First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins Publishers Inc. in 2019

Published simultaneously in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books

Published in this ebook edition in 2019

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Text copyright © HarperCollins Publishers 2019

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Cover art by Anna Dittmann

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Sarah Henning asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008356064

Ebook Edition © June 2019 2018 ISBN: 9780008356088

Version: 2019-06-21

To my sister Meagan—

I miss you every day.

And to Justin—

the car chase happened. Kinda.

Epigraph

Come away, come away—

O’er the waters wild.

Our earth-born child

Died this day, died this day.

Come away, come away—

The tempest loud

Weaves the shroud

For him who did betray.

Come away, come away—

Beneath the wave

Lieth the grave

Of him we slay, him we slay.

—A sailor’s shanty known as “The Mermaid’s Vengeance”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

1. Evie

2. Runa

3. Runa

4. Evie

5. Runa

6. Runa

7. Evie

8. Runa

9. Runa

10. Runa

11. Runa

12. Runa

13. Runa

14. Evie

15. Runa

16. Runa

17. Evie

18. Runa

19. Runa

20. Evie

21. Runa

22. Evie

23. Runa

24. Runa

25. Evie

26. Runa

27. Runa

28. Runa

29. Runa

30. Runa

31. Evie

32. Runa

33. Runa

34. Evie

35. Evie

36. Runa

37. Evie

38. Runa

39. Evie

40. Runa

Acknowledgments

Excerpt from Sea Witch

About the Author

Books by Sarah Henning

About the Publisher

Prologue

“You will have your voice for only a few more moments, my dear. Use the time wisely.”

The girl swallows again and then takes a heavy breath.

“I first saw Niklas on the day I turned fifteen. It could be called love at first sight—but I’d seen his face before. In a statue I’ve had in my castle garden since I turned ten. Those red flowers I brought you, they grow—”

“Yes, the Øldenburgs love their statues,” I say, sounding again very much like Hansa. “There is yet to be love in this story. Only coincidence and horticulture.”

The girl licks her lips and recasts. “I stayed beside the boat all night, watching this boy. Then, after midnight, a great storm came, waves crashing down so hard, the ship toppled onto its side. The sailors were in the water, but I didn’t see the boy.” Here, her voice hitches. “I dove down until I found him. His limbs were failing him, and his eyes were closed. I pulled him up to the surface and held his head above water. We stayed like that the whole night. And when the sun returned and the ocean calmed, I kissed his forehead and swam him to land.”

Reflexively, my tentacle tightens around her waist as I’m reminded of Annemette, even though I’ve read enough to know this story by heart. A storm, a shipwreck, a savior.

“And?” I ask.

“I placed him beside a great building. I stayed to watch, hiding among some rocks, covered in sea foam. Soon, a beautiful girl found him and sounded the alarm. I knew then that he would live. He awoke, and was smiling at the girl.”

“No smile for you?”

“No.” The determination returns to her voice. “But I wanted that smile—I want it now. I want him to know that I saved him. That I love him. And I want him to love me.”

Ah. She’s lied to me.

“But you said he already does.”

The girl looks away, caught. Finally, she continues. “For the past year, I’ve watched him. And I know if I could just be human, he would love me. He thinks he’s in love with the girl from the beach, but I saved him. I saved Niklas.”

Like Anna, this girl believes she deserves something and she’s willing to risk her life and all she knows for it. But this girl doesn’t crave revenge.

She wants a happily ever after.

And for that, I cannot blame her. Even after all these years, I still wish for my own.

“It is very stupid of you,” I say finally, “but you shall have your way.”

—From the final pages of Sea Witch

1
Evie

THE SHARPEST OF THINGS KEEPS ITS EDGE EVEN IN THE dullest of settings.

And so, my coral knife shines through the shadows I call home. Rendered ghost white with magic, the serrated blade sharp is enough to cleave a single hair in two.

Beautiful. Deadly. Perfect.

I only hope it’s enough for when they arrive.

Because in the hours since the little mermaid left the sea for land, chasing her true love, I felt it. A tug. A thread pulled clear and released.

I felt it in my bones, rotting through the marrow, septic in my lungs, gut, and heart, and yet, this jolt of pain was bound to come. It needed to come. The sea’s monopoly is not sustainable.

In the time that I’ve lived below the surface, the magical balance has shifted, the power slowly tipping from land to sea, until the majority of the land’s magic had sunk to the depths of the sea king’s domain, destined to obey an unnatural master. Now the imbalance is so glaring it’s all I can see beyond the lair that is my cage, beyond my forest of polypi, the fissures in the earth bubbling with turfmoor, and the violent whirlpools spinning sirens in the deep. Past the eerie blue radiance of the sea king’s castle and its grounds, magic teems, heavy, overflowing.

After the little mermaid left, I began to think how impossible it is that the magic on land has all but died away, though it’s simple, really. There were so few of us witches. Hunted, killed, banished. We were eliminated one by one for centuries, until the land was nearly drained of its magic and those who knew how to control it. From Maren Spliid and her death at the hands of the witch-hunter king, all the way through the years to me, each of us cast into the afterlife. But I did not die, not in every way, and so my magic is still my own, a mix of land and sea.

I remember my time above, and the thaw inside me crystallizes, clear and blue. I was a witch turned underground by fear—I didn’t even know how to use my strength. It was how Tante Hansa tried to keep me safe. Hiding away my power, repressing it. As if it were something that could be shuttered away in a cupboard from prying eyes. Out of sight, out of mind.

But now, my eyes are open.

The balance of magic has always been precarious. Built on exchange, all of it. Not just the spells, the whole system. And the ebb and flow of power is skewed toward those who seek to own it. Yet as the little mermaid set foot on land, taking her powers with her, the scale tipped back toward the land just a sliver. The land’s shockwave of relief sent a jolt of fire through my bones, but my brief pain is of no concern. I do not need this magic to live.

There is another who has much to fear.

I tuck the knife away, safe in my cave, and pull out my spell books, presents from Tante Hansa, one in each tentacle, plus two in each hand. I settle into the pewter sands and thumb through them. Tante Hansa always told me that magic will forever seek equilibrium. Now that the door has finally been opened, perhaps I can hasten the land’s gain.

That’s when the polypus closest to my cave clears its throat, and the voice I took from the little mermaid cuts into my insulated world. “Weren’t your efforts to curb the Tørhed enough of a disaster? You want to try again?”

I startle a little—so used to fifty years of silence. Anna. She can surely feel the imbalance too. Though I gave her the little mermaid’s voice, we’ve yet to talk much about what she did, why she did it, and why I did what I had to, to save Nik. But now is not the time to start.

“This is different,” I say. My spell of abundance to end the sea’s Tørhed and bring life to our fisherman’s nets created an imbalance that angered Urda. My desire here is just the opposite. “I have to try.”

“Fine,” Anna goes on. “But you won’t find what you want in those books.”

I turn a page of my spell book in defiance.

Almost as an exclamation, there’s the distant sound of an explosion, big enough to push the whirlpools off axis, turfmoor burping, sea floor quaking into the water and then drifting into a new arrangement. My polypi forest—like Anna, bodies discarded and moored by magic—twists and hisses, waving in the disturbance.

Yet another sea mine—a bomb hidden in the water, eager to blow a hole in the right ship and make bones of targeted men.

There’s a war raging on the surface. Over land and sea, and even in the air, humans under many flags have banded together to kill one another. There is no magic involved, of course. If there were more than a meager amount of magic left on land, perhaps this war might not be waged. Still, the search for power—magical or not—will always be. Once the mines and the bullets stop, lines will be redrawn, and a different type of power will shift. Another imbalance.

Anna starts a tart reply. “Evie, you—”

“Létta.” Stop, I command. Because something’s not right.

Then, as if in answer to the sudden silence, a great voice booms into my lair, echoing hard enough to rattle my teeth and bend the branches of my bone-thick polypi forest.

“It can’t be—the great sea witch talks to herself?”

I freeze as he comes into view, power and magic dripping off him in a terrible wake.

The sea king.

His hair is the color of snow in the thick of winter, eyes crystal blue, skin glowing with almost too much life, flush and vibrant. Atop his head is a crown of pearls fitted to a cluster of eel skulls, jaws pried open in wide V shapes, their teeth on edge. I have never seen his crown in person before, but it is the very semblance of life and death, and power. A reminder of what can be taken—the fruits of one’s labor, sucked out, even when one bares fangs.

The sea king smiles, and it is as brilliant and deadly as one would expect. “It must get so lonely, stuck in the shadows by yourself.”

He would know. It’s not my magic or memories that keep me here, it’s the king’s. So afraid of what I can do, though he floats before me, amplified in a way that isn’t natural, even for magical creatures.

He has a penchant for the nectar of the rare ríkifjor flower—a drug that both harnesses magic and intensifies it. But surveying him now, it’s almost as if the ríkifjor has fused to his blood, bone, and skin. That imbalance I feel, it leans hard into this man, who has absorbed as much magic as his body can hold and then doubled it through the constant, steady ingestion of ríkifjor.

Looking at him can only be compared to staring directly into the sun.

He is power.

But if he’s here for the first time in fifty years, there is something his power cannot hand him.

“At times, Your Highness, this cove has felt like a prison,” I say, and his smile curls up. “But just because I cannot leave doesn’t mean I don’t receive visitors.”

The sea king’s posture stiffens. Yes, this is why he’s here. This powerful man has lost something important to him. His daughter is gone, and perhaps more importantly, so is her magic, which shares a direct tie to his. As I suspected, the thread pulled from me must have been so much worse for him. “Reverse the spell and bring her back. Now,” he commands.

I smile, reclining on my tentacles like a queen. I cock a brow. “Do you even know which one is gone?” He notoriously treats his daughters like pawns in a game, using their beauty and their talents when convenient.

“Insulting me will bring no good to you,” he says, but my smile doesn’t waver except to grow with satisfaction when he says her name. “Alia belongs in the sea. Return her.”

“Your Highness, you should know better than anyone that even you can’t control a strong-headed woman,” I say, and I know he’s thinking of his first queen, Mette, the human he saved but then couldn’t keep, her heart cracking as she longed both for him and for the life she was meant to lead. “Alia must be free to make her own choices and live her own life—experience love and freedom. But instead, you trap her, and all your people, under your thumb with false promises of protection from humans. Not since Annemette—”

“Never speak that name to me again,” he growls, his fury sputtering between us. She’s the one who left him, betraying him, his family, and the secrets of the mermaids. I hope Anna is really listening to him now.

As his nostrils flare, I look him dead in the eyes. “Like Annemette, Alia has four days to make the boy love her and live, or fail and die. Either way, you’ll never see her again.”

“I can destroy you!”

I bare my teeth. “Ah, but you haven’t. Even with all the power you steal, you still need me.” My voice gains strength with each word. He’s desperate. He can’t retrieve Alia on his own. There is an element of my magic he will never master. “I can bring Alia back, but I will need something from you in return. I have my price.”

The sea king’s lips drop open. I have him backed into a corner, and he knows it. My ask is simple, and only he can do it. He can’t give me my life back, my lost time, or Nik—may he rest in the tide—but he can unchain me from my lair. The words are on my tongue, ready, when something nasty ticks across his handsome features.

“You have your price, Witch, but you forget your place.”

His teeth click together, and the blue of his eyes goes cold. It’s then that the wet, hard certainty of my mistake reveals itself to me. This man won’t kill me, but for the abundance of magic that he is, heavy and unwieldy, he can hurt me so badly, I will wish I were dead.

The power within him—amplified, multiplied, looted from land and sea—expands, bursts outward, like a living bomb. A sea mine of magic, aimed straight at me.

“Morna, herfiligr kvennali∂!”

Waste away, wretched woman!

The words hit my ears with a force of magic I’ve never felt, slamming into me with the power of the sun falling out of the sky and barreling toward the earth, bringing enough light to dissolve all of us the instant before impact.

And then my world, already so dark, fades to complete, flat black.

2
Runa

I SHOULD’VE KNOWN I WOULD LOSE HER THIS WAY.

To him.

The boy. That stupid boy. With his stupid dark hair and sparkling eyes and regal blood.

The one she saved in the height of summer, during a ferocious storm when she’d been stalking him yet again. Living in the wake of his ship, hoping for a glimpse of him with his brothers, with their cheekbones and songs and dogs. As if they’d been created from her heart’s desires and plunked onto the earth, just close enough for her to want, just far enough—different enough—to escape her.

Always fascinated with humans, Alia.

Always fascinated with what she shouldn’t have. Riding the edge of what was acceptable down below—testing our father’s kingly patience and personal leniency. Rescuing that boy and then all but bragging about it by lugging into her garden that stupid statue that went down with him.

I was there when she first saw him above. Her eyes shone with immediate curiosity. We’d turned fifteen at the same time—twins so alike and yet more like two sides of the same coin. We had gone to the surface together, but the fascination with the world above was hers alone.

Once she learned his name, it wouldn’t leave her lips.

Niklas.

Now she’s gone to him, I’m sure of it.

It’s been a day since I’ve seen her, the longest we’ve ever been apart. I have no choice but to believe I’ve lost her to him, because the alternative—that she’s dead or dying somewhere and my heart has yet to realize it—is too painful.

Not that it feels fantastic knowing that my twin left me, our family, our world for a boy.

A stupid human prince of a boy who doesn’t even know her name.

“Oh, Alia. How could you do this to yourself?” I mumble into the morning tide, mermaid tail swishing hard, fists balled tightly at my sides, nails digging crescents into my palms. “How could you do it to us?”

The magic to become human has been banned forever by our father’s own hand. He invented it himself, after he brought home his first queen, but the last time it was done, it nearly brought our people to ruin. Four days, one knife, and the truth about life beneath the sea spilling from the lips of one of our own, nearly exposing and endangering us, if Annemette had lived.

So, here I am, closer to land now than I’ve ever been, swimming in the shadows of a new morning, staring at the place I know in my gut Alia will be.

Øldenburg Castle.

Home of stupid Niklas and his stupid laughing smile and stupid dimples.

The castle is just as Alia said it would be. High on the hill and old enough to have Viking bones in its crypt. It’s the biggest thing in sight, dwarfing the mountains at its back simply by a purposeful trick of perspective. The town below it is a warren of stone houses, shops, and the like. Bricks line the streets, slick under the weak light of a rising morning sun as the people of Havnestad run out for their errands.

I sink back below the surface. The waters will be safer near the castle—buoys keep ships from docking too close, so none will mar my path, even with the bustle of the morning. Plus, there are mines out here, bombs meant for ships in the humans’ great war. I doubt they know or care how these hurt us below.

I set a course straight for the castle, my path clear though I’ve never swum it before, but still I know it. Late at night, Alia would whisper tales into my ear while our sisters slept. Tales of watching the grand summer parties from beneath a marble balcony, something new added onto the old castle in recent years.

Morning isn’t the time for parties, but this balcony may be the only way I can see into the castle from the water. Beyond the buoys, I swim into a narrow channel, sheer rock faces on each side, protecting the Øldenburgs from visitors they’d rather avoid. And there, right as I enter the opening of a cove, the balcony’s footings appear like skeleton bones, jutting up from the sea floor. They sweep out over the water and back down below the surface with the fluid motion of a dolphin’s jump.

Above the balcony that sits atop those arches, the castle teeters from a cliff face. It juts out like the haughty chin of its founding king, eyes down on all that it owns, including the waters at its shores.

“The sea’s not yours, greedy bastards,” I say under my breath. My father could build a castle just as big as this one from the bones of Øldenburgs and their ilk who’ve fought the sea and lost over the centuries.

Gulls sweep the surface as a soft breeze caresses the tide, autumn sweet as it descends on 1914. Music tinkles out from the castle’s wide-open doors and windows. Hope rises in my gut—no, it’s not time for parties, but where there’s music, there are people.

I hoist myself up just enough that I can see beyond the balcony and through three sets of grand doors that bring the outside in. Men in tea jackets, hair swept back as if it’s shiny and wet though perfectly dry, crowd around something within. Ladies are there too, but most run around in stiff blue dresses with white aprons. Servants—I’d recognize the scurry and dutifulness anywhere.

I can see why Alia loved this balcony so—it provides cover that kept her from being spotted, while also allowing for an easy view of the happenings above. I watch for a minute, unsure what to do next except take it all in.

But then a servant moves aside, clearing breakfast plates, and—there. A glimpse of what’s beyond.

A girl dancing in a dress of shimmering gold.

Alia.

Long blond hair trailing as she moves in time with the music, a glorious smile upon her face. She’s always been graceful, yes, but it’s difficult to be anything else in the water, our very atmosphere encouraging swirls, twists, spirals.

My lips drop open as I watch what she can do on two feet. A heavy feeling stirs deep within my bones that I could never move this way on little propped feet, not now, not with another lifetime of practice.

We are twins, but not identical in the least.

Yet, there she is. Moving like the water itself. It’s magnetic. Everyone is watching her with the same intensity as I am, but where joy sparks in their eyes, mine soak in bittersweet relief.

My sister is alive. But she might not be for much longer.

I know the bargain. Everyone does, even if Father banned it.

The magic works for four days. Four days to earn a prince’s love or spill Øldenburg blood to survive. Without either, she becomes foam in the tide.

One day is already gone.

I’m too fearful to whisper it here, this close, but a refrain sticks in my mind.

Oh, Alia, what have you done?

3
Runa

THE SONG ENDS AND APPLAUSE TITTERS THROUGH THE room, along with calls for more. Alia curtsies, and when she does, I see him in the corner, pointing his dimples at her, dangerous as they are.

Niklas.

“Again, if you will, my dear,” he says, and I hate that he’s already using terms of endearment. She has a name, Niklas—use it. “Please, for our guests.”

Alia obliges as a song strikes up yet again.

The relief of seeing her here and alive ebbs, and the panic comes in double—triple—what it was before. I try to shove it down, lock it deep within me. I have to get her attention. I have to talk to her. Is the magic she used the same as when Annemette made her choice? What did she sacrifice to come here? Or better yet, who? No, no, I cannot believe my dear sister would harm anyone, even to achieve her greatest desire. Annemette was driven by revenge, my sister by love—or so she thinks.

Alia begins dancing again, and the crowd settles back into watching her—all but two boys, who manage to break away and walk onto the balcony. At first, I think I can stay still and unseen, but then they keep walking, all the way over into the corner right above where I’ve stationed myself.

Of course.

Careful not to let my tail make too much of a splash, I pull my body as far under the latticed balcony as possible, winding my fingers around the arcing pole that holds it up, taking care that my hands don’t show.

One boy is tall, one is short, and both will be a huge problem if they happen to see me. But it seems to me as if they don’t want to be seen themselves—their voices are low, gestures short.

“How many now?” the tall one asks, a handsome smile turning up at the corners of flushed cheeks.

“The numbers are fresh to me as of last evening,” says the short boy, his hawkish features bending hard with each whisper. “Five U-boats.”

I try to process a word I’ve not heard before. U-boat.

“Shhh,” the tall boy says, nearly smacking the short one across the mouth. “Do not use that word.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” the short boy replies. “Look, I know it’s not encouraging news, Will, but it’s what I have.”

Will nods at this too. “Good work, Phillip. Thank you. The contract will be complete as of tomorrow.” His eyes search the waters. “My uncle—”

Suddenly, Will cuts off and plasters a smile back on his lips. His whole voice changes, and he plants a hand gamely on the short boy’s shoulder, his broad back to the ocean now. “What a delight that your parents are making their way here, Phillip! It has been ages since I’ve danced with your darling mother.”

It’s just then that I see Niklas striding their way. He’s got the audacity to wear a slender crown atop his head and more jewelry too—a brooch, cufflinks of shining gold, even a ring of blood-red stones that burn despite the weak light. I have a strong suspicion that this boy loves to collect shiny objects, my graceful sister being just the latest.

“Ah, Will! I thought that was you, sneaking in the back and stealing kringle!” Niklas chides, doing more than simply clapping the tall boy on the shoulder—instead he brings him in all the way for a real embrace.

When they part, guilt flashes across Will’s features. “There are some things I’ve never been able to outgrow, my friend, and kringle is one of them.”

I angle myself a bit more so that I can see Niklas as he talks to his friends, but it’s then that another person comes into view. Alia. She places a hand on Niklas’s arm.

“Oh, boys, this is my foundling. Isn’t she lovely? Did you see her dance?”

The boys nod as Niklas gives her a little twirl and she falls into him with a ridiculous smile. She’s been topside for a day, and there’s already more color in her cheeks, though I suppose that might be Niklas’s doing more than the work of the September sun. “You’ve heard the story, of course, haven’t you? I’m sure it’s all the gossip. I found her yesterday on the beach during my usual walk at dawn. All torn up from a shipwreck and no voice. Lucky to be here, I’ll say. Now she’s my guest, and quite the dancer.” He pats Alia’s hand. “Things worked out just fine, didn’t they, my dear?”

No voice? Relief floods over me—she gave up her voice instead of a life. But how? That doesn’t even make sense. And why would she give up her voice? How can he fall in love with her if he doesn’t even know her name? Wait, she could write it, couldn’t she? Surely. But she would have if she could, right? The questions tumble over themselves as the pleasantries continue.

“Please meet Phillip—a distant cousin on my mother’s side,” he says, pointing to the shorter boy. “And Will, who I’ve known since boyhood, but, I don’t know—can I still call you friend, or is cousin now more appropriate?”

Alia’s slippered feet move just so as she curtsies for the boys.

“Oh, cousins. Don’t let formalities confuse you, my lady,” Will says. “Even though it won’t be official for two more days, who cares? We’ll be cousins for the rest of our lives.” Will laughs, and I hate that I like the sound of it. “Why not start now?”

“Fine, cousin, then,” Niklas agrees.

They laugh, once again too jovial as Alia looks from Niklas to Will and back, clearly confused. The joy crumbles from Niklas’s face, and suddenly my lungs stutter themselves shut as I comprehend what would make these boys cousins.

Blood. Or oh, no.

As it hits me, the boys must realize it too and excuse themselves on the pretense of wanting coffee. When they’re gone, Niklas removes Alia’s hand from his arm, clutching her fingers sweetly.

“Dearest,” he starts, taking a deep breath almost as if he cares, “I am to be married the day after tomorrow.”

Alia’s face falls. Her other hand grips his arm so tight, her fingers wrinkle the starched fabric of his tea jacket. My heart feels as if it’s in her vise grip, too.

“Though it’s only been a day, I … I feel like I know you. It’s strange, this kinship that we have—both of us lost as sea. Washing ashore on the same beach, some miracle, my little foundling.”

Alia nods, close to him, a look on her lovely face so pure that it says a thousand of the words she cannot. Willing him to see. Willing him to know that he does know her. That she saved him. That it wasn’t an act of his God that rescued him from the wreck that drowned his brothers and father; it was her.

I hold my breath as I feel it coming. He’s leaning into her and she’s still clutching him for dear life, looking up to him with eyes that contain whole oceans of blue, her lips and cheeks rosy from dancing.

Yes. Kiss her. Please, kiss her.

For the magic to work, she needs true love’s kiss—all the stories have been the same.

Their lips touch, and my arms give way as I slide down the pole from relief. It’s short, and sweet—but I realize before it’s over that it’s not enough.

There’s no magic to it. It’s not transformative in the least. Whatever spell Alia has found to give her legs, this kiss doesn’t have the power to keep her on two feet.

Too quickly they’re apart again, all of it rushing back to Niklas—the surroundings, the people just steps away in the dance hall, what he is bound to do in two days.

“I’m sorry. I’m king now, and a king’s duty is to his people. With my father and my brothers departed … it’s up to me to do what’s best. There are so many uncertain things about the world right now …” He trails off, and I can only imagine how the war would affect a kingdom like this. “But what is certain is that despite what’s going on, I need to make the right decisions for Havnestad. And the right decision for a new king is to ensure the continuation of the monarchy.”

Continuation of the monarchy. Anger singes my veins as my breath grows short. His monarchy would be dead if it weren’t for the girl right in front of him.

The king weaves his fingers tightly in Alia’s. “But please, please stay. Sofie will love you—I’m sure of it.”

Sofie. I hate her name already.

He smiles softly. “Perhaps you can be one of her ladies and stay here as long as you wish.”

Yes, yes, I was right—this boy just likes to collect things. His foundling on the beach. Now his dancing girl in the castle. There to entertain his wife as her own heart explodes from sorrow.

What a kind and generous king indeed.

“Your Highness,” comes a woman’s voice from within, “the queen mother has requested your presence in her chambers.”

Niklas squeezes Alia’s fingers. My sister’s hand drops from his arm, obliging, as if she hasn’t just weathered the biggest blow in all her life. The boy she’s in love with, the one she rescued, the one she gambled her life on, cannot love her because his heart is wrapped up in a contract signed by his father.

“I will see you soon, my sweet foundling.”

And then he’s gone.

My sister’s form slumps on the balcony, her head resting on the cross of her forearms against the railing, her shoulders heaving beneath her tumbling hair. I slip my fingers up through the slats in the balcony floor, thin ribbons of marble crosshatched beneath my sister’s feet. I touch the toe of her slipper, as light as rain. Alia’s eyes flash open, meeting mine. She immediately glances over her shoulder to the room off the balcony, clearing out from the breakfast entertainment. The guests are gone, and a few servants run about shutting the open doors.

When all the doors are closed, Alia sinks to sit on the woven floor pretending she’s just looking out past the cove into the tip of the sea.

My voice is low and rushed. I swing around the pole so that she can see the entirety of my face as I bark at her all the questions I can’t hold inside anymore.

“How? Did Father keep the books we thought were destroyed? The ones Annemette used? Or did you ask them—Mette’s daughters? Why didn’t you tell me? And what happened to your voice?”

Alia takes a deep breath and holds up her hands—watch this, her fingers spell. When we were younger, our oldest sister, Eydis, taught us hand signals she’d devised to communicate across the room during our daily lessons while our instructors’ tails were turned.

Alia signs a single word. Witch. We used this to describe our voice instructor, who had a habit of burying us up to our necks in the sand so that we’d learn to properly project without the crutch of movement.

But there’s only one real witch I know. Alia didn’t find the magic herself through books or rumors. She went straight to the creature who doesn’t need to know the old ways—the only one under the sea dangerous enough to try something like this.

“You went to the sea witch?” My tone is appalled and disgusted at once—if there’s a single being beyond humans that we’ve been consistently taught to fear, it’s her. I take a deep breath and I ask, though I know what she will tell me. “And she took your voice?”

She nods.

My disgust squirms and twists into blatant outrage. I’d never sacrifice a life, but this. It’s all I can do to keep my voice down. “So you really can’t tell him that you love him? Who you are? What you did?”

She shakes her head slowly, sadly.

“What about writing? Can you do that? Tell him the story that way?”

With another shake, she confirms it. She’s utterly defenseless. Able only to use her smile, her shining eyes, her graceful dancing, to get what she needs. She’s done well for herself to get this far, but it’s … so superficial. Not to mention, he’s about to be married.

“That kiss didn’t do it? Didn’t appease the deal? You must earn his love,” I confirm. Alia nods and I continue. “It’s not the kiss that does it; it’s the love behind it.”

Alia squeezes my fingers and then makes our sign for human—two fingers walking. Human love.

“Or Øldenburg blood?” I whisper. Alia’s face blanches, and she shakes her head violently.

No. No. No, Runa, NO.

It’s the only other way to satisfy the spell. We know this from Annemette’s story too.

A kiss of true love or Øldenburg blood.

But this path isn’t one she’s entertained—not yet. In fact, given the look she gave Niklas, it’s the last thing she’ll entertain at all.

“Alia, listen to me. You may not have a choice. His brothers and father died in the storm where you saved him. Everyone in the sea knows that.” I think of that other boy, Phillip, but his relation to Niklas is on his mother’s side. His blood will not satisfy Urda. “His might be the only Øldenburg blood available. And if that’s what it’ll take—”

Alia shakes her head violently again, pointing at me, then her ear, then toward the door where the king made his exit. She points to herself, and through the force of her hands, the signs she’s using, the fury on her face, I understand her.

You heard him. He knows down deep I rescued him. He loves the mermaid who rescued him. That’s me. He loves me.

“Alia,” I say, hooking the pole with one arm and swirling my tail around the bottom so I don’t slide. I grab her trembling hands, trying to still them. I’ve always been the one to tell her the truth when her dreams push the boundaries of reality. “He loves the idea of you—this girl he plucked from the same sea he survived. He hasn’t said he believes in mermaids, has he? Or that he believes one rescued him? Or that you look just like her? No, he hasn’t.”

I reset my grip, harder, stronger, as she shakes her head. “You can’t hang your hopes—your life—on a boy like that. The only person he’s in love with is himself. He loves the idea that Urda swept him up and saved him while his inferior brothers sank to the deep. You were just the courier.” The words feel like darts pouring from my lips, but I have to make her see.

Alia’s shaking head gains speed, and she grits her teeth hard, a red flush gathering under her eyes.

She points to me, and I know what she’s going to say before she signs it. I know her nearly better than I know myself.

You don’t know him, Runa. You don’t. You’re wrong. That’s not true.

It’s then that Alia surprises me, breaking my grip on her with such strength that I teeter back, holding on by only my tail, curled around the balcony base.

Then she signs a single word.

Leave.

“No, I won’t leave you. Are you crazy? You have, what, three days? And he’ll be married by then. Alia, won’t you—”

Leave!

She stands, red in the face, so angry she mouths the words.

I don’t want to see you again. If I am to die, let me die in peace.

Then Alia turns, because if I won’t leave her, she’ll leave me.

And she does, not even looking back, disappearing through the nearest set of French doors and into the castle.

I slip beneath the water. All the panic I’ve pushed down rises, galvanizing within my chest, setting my heart a-skitter and my fingers trembling. The sudden need to do something holds tight to my skin, bones, heart, and tail.

I have to stop this. This can’t happen. It can’t. There has to be a way to undo this. To save Alia from herself. I can’t have Alia fail. I can’t lose her twice.

I must visit the sea witch.

4
Evie

THE LIGHT FILTERS IN SLOWLY, MY WORLD GOING FROM a sky with no stars to one with a rising sliver of moon. Beneath that weak glow, my body is a pile of lead, the casing of a ship sunk to this place, rusting and rotting as the urchins gut it out. The only energy I have left goes to trying to open my eyes further to see what, if anything, is left.

“Oh, good, you’re alive,” comes a voice.

It takes me several moments to realize it’s not a voice in my head. I’m still so unused to company that it’s nearly impossible to remember the sound.

I’m conscious of my lungs working, drinking in thin breaths of murk. As I work to test my faculties, the voice continues. “If you’d listened to me, I would’ve told you that what you need isn’t in those books. That magic is for the witches above—the sea people are magic. You can’t solve a problem like this with only land magic, you have to know the magic in the sea.”

Oh, Anna. Always with the suggestions.

“I’ve been here just as long as you,” I say, my voice sallow in my ears—nearly as dead as the rest of me. “I know what you know.”

“But you don’t,” she responds back with all the energy I don’t have. “You forget that I was Annemette for four years, squid.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

Her time as Annemette is the reason both of us are here, in the dark. Her “father” all but confirmed that when he nearly killed me in my home. If I had the energy right now, I’d shut her up yet again.

I wedge one tentacle into the sand, trying to leverage myself up and around from where I landed. The pewter grind of it coats my skin in a gray rash, embedded so deep it may never come out. The tentacle gains traction, and I’m able to add two others to fortify it and push until I’m on my side. I sit up too fast, my head spinning as I screw my eyes shut and fall back onto the sea floor with a soft whomp.

“I know a spell that might help,” Anna offers, clearly peeved I didn’t jump at her hint of knowledge before.

“What is that?” I say, as I try once again to sit up. I’m more successful this time, but my head still spins horribly, my ears clouded with bells.

“Festa.”

If it wouldn’t hurt, I’d nod. This was a spell Tante Hansa used when she’d gained the nickname Healer of Kings. It’s not anything new, and I’m unsure whether it will repair the depletion I feel down to my core. Especially if I, the depleted one, am the witch commanding the magic for strength. It’s not a spell I’ve ever tried on myself; it’s only something I’ve seen used on others.

“Go on, then,” I tell Anna. “Use that magic on me. Spell me. I gave you that voice; go ahead and use it.”

She laughs, no mirth in it. “You gave me a voice, but you took my magic when you murdered me. Or have you forgotten that?” She says it like she’s razzing me, but there’s more pain in there than she wants to admit, and she’s trying very hard to inflict hurt while I’m already down.

“No, you took your own magic when you murdered King Asger for a chance to be human,” I remind her, very close to bringing up the elephant in the room between us—Nik. Neither of us has mentioned his name since I restored her voice, and I know when we do, it’ll be even uglier than this. “All I did was make sure you couldn’t murder again.”

There’s a gasp as that barb does the job. I wonder if this will be our future, wounding each other in little ways until all that’s left is to bleed out.

It’s silent again, and as an olive branch, I try the spell, closing my eyes and digging deep for reserves of magic that are dead or sleeping.

“Festa.” The spell is meant to revive strength, though as the word echoes through my lair, I feel nothing of the sort. There isn’t much to exchange—not much strength to get when there’s barely any magic within me to give.

Still, improbably, there’s a twitch somewhere deep inside. Like a seedling poking through the earth, weak and reaching for the sun. Easy to snap. Easy to crush. Barely anything at all.

“Festa.” I repeat.

Another twitch.

“Festa.”

And then, Anna joins in, her voice subdued. “Festa,” we say together as a prickle of relief touches my heart.

We repeat it five times more, and finally I have the strength to get off the sea floor. I dust myself off. Pick at some shrimp my polypi have caught and rained from their branches. The sustenance helps, but again, I must rest. I coil my tentacles below me.

“Thank you,” I say reluctantly.

“You’re welcome.” She laughs a little, more to herself than to me. “I need you alive—you die, and the sea king’ll vaporize this whole place and those of us literally rooted to it.”

The sarcasm sits all wrong in the little mermaid’s tone, though I still recognize this Anna from our childhood, playing it off with humor because she was hurt.

I swallow a few more shrimp and gather the energy to say more, knowing that it will be a while before I can cast another spell. But then yet again there’s someone who’s come from the clear blue into my sunspot cove. The weak magic within me throbs a warning I might have noticed if I hadn’t been concentrating so hard when the sea king arrived.

It’s not him, though. There’s no excess power slipping into my waters. Perhaps another brave soul who needs my help. I stack my spell books gently by my cauldron and arrange myself into the powerful creature anyone who visits expects me to be, hoping I don’t look as drained as I am.

It is indeed a mermaid who appears, swimming feverishly, determination folding her beautiful face into a frown. She looks very much like Alia, though her hair has the colors of autumn strung through a base of curled blond. Her eyes are a honeyed amber unusual here in this kingdom of shades of blue.

“Send her away. Even if the knife is made, you don’t have the—” Anna starts in a moment before I whisper “létta” yet again, and she cuts off. This makes me smile just a little bit—I probably couldn’t make a pot boil right now, but I can do that.

The mermaid sees me and doesn’t waste a beat, diving right in.

“Witch!” she spits with rage. “My sister will fail. That boy won’t fall in love with her in four days—he’s to be married. Married! And in fewer days than she has left!”

Now that’s a surprise—he’s so young. But the fire in the girl’s eyes sparks with truth.

“Give me the antidote,” she demands. “I’ll pay whatever the cost. Take my tongue, my eyes, my ears, hell, have my tail and fashion it for your own. Whatever the cost, I’ll give it to you.”

I don’t reply, and the girl looks me up and down from the other side of my cauldron, her eyes glowing behind thick lashes. The fury within her is eager to escape through more than just words.

“One day is already gone. How can you just sit there like that? She has three days left to live!”

The girl raises a hand as if to topple my cauldron, that anger begging for release.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say, calm in the face of her fury. This only serves to make her angrier, but she removes her hand—she’s a smart one.

When she speaks again, her voice cracks, the mermaid’s ire shattering into a new wave.

“Bring my sister back. You stole her from me. From all of us. You knew hers was a fool’s ask—a death sentence—and yet you did it anyway.” Her teeth are bared, and somehow that makes her look younger—she’s close in age to the mermaid who came here. The sea king’s most recent brood. “Do you know what the sea king will do when he finds out what you’ve done? What my father will do? Why start this again? You know the danger. Why?”

I level the girl with my gaze, and I know what she sees—young face, dark hair threaded through with silver, I’m as pewter-toned as the rest of my world. To her, I must look every bit of my reputation. This thing she’s been taught to fear—a freak of nature, tethered to my cove by her powerful father because of the things that I’m able to do. She came in here with fire and verve, angry at being left behind. Angry at what Alia’s bargain may bring. But she came, despite my reputation. Because she loves her sister as much as her sister thinks she loves this boy.

“Child—”

“Runa. Use my name. You’re not my oma.”

This nearly makes me smile—her oma I am definitely not. “Runa, I already know what your father will do because he’s come and done it. And because of that, I cannot help you.”

Behind my back, I can practically feel Anna’s soundless judgment—the knife is safe and ready to use. Though it was not plain in Alia’s bargain, surely this girl knows her history—the magic will accept the boy’s blood if her sister fails at love. I could give the knife to her now. But magic always takes an exchange, and I have done the work without promise of payment until now.

“You cannot … ,” the girl starts, sputtering despite her clear strength. The weakness in her voice signals a sob rising, high and hard. “It’s like you’ve torn my arm from my body. She’s my twin sister. My other half. Please …”

“Your father depleted me of my magic. I want to help you, but your request alone is not enough, Runa.”

The girl smacks the cauldron in frustration, and the metal rings out around my polypi trees, clanging to the surface, up to the sun that barely shines here. “You changed her—endangered her—for one stupid boy who doesn’t even know her name. It should be more than enough that her twin sister wants her back. I shouldn’t need anything else. I should be enough.”

I level my gaze at her and smile, which irritates her more. “Ah, but you have what I need.”

The girl’s brows pull together, but she doesn’t ask, waiting instead for me to plainly state what she must do.

“You see, I know about you, Runa. Famed gardener, are you not? Little Runa and her special flowers. Alia, yes, she’s known for the beautiful things she can make,” I say, gesturing to the red flowers the little mermaid offered me before I took her voice. “But she can’t do what her twin can do. Runa, the last-born daughter by a minute, the one who keeps her father strong with all the ríkifjor he can stomach?”

Something in the girl’s eyes hardens—honey frozen on a winter’s day. “They’re guarded. Even I can’t go there unsupervised. I can’t—”

“Then I can’t help you.” Runa’s jaw sets as I continue. “Your father came to me, frustrated that he doesn’t have the power to bring Alia back, and drunk on ríkifjor, attacked me. He attacked my power—undermining the only person alive who can save Alia. To have the power to save her, I need to build my strength back up. Surely thirty of those flowers would do.”

“I can’t bring you thirty flowers. Maybe one, but thirty? They’re protected both by magic and by armed guards. There’s no way—”

“Seeds, then.”

“But—”

“Runa,” I say, wrapping a tentacle around her waist, drawing her in. To her credit, the girl gives me no reaction—not a blink, no curl of revulsion, no tremble of fear. Her face is blank, hard, determined. “I cannot change my price. It is up to you to figure it out. If you want your sister to live, bring me the flowers and we will deal. Then you will have what you need.”

5
Runa

A WAVE OF DREAD SWEEPS OVER ME AS I LEAVE THE SEA witch’s lair. Was I really so naive as to think this creature, this slithering monster, would give me any relief?

The whole thing almost felt rehearsed, like she had been expecting me and was prepared. She stuck to her script as the actors do in our monthly moon plays, asking for impossible things in the name of love. Alia never missed a chance to show off her dramatic skills on stage, but now, what will she do with no voice?

No voice. No more plays. I shake my head. These are the least of Alia’s problems.

Though I’m away from the witch’s murky waters and back in the cool blue of the open sea, I’m not any more confident that I’ll get my other half back alive. Loss already weighs heavy on my shoulders, and I fear I will carry this forever if I fail.

No, I will fix it. I will get the antidote. I will save Alia. I won’t lose her.

I swim on, yet I have a major problem. Father counts those flowers like he’d count gold if he were any other type of king. But to my father, gold isn’t power—magic is.

And my flowers are magic.

Yes, Witch, I’m the gardener. “Little Runa and her flowers”—the witch knows the common refrain. For all the beauty Alia can produce, I’m the one who can make the tough things grow. The important things. But I was telling the truth when I said that even I’m not allowed to go into the ríkifjor garden without supervision. The ríkifjor can’t be touched, not by me or anyone else, unless Father’s security—both physical and magical—deems it so on a very specific schedule.

Though I hate losing time, if I’m to get them, I won’t be successful in the middle of the day—I need to wait for nightfall for any chance to sneak in. In fact, I won’t be successful at all if Father realizes I’ve been gone too long.

I swim straight from the sea witch’s lair to the castle grounds. The sea kingdom can be seen from miles around, shining a brilliant cerulean blue. I sweep through the front gate and into the winding hallways as if nothing is amiss. I smile at all the right people and make proper small talk. I go about my day pretending it’s completely normal that Alia is not at my side.

The afternoon brings my lessons—singing, dancing, the human arts—with my sisters. Alia’s absence hangs in the water between us, each drop swelling with our growing anxiety. And yet we stay silent. If Father heard us talking, it would only make it worse.

After lessons and supper, where I looked everywhere but Alia’s empty seat, a plan begins to take shape in the shambles of my distracted mind. It’s perhaps the only way to get the witch her flowers, secure the antidote, and deliver it, though it won’t be easy. But what choice do I have? I can’t just let Alia stay there and die, even if she doesn’t want to come with me. Living with a broken heart is better than dissolving into sea foam. It has to be.

I go to bed early, feigning illness, but none of my sisters buy it. When the castle is dark and quiet, Eydis spells on the light, but I’m already wide awake, going over the scenarios in my mind, eyes glued to the vaulted ceiling of our chambers. My other sisters—Ola and Signy—converge upon my bed, taking space among the blankets.

Dark blue and near black—the color of the deepest part of the ocean on the cloudiest days—Eydis’s eyes fall to mine. She’s usually covered in diamond dust from brow bone to chin, but barefaced in the night, she looks more serious than she’s ever been in her life. “She went above, didn’t she? For that Øldenburg?”

I sit up, and that’s enough of a confirmation. The sob that sat deep in my throat this morning is welling up again, fat and misshapen.

Signy, the closest in age to Alia and me, already has it figured out, arms crossed tightly over her chest, the tips of her ink-dyed hair dusting the goose bumps on her arms. “And the sea witch did it, didn’t she?”

I nod. Ola’s eyes grow wider as she adds another question. I may be Alia’s twin, but Ola looks the most like her—blond and ethereal in the way most humans expect mermaids to be. “Is there anything we can do?” Both her hands snag one of mine and squeeze. “Tell me what we can do. There must be something.”

I swallow down that sob. I didn’t want to include them, because the more of us who are involved, the easier it will be for Father to know.

Yet now I can’t leave them out of it. “There is an antidote. But Father visited the witch and weakened her enough that she can’t make it. I have to bring her something first.” The way they watch me confirms they know exactly what I must bring.

“But Father—”

“How? It’s guarded—”

“He’ll be so angry—”

“I know!” The sob squeezes out, making my voice too loud. I close my eyes to reset. “I know,” I say again, quieter and more controlled this time. “But we all know what his wrath is like—it’s not difficult for any of us to imagine what he did to her. She needs the flower to be powerful enough to help Alia.”

“No, no, no,” Ola says, emphatic. “We need to tell Father. If we go behind his back, it will only be worse for us.” She rises from the bed and heads for the door that leads from our chambers into the family wing.

“No!” I snap, jumping from bed and physically cutting her off. “We can’t tell him. He’s already assaulted the witch. If he finds out that she’s willing to help us and not him, he won’t be pleased.”

“Are you kidding?” Ola says, crossing her arms over her chest, one brow cocked. Her voice is still too loud. “He’ll reward us.”

Eydis sweeps forward and places her hands on either side of our sister’s cheeks, forcing Ola to look her in the eye. “Ola, the last thing Father is interested in is positive reinforcement. He’s not going to start now.”

Ola doesn’t answer her, looking to me instead. “How do you know he assaulted her? How do you know she’s not lying? We all know the tales—she’s powerful enough to ruin the sea as soon as save it. Why would she rescue Alia after sending her to her death? Maybe she just wants ríkifjor to become more powerful. She nearly destroyed us once. What could she do with the power of those flowers?”

All of it could be true. But we have to try.

I believed the witch when she said that Father stormed in, angry that he couldn’t get Alia back himself. That seems exactly like something he would do—our whole lives he’s been paranoid, what with the disaster that almost befell us with Annemette. The ríkifjor augments his power, which makes him feel more in control, but it also makes him volatile. He’s not the king he was the first hundred years of his reign.

“Ola, you have to trust me,” I say. “I met the witch, and I believe her. I have to try.”

“I want to try with you,” Eydis says. “Signy?”

Behind us, she nods. Then all our eyes turn to Ola. She shoves a stray curl behind her ear. “Fine.”

Eydis looks to me. “What’s the plan, Ru?”

“To get the flowers, I need to go alone. The four of us can’t travel in a pack through the castle. Even in the dead of night—Father will sense it.”

The three of them nod as one. Then Eydis speaks. “Signy and Ola will come with me. The ríkifjor will buy us the witch’s strength, but it won’t get us the antidote. She’ll want more.” Eydis says this with certainty. At nineteen, she believes she knows more than all of us combined, and maybe she does. She touches their shoulders. “Together we will meet the sea witch’s price—there’s always a price for these things.”

Then she looks to me. “How did Alia pay?”

“With her voice and most likely her life.”

“Not if we can help it,” Eydis says, and checks the night clock’s swirling dial in our shared chambers. A quarter till midnight. “Let’s get going. Meet us by the canyon in an hour, Ru, and we’ll go with you to wake the witch. Alia can’t wait much longer.”

“The canyon?” I ask. It’s a strange place for a meeting, this crag that runs across the strait like an old wound, cool reams of water whispering from its depths. It’s also in the opposite direction from the sea witch’s murky lair.

My oldest sister nods, the ends of her diamond-dusted hair sparkling like the snow the winter brings above. “By the red coral. You know the one that looks like a hammerhead on a pike?”

“Yes, I know the one, but why—?”

“Because that’s where I keep what the witch will want. Where do you think I get my diamond dust from? I have a treasure trove, Ru.” I always figured Father gave her the dust she loves so much, eager to marry off the next in his brood, what with all the suitors Eydis sees on a regular basis. A shiny prize for the king’s second-wave eldest. “My diamonds and pearls can be replaced. If the witch demands a payment for Urda, she can have my treasures, but no one is taking my voice.”

The family gardens ring the grounds, a patch for each of the sisters from the king’s two wives—Queen Mette, gone in the tide long ago, and Queen Bodil, my mother, who’s young enough to be the same age as our older half sisters. My patch sweeps the long way around the royal chambers, where Father and Mother’s patio bleeds into the soft turquoise sand. It’s the largest garden, the final connection in the ring, swinging around for the ten sisters like a short-handed clock.

My garden is nearly all ríkifjor now, blanketing the sands in their ghostly way. The only other flowers are roses with exaggerated points edging the borders, sharp enough to scare away any curious fingers on sight alone. The guards are there, even in the dead of night, planted three around, spaced like slices of pie. The public believes the security is because of the garden’s proximity to the royal chambers, and that is a very good cover story indeed.

I stick to any shadow I can find, careful not to draw the guards’ attention, and careful to not to disturb the aura of magic surrounding the ríkifjor—an extra security measure. My heart thuds tightly in my chest, and my swim stroke falters for just a moment.

There are so many ways my plan could crumble. The guards. The magic. The possibility that I don’t know Alia as well as I think I do. Still, I push forward. Shadow to shadow, I wind my way through the serpentine layout of garden plots, thankful when I arrive at the edge of Alia’s garden.

Though I’ve seen it a million times, my heart drops at the life there. So much life, in every color: ruby red, yellow as bright as the spring sun above, velvet purple, cloud-white. All as shiny as a new day, they’re every bit as bright as she is. As romantic as she is. As full of hope and promise and sunshine as she is.

They’ll die without her. If not now, soon.

There, in the middle of it all is the massive statue she acquired after rescuing the boy this summer. Like his father, brothers, and the rest of the ship, it sank to the sea floor and lodged itself in the sand. Until a day later when she returned to the scene of it all and wedged it out, using the very limits of her magic to move the thing all the way from the wreck site to this garden.

The statue is as bold as the fact that she brought it here, thumbing her nose at what anyone thought—even Father, who likely only allowed it because it shows exactly how ridiculous the Øldenburgs are. The statue was meant to make a statement on land—Look at this would-be king! Standing tall on a ship’s prow, one foot hiked up as he looks out, eyes searching for new lands to pillage!—and it does so here as well. It’s a trumpet-blast declaration of what Alia did.

I slink into the shadow of the statue and look up at him.

“I hate you,” I whisper to his stupid, handsome face.

The statue stonily accepts my words, but there’s so much more I want to say to him. That he’s already broken my sister’s heart and he’s nearly broken mine, which is hanging on by the thread that I can save her with these seeds and the sea witch’s help. That he doesn’t know how lucky he is that Alia was already in love with him when she rescued him or he’d be bones like his father and brothers—one more Øldenburg fed to the sea.

That he never deserved her and never will.

Looking around just to confirm yet again that I’m indeed alone, I crouch below the statue and dig, the crux of my plan hinging on the next few moments.

Although Alia could cultivate the most gorgeous blooms, they weren’t what she really wanted to grow. Not once she realized Father’s penchant for ríkifjor. And so I gave her a chance to try, squirreling away seeds for her to plant. Yet, as I had suspected, nothing ever came of them. I only hope she’s left the remainder where she hid them for safekeeping.

It takes several handfuls of soil pushed to the side before I feel the heat of them like the dull burn of the sun’s rays at the surface, warm but distant. Suddenly, my fingers seem to know exactly where to go, and they should—they handle the magic of the ríkifjor every day. Before breakfast each morning, I tend the garden and pull the plants for Father’s daily use—a shot of nectar before he begins his day. It’s the only reason I was able to get above this morning—I’d prepared the ríkifjor before leaving.

Relief washes over me as the warmth of the seeds grows stronger, my fingers burning to reach them. They’re here.

My sister’s heart holds on to everything too long—love, dreams, hope, and things, lots of them. Her trunks are stuffed full of items, found, bought, or otherwise loved. I knew, as sure the sand in the soil, that she kept the seeds I gave her. Just like I knew where she’d be. What she’d done.

My fingernails scrape canvas. I tug at it and sand spills out, dribbling over the base of the statue, which, of course, has his whole ridiculous name and previous title on it: Crown Prince Asger Niklas Bryniulf Øldenburg V. And there in my hand is more than what I need. I release the strings of the sack and peek inside. Another sigh of relief shakes my body. She kept almost fifty dormant ríkifjor seeds.

Thank Urda.

Although Alia always played an excellent damsel in the castle moon plays, for once this damsel may not need her king after all. “You very well may have just rescued yourself, Alia,” I whisper to the seeds.

“So Alia does need rescuing, then.”

I nearly drop the bag and whirl around at the sound of another voice. I’d been sure I was alone, but there, right in front of me, is Oma Ragn—Queen Mother Ragnhildr—my grandmother. The woman who taught me everything I know while singing sailor shanties about mermaids and their vengeance.

Her smile is quick and conspiratorial as she swims forward. These days, her eyes are a blue so crystal clear they’re nearly as white as her hair, but she never misses a thing. Not when it comes to her son, not when it comes to me, not when it comes to anything.

“Believe me, darling Runa, if your father can sense she’s left the water without even checking her bed, I know it too. When magic leaves the water, those of us who’ve been here long enough feel it.” She says it all like she’s seen what I’ve seen above—Alia, the boy, her hopeless chance. Then her eyes flicker to the bag. “Is this how you plan to get her back?”

She doesn’t have to open the bag to know what’s in my hand. Oma Ragn was the one who started me off planting ríkifjor. She can sense the seeds’ power just as well as I. The only one better is Father and that’s because he has so much of it running through his veins, he’d likely fall over dead without it.

I wouldn’t lie to Oma Ragn, and there’s no use in it anyway. Not with her. “To get Alia the antidote, I need to bring these to the sea witch.”

“I should’ve guessed that old squid would be behind this,” she says with a tart turn to her mouth. Oma Ragn is two hundred years old and counting, and that time has only served to make her more direct. “She was powerful enough to perform the changing spell but isn’t powerful enough to get her back without the ríkifjor?”

Her voice is too loud, and I glance around, looking to every corner and around the overdeveloped thighs of the massive statue.

Oma chuckles, her voice almost louder when she speaks again. “Ru, calm yourself. I’ve distracted the guards.”

She says this with such cool confidence. It reminds me of how she used to promise to spell away all the monsters in our dreams if they should appear in daylight. I can still see me and Alia standing at her bedside in the dead of night, nightmares fresh behind our eyes. She’d pull us close, and once our hearts had calmed, she’d sing three stanzas of “The Mermaid’s Revenge” to send us back to sleep.

But no song is going to ease my nerves now. “Not exactly,” I say, answering her question. Oma Ragn is critical of Father in ways no one else can be—especially in the years since Annemette’s change—but I’m not about to offer up what the witch said he did to her. “Oma, I have to go. Please don’t say anything to Father. I’ll get Alia back.”

“I won’t and you will.” Oma Ragn shoos me with a wave of her long fingers. “Go. Visit the witch. I’ll be in my bed, praying to Urda that she doesn’t turn you into a talking crab.”

Despite myself, I smile. Oma Ragn has a way of bringing humor to even the direst situation. “If she turns me into a talking crab, do me a favor and make sure she changes me back before Father tries to fillet her for it. We need her to get Alia home.”

Oma allows me a quick grin that reaches the tide-break white of her eyes. “It’s a deal, Ru.” She makes a move to return to her quarters, or maybe to the route of whatever midnight swim she was on when she found me, but then she stops and wraps my wrist in her knotted fingers. “Good luck, my dear. You and your sister will need it for all to turn out right.”

I press a quick kiss to her cheek and leave, seed bag in hand, for the witch’s lair.

6
Runa

“YOU CAME HERE alone?” EYDIS ASKS, A HEAVY NOTE OF big-sister protectiveness ringing out as the first strange trees surrounding the sea witch’s lair come into view.

I don’t blame her—it’s the last place any of us would ever willingly go.

“Yes,” I say, adjusting my grip on the bag in my hand—inside is Eydis’s stash of shipwreck jewels, and it’s heavy enough that both of us are carrying it. “Alia went in alone. I owed it to her to do the same.”

Actually, I was just so angry that I didn’t have the capacity to worry about swimming straight into an ancient Viking horror story.

“Is it just her in there?” Ola asks, nerves shaking her usually confident voice.

Signy rolls her eyes. “Of course it is. Didn’t you ever listen to Oma’s stories? Witches like that always live alone.”

“Ladies,” Eydis snaps, half whirling around, and my hold on the bag slips as she wrenches me with it. “It doesn’t matter if she’s lonely or popular; all that matters is that she gives us the antidote. For all the poundage in this thing”—she hoists up her end of the bag for a moment—“she can buy herself some friends.”

That shuts up everyone, all our energy focused on making it through the trees. As we draw closer, the anxiety that’s been swirling within me all day lessens and is replaced by a shifting tide of confidence. We’re here. We’re going to get what we want. We’re going to make this happen.

I speed up, swimming into the expanse of pewter sand that surrounds the witch’s lair. Gamely, Eydis increases her pace to match mine, determination set in her face. We haven’t worked it out, but I’m the one who will be doing the talking.

Despite my middle sisters’ loud jabber, the sea witch doesn’t greet us immediately when we arrive. My blood pressure spikes when I realize she’s not waiting on pins and needles, antidote in hand as she should be. This is her mess. This is our fight for the life she put at stake. She should at least have the heart to show up.

I hand Eydis my corner of the bounty and move in front of my sisters. Signy and Ola move in line with Eydis.

“Sea Witch,” I start, and my voice is clear of any trembling, that confidence that rose in my belly setting the tone. I am the baby of the family, but I’m not to be taken lightly. The sea witch will learn that too. “I’ve returned with the ríkifjor. I’ve brought my sisters as well. The antidote, please, and we’ll be on our way.”

There’s movement at the mouth of the cave, and behind me, my sisters stiffen.

But I’m not scared of the old squid.

My sisters may grow tense as she wakes, but I grow stronger, arms crossed—not protectively but with malice—my body one unwavering line, jaw cut.

The witch appears, slinking from her cave, tentacles a giant plume of liquid onyx. Her face is placid, and I know my sisters are immediately fascinated by her appearance—Eydis, her bare-moon complexion; Ola, her dramatic curls; Signy, the whole steely spectrum of her—because it’s true: she’s striking.

“Little Runa, where are your flowers?” the witch asks.

I hold up the bag. “Where would you like them?”

I don’t have to explain. The sea witch is a sharp one and understands instantly. “Will they grow anywhere, or must you have light?”

I glance around her home—it’s just as dark now as it was in the halo of morning. “Considering what we have to work with, it may not matter.”

To my surprise the witch cackles. “I didn’t choose the darkness, child, it chose me.”

She waves me over a scarred shoulder and leads me to her cave, built into the base of an enormous black rock, that must jut out and into the thick of the Havnestad night. Behind me, my sisters waver where they’re planted, deciding if they should get closer to keep an eye on me. I wave Eydis back. I can hold my own.

The witch points to a spot near the cave mouth and settles back onto her tentacles, again treating the eight of them as her throne. I reach into the bag, count out thirty seeds, and then shove the rest into my bodice, hoping she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that some seeds remain.

She asked for thirty, and I won’t give her a seed more.

Like the flowers themselves, the seeds are milky white and so luminous that they practically create their own light in this hollow place. I sprinkle them in a half circle before sinking down to the sea floor, where I use both hands to sweep a blanket of sand over the seeds.

Next comes the magic. Mine is a spell commonly used to spark life into most anything, but there’s something about the way I say it that works wonders with these finicky plants. As if they’ll only take direction from me, the charge in my blood the frequency they need to behave, grow, thrive.

“Líf. Líf. Líf,” I say, over and over—thirty times in all. The witch watches me quietly, a smile settling into the corners of her face. She was beautiful once and still is in her own way.

As the magic warms the sands beneath my hands, I think of how it’s romantic that she allegedly gave her own life to save the future king’s, except for the fact that his life led to the grandson now holding my sister’s heart captive.

Nothing about these boys should make them worth saving. Not a title. Not a handsome face. Not all the pretty words in the world.

None of that should’ve taken my sister from me.

My anger rises all over again, along with the heat from the plants. Something about it seems to make them grow faster than I’d expected, the entire lifetime—from seed to seedling to bud to bloom—elapsing in mere seconds. Behind me, the sea witch gasps, and it almost makes me smile despite my anger.

I can do something she can’t.

“You are talented, Runa,” the witch says, her chin tilted upward, but this time in admiration. She sweeps in behind me and plucks up ten of the flowers—one in each tentacle and one in each hand. Then it’s over to her cauldron, where she tosses them in, stems and all. The pot immediately starts to boil as I return to where my sisters are waiting and watching. The steam rises, and the witch inhales big belly breaths as the flowers’ sweet perfume wraps around the lair.

It’s several moments before the heat peters out, the steam dying, the boil calming. The witch dares to touch what’s inside the cauldron—pure, concentrated ríkifjor nectar—with her bare hands, cupping it into her palms and bringing it to her lips. She sips it down as we watch. After she swallows, a smile slips across her face. And though she’s a study in shades of gray, something warm seems to touch her—life and strength renewed in the darkness. When she opens her eyes, she’s staring straight at me.

“Now we may deal.”

Sensing her moment, Eydis swims forward and presents her loot. But she doesn’t cut in, allowing me to continue to be our voice. “As payment for the antidote, we have brought you jewels—rubies of Rigeby Bay, sapphires of Havnestad, emeralds and diamonds of the western countries. Some free to sell or admire on their own, others ready to wear in settings of gold, silver, pewter, and the like.”

At my pause, Eydis opens the bag just enough to reveal the glittering contents, bright even in this gray place.

The witch looks but doesn’t seem to see the beauty flashed before her. Her tone is level and matter-of-fact, her voice stronger than any time I’ve heard it. “Jewels are not what I require.”

“Pearls, then,” I say, gesturing to the one hung by golden thread at my throat. All of us—including our mother and half sisters—have them, a favorite gift from Oma Ragn. “We can easily obtain a large number of pearls in a matter of hours.”

A flicker of disgust moves across the sea witch’s face. “Definitely not pearls.”

My confidence begins to slip. Inside the safety of my rib cage, my heart stutters and teeters. “I returned with the ríkifjor. We refuse to make the same deal our sister did—you shall not make our entire generation voiceless. We’ve brought you items of great value that could buy you freedoms you haven’t seen in decades,” I say, frustration and exhaustion making my voice thick, yet higher than I’d like. I can’t sob in front of this woman. In front of my sisters. I look her dead in the eye. “What will be enough for you?”

The sea witch’s answer is immediate. And I wonder if she always knew I would return with my sisters, just like she knew I would come in the first place.

“It’s not much that I require, and it means more to me than it does to you.” She could say the same thing about our voices, so I do not find comfort in this statement, clamping my lips shut, waiting impatiently for her to go on. “All I want is the same thing from each of you: your hair.”

At this, Eydis’s breath catches. “Our hair? But why our hair—it’s not precious; it’ll grow back. You could magic it back.”

The sea witch’s face remains placid—no reaction. Simply a tilt of her head. She’s nearly the definition of bored, settling on a throne of writhing black.

“That’s exactly right; it is of no consequence to you. Hair grows. But that is what I request for what you want me to do.”

This can’t be right. It can’t be. From all of us? Something that isn’t precious, endangered, or rare?

This has to be a trap. A trick. Wrong.

The sea witch just watches us, no concern crossing her face or posture, as she waits to be paid.

Unease growing in my belly and in my teetering heart, I nod, telling myself it’s not what she wants; it’s what she needs for the antidote. Maybe she needs a piece of us to return our missing piece.

The witch seems to sense the tide turning her way. She extends a hand to me. “Come then, let us take your hair.”

One by one, the witch seats us on a sandstone block next to her cauldron and, using a plain knife fashioned of razor-thin coral, slices our hair up to our chins. Eydis sits first, and, without planning it, we go in birth order. Ola next. Then Signy. Then me. Every lock is tossed without a second glance into the cauldron.

When she’s finished, I straighten, nose to nose with the sea witch, awaiting our antidote. The murky water feels cool against my neck, and I tell myself it’s simply a new sensation and not my nerves settling in. We’ve done our part; now she will do hers and then we’ll save Alia from her quest.

“Very good then, my girls. You’ll have what you need, along with instructions as to what must be done.”

I expect the sea witch to return to her cave, rifle around, and come back to us with another little glass bottle filled with a shimmering liquid.

Instead, the witch hands me the knife she used to cut our hair. I stare at it, the words dying in my mouth. The witch brings a silky tentacle to my chin and tips my head up so that I can do nothing but stare into her dark blue eyes.

“Find your sister at the waterside and give her this knife. If she does not gain the boy’s love in return by the end of her fourth full day on land, she must plunge this knife into his heart, letting the blood drip upon her feet. When his life-force is gone and his blood has anointed her new body, she will be human for the remainder of her days.”

“She can’t come back to us?” Eydis asks. “She can no longer be a mermaid?”

The witch’s voice is level and clear. It’s a dagger to each of our hearts. “Oh no. Never. That isn’t how the magic works.”

No. That’s not right. The words tumble out as I try to grab a breath.

“But Queen Mette—”

“Queen Mette’s magic was something else altogether—the joining of this world’s magic with the magic above.”

She says it like it’s a fact. That Father’s first queen was able to achieve something we can’t. My guts sour and pucker. I glare at the knife in my palm, wondering whether, if I murder this witch right now, my sister will automatically sprout fins and be called home. The weapon is sharp enough to slice a finger straight through with barely any pressure. There’s definitely magic in it, but it isn’t what we asked for.

What’s more—it won’t work.

Alia’s face on the balcony when I suggested this as an option flashes through my mind. I know my sister, stubborn and romantic to the core. She won’t murder Niklas under any circumstance, even if it means she’ll rot from the inside out.

This was supposed to be an antidote—an alternative to get her home.

“But that describes your magic too,” I say, lobbing the sea witch’s logic back to her. Reminding her of who she was. I move from my seat to my full height, daring to bear down on this witch, reclined on her stupid tentacles. “Which means you have the antidote. You have what Mette had. We kept our end of the deal. This isn’t an antidote; it’s a murder weapon. We agreed on the antidote.”

The witch straightens herself to her full length, giving me a taste of my own medicine, staring down her nose at me. Her presence is more than her frame—the entire cove seems to join her in staring me down, the weight of it all pressing into me. On all sides, her strange trees seem to curve inward, their skeletal limbs reaching out for me, my sisters, our anger.

“You know nothing of my power. And it was you who said the word antidote, Runa. I did not,” the sea witch says. “I told you I’d give you what you need. And what you need is this knife.”

7
Evie

OUR CONVERSATION IS OVER, AND THE MERMAIDS swim away, their new chin-length hair streaming lightly behind as they navigate my polypi forest. But our visit is not over. I can feel it from the tip of my tentacles to the very ends of my curls.

“Why do you need their hair?” Anna asks.

“You’ll see,” I say, hoping that will stop the questions. The Anna I knew wasn’t full of questions, but that seems to be who she’s become since I gave her a voice. I suppose if I’d been left as a silent polypus, I’d have many too.

“You’re not … you wouldn’t … you can’t. If you leave us, we’ll be turned to rubble. Father—the sea king—he’ll decimate your lair.”

“I can’t leave unless he frees me, Anna,” I say, fishing the hair out of the cauldron before tying it all together with twine. Once wrapped, I tuck it into the remaining ríkifjor blooms, ensuring that it’s snug and hidden. “No spell of mine will change that.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t preparing to leave. Why else would you need that hair? I know you’re not going to use it to bring me back.”

“Létta.”

I silence her not a moment too soon. Runa has returned. I can only hope she believes she’s imagined her twin’s voice.

Runa has my knife clutched carefully, tightly between both palms before her chest, like she’s praying. The confidence has faded from her features, but here she is again. Unsatisfied with the bargain. She looks to me, eyes shining, and I know before she speaks that her voice will be the weakest I’ve heard it.

“She won’t,” Runa says, bottom lip rosy and trembling, her voice barely loud enough to be heard over the near-stagnant tide of my home. “She’s loved him since the moment she first saw him last year. She’s the only reason he didn’t die in that storm this summer. She wouldn’t let him die then, and she won’t kill him now … even if means her death.”

My breath catches. “This summer?”

The girl nods. I knew Alia had lied about the boy already loving her; she all but admitted it, but I at least thought the details of her story were true. I cock a single brow and ask a question that’s already been answered in the pit of my stomach. “And I don’t suppose she’s had a statue of him in her garden since she was ten?”

Runa glances down at the knife in her hands and then back to me. “Alia does have a statue, but only for the past few months. She pulled it from the wreckage and dragged it over to her garden like some sort of altar.”

I inhale deeply, closing my eyes. Beneath me, my body becomes perfectly still, tentacles like cut stone. Even my uncut curls feel weighed down by whatever is moving through my belly. Anger and revulsion—both directed at myself, not the little mermaid. I should’ve known the girl was trying to manipulate me. I’ve had sixty-six years on this earth to know better.

Finally, after a long moment, I open my eyes. “Alia told me she saved him a year ago, on the first night she saw him. She told me she’d had a statue of his likeness in her garden since age ten. And she told me that when she left him on the beach, he was found by a girl—one he believes rescued him, and therefore loves. She said she’d watched that love for a year.”

Runa’s lips drop open, color coming again to her cheeks, the fierceness in her eyes returning.

“That story isn’t correct—he’s marrying a girl from somewhere else. But”—her voice is trembling along with everything else—“if you knew all that and what she had to do in four days—why on earth did you say yes? Why on earth did you send her up there knowing she’d fail? That she’d die?”

Because I believed her love was worth it.

Because I saw myself in her. And his grandfather in him.

Because I still believe in happy endings, even when I’m a nightmare.

Runa is staring at me, and I wonder if she can see it in my face—the girl behind the years. The one who gave herself for Nik more than once and who would do it again.

“I thought her heart had had enough,” I say, and now my words are weak and threaded with all the exhaustion I don’t have the strength to hide. “I thought that she deserved a chance at love.”

“A chance?” Runa advances on me, what’s left of her curls swirling around her like a lion’s mane. “You heard all that, with all your fabled wisdom and reputation, and you knew she didn’t have a chance.”

“None of us knows anything for sure, Little Runa. But your sister was resolute. She sought me out, willing to fight for something she believed in. Whether she wins that fight or not, it wasn’t my place to tell her she shouldn’t try.” I clench my teeth, my fists, my tentacles. “Love is worth suffering and sacrifice if it’s true.”

“Love is worth nothing to a life if you aren’t around to live it!” Her face is screaming at me: Why can’t you see this? Haven’t you lived long enough, suffered long enough, to see that death is permanent? Haven’t you lived long enough, suffered enough, to see that death is death? “Alia should’ve been here for three hundred more years. How many times could she have loved in all those decades and not paid so dearly?”

Runa is heaving now, the knife deadly in her grip. I’m not afraid of her, but suddenly I am afraid for her.

“You don’t believe in love, do you?” I ask.

Her fingers clench white-tight around the knife. “I love my sister.”

“Runa,” I say, wanting very much to lay a calm hand on her heaving shoulders, though it won’t help dull the abandonment she feels. “If you truly love her, the best you can do is give her that knife and accept her choice.”

“No. I won’t accept that. I gave you my father’s flowers, endangering him and me in the process. We gave you our hair—and you didn’t even use it for anything.” Runa raises the blade. “And now I have a knife but a sister who would die before wielding it on the only damn Øldenburg available.”

The mermaid isn’t done. She’s pausing to make sure it sinks in for me. Everything she’s lost, laid out plain.

“I only have one more thing to give you, and if you don’t take it right now, you’ll find out how talented I really am.” Her nostrils flare, and she advances on me, knife out. “Change me. Change me and I’ll do it. I’ll kill the boy if it means she’ll be saved.”

The girl’s amber eyes bore into my face, her shoulders and chest heaving.

I truly believe she will kill the boy for her sister to live.

I am both impressed and completely heartbroken over this. No matter what she may think of me, my motives were pure in sending her sister above. I firmly believe my heart was in the right place when I gave Alia legs. Though now I realize I shouldn’t have worried as much about her lying on land as lying to me, though either way her manipulation may be Nik’s grandson’s undoing. Somehow, I wish Niklas were anyone else. Maybe he is—maybe the little mermaid told me one more lie to get her way, knowing my history with his family and how I loved Nik.

“You’ve seen this boy above, and yet you will do it?”

Runa nods, fury hot in the set of her shoulders. “Oh, I saw him. He acts like she’s a prize pet. Something shiny he found on the beach. A nice complement to his stupid sapphire crown or dumb red ring.”

My breath catches. “Red ring?”

“Yes, it’s not rubies or garnets but something else. He rubs it like a two-bit moon play villain.”

I work to keep my face plain, though at my back I can feel Anna yearning to scream. When Nik was alive, he would visit often. He’d dip the toes of his oxblood boots in the water, rear end in the dry gray sand, and tell me about his life. Within a year of my absence, he told me how a maid had found a red crystal rock in the old dresses I’d left at the castle the night that my time above ended. It was the stone the sea had given me when I practiced my first exchange spell—Annemette’s life for what the sea had already claimed. He remembered me wearing that dress when he’d spotted me while readying Iker’s boat for the Celebration of the Sea.

My heart lurches for all the things I would’ve done differently that morning on the dock. I should’ve kissed Nik when he brushed a curl from my cheeks, his fingers lingering long enough that we both turned nearly as red as the stone in my pocket. The stone that Nik fashioned into a ring, that now sits atop his grandson’s finger.

“What else do you know about him?” I ask the girl.

I’m worried I’ve gone too far and that her frustration won’t stand it, but Runa bites her lip, her interaction above running through her mind. Though she’s thinking hard, I find it difficult to believe she’s forming a lie. She badly wants to save her sister, and it’s enough to keep her honest. It wouldn’t do to exaggerate.

“These other boys, they were talking about something called a U-boat.”

My heart stops. U-boat? It had been invented when I was a girl—it wasn’t common, but Father had done his research on them for King Asger, believing he might be able to better spot whales while working in tandem with them.

They weren’t widespread then, but now, with time and improvements in technology? They might be. That possibility looks much different to me from my vantage point under the sea. The danger they might pose to the merpeople is great.

“They’re ships that can stay underwater for weeks at a time,” I say, my memory shooting back to drawings Father got from a sailor near the mouth of the Rhine in the North Sea. Runa startles. “Yes, what you’re thinking is correct—they’d be extremely dangerous to your people in the water.” A shock of realization goes through me. “And the kingdom is building U-boats for the war effort?”

Havnestad always put its people to work on boats in times of famine. Times of war may be no different.

The girl nods. “All of Denmark, including Havnestad, is officially neutral, though boys in the southern regions are close enough to Germany that they’re being conscripted. So, Havnestad—all of Denmark, really—is in the war, whether it wants to be or not.”

Boys, stolen for war. They’re just bodies. Bodies upon bodies. I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to believe Niklas or any other ruler losing civilians to a foreign power would want to make sure that power succeeds.

“Niklas is king of Havnestad now, not simply a prince.” More news to me—news that would explain his impending marriage. “So, he would have to approve these U-boats—I don’t know how it works above, exactly, but here Father would have a say on anything that could be a potential pain—or profit.”

Profit. In war? I can’t reconcile this thought with my Nik. Though his grandson is not the boy I loved. “And you believe he could be making a profit?”

“Why else would he help without declaring war himself?” she says, anger flaring, though it’s not for me. “He’s probably even making a profit on the mines he’s set in the waters.”

I know all about the mines. They go off daily outside my lair, a sign of what rages above.

Runa shakes her head. “They’re meant for enemy ships, but they’re dangerous to all of us down here. There’s something unsettling to me about a man who would place live bombs in the sea without a care for who or what might detonate them.”

“And your people have died from this practice.”

“Not yet, but there have been injuries. Whales, sharks, and fish from the smallest to the greatest have been killed. If a ship explodes, the projectiles can wipe out anyone or anything in their wake.” She takes a shaky breath. “It’s bad enough already, and who’s to say how long the war will last?”

The meaning of all of it piles between us, shadows dancing in the almost-dawn. In some ways I’m protected here in my prison, protected from the outside by buoys Nik erected long ago, my cove off limits to anyone who would want to wade out into the black tide. They do toss Sankt Hans Aften dolls into my waters each year though. Not everyone, of course. Only those who believe the tale of the witch, the prince, and the spell that plucked him from the brink of death.

The mermaid stares at me. “Let me do it. Help me save her. Change me.” She dares to grab my hand in the one that doesn’t hold the knife. “Please, please. Please let me make this right. I can’t lose Alia.”

Something Tante Hansa once told me breaks loose from the memories of old, falling into the forefront of my mind.

Loneliness is the weakest excuse for magic there is, and it mixes horribly with pride and ignorance.

She’d meant it as a rebuke of me while I tried to help Annemette, yet I know this is different. This girl is lonely because this is her sister. Her twin. Her other half.

She’s not prideful. She’s not ignorant—she knows much more about the situation than I did about the girl I once knew. That much is for sure.

And she’s given me every indication she will go through with murdering the king to save both her sister and the merpeople endangered by the U-boats and the mines.

My mind churns with all the possibilities. Who might live, who might die, what might become of the magical imbalance with another mermaid on land. With another exchange. It’s a long shot, but we all might get what we want.

I add my other hand to the top of hers until we’re holding each other like fish skewered through the belly on a pike. Her hand is warm and reminds me a little of home.

“I will change you, but listen closely.” The girl’s eyes widen with relief. “Here is what you must do. As I told you before, dying Øldenburg blood must fall on your sister’s feet, shed by this knife. If that happens by the last moment of the fourth day—at sunrise, because that is when she ascended—she shall live. Though she can never become a mermaid again.”

She swallows. “Never? Not even with this knife?”

“Not the terms of her deal. The magic is serious about exchange—the sea cannot take her back.” I wrap a tentacle around the girl’s waist. “Now, your deal is different.”

I watch her eyes as I let that sink in. Her lip begins to tremble, and I don’t blame her—she feels as if she’s failed already because her sister can never again be a mermaid—but the girl’s eyes remain fierce and steady.

“Your deal, Runa, is one of very specific action. You are there to help your sister, but still, Alia must kill the boy with this knife. I can’t change that either. Her life was her bargain, not yours.” This truth seems to puncture Runa’s resiliency even more. “But having you there by her side, like you’ve always been, is the greatest power you have to give. Do you want me to go on?”

Runa swallows a sob and nods.

“After Alia allows the blood to fall on her feet for her survival, these are the things you must do to return to the sea: You must gather the boy’s red stone ring and retrieve the knife. Then you must sprinkle the boy’s blood on your own toes. Fail to do any of that by the close of the fourth full day after your arrival, including sending me the ring and the knife, and you will remain human forever.”

She swallows. “I … I won’t become foam in the tide? I’ll become human if I fail?”

“Don’t assume you will fail—you didn’t come here to fail.” She squeezes her eyes closed for a second and then she’s right back with me. Good.

My tentacle slinks off her waist and my hands drop hers as she runs it over in her mind. It’s a lot, true. And I gather that unlike Alia, the very last thing Runa ever wanted to be was human. But that was before she knew her sister might die. “Now, do you agree?”

She’s nodding before the words are out. “Yes, I agree.”

I watch her, making sure she means it. But she’s unwavering under my hard stare. “Give me the knife.”

Without a word, she extends the weapon. There’s a little hesitation as I transfer the hilt to my hand and draw it close, inspecting the serrated edge, the coral so finely cut, it’s almost translucent in its sharpness.

“Give me your hand.”

The mermaid extends her left hand over my cauldron, clever girl. She’d been holding the knife in her right, dominant, hand. She may trust me to change her, but she isn’t so sure I won’t send her topside missing an important appendage.

As a measure of good faith, I put a tentacle around her wrist instead, silky smooth and delicate. The cauldron is as deep and dark as the night, yet there’s a heat rising from it—part of my particular magic. I place my own arm over the cauldron, so that our arms are side by side. Then, without warning or hesitation, I drag the knife over the skin of my palm. Blood, onyx dark, oozes into the flat gray of the water, molasses slow and sparking with the magic I hold within.

The girl’s eyes stay on the knife as she waits, knowing that it will be her turn next. My blood drips onto her flat white palm in the moment before the knife breaks her skin. She doesn’t move, recoil, or even wince, though blood as red as the flowers her sister gave me swirls into the gray. I smother her hand in mine and squeeze, our blood dripping into the pot’s belly below as one.

With each drop, the cauldron softens with an inner light. It has the same silvery glow of a full moon on shallow waters, flashing mesmerizing rays into the starbursts of the girl’s amber eyes. I take a deep breath, and then I let my voice echo off the polypi, deep and commanding, with all the power her flowers have afforded me.

“Líf. Saudi. Minn líf. Minn bjod. Sei∂r. Sei∂r. Sei∂r.”

As I say the final word of the spell, the cauldron trembles with light—blinding and brilliant and enough to turn this whole pewter-rendered world stark, shocking white.

When the spell is complete, the light recedes in an instant. From the depths of the cauldron, a silvery liquid swirls, as if the best pearls in the ocean had been melted down.

I bring a tentacle up before the two of us, a small bottle grasped there. It’s much like the one I gave Alia. This one is light green in color, bringing all the power of the new spring sun. I dip the bottle into the potion, fill it to the top, and then stop it with a bit of cork.

“Take this draught in the shallows, so you shall not drown,” I say, and then I give her one final reminder. “You have four days for yourself. Two for your sister. Ring, knife, blood.”

With careful fingers, the girl seizes the bottle and the knife, pressing both to her heart, and repeats back what she must do. “Ring, knife, blood.”

As she turns to go, I swear I hear her voice again, whispering a single refrain.

“I’m coming, Alia. I’m coming.”

8
Runa

TOPSIDE, THE FIRST FINGERS OF DAYLIGHT SWIPE ACROSS the horizon, a bright white light across the Øresund Strait, the promise of the sun coming fast. The morning glow touches the beaches of Havnestad, the mountains behind the town lit only at the very tops, the rest in the steely tones of the sea witch’s lair.

The play of dawn would be beautiful if it didn’t signal another day gone for Alia.

I’m coming, Alia. I’m coming.

I cling to the shadows falling from the rocks that hug the sea witch’s black cove, the draught just as heavy in one hand as the knife is in my other. I need a place to change. I believe the sea witch that it would be best to take the draught in the shallows. It’s easy to picture Alia two dawns previous, changing on the main beach, timing it just so to coincide with the morning walks in which the king likes to indulge. She’d skipped breakfast for weeks on end just to watch him wander around, tossing sticks with his dogs, surveying his kingdom.

But from where I am, my view of Havnestad’s main beach is already filled with townspeople. The docks beside the beach are alive with the sounds of men, cargo rolling along on horse-drawn carts tinkling with lantern light that won’t be needed in a few minutes’ time. Many of them carve a path straight up a skinny brick road that lines the ocean and leads up to Øldenburg Castle, carrying preparations for the wedding, I’m sure.

The rest of the beach is an ode to that occasion as well. Tiny paper lanterns are strung from poles in a regal square closer to the castle, the skeleton of a bonfire pit to one side, an altar to another. I’d once been told the Øldenburgs loved to be married at sea, on the decks of their great ships, but I suppose it would be rather disastrous if the wedding party struck a mine planted in the waters its groom believed he owned.

I don’t see the boy on his morning walk, not yet, though he will likely be there soon. And maybe with Alia, if I’m lucky. I tuck the knife and bottle safely within my bodice, tight against the beating of my heart and the ríkifjor seeds I placed there before returning to the witch’s lair. My precious cargo safe, I swim around the black cove and to the other side of Havnestad, toward the sea entrance to the castle with its marble balcony. Cliff faces meet the waters here, so different from the rest of paper-flat Denmark, this little kingdom.

Around this side, not yet to the castle’s channel, there’s a strange arch of stone, yawning over a fissure between the rocks. The water streaming under it is deep and sure, and I swim through, coming up onto a little lagoon. On a sliver of beach, between two large boulders, standing sentry at its mouth, is a tiny cave. To one side is a steep stairway of stone and switchbacks, leading up to the cliff. I strain my eyes in the low light to see exactly where it leads, but there are only trees, shading the clifftop from view of the castle above.

Yes, this will do.

But first, I’ll need clothing.

The witch gave me nothing to wear, so I must make it myself, using what is around. Which isn’t much. Sand, rocks, and water. But under the surface—that’s something I can use. And so, I spend the rest of dawn pulling seaweed from the lagoon. It’s not much, but it’s just enough for a skirt to go with my sea bodice.

My bodice is a salt-water ivory, the color of a seal tusk, spelled together with the sheen of a thousand pearls by Eydis, who won’t have any of her sisters wearing everyday canvas. Considering the silks and stays that Alia was wearing in the castle yesterday morning, it’s a good thing Eydis has such exacting standards.

Once I have enough seaweed—dark green and thrumming with the closing summer—I lay it all out on the beach and close my eyes.

“Snúa. Efni.” I command.

A cool whiff of magic settles against my skin, my confidence spiking.

My magic works here.

My eyes fly open, and I watch, repeating the spell over and over, as the magic does its job, weaving each length of seaweed upon itself, twisting and braiding, each piece drying lacquer-hard once put in its proper place.

“Snúa. Efni.”

“Snúa. Efni.”

“Snúa. Efni.”

Soon enough, the seaweed has thatched itself into a skirt that is actually quite beautiful—as deep and shiny as the best emeralds. I wind it around my waist, securing it with one last fat piece of seaweed that finishes the dress like a silken ribbon. It feels a little strange—having something besides water flowing over my tail. There’s some seaweed left over, and I set it aside on the beach as I come into the shallows—someone will surely have a use for it.

Pleased, I remove the knife and the draught—half of me above water and half of me below. The bottle catches in the light streaming over the rocks, the sun that much higher now, though the light is still blue with the receding night. The potion within glows like the moon on a clear night—so opaque as to be nearly white, shining as if it has a life of its own. Maybe it does.

I take one last look at my tail fin, sighing in the sand here beneath the hem of my new dress.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell it. “I’ll get you back.”

I pop the cork and let it fall into the water.

Bottoms up.

The liquid is cool to the touch but burns going down—fire water coating my tongue, throat, and belly. The warmth spreads across my body in the length of time that it takes for a bullet to explode from a pistol. And, suddenly, I’m the sun itself, pulsing and strobing with heat we rarely feel in the sea.

I cling to the knife in my hand, willing myself not to drop it, my fingers sweltering themselves numb, the bottle already dropped, my concentration only enough for one. I’m melting. I’m as liquid as the sea—hot, warm, steaming. Only the knife is solid; fire is what it bends to and I am fire. Fire and fury and nothing at all.

All of it is intense enough that I wonder whether, in my anger and desperation, I’ve made a huge error. If the sea witch concocted a potion to end me, not aid me. Some old grudge mingling with a new one for Father’s recent attack, killing off two of the sea king’s children in one easy swipe. But just as that thought crystallizes, the heat backs off. The warmth cools into something hard. Solid.

Legs.

Bones and muscles and tendons and arteries and veins.

Ankles and toes.

My lungs sputter in my chest, no longer suitable for both worlds. Made for only one, and it’s not my home. I gasp in as much air as my lungs can hold, suddenly in need though I haven’t been underwater for several minutes. Somehow without my mermaid body, the air temperature is much colder, and I immediately begin to shiver, the adrenaline coursing through my veins notwithstanding.

I push myself up out of the lapping tide, new legs wobbling under my weight, my toes digging into the uneven sand below. It’s almost stunning to me that I’m whole and solid. I look down past my seaweed skirt to those toes, flashing white. I am human. And now my clock is ticking right along with Alia’s.

I test out my stride, taking a few uneasy steps. The shifting nature of the sands under my feet doesn’t help before I nearly fall over. And then I realize that even if I figure out how to walk, I still won’t be right. I need shoes.

I backpedal and retrieve those extra wisps of seaweed.

“Snúa. Efni.” I say the spell, but … something’s distant about the magic I’ve called forth.

“Snúa. Efni.” I repeat, thinking it might improve things.

It does, but the distance stays, even as the seaweed begins to obey, weaving itself into one slipper and then another.

I keep reaching, reaching, reaching, for the magic as it works. It hears me, but it’s from across the room, not within my veins. After much longer than I’d expected—several minutes longer than it took the magic to create my entire skirt—my shoes are made. They aren’t durable in the least, but they should do for now.

When I’m finished, the sky has evened out into a lush blue, the warmth of dawn gone. Another day begun. Two days behind. Time to find Alia.

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