Silver glints off the blade as it slashes through the air. The princess doesn’t flinch as blood spatters on her face.
“That’s what I would always do, too.” The princess says. She sounds far away. I wonder if part of her has been banished too. I wonder if those parts of ourselves will ever meet somewhere else, somewhere far away from all of this.
The man sputters, falling to his knees and grabbing his throat. The princess doesn’t move. Of course, a puppet cannot move on its own.
She looks at me and speaks again. “I won’t make this easy for you.”
As if I don’t already know.
“Where do you want me to open a wound?” I ask her. I keep my voice low despite the choking of the man between us. It’s loud, but I know she’ll hear me.
“I don’t.”
I gave her a chance. I slice her hand and wrap it around the man’s throat. Except for his twitching, it truly feels like they’re dolls.
I can’t throw up. I can’t gag. I can’t look away. The dagger drops from my numb hand. I see all of it. The whole nightmare. I’m such a fool.
The man won’t stop struggling. He won’t stop begging, not as his hair whitens, strand by strand, not as his voice dwindles, raw and gasping. I see the princess’s hair, something I’ve gotten used to as white, regain its dark color. But it doesn’t stop there. The man’s skin begins to thin and flake, like withering leaves or wool thrown in fire, slowly curling to ash. His eyes bulge out, made all the more obvious by his failed attempts to blink. His lips crack and start to bleed as they dry out. It’s only a small portion of the blood.
There’s so much blood.
And I’m not covered in it, but somehow I am. Somehow, I feel it on my skin, coating me. What am I doing? I’m standing still, doing nothing yet everything at the same time. I can’t see the princess’s eyes, but I want to. I want her to stop staring into the eyes of a dying man.
It’s obvious the moment it’s over. All the tension leaves his body. He’s only held up by the princess’s hand around his throat. She’s quiet as she lays him on the ground, so gentle it makes the blood around them look warm.
Mare whimpers behind me, and I don’t know what to do with the knowledge that he watched the same thing I did. That he stood by as it all happened, like another puppet whose strings I didn’t move. Why didn’t I turn him away? Why didn’t I fight him about coming?
He wanted to come, I remind myself.
I turn to look at him and expect tears, but all I see is him biting his lips and holding his head with one hand. He must be feeling the surge of samay in the princess, amplified by the stone in her chest. He didn’t make a single sound until the power hit him.
The power I’m still incapable of feeling.
The princess doesn’t waste any time. She steps away from me and the body. She sways on her feet, but flinches away from me when I reach out to make sure she doesn’t fall. She stumbles in the sand and makes it a few feet away before crumbling to the floor. Her breathing is ragged. She’s gasping.
“Princ–”
“Don’t fucking call me that,” she says between clenched teeth. I’ve never heard her curse as much as today. I've never seen her like this at all.
No, that's not true. I saw her like this in Lima, gearing up to teleport in a wave of emotionally driven mimicry.
She’s winding up her power. Little by little, her hair stands as if electrified. She looks godly, unnaturally powerful. She doesn’t blink as she kneels and slams her healing hand into the ground, her fingers cracking again beneath the pressure. But this force isn’t a simple punch. It’s an earthquake.
The ground trembles. The earth splits. The water in front of us rises and then falls as an island rises from its depths. Isla del Sol is a few meters away from us in a mere minute. Through the crashing waves of the disturbed lake, I see fins. Sirens. They call to me in desperation, and I know, as certain as fate, that they will take me to the island.
All that’s left for me to do is go.
Yanami heals her hand and stands up. Her hair falls, only a few streaks of white scattered throughout.
Mare walks up to me and reaches for my hand. The moment I feel his touch, I yank my hand away.
“You remember the way back to the house, right?” I ask. He doesn’t respond. He just looks at me, brows beginning to furrow. “Head there now while I help the princess start her boat.”
“Why aren’t we leaving for the trials now? We don’t have time,” he says.
I look at him, really look at him, and my mouth drops in surprise. A new form of nausea bubbles in my stomach, something I want to cover up with disbelief. Because Mare thinks he’s going on the trials on Isla del Sol with me.
“You’re not going on the trials with me,kori,” I say, every word slow and deliberate.
