“Do you know where Cordelia is?”
“I wish it were that simple, child. Even if we find her, it may already be too late.”
“What do you mean? Where is she?”
Perhaps it was the fear in my voice, or perhaps the weight of her guilt reached its final tipping point; with terrible suddenness she rose from her chair and snatched up the cap like some withered bird of prey. “Follow me,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”
Chapter 24
Fire and Ice
Blue was deepening overhead when we emerged from the castle, the sky pricked with the first icy lights of the evening. Mist had already gathered around the ruins of the abbey, creeping toward the cliffside path with unnerving deliberateness.
“Where is she?”
“The water.” Mòrag fought to catch her breath as we dashed out the garden gate. “She’s going to try to go home.”
“Into the lake? It’s freezing!”
She pressed her lips together and ran. I raced after her. Melting frost soaked my slippers and drove numbing spears of cold into my legs with each step. The wind off the lake had a razor’s edge, and we bled warmth as the sky bled daylight. A stitch started in my side as we flew down the cliffside path, arms outstretched to keep balance on the slippery stones.
Mòrag didn’t cry out as she fell. I heard only the crunch of stone and a sharp intake of breath as she went down, sprawled on her back in front of me, one leg twisted beneath her.
“Mòrag!” I slid to her side. “Are you all right?”
She tried to move and gave up with a hiss of pain. I slipped an arm behind her shoulders, but she batted me away. “Get to the quay,” she panted, pushing the sealskin cap into my hands. “Give this to Cordelia. Help make it right.”
“Not until you’re back in the castle.”
“Don’t be stupid, girl! There’s no time!”
“I’m not leaving you for the Green Lady!”
“She won’t come here,” she said. “She doesn’t care about me, or you, or anyone else. Lord Selwyn was the one who took it from Cordelia. He’s the one she came for. Go!”
I took the cap and stuffed it in my pocket, then unclasped my cloak and tucked it around her. She seized my hand.
“And you mustn’t let Selwyn know you have it. Even now he might . . . Until Cordelia has it, he mustn’t know.” She shoved me away. “Go!”
Blinded by a sudden wave of tears, I sucked in a breath, leapt to my feet, and ran.
The pale spar of Long Quay broke the shimmer of starlight on the surface of the lake. Dark figures gathered at the end. I nearly ran into Akarra as she paced on the stones along the shore. “Aliza, what’s—?”
“There’s no time! Mòrag needs your help. She fell on the path. I think her leg’s broken.”
“You left her?”
“She wouldn’t let me take her back to the castle,” I said and told her about the cap as quickly as I could. “I’ll get it to Cordelia. You need to help Mòrag.”
“You’re sure?”
“Aye.”
With a rumble and crunch of gravel she spread her wings and took to the air. I ran as fast as I dared down the quay, sliding on the ice-rimed stones. A single lantern burned high on a piling at the end, and by its light I saw Cordelia standing at the edge, dressed only in her shift, toes curled over the lip of the pier. Her gown and shoes lay in a crumpled heap next to her. Selwyn and Alastair stood between us, but Cordelia held them back.
“Lord Daired, Niall, stay where you are,” she cried. “If you move, I’ll throw myself in.”
“Lady Selwyn, please,” Alastair tried, edging forward. “Whatever’s going on here, jumping into the lake won’t—”
“You don’t understand! You couldn’t possibly understand,” she cried, sounding close to tears. “How could you? You and your Aliza. You chose each other. You’d do anything for her: brave any terror, risk any death, and she’d do the same for you! What do either of you know of cold love? What do you know of broken trust?”
Selwyn pushed in front of Alastair. “Darling, please be reasonable.”
“No!” Her voice rose to a shriek. “Don’t you see? I have to go home. I have to escape now, before—before . . . It’s the only way the Green Lady will leave us alone. It’s the only way to make this right!”
“Cordelia, stop this now. Your home is in the castle. Your home is with me!”
“My home was never with you!”
“What else do you want from me? What else can I give you?” Selwyn knelt on the quay. “Tell me! Anything you want, anything at all!”
“I want to see my family again.”
“I am your family.”
“You’re not!” she shouted. “I didn’t ask you to take me. I never asked for any of this. All these years, all this pretending. Something terrible is coming, Niall, and if you won’t give me my freedom, I’ll take it myself.”
“You’ll die in that water!”
“Then I’ll die.”
I reached Alastair and touched his arm as their voices rose. “Aliza?” he whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“Making it right.” I felt for the cap in my pocket. The sealskin wrapped around my fingers, warm and comforting, as I tried to figure a way to get past Selwyn. “Tell us, Lord Selwyn,” I said in a louder voice. “Admit what you did.”
Waves battered the pilings beneath us and the wind tossed up spray like snowflakes, tearing the words from my lips. With it came a familiar smell, stinging my nose with the scent of gravemold. My heart skipped a beat.
“Oh, but Aliza, he can’t.”
The Green Lady glided toward us along the quay, glowing with a ghastly marshlight. Once again she wore Charis Brysney’s face.
“Did you really think it would be so easy?” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t worked out what kind of man he—”
Alastair leapt forward and drove his sword into her heart.
The Green Lady stumbled. She looked down at the steel buried in her chest, looked up at Alastair, and laughed.
“I am one of the Eldest, dragonrider, a shadow of a shadow of the first darkness that fell upon this world, and even you cannot hurt me.” With a flick of her wrist she twisted the hilt out of his grip and pulled the sword from her body. Inky nothingness dripped from the edge. Needle fangs shone in Charis’s mouth, and then her face dissolved, swirling into the gaunt, spectral figure I’d seen in the abbey. Alastair fell back.
Only a nakla . . . always unworthy . . . never enough . . .
The Green Lady swung the sword lazily. “Come now, you’re all too easy!” She clucked her tongue as she held the blade aloft, pointing it at each of us in turn. “Such keen regrets to uncover. Such dark secrets to dig up. Such delicious, dangerous lies.” She settled at last on Alastair. “Alastair Daired, pride of House Pendragon and heir to the Fireborn. Is that what you call yourself? Look at you! You are weak. You couldn’t protect your wife, you couldn’t save your child, and you will never, never be the man Erran Daired was.”
A secret shame . . . poison to his noble bloodline . . . not enough . . .
Black hair flopped in an untidy braid down one shoulder and blood splattered her face, her throat torn by a gryphon’s talons. Child’s eyes darted from me to Alastair and back again, clouded and unseeing, my nightmares enfleshed. She spoke in my little sister’s voice. “What about you, Aliza? You let me die. You forgot about me, and you let me die.”
“Rina, no . . .”
“You want to be a healer, but you carry death in your body. You may try and try and try, but you will never bring a child into the world, and those you love will resent you for it before the end.”
That’s not true! Alastair cried, or perhaps I did. Did we? Will he? Marshlight drank the darkness around us. Cold washed over me, freezing body, mind, and will. I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t escape. I carry death in my body . . . I carry death . . . death . . . The choice would fall to me in the end. How
long am I willing to watch him burn?
The Green Lady slipped between us like smoke, Rina’s features melting into a putrid mockery of Cordelia’s beauty. Selwyn shrank against a piling as she approached. “And you. Oh, there are no words for what you’ve done, Niall of the Keep.”
“You don’t understand,” he moaned. “I love her! She was going to leave me. She was going to leave!” He fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. “No, not you! Get out of my mind!”
“I could not touch your mind if you were not guilty, Niall Selwyn, and I have waited a long time for this. The one who called me here told me there was a deep and dreadful wrong to avenge on the shores of Lake Meera, and he was right.” She smiled and crouched next to him, stroking his hair with slimy fingers. “He did not tell me this vengeance would be so sweet.”
“Get out get out get out!”
“You kidnapped a daughter of the sea. You betrayed the trust of an innocent selkie. You’ve kept her prisoner for all these years: as your wife, your plaything, your slave.”
“But she loved me!”
“You lie,” the Green Lady hissed. “There can be no love between Idar and humans. It is an abomination! You stole her cap. You stole her life. You are guilty.”
“Get out of my head!”
“Not until you do what you must do,” she said and pressed Alastair’s sword into his hand. “Shorten your years for all those you stole from her. One little thrust—”
“Leave him alone!” Cordelia’s voice cut through the icy air. My head cleared. The whispers faded. My fingers closed around the sealskin cap in my pocket. “He did wrong, but I’m the one he wronged, not you,” Cordelia said, “and if I must, I will make it right.”
“Pray, selkie, how will you do that?”
Cordelia backed up until her heels hung over the edge of the quay. “I-I’ll return to the water. I’ll go back where I belong.”
“In your human form? Fool! You won’t last two minutes.”
“Long enough. I know the laws of the sea; I know the laws of your kind. It’ll end what he started. You’ll have no more hold over him or anyone else in his household.”
The Green Lady made a sound in her throat that might’ve been a laugh. “Perhaps.” She let one long nail slide along Selwyn’s cheek as she took the sword from his hand. He shuddered and went rigid. “Then again, perhaps not,” she said, facing Cordelia.
Which meant, for a few precious seconds, neither Selwyn nor the Green Lady were looking in my direction.
“Cordelia!” I cried and raised the cap.
Both Cordelia and the Green Lady saw it at the same moment. The shriek that went up from the Green Lady’s throat rolled over the water, foul with the fury of a spoiled hunt. She whirled on me, the Cordelia mask falling away in flashes of marshlight and dripping darkness as she raised the sword.
“NO!”
Alastair threw himself forward. Dead green arms grappled against his living ones, the blade flashing between them as they struggled on the edge of the quay.
My scream came too late. They plunged over.
Black waters roiled beneath us and Alastair surfaced, but the Green Lady dragged him down again before he could seize the piling.
Cordelia tore her cap from my numb fingers, tugging me back even as my body made the decision to jump in after him. “No. Stay here,” she said and pulled the cap down low on her head. The furry flaps lengthened, tumbling down around her shoulders and fluttering after her like a cape. Her arms grew long and flattened, her eyes turned black, and she dove off the quay as brown-gray fur closed over her face.
My mind churned to life again. Rope. We need rope! I seized Selwyn’s shoulder as he stared at the place Cordelia had gone under. “Selwyn! Is there any rope nearby?”
“They’re gone.”
“No! They’re not gone! They’re coming back, but they need our help. Selwyn, look at me! Is there any rope?”
Slowly he shook his head.
I released him, casting my eye around for something, for anything to help haul them onto the pier. The little roofed enclosure that sheltered the lantern yielded nothing beyond spare wicks and a tinderbox. There was a splash, mixed with a barking cry from the lake. A seal’s head bobbed a dozen yards from the quay, but Cordelia kept slipping under, webbed arms thrashing the water as she struggled to surface. Alastair clutched at her, his face ashen.
Fear brought an edge of clarity. Rope. Cloth. Clothes? I tore the cloak from Selwyn’s shoulders and swept up Cordelia’s fallen dress, looping them together and tying them fast to the nearest piling. The ends just reached the water. It might work. It has to work.
I looked up, and my heart plummeted. Cordelia and Alastair hadn’t moved. Wavelets lapped at them, calmer than before. Alastair no longer struggled. Ice crystals lined his hair, shining in the starlight. His breath ghosted over the water, rapid and uneven, and my rational mind did the calculations even when the rest of me cried out against it. Alastair’s armor was too heavy. He was dragging them both down. They weren’t going to make it. Unless . . .
Don’t be a fool. She was with Mòrag at the castle, and the castle was too far away. She can’t hear. My voice wouldn’t be loud enough, would never be enough . . .
“AKARRA! HELP!” I poured into those words my last drop of faith in the gods, in everything right and fair and just in the world, in everything I ever cherished, hoping it would be enough for a miracle. I screamed her name until I thought my lungs would burst. “AKARRA!”
Cordelia barked as Alastair slipped underwater.
And suddenly it wasn’t me screaming anymore but a much deeper voice bellowing Alastair’s name as Akarra dove toward the lake in a glorious explosion of wings and dragonfire. Talons tore at the waves as she plunged in after them, clawing through the dark water. With a hiss and a sputter the column of dragonfire vanished, its absence leaving bright spots in front of my eyes. I crumpled to my knees. Come back!
More flames erupted from the lake. Akarra hurtled out of the water, her wings tossing up spray as she flew toward the quay, cradling two limp figures in her talons. I hauled up the makeshift rope and untied Selwyn’s cloak as Akarra landed and set Cordelia and Alastair down on the stone. There was no sign of the Green Lady.
I rushed to them. Alastair’s eyes were open and unblinking. His breath gurgled in his throat. “Alastair? Can you hear me?” I swore. “Alastair!”
He rolled to his side and vomited water onto the quay, then slumped back into my arms. His lips moved, but no sound came out. I struggled with the laces and buckles that fastened his armor, then gave up, drew his dagger from its sheath, and cut him free from the waterlogged leather. He held on to me as I pulled off everything but his breeches, his shivers shaking me almost as much as they did him. Good. If he could shiver, it meant he wasn’t past saving. I wrapped us both in Selwyn’s cloak and held him tight.
“You’re safe,” I said. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
“I k-n-n-now,” he said in my ear. “Just p-p-please don’t let g-g-go.”
A leathery wing encircled us and Akarra drew us close. Her sides steamed in the cold air as Alastair hunkered next to her. She held my gaze over his shoulder.
“You heard,” I whispered. A sob caught in my throat. “You heard.”
She brought her head close to mine and touched my cheek with one wingtip. “I’ll always hear.”
“Is he all right?” a rough, barking voice asked.
Akarra and I turned. Cordelia stood at the end of the quay, naked but for the dripping sealskin cloak. She’d pushed her sealskin back from her face so it hung like a mantle around her shoulders, and she’d resumed her human appearance in every aspect save for her eyes. They’d stayed pure, fathomless black.
“I’ll l-l-live,” Alastair said. “Thank y-you.”
The dark shape that was Niall Selwyn groaned and stirred, clasping his head in his hands. Cordelia looked at him, looked at her sealskin, looked at the lake. Scales flashed ne
ar the surface of the water. One or two webbed hands pointed to Cordelia’s sealskin, the Mermish voices cresting with excitement before descending into shrieks as they noticed Selwyn crouched in front of her. A selkie on land needed no further explanation. They understood what he had done.
Cordelia tore her gaze from the water and knelt next to Selwyn. “Niall? Niall, do you hear me?” He clutched at her, and she smoothed his hair from his forehead. “Shh. The Green Lady is gone.”
“I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for you to hate me. I thought you wanted to be here. Cordelia—love—please. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.” He buried his head in the folds of her cloak. “Oh gods, forgive me!”
“I do.”
He looked up. “Then you’ll stay?”
“Niall, you know I can’t,” she said sadly. “This is not my world, and I cannot face the—no. I have to go home.”
He uttered a despairing cry.
“That’s not the only reason I need to leave,” she said. “There are other things in the Wastes, old, dark, vengeful things, and the next might not toy with its victims so long. As long as I am land-bound you are in danger. If I return to the water, their kind won’t torment you again. You have wronged me, Niall, but I cannot wish on you another creature like that. I want you to be free.” She kissed his forehead. “I want us both to be free.”
“I don’t want to be free. I don’t want any of this if I can’t have you!”
Cordelia kissed him again, once on each cheek. “Then I’m sorry,” she said and straightened. Her eyes met mine and she gave a small nod. “Aliza, Lord Alastair, I pray the favor of Aquouris and Uoroura, Nouroudos and Ourobauro go with you always. Thank you for all you’ve done here.”
Selwyn staggered to his feet and reached for her. She raised her hand to his. For an instant their fingers intertwined, but before Selwyn could embrace her, she shook her head and lowered her arm. “Find someone who can love you as you deserve, Niall. That’s the only prayer I have left for you.”
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