.

  And then she’s to her feet. Can’t.

  I scramble up after her. I’d like to convince myself it’s the sea, our home, that she can’t handle, but I know it’s what we must do tonight.

  “We can,” I say. I grab her hand as we turn for the castle.

  She takes a deep breath. I know.

  We make slow progress up the now-empty sea lane, through the rose garden, and into the castle. I hold fast to Alia’s hand as we climb the steps to the ballroom I first saw her in that day, the one with the marble balcony. Music streams out into the hallway, the thrum-and-thump of dance testing the ancient castle’s foundations.