Page 9

T he entire afternoon passed with guards barring my door. No one entered. Not Agatha, nor Evander.

I scrubbed my face with frigid water. Washed my hair and slipped on a clean chemise and dressing gown.

All the while I thought on how I might escape.

Perhaps there were passages I’d failed to discover when I’d been a curious girl exploring the fort.

Dark and winding tunnels I’d missed that might lead me to the base of the mountain.

But unsurprisingly, I found no secret doors behind the tapestries in my room.

There were no cobwebbed halls behind my hanging gowns.

As the sun began to set, I sprawled over my mattress, staring up at the ceiling while a horrific maw widened in my stomach. My hope slowly slipped inside it, swallowed up.

Three quick knocks came. I sat bolt upright. The pock-faced soldier swung my door open, and Agatha walked in. Her hair was loose and wild, black curls haloing her wan face. She held a single lit candle. “I’m allowed to stay until it burns out.”

My throat shut at the sight of her, so I nodded and patted the mattress beside me.

Her gown was creased, and her knit wrap was pulled tightly around her narrow shoulders.

She walked silently, grabbed a book from my table, and set it at the foot of my bed.

She placed the candle atop it, then drew all the bedcurtains shut.

She climbed onto the bed and propped herself up beside me.

We both waited until the door snicked closed to talk.

“King Theodore came to speak with me,” Agatha whispered.

Angry tears sprang to my eyes. “Did he tell you I was an imbecile? That I was a coward and that all of this is my fault—”

“Shhh.” Agatha moved closer, wove her fingers through mine. “No. He came to tell me of your conversation. And that he would work on a plan to get you out.”

I shook my head. “He said it would take him time. Time I don’t have.”

“He’ll get you out,” Agatha said, with assuredness. “I trust him.”

“Tell me why.” I peered up at her from where I lay.

The firelight flickered around our little cocoon.

“You only knew him as a boy. He’s certainly changed since you were his governess.

He’s a dashing, priggish king now.” Agatha squeezed my hand and I fell silent, and then, quietly, I asked, “How did you come to leave him and end up here?”

Agatha hesitated. “When I knew the king—the prince, then—he was about seven. I was only sixteen, and I fell in love with a young soldier in the king’s guard.

” She swallowed hard. “After some time, we decided to perform a blood bond. In secret. Just the two of us one night in front of the fire.” Melancholy filled her voice as she recalled it, and I wondered if she saw the flame-lit memory in her mind.

“But when King Athan, Theodore’s father, found out—well, he ordered that our bond be severed. ”

I turned to see her better. “Severed? But you loved each other.”

“If only love were enough to overthrow the will of a king.” She huffed a breath. “Afterward, I left and came to Seraf. Word hadn’t spread yet that Nemea had started hunting Sirens when I set sail.”

“I see.” I propped my head on my hand. “Do you still love him? Your soldier.”

“That was nearly twenty years ago, Imogen.”

“Do you?” She shook her head too quickly and wouldn’t meet my eye, which pulled a smile from me. “Well, when my future husband has tied me to some bed, or some mast, and I am no longer allowed to keep a handmaid, I hope you leave this place and go find him.”

“ Imogen. ” She scowled at me. “I know Theodore. He will help.”

“Was he imperious as a boy too, or is that quality something he needed time to grow into?”

Agatha snorted. “He was a sweet boy.” She gave me a sidelong look. “I remember him constantly whining for sugar cubes, though.”

I grimaced. “Disgusting.”

“Imogen.” Agatha’s voice went low and somber. “The news I hear from Varya is filled with stories of what a generous ruler he is. He is duty-bound to his core.”

I quirked a brow. Fort Linum was a distance from Port Helris and the connected town of Stowand. Whatever information Agatha received about Varya and its king came from far outside the fort. Correspondence from the rest of the archipelago came sporadically, unreliably. “Who told you that?”

Agatha’s pert nose scrunched up and a blush stained her cheeks. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just a curious and very specific detail, ‘ duty-bound to his core, ’” I said. “How do you know it?”

She swatted the question away with her hand. “Friends send me letters.”

“About the king of Varya?” The blush on her cheeks darkened. I sat all the way up. “It’s your soldier, isn’t it? He still writes you?”

Agatha shuddered. She took both my hands into hers. “He’s here. He’s Theodore’s commander now.”

“He’s here? Have you seen him?”

Agatha nodded, a soft but warring look on her face. “I asked if he could possibly help too, but… Not right now. It’s too dangerous. Please, please trust that King Theodore will do what he’s promised in his own time.”

“I’ll be bound to Evander by then.” My voice shook. The hope of escape was slipping through my fingers like water. “It’ll be too late to leave. What if I’m with child by the time he enacts his ‘plan’? What if I’m nothing but a corpse?”

“Stop.” Agatha’s big eyes filled with a silvered rim of tears. “You serve no purpose to the captain dead. And you will not be with child—I’ll make sure of it. A few months, Imogen. We can make it through together for a few months, can’t we?”

My eyes fluttered shut. “You think I’m much stronger than I am.” I could only bend for so long before I snapped.

Agatha threw her arms around me and tucked us back into the pillows. I let myself weep then. The profound, mourning kind of weeping. I could only suck in hiccuping breaths by the time she spoke again.

“Someday,” she whispered, as her fingers played through my damp hair, “you will have a full life. A home, if you want one. And you’ll see more than these stones and mountains and sky.

And I’ll be with you when you first touch the sea.

You’ll feel sand between your toes, and salt water on your tongue, and you will feel more joy than you can fathom. I promise.”

We sat like that, watching the candle flicker across the bedcurtains until it burned itself out.

Agatha kissed my forehead before she left.

The darkness was thick as pitch, so I closed my swollen eyes, and I sank into the mattress where I floated between wakefulness and sleep—in a liminal space where the sheets around me became seafoam, and the tears in my mouth the waves.

Hours passed slowly, dragging me into the middle of the quiet night.

The mumbling and shuffling sounds of the guards in the hall had finally ceased.

I wondered if they’d left, or perhaps they’d fallen off to sleep.

I pulled back the bedcurtain, swung my feet to the floor, and crept on tiptoe to listen at the door.

There was only the blood whooshing through my ears, but I stood like that for a long while, listening for breathing, for any sound at all. Finally, I set my hand to the knob—

And froze.

There were boots on the stairs. Heavy footsteps, far below, but they were drawing closer. Then there were many boots, ascending in unison—like soldiers did. I drew away and threw myself back onto the bed just as my door squealed open.

“Love, wake up.” Evander spoke softly. He held a candle above me. “Come with me.”

His gray shirt was creased and untucked.

His cheek was stubbled with blond hair and his brow was damp with sweat.

The contours of his face looked strange in the light, casting undulating shadows over the curves of his skull beneath his skin.

I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing when he held a single finger up to his lips, silencing me. He took my hand and tugged me to stand.

“Take this off,” he whispered, as he pulled at the ties of my dressing gown.

“No.” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “What do you want—” Light glinted off a slim, curved pipe tucked beneath his arm. “What is that?”

Before he answered, a tendril of briny air wound itself into my nose and I knew precisely what he carried—the siphon.

The one they used to force a Siren to shift before executing her.

The scuff and fall of his soldiers’ footsteps filled the hall.

Like ants at work, they filed into my chamber, each carrying two buckets of water.

Seawater.

The sea and I had never met—not truly—but I knew it. It was in my blood and bones. I was made from it and would return to it.

Evander’s men went into my dressing room. The splash, splash, splash of their buckets emptying into my tub sent a prickle across my skin. They kept coming, a dozen of them at least, and I watched, stunned still.

Evander set down the candle and worked on the ties at my waist, taking the dressing gown from my shoulders so I wore only my thin chemise. He took the siphon into his hand. Determination stained his countenance—fists rounded and jaw set. He moved toward my dressing room door. “Come.”

“I do not want to.”

Evander stopped midstride, his eyes filled with menace. His men were just winding their way back out to the hall. “You’re relieved,” he said to them, quietly. “Go.” They obeyed. The door closed noiselessly, and Evander slid the bolt.

He grimaced at me. “Don’t look at me like that.” The siphon dropped to the woolen rug with a dull ping. “Don’t you, of all things, dare look at me like I disgust you.”