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I twist around, trying to free myself, and the last thing I see is the deck of the ship, Ramsay running to the tentacle with his sword raised, Thane kneeling on the deck beside Sam, and Sam lying there in a pool of her own blood, dead.

Then I’m pulled straight down into the ocean.

Straight to Edonia.

CHAPTER38

Maren

The Krakenwho has me moves quickly but it’s not alone. When I turn my head to look back at the surface, I see another one still battling with the ship, though it seems weakened from the fight.

It continues to swim down, taking me as a hostage, and at first all I see is the dark blue of the deep rising up to meet me, that infinite abyss that stretches on forever. It doesn’t take long before I spot the bottom, a dark red reef that reminds me of blood, and in the middle of the towering reef, in a circle of sand, is Edonia.

The Kraken’s grip on me tightens, as if it knows I’d try and squirm away. I try anyway, attempting to loosen myself from the suctions but they cling on to my skin so hard that I’m afraid they might tear my skin right off.

“Here she is,” Edonia calls out to me in her smooth, malevolent voice. “How I’ve been waiting for this day.”

I stop my struggling to gape at her as the Kraken delivers me, holding me out like a hard-won prize.

Edonia looks more or less as I remember, but even more powerful and menacing. She seems taller, her shoulders wider, and her white hair is longer, turned into pearlescent writhing eels that snap at the water. The red in her eyes is no longer a bright coral but dried blood, bordering on black, and they seem to take up her whole eye so there’s no white left in them.

She smiles at me and her teeth rival mine, sharp as knives.

I compose the look of awe on my face and give her nothing back.

“I know you’ve been waiting for this day too,” she says with a knowing tone. “My sweet ink-haired girl, I remember it like it was yesterday when you called upon me, only miles from here if you can believe it. So fresh, so young, so full of innocence. It’s hard to believe that you’re the same Syren at all, and it’s not because you have legs. You seem so much…older. And I know, twenty-six is not old, not down here in the deep, but up there…”

“If you’re trying to insult me it’s not working.”

“Insult you? Gracious, no.” She grins at me and small fish dark out of her mouth. The white eels of her hair snap at them as they go, eager for a snack. “But it is the truth. The world up there has been most unkind to you, hasn’t it?”

“I’ve managed,” I reply curtly. I try to straighten myself but it’s impossible when you’re engulfed by a giant tentacle.

She gives the Kraken a nod. “Release her.”

The Kraken lets go of me, the suckers releasing with apop pop pop. I gasp and sink to the sand, holding onto my aching skin where they had sucked at me.

“So I heard you want me to reverse the spell…” she says.

I struggle to my feet, feeling strangely unbalanced despite being underwater. “Who told you that? Nerissa?”

“My sister? Goodness, no. As if I would ever listen to her. Barely even a sea witch, if you ask me, but every family has to have a black sheep.”

She takes a few steps toward me, her movements smooth and measured. Her black diaphanous gown floats around her like silk and I realize it’s made of Kraken ink. “I’m no fool, dear, though I certainly am curious. I don’t make bargains with Syrens like you and assume that everything has worked out in the end, not with so many variables in life. For I believe in accountability.”

I snort at that and she gives me a steady look as she continues. “I am a fixer, Maren. A life-changer. A wish-maker. I need to know how my…clients…have adjusted to their new lives. You were never truly alone, princess, no, I was always there in some way. I have creatures below the sea and above that checked in on you from time to time. I liked to keep an eye on you to make sure all was well.”

Indignation flares in me. “All was well?” I repeat, the phrase a bitter taste in my mouth. “Then clearly you saw that for the last ten years, nothing has been well!”

“You made your choice, dearie,” she says with a patronizing tone, walking around me, her white eel hair shining like pearls as they swirl in the current. “And it was your choice. You’ve forgotten thatyouwere the one that came to me.Youasked me.Beggedme. I gave you what you asked for. You’ve rewritten the story to make yourself the victim here but you’re only a victim to your own foolish choices.”

I open my mouth to rebuke that but shut my mouth into a tight line. Because she’s right. She’s pure evil. She was in the wrong, she persuaded me to continue by telling me the lies I most wanted to hear, but I am the one who asked for it. I am the one who made the choice in the end. I’ve known that too, of course I have, and I’ve hated myself for it. That’s why this mistake has weighed so heavily on my soul, because I know that in the end, I am the one to blame.

I close my eyes, remembering Ramsay’s words, that we don’t make mistakes but choices that lead us on a different path. This is the path I chose. But it’s not the one I have to stay on.

“What are you thinking, I wonder?” she muses and I open my eyes to find her gone. A shadow passes over and I look up to see her swimming above me, moving like a shark, the sun a faint glimmer behind her. Before my eyes her legs come together and turn a smooth seamless white, a shark’s tail at the end.

“Are you envious of what I can do?” she says, swimming down now and circling around me. Now she’s no longer Edonia but a great white shark, a ferocious-looking beast with her red eyes. “Do I remind you of your friend?”