Page 25 of Waters that Drown Us
“A happy ending then,” she says, but it sounds like a question.
“That’s her prize,” I respond simply, a vague answer to an unspoken question.
“For being kind? Unlike her stepsisters?”
“For being quiet. For listening to her mother, and not revealing her secrets. And for being useful, I think,” I muse, knowing I’m projecting my own pain into this children’s story. But I can’t help it. Not when I know the lesson my father was trying to teach me. “Vasilya never complained about her chores, and she always listened to her father, even though he brought that pain into her life. She was rewarded for being docile, and that reward was another person choosing her life for her.”
Branches creek in the distance. This night is not dark, like the one in Vasilya’s journey, even as the sun dips below the horizon. The light of the moon is so bright as it makes its arc across the sky you can see every needle and leaf scattered on the ground around us.
“What would you want your prize to be? For being kind and brave and cunning,” Emily asks. My chest pinches with the words she chose for me. Not docile. Not obedient. Not the parts of Vasilya I was raised to embody, groomed to reflect.
“I would want to choose,” I say easily, knowing what my answer would be without giving it a second thought. “I would want a lifetime of choices. Of being able to dictate my own life without anyone’s influence. No lies, no manipulation, no choices made for me unless I want them to be. The freedom to give upcontrol because I trust someone, not because it’s being taken from me.”
Emily’s holding her breath. I wish I could tell her everything. But she’s sonormal, with her brilliant brain and her research project and her phobias. I can’t turn around and sayI’m sorry, I lied, I’ve faked my death to escape my criminal father and monstrous fiancé, and now I’m becoming a monster so I can kill them before anyone else dies for me, but you might die before I can do that just because you spent time with me, I’m so sorry, please don’t leave me. So I wait for her to say something, anything, so I don’t have to.
“I think you’re very brave. And I hope you get the life you deserve.”
Chapter 12
Emily
“Get in the water, you ridiculous child!”
I absolutely willnotget in the fucking water, thank you very much.
I’m sitting in a much smaller boat than the one we usually use for research. I still have no idea how she convinced me to get on this fucking thing, and I’m finding myself longing for the solid feeling of the Class II under my feet. I ammissingadifferentboat.
Somehow, Alice is fixing my fear issue. Just not the way she intended to.
But this is a bridge too far. Alice is treading water, her lithe body covered in a thin, pale blue swimsuit that clings to her angles and small curves. She has a pair of comically large goggles on her head, which have a breathing tube attached to the side.
“We’re supposed to be doing research,” I grumble, pulling my swim cover over myself and crossing my arms. “And anything could be down there.”
“Emily, you can see the damn ocean floor from here,” Alice scoffs, rolling her eyes as she adjusts the goggles back onto her face. She takes a deep breath and dives beneath the surface, which she’s done about a dozen times now, and the world issilent for about one hundred and eighteen seconds before she pops back up on the surface.
“See, I can swim to the bottom and back. It’s less than thirty yards.”
Somehow, that’s not comforting at all.
Alice paddles back over to the glorified raft I’m parked in and grabs the side, hoisting herself up so she’s leaning on her stomach, her lower half still in the water.
“You can’t be afraid here. You’re completely in control,” she says serenely, removing her goggles so she can push her hair off her forehead. Her eyelashes are nearly white and covered in dewdrops, reminding me of mermaids and ice princesses and other animated leading ladies.
“I beg to differ,” I grunt, looking over the side of the boat with disdain. “Seems like you’re the boss here.”
I could face this fear, like I do all others. I thought about it when Alice said she had another adventure for me. Like on the cliff and the research boat, I could swallow down the bile creeping up my throat, force my expression to be neutral, and hold my breath until the experience was over.
But after the evening with Alice on the cliff two nights ago, I seem incapable of faking things with her.
She’s clearly not working for her father. I’ve known that she was his victim for a long time, but she’s admitted now, in her own way. Between all the surveillance we’ve done and my personal assessment of her, I can come to Clara with confidence that she doesn’t have anything useful to provide about her father or his operations. It’s been too long, and there have been too many changes in the past half-decade to assume anything she could tell us from her years with him would still hold water.
I haven’t figured out how to convince my cousins not to use her as bait yet. I’ve been avoiding Clara’s request for an updatewhile I try to come up with a plan. But I know I’ll figure it out, because Ihaveto.
Alice deserves a life. One where she’s not hiding from her father, living in fear of his retribution. She deserves truth and honesty and goodness and choices.
And I can’t give her those things, not now. Not until we kill Konstantin, and Ilya as well. But until then, I can stop putting on this mask in front of her. I can be afraid, even if that’s the only version of myself she gets to see in all it’s ugly truth.
“Look at me,” Alice says, drawing my attention back to her. She’s propped herself up even further now, and bends at the waist over the rim of the boat to grab the extra snorkel she brought.