Brine and Bone

by Kate Stradling

  But his optimism on that count had no foundation. “I can’t walk, not like this,” Magdalena said. “And you can’t carry me without drawing attention from the whole court.”

  Concern wore deep lines into his charming face. Magdalena, on impulse to comfort, leaned over and kissed him.

  A violin stuttered, and two massive blades lodged in her heels to stay. She jerked her attention to the dance floor, where Lili stood frozen, her huge blue eyes fixed upon the couple. Despair skipped across the foundling’s face as the other dancers whirled and twirled around her. Nobles up and down the table noticed her arrested movement. They looked from her to the prince and his future bride.

  As at lunch, the silver-haired foundling bolted from the hall. Magdalena hissed, her grip tight on Finnian’s hand, but the pain receded into numbness. The dance continued, the music soaring up to the open windows high above, where it mingled with the wind.

  Chapter 12

  “You’ve been exchanging letters,” said Captain Byrne as he escorted Magdalena back to her room that night.

  She frowned at him. “Who? The prince and I?”

  “It’s the only logical conclusion. Either that, or you somehow orchestrated clandestine meetings while avoiding both me and his silver-haired arm-leech. She really is the prettiest little thing.”

  This added phrase, Magdalena suspected, was the glamour’s punishment for the insult that preceded it. Captain Byrne made a sour face but did not retract his words.

  “It must be letters,” he said. “Left for each other in the garden, or some such trysting place. Although, your familiarity with one another—”

  “Letters, yes,” she said quickly. “The prince can be quite eloquent when he wants to be.” The officer spared her a cagey glance. Perhaps she had accepted his explanation too readily. She turned her attention forward. “I can go on my own from here.”

  “What would his Highness say if I had to report abandoning you halfway?”

  “I really don’t think he would mind,” said Magdalena. Finnian would have escorted her himself, but his parents insisted on a private audience with him. His expression when King Ronan ordered Captain Byrne to play escort in his stead had spoken volumes on his feelings for this arrangement.

  “Nevertheless, you’re stuck with me until you’re safe in your own room.”

  She gritted her teeth and kept walking. Relief flooded through her when the door came into sight, and even more so when she shut it between them. Captain Byrne could kindly take his speculation elsewhere.

  Not an hour later, a tap-tap-tap drew her back to the hall. As the night before, Finnian slipped inside as soon as she cracked the door open.

  “You’re early,” she said with some surprise.

  “Lili’s disappeared again. I sent Gil to look for her.” He eyed her braided bun with dissatisfaction. “I take it you expected me?”

  “Yes.” Suspicion crossed her mind and manifested in a scowl. “You’re not trying to catch me in my nightgown, are you?”

  “N-no!” he stuttered, and his face turned the shade of a steamed lobster. “Of course not! Only—would it kill you to let your hair down? You’re always as neat as a pin.”

  She arched her eyebrows at him. Brief temptation flitted through her mind—to give in to the simple request, to loose the heavy braid and let her hair fall in waves down her back, to observe what effect this might have upon him. But, given their surroundings and his propensity towards physical affection, she dismissed the idea.

  “Come on,” she said, drawing him by the hand toward the hall. “You know I don’t like you in here.”

  “Does it worry you, Malena? We’ll be married in a week.” Behind his dancing eyes lurked a wariness that betrayed his own concern.

  “It won’t worry me when we’re married,” she said simply. She pulled him from her room and shut the door behind them.

  They spent a lovely evening playing cat-and-mouse with Captain Byrne, who, having abandoned his search for Lili, focused instead on locating the prince. Finnian knew dozens of hidden nooks throughout the palace and delighted in dragging Magdalena from one to the next as they evaded the stalking officer.

  Captain Byrne, too proud to ask his fellows for help—or too reluctant to admit he’d lost his charge—tiptoed through the palace whispering threats under his breath. He seemed at last to abandon the search, but when Finnian and Magdalena circled back to her room, he stood propped against the door waiting for them.

  “Mm-hmm,” he said in disapproval.

  “Oh, keep your shirt on,” said the prince. “We’re getting married.” He primly kissed his fiancée on the cheek and saw her through the door, after which their abandoned chaperone escorted him back down the hall.

  Magdalena readied for bed, toying with the pearl engagement ring all the while. When it came time to blow out her candle, she left the bauble on her finger and curled into her pillow with a sigh. Sleep descended, and her thoughts drifted to ethereal realms.

  “It’s not a soul of your own that you’ll get.”

  Darkness pulsed before her eyes, with the vivid awareness that only came in dreams. A shadowed creature swam from one shelf to another, collecting items as it spoke.

  “Fay like us can’t have our own souls. The best we can do is to latch onto someone else’s, though why anyone would want that is beyond me.” Sharp eyes surveyed her, and a cunning smile curved up the creature’s mouth. “But you do want it, don’t you. Foolish child.”

  The creature emptied its collected items into a leaden vessel. The strange fluids sank and sloshed together, denser than the water around them.

  “It’ll cost you. It’ll cost you what’s most precious to you, and if the human doesn’t marry you, if he doesn’t join his soul to your little scrap, you die.”

  Shock struck Magdalena like a thunderbolt. The creature continued on as though she wasn’t there.

  “Do you understand, little siren?”

  “Yes.” The word echoed into the water from a sweet and desperate voice.

  “So we have a deal?”

  “Yes.”

  The shadowed creature grunted. With trenchant proficiency, it sliced a jagged knife across its chest. Black blood dripped like tar into the vessel. The contents swirled and sparked with the light of a thousand tiny stars. In the aftermath, the creature smeared spindled fingers across its self-inflicted wound. The blood, thick and sticky, formed a ghastly seal.

  “I’ll take my payment now, my dear.”

  The knife slashed toward her. Magdalena jerked awake, her tongue on fire as if someone had torn it out.

  Lili lay beside her on the mattress, staring solemnly at her through the pale morning light.

  Magdalena shrieked and wrenched away. She tumbled off the bed, her arms flailing as she hit the floor in the narrow gap between her mattress and the wall. In horror she stared at the foundling, who knelt on all fours to peer over the edge at her.

  “Wh-what are you doing here?”

  Lili narrowed her eyes as if contemplating a particularly stupid child. Her silver hair tumbled around her, glossy and luxurious in the light from the window. The exquisite lines of her face—the perfect nose, the rosebud mouth—blurred and realigned. She caught Magdalena’s left hand and sat back on her haunches to study it.

  More specifically, to study the pearl ring upon it.

  Her lovely fingers felt as cold as ice. The back of Magdalena’s neck prickled with terror as the glamoured sea-fay examined the ring. When Lili moved to take it off, Magdalena clenched her hand into a fist and tugged it protectively to her chest.

  Resentment crossed the foundling’s face.

  The vision, the shadowed creature’s words—

  “You need him,” said Magdalena.

  Lili met her gaze, her sapphire eyes teeming with fervor.

  Magdalena pressed on. “If he doesn’t marry you, you’ll die? But why him? Can’t you choose someone else?”

  The foundling shook her head with such
violence that her silver hair rustled around her. Her eyes burned like embers as she reached again for the ring.

  But Magdalena twisted away, shielding it between herself and the wall. Ice-cold fingers scrabbled at her. She hunched into a ball, terror fluttering in her throat but her determination unwavering. The ring itself could not confer an engagement from one girl to the other, but if Lili took it, if she hid it or lost it—

  “It’s not yours!” Magdalena cried, anger spiking within her.

  The silver-haired foundling sat back again, her mouth set at a defiant line.

  Magdalena, no less defiant, said, “He’s not yours. He’s not a trophy. He’s not a pet, or something you can own. I don’t own him. No one owns him.”

  The girl frowned as though presented with a concept completely foreign to her. Magdalena looked down at the gleaming pearl and contemplated the engagement that it represented. Lili’s life depended on the prince, but he had chosen another. What responsibility did Magdalena bear in this tangle?

  Could she give him up to spare the girl?

  “If he had chosen you, I would have accepted it. My heart would have shattered, but I would have accepted it. He’s not an object. He doesn’t have to meet anybody’s expectations but his own.”

  Lili eased back on the bed, that incomprehensible expression still on her face. As her feet touched the floor, Magdalena hissed.

  The foundling cocked her head. She stepped to one side, observing. The knives lanced through Magdalena’s feet and summoned tears to her eyes. Lili crossed around the bed, her wide eyes taking in every wince, every pained flinch.

  Magdalena’s magic roiled out of control, and the foundling loomed over her, wonder in her expression.

  “How do you endure it?” she asked through clenched teeth.

  Lightning-quick the creature stomped her foot. A cry wrenched from Magdalena’s throat. Lili stomped again and again and again, until tears flooded down her victim’s cheeks. With a fierce expression, she thrust out her hand.

  Magdalena, despite her misery, said, “No.”

  The foundling recoiled. Confusion danced across her face.

  “It’s not mine to give you.”

  Understanding dawned. In reluctance she withdrew. At the door she cast a resentful glance over her shoulder before passing through to the hall.

  Magdalena let out the breath she had unconsciously held. The throbbing pain in her legs ebbed, but she lay in that nook between bed and wall, listening to the silence around her, terrified that the desperate creature would return.

  She hadn’t felt Lili enter the room. She must have been in a deep enough sleep that her magic had remained dormant. Direct contact when the girl had climbed onto her mattress had stirred it awake, and Magdalena with it shortly thereafter.

  She shuddered and half rose. Her head pounded and her vision swam. Lili knew now that her every footstep caused the prince’s affianced incredible pain. What would she do with that knowledge?

  A tap on the door roused her from this reverie. “Who is it?” she called, tossing a blanket around her shoulders as she stood.

  “Captain Byrne, milady.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We’ve come to move you to another room.”

  Ordinarily she would have questioned this seemingly random announcement. After this morning’s encounter, she wanted nothing more than to get away from these narrow walls. “Just a minute,” she said, scrambling to get dressed.

  When she opened the door with her hair still tumbled around her shoulders, the captain raised his brows in teasing surprise. “Serves you right for staying out so late last night,” he said, and he swept past her with a pair of underlings.

  Magdalena ignored the quip as she worked a braid. “Where are you moving me?”

  “To quarters among the other nobles. It’s where you belong if you’re going to marry the prince. Besides, it won’t do for your parents to arrive and find you living in a hole like this.”

  “The king and queen seek not to cause offense with Ondile,” she surmised.

  “And the nobles’ wing is better patrolled at night,” he said with a cheeky wink.

  The new quarters, far more spacious, featured a canopied bed and a window that overlooked the garden.

  “But don’t get too comfortable,” said Captain Byrne. “You move to the prince’s room on your wedding night.”

  He exited then, leaving her in a state of high embarrassment.

  Chapter 13

  “Why, pray tell, does a mere captain keep stumbling across you with your hair down?” Finnian asked when Magdalena met him at lunch.

  “How can you possibly know that?” She glanced across the room at Captain Byrne stationed by the door. From his position, he could not hear their quiet conversation, but the smug, upturned corners of his mouth indicated that he knew their topic.

  “Because he keeps bragging about it to me. One of these days I’m going to grind that smirking face into the ground. In the meantime, could you please not give him any more reasons to gloat?”

  “He gloats over something so trivial? Why this obsession with my hair?”

  Finnian tugged at one of the bound locks. “I happen to like long hair. Gil says yours is almost to your waist.”

  She suppressed an instinctive laugh. “I suppose you’ll find out after we’re married.” The morning’s encounter flashed through her mind, forcing her to add beneath her breath, “If we’re married.”

  “What was that?” the prince said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Malena—”

  “Have you seen Lili today?”

  Confusion wrinkled his brows. “No.”

  Where had the creature gone? To the ocean steps, perhaps?

  Magdalena’s thoughts turned cynical. “She wears her hair down. Do you like it?”

  He moved in close and kissed her just beneath her ear, sending a shiver through her. In a murmur he said, “I prefer brunettes. Sarcastic ones.”

  “Your Highness, some decorum, please,” said Captain Byrne across the room.

  “Shove off, Gil,” said Finnian, settling back into the sofa.

  His parents appeared shortly thereafter, and they proceeded to their meal. Magdalena, on edge for when or if the foundling would appear, barely touched her food. Afterward, the queen led her away for more dress fittings and decision-making.

  Supper passed in a similar fashion. “Are you feeling all right?” the prince asked, noticing her unrest.

  She twisted the napkin in her hands. “Yes.”

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

  She looked up sharply, her gaze meeting his. “No,” she said, but the word had no certainty behind it.

  “What’s wrong? Are things happening too fast?”

  Anxiety sparked through her. “Is it too fast for you?”

  He scoffed. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been engaged since I was twelve. It’s been far too slow.”

  “What?” said Magdalena. The prince at twelve meant she had been only ten years old. “That’s rubbish. Back then you always talked about how you would have to bring your bride back from somewhere else.”

  “Well, of course. I knew my parents would send you away as soon as they caught on. That magic of yours preempted them. And I would have brought you back if my father hadn’t done it first. But why do you look so thunderstruck? I told you I pined after you for years.”

  She swatted at him, too flustered to answer.

  He grunted. “I can’t visit you tonight. That hall they’ve put you in has half a dozen guards stationed in it all night long. I think that was by design.”

  “You think?” she asked, covering her disappointment with a wry smile. “Should I try climbing out my balcony?”

  “Don’t you dare. I won’t have you breaking your neck.”

  “Then we’ll have to forego this evening’s tryst,” she said. Although she wished it were otherwise, the new room and added guards would at least
prevent her from waking with a malevolent sea-fay beside her.

  Still, restlessness ate at her as she readied for bed. She slept with her ring on, and checked that it was still there the moment she awoke.

  The days passed quickly with wedding plans and preparations. The Grand Duke and Duchess of Ondile arrived near the end of the week in a colorful entourage, with flowers and servants and boxes upon boxes of wedding gifts. Magdalena’s mother enveloped her in a perfume-laden hug. Her father spent the afternoon with King Ronan and Prince Finnian, discussing what political arrangements a marriage between the two governments might necessitate. In a flash Magdalena shifted into her proper role as the daughter of nobility, complete with a personal maid and a dozen pastel dresses to choose from each day.

  And Lili lurked at the edges of the commotion, silent and watchful, a silver shadow that slipped away whenever Magdalena spotted her. That creeping presence preyed upon her thoughts and disrupted her sleep.

  If Finnian did not marry her, she would die.

  But would Finnian want to marry her if he had not already chosen another?

  The night before the wedding, Magdalena tapped on the infirmary door. Master Asturias looked up from his desk in the corner. “To what do I owe this visit?”

  She held aloft the book of fairy lore, which had gotten jumbled with her own things amid the upheaval of changing rooms. “I’ve brought this back. Sorry it took me so long.”

  “Did you find the answers you sought?”

  She hesitated, but the emotional misgivings within her pressed her to speak. “Yes and no. It says that fairies and humans sometimes marry, but that they’re not compatible. But what if their lives are tied to one another already? What if… what if a fairy’s life depended on a human’s?”

  He tipped his head. “How so?”

  “Through a curse, perhaps?” The glamour that surrounded Lili, whether she had agreed to it or not, appeared to fall on that side of the magical spectrum.

  “A curse that binds a fay to a human?” Master Asturias asked.