Haera brooded until she finally reached the rocks, but then practical concerns took over.

What was she to do with her clothes?

Jonathan usually handled that, bringing them when they met onshore and taking them away when she left.

After their argument, he might not return for their usual appointment, and she wanted to apologize before then anyway.

Tomorrow, in fact.

A large rock stood far back enough that the high tide wouldn’t reach it.

She looked around to make sure she was alone.

Then she undressed and tucked her clothes and boots in a crevice beneath the big rock.

Naked, she transformed into her four-legged horse form and walked into the water.

The waves lapped welcomingly at her fetlocks and then rose steadily over her legs.

Sand and pebbles scraped against her, borne landward by the water to blend sea and shore.

The current urged her forward, and she lunged in with relief as it buoyed her, taking the burden of her body weight.

She bobbed up and down, concentrating as her hind legs fused together into her marine tail.

There. She was herself again.

Her true self that needed nobody else: not a friend, and definitely not someone to love .

Just because she’d grown used to wearing a human-shaped body once in a while, just because she’d been learning new things, didn’t mean she was changed.

She crested to the point where the waves rose highest. Once she got past it, the water would calm again.

Normally, she plunged beneath the surface and cut through the waves, the better to conceal herself and hurry back home.

Tonight, though, the air called to her: stay just another moment .

And so she crested the surface of the wave instead, letting it carry her higher up.

Freedom . The word flashed across her mind.

Haera, nearing the top of the wave, looked longingly up toward the sky, where freedom beckoned.

Then she reached the wave’s peak, looked down at the water that awaited her, and saw the end of freedom altogether.

Three pairs of Each-uisge eyes glowed up at her.

She’d been caught.

There was no time to feel anything but shock.

The wave swept her swiftly and unforgivingly down, smacking her into the surface and then shoving her below it.

The Each-uisge parted before she could crash on top of them.

Below the surface, she looked around wildly to see that she’d been met by Asgall, Beathag her mother, and Calder, the Sire of the herd.

Calder’s tail, mottled with blue and black, barely moved as he held steady in the water.

By contrast, Beathag’s dark green tail whipped back and forth in agitation.

Shite. Shite, shite, shite.

They all dove down and surrounded her.

Asgall’s eyes were bright with malice, Beathag’s with rage.

Calder’s were only cold with purpose.

How much had they seen?

Had they just witnessed her human transformation?

They must have. How had they known to wait for her here, and how had they found out?

She’d been so careful.

They would question her and then undoubtedly condemn her.

Banishment could be her fate, and then where would she go?

Maybe she should just tell the truth.

She wanted to be a Stormhorse.

Her rule-breaking was in aid of that, and she hadn’t betrayed the herd’s existence.

It might be best to say that—right away, in fact?

She opened her mouth to speak.

Her mother struck first.

Without a word, Beathag head-butted Haera in the chest, driving her backward.

Then she did it again.

Before Haera could get her bearings, Asgall’s tail slammed against her fins; together, he and their mother sent her tumbling head over tail.

Her front legs flailed as she tried to right herself, but then Beathag’s teeth sank into her shoulder.

This was no reproving maternal nip, nor even the more serious bites her mother had given her in times of anger.

Her mother tore into her hide, drawing blood while Haera cried out.

Asgall laughed and slammed his own head into her back, this time pitching her forward so she was forced to look the Sire in the eye.

Haera tried to say, Wait, but only “whuh” came out before Beathag’s shell-edged hooves cut into the side of her neck, a hot slice of pain.

Her wounds were already stinging from the salt.

The Sire did nothing.

He watched impassively.

Haera muffled her pained cries.

A beating was preferable to exile, where she’d be vulnerable to predators and famine.

This might be Calder’s mercy, perhaps in deference to the memory of her father.

If she endured it stoically, then it’d be over.

Along with her dreams. Calder would decree Haera join the ranks of broodmares posthaste.

“Sire!” she cried pitifully.

“Let me explain why?—"

“Silence,” Calder said, even as Beathag lunged again. Together, Haera’s mother and brother kicked and slapped and bit her, again and again until her body no longer felt like a body but a breathless sack of pain. She burned white-hot with agony from muzzle to fin. Her flesh seemed tender enough to be eaten without chewing.

When would it end? When would they be satisfied? She had broken herd law, yes. Her family was not fond of her, yes. But this ?—

It was only by chance that she rolled upward when Asgall’s tail passed beneath her in a vicious swish, fast and hard enough that it would have snapped her spine if he’d connected.

It was then she realized the beating wouldn’t be over. They wouldn’t be satisfied until they’d torn her to pieces. This wasn’t a reprimand. It was an execution. Her own mother and brother were going to kill her.

“Stop!” she cried. “Mother! I didn’t betray us. Nobody knows about the herd. I just wanted to?—”

Calder spoke, cutting her off. “Your brother has told me you do not wish to breed. I see now you’d rather take a hideous form than follow the course of nature. Banishment’s too good for you. Your mother and brother will erase the shame you brought upon them.”

An honor killing? Oh, by the depths, no one ever turned back from those. “No, wait! I?—”

Calder nodded at Beathag, who bobbed next to Haera. “I’ll trust you to do your duty. Finish her.”

Beathag’s eyes held no hint of reluctance or remorse. “We both will. My son and I will atone for her.”

“Sire,” Haera croaked. Her ribs ached. “Please, I did it for a noble reason. I was trying to?—”

Before she could finish, Beathag’s fin cracked across her face again. Haera tumbled, and when she opened her eyes again, the Sire had swum away.

He was gone, and if Haera’s family showed mercy to her, then he wouldn’t have to know. She could leave and never return, taking her chances in the open ocean. At least banishment was better than death . Maybe the unthinkable would happen, and Beathag would spare her daughter’s life after all.

“I’ve had many disappointments,” her mother said. “You, the worst of all.”

Hope collapsed in Haera’s chest like one of Jonathan’s structures made from playing cards. Beathag looked even more merciless now, if that was possible.

Asgall—as if sensing he was the second-worst disappointment—took this as his cue to strike Haera again. He used less force than before, and he laughed. Now that the Sire was gone, it seemed he felt free to take his time about hurting her.

Haera wheezed, “I only wanted to help our family…after my father…”

“Don’t dare speak of your father.” Beathag bared her teeth. “And you do nothing for our ‘family.’ You think only of yourself.”

She tore into Haera’s shoulder again. Haera yowled in agony. She’d never been on fire, but this pain reminded her of the awful flames in Jonathan’s fireplace. This must be what it was like to burn.

She was a fighter, a hunter, wasn’t she? She couldn’t be so wholly passive, so complicit in her own death. She could strike back at Beathag, and she’d better do it fast. Beathag was smaller than she was, and not nearly as strong. Haera could draw her mother’s blood in one final gesture of defiance.

She looked into Beathag’s eyes and saw only loathing, relentless and cold. “Always, you shame me,” Beathag said. “You’ve never been who you’re supposed to be. And now you’re nothing at all.”

The strength drained from Haera at once, as if Beathag had sliced a hoof across her jugular. She floated uselessly in the water, blood drifting slowly from her salt-stung wounds.

“My son,” Beathag said. “She tried to take what you should have had.”

Behind Haera, Asgall snarled. She’d nearly forgotten about him.

“You failed me too,” Beathag said. “With that selfsame human, was it not?”

“He tricked me,” Asgall rasped. “I wasn’t like her. I didn’t go ashore or betray our kind!”

You transformed and got on a rock, Haera thought, but didn’t say—Beathag cut her off.

“And you never will. No more of my family will I lose to those stinking creatures. You both are mine . You’re for the ocean, my son.” Beathag glanced at Haera, who floated and ached. “Your sister’s bones will be too. That is all the kindness I can offer.”

Jonathan’s kindness was different. That was a strange thought to have just now. It had to come from blood loss. To think…the sea held her death, but on land was a human who’d made her tea and taught her to read…

“End this now,” Beathag told Asgall.

End it. Yes. As she began to sink toward the ocean floor, her tail limp, Haera thought an ending wouldn’t be so bad. Her body might feel like one big bruise, one long snapping bone, but her mind was mercifully numb.

She looked up at the surface and closed her eyes. Her last sight shouldn’t be the family that hated her. Until now, she had not realized they did. I am nothing at all .

Asgall’s teeth snapped at her neck. “You dared approach him,” he whispered. “You dared .”

Jonathan, again. Of course Asgall would punish Haera for taking something he didn’t even want, something he’d surrendered. Typical. What was the point in responding? All was lost, wasn’t it?

Then, behind her eyelids, appeared a woman in a nun’s habit, her eyes closed and her face pale with sorrow. Her hands were clasped at her breast. Sister Madeleine. Tall and graceful, and…

And beautiful, the most beautiful thing Haera had ever seen…

“Angel,” Sister Madeleine whispered, “I’m so afraid.”

Afraid? Afraid of what? What could threaten her when she stood alone, praying?

“If you’re there, if you’re good, please guide me now. Protect me.”

Sister Madeleine needed protecting? Haera curled more deeply into herself as Asgall dealt her a particularly vicious blow. She could protect nobody like this, least of all herself. What good would she be to Sister Madeleine? Nothing…I am nothing…

Asgall swam backward, beating his tail, building up force to turn on her. Haera closed her eyes again, listening desperately.

“I’ll do what you said, as soon as I can. It might take a while, but ? —”

Asgall laughed. The current shifted. He was closing in.

Sister Madeleine pressed her clasped hands to her lips. She murmured, “I’ll return to you. I swear it.”

Haera opened her eyes. Asgall was right there. His mouth was open, his teeth razor sharp.

She struck him in the mouth with her hooves. When he reared back, blood flowed from his muzzle.

And then she fled.

Each-uisge did not flee, but they also didn’t do a lot of the things she’d done already, and she knew exactly where she was going. There would be no more pleas for mercy, no more curling up and waiting to die.

Her woman had called to her, for her, and Haera was not nothing .

She wasn’t as strong as Asgall, but she was faster than he was, and for sure she was both stronger and faster than their mother. She was injured, but not yet broken, and although she couldn’t fight, she could try to escape.

Rage could drive her. Betrayal could fuel her. But nothing, nothing could propel her forward so powerfully as hope.

For it had been no hallucination—Sister Madeleine had called to her. Haera didn’t know how, but Jonathan had said something similar when they’d met: that he still heard Asgall calling to him sometimes. Perhaps that had been more than idle human dreaming. When the bond formed between an Each-uisge and its chosen human prey, if it didn’t consummate in a feast, then what could resolve it?

Of course Sister Madeleine was crying out to her, promising to return to her. Haera couldn’t just give up and die. That wasn’t their destiny.

Return to me, she would have called to Sister Madeleine if she could. I’ll live for you. I’ll survive this, for you.

She could hear her mother and brother pursuing her. Her destination seemed an age away, but it was getting closer with every stroke of her tail, and then, suddenly, the swirling waters were in sight.

Behind her, Asgall shouted, “You’re mad!”

She said nothing to that, just plunged on, and by the time she’d reached the edge of the whirlpool, they’d stopped chasing her. They’d have to be the mad ones to follow her this far. Everyone knew the Witch’s Whirlpool was a deathtrap.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. This was still a better alternative to being killed. Haera threw herself into the current and wondered if she’d snap in two when it took hold of her, dragging her downward to a pit where no creature was meant to go. She curled into the inside edge of the current, extending her neck as much as she dared through the wall of water into the eye of the vortex, and then looked down.

The witch looked back up at her.

Her eyes were black as the pit. At the bottom of the seemingly endless pool, she too whirled around and around, whipping a human corpse through the water with each hand.

By all accounts, one was a human man who’d spurned the witch, and the other was the human woman he’d chosen instead. In return, the witch had chosen revenge, and for this crime she was bound eternally to her victims. Centuries later, neither would let her go. The spinning of the corpses caused the vortex that no one from leagues around would approach. Asgall and Beathag would think Haera was dead for certain.

If she didn’t pull this off, she would be.

“Ancient One—” She struggled to keep her head out of the water wall, leaning down toward the eye of the whirlpool surrounding the witch. “Help me!”

The witch said nothing. She continued to spin in place, whipping the dead bodies around.

“Do you see my wounds? My kind punishes me for pursuing a human—for following my heart, as you followed yours?—”

The witch spun faster. For a second, Haera was sucked back into the whirling water, pulled downward, before she struggled free again.

“You know what it’s like!” she gasped. The closer she was pulled to the bottom, the crueler the current was. Her body was designed to withstand brutal pressures, but not this, and there was dark magic at work besides. “You know how they don’t let go of you!”

The witch—for a moment—slowed. Not stopped but slowed.

Haera thought fast. Brute strength was useless, but flattery might work. “Some called you jealous, but I call you brave. You risked everything for him.” She nodded at the male corpse that clung to the witch’s right hand, perfectly preserved after centuries, clothes and all. “And he was foolish to prefer her .” She nodded at the female, whose red hair fanned out around her face. “I came here to ask your blessing, that I might have even a little of your courage!”

It was a lie, of course, but the witch didn’t know that. She said nothing in reply but kept spinning the two bodies. Haera wondered what the witch would do. Nobody knew what happened to creatures who got too close to her. She couldn’t use her hands, but her teeth were sharper than any shark’s.

“Help me!” Haera screamed again, just as she’d called to Sister Madeleine a turn ago.

The witch looked up at her, her eyes darker and colder than the depths. Haera stared back down, even as her bleeding tail beat uselessly against the currents that were now starting to pulverize her. Her ribs had never hurt so badly as they did now.

The witch said, “You will fail.”

Fail? May the depths save Haera if this creature could see the future. There were all kinds of rumors about her abilities—but if she could do that, wouldn’t she have foreseen her own doom? She couldn’t be right, not when Sister Madeleine herself had appeared in what must have been a vision.

“I won’t, Ancient One,” she pleaded. “She calls to me. She needs me!”

The witch stared at Haera, spinning in time with her. Haera looked back into those black eyes, as voracious as the whirlpool she’d created. She was a creature of hunger and need, like Haera herself. She might understand, she might show mercy, and…

“Try, then.” The witch’s voice sounded as if it had been dragged across a seabed full of broken shells. How long since she had last spoken? “Try, fail, and despair.”

“No. I’ll succeed, and?—”

“Fail. Despair. Come back.”

Haera stared at her. With every passing second, as the water battered her and she lost more blood, it became more difficult to focus, much less make sense of those words. “Come back?”

The witch’s eyes, for a moment, held more than darkness. They held fire, hotter than anything in Jonathan’s home, hot enough to turn the sea to smoke if she didn’t bank it.

“Bring me your despair,” she said.

Haera’s head spun like the whirlpool. That wasn’t a prophecy—and something about the way the witch said it didn’t even sound like a command.

It sounded like a bargain.

She didn’t know what the witch was bargaining for. Perhaps she only wanted to see someone else fail as she’d done and thus share in her suffering. It didn’t matter. Haera would take any terms.

“I will,” she gasped. “If I fail, I’ll come back. With my despair.” Whatever that meant. Despair wasn’t something you could carry in a treasure chest. Not that it mattered, because she sure as sunlight was never coming back here. The vision of Sister Madeleine had given her all the hope she’d ever need. “I promise!”

As soon as she’d said the words, the dead man’s mouth opened. So did the dead woman’s. Together, they began to scream. Their long-silenced voices were louder than the howl of any tempest. Haera’s head tossed backward and she was lost in the water again, buffeted by its uncaring power. It was still less terrifying than the sound of the murdered lovers.

The witch’s voice cut through the screams as if it were slicing through a wave to the other side. “Agreed,” she said.

Haera’s head made it back through the water wall, just in time to see the witch throw one hand upward: the one gripped by the man she’d loved. The whirlpool’s wild current shifted. It caught Haera, lifting her higher even as it whipped her around, away from the stronger force at the base of the vortex and up toward the surface.

And then—suddenly—it let her go. It flung her from its embrace until she drifted limply in a slower current.

Blearily, she looked around to find herself on the whirlpool’s other side, far from where Beathag and Asgall had pursued her. A startled school of pollack swam away the instant her marine tail twitched.

Now she was alone, but her wounds still bled. Predators would catch the scent, and the last thing she needed was to become an orca feast. How far was she from shore? Hopefully not far. She was at the last of her strength. Her wounds would begin to heal soon, but it might not be soon enough.

Moving as carefully as she dared, she fought her way to the surface. Thank the Great Mare, the shore was in sight—but it was another side of the island. In fact, it was the stretch of beach where Haera had first seen Sister Madeleine.

Had the witch known? Was this a seal on their pact?

Right now, she didn’t care. Haera held back a groan—it would take too much energy—and swam for the shore. At this hour of night, it was empty. It seemed like an age before her front hooves grazed the seafloor, and then she had to fight against the waters that wanted to drag her back home.

This time, she didn’t bother with four legs. Her bleeding tail dragged against the rocks and sand as she lugged herself out of the water and, shaking with fatigue, concentrated one more time.

On the shore, beneath the moon, she lost consciousness as her human body collapsed. It, too, bled.

When she woke up, a harsh light shone down onto her face. It was like no sunshine Haera had ever seen. The sky was gone; in its place was a white, flat surface from which the light glared.

She lay on something soft. Her left arm hurt; when she turned her head, painfully, she saw something sharp had been stuck in it, attached to a bag full of clear liquid. She was still naked, and a long piece of cloth covered her from her chest to her feet. Her entire body ached.

A ceiling above her. Walls around her. She was indoors, away from the sea, and weak. This was entirely the human world, and she’d swum right into its arms with no guarantee of welcome.

And she wasn’t alone. Jonathan sat in a chair next to her bedside, regarding her solemnly. Next to him stood a woman in a blue shirt and blue pants. “Welcome back,” Jonathan said. “This is Nurse Kilbright. You’re in her practice. Jorsay only gets a doctor twice a week.”

Was that supposed to mean something? Haera tried to speak and couldn’t. Her chest weighed as much as a dead whale, and her throat hurt.

“I’ve cleaned you off and stitched you up,” Nurse Kilbright said. “You’re healing awfully fast, though.” Her eyes narrowed.

“Why, there’s some luck,” Jonathan said quickly. “Sue, can we have the room for a tick?”

Nurse—Sue?—Kilbright nodded and left. Jonathan watched her go, and when the door closed, he turned back to Haera. “You’ve been out for nearly twenty-four hours,” he said. “Word went round the island of a tall, naked woman who washed up on the shore, beat to shite and back, unconscious and with nobody to claim her. I came as soon as I could.”

He’d come? After the cruel things she’d said to him? She hadn’t even had a chance to apologize. She had a dozen questions, starting with where she was, but she felt fuzzy-headed. Nothing around her seemed real. Instead of anything pertinent, only one word made it out of her dry mouth.

She whispered, “Sorry.”

“I reckon you are. Probably for all sorts of things.” Jonathan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyway, I’m here.”

Haera found another word. It was even harder to say. “Why?”

Jonathan smiled. It was a little soft, a little sad. “Well then, lass,” he said. “What else are friends for?”