The sudden croon of Eusia’s smooth voice inside my head made me flinch. “Dear girl.” This nekgya’s mouth did not move with the same ease that the others I’d encountered had. The jaw cracked, the lips fumbled and showed darkened teeth. “Look how you’ve faded. The light has fled your eyes. Perhaps magic does not suit you, after all.” She snickered. “It did not suit your mother either.”
“It suits no one,” I fumed. “From what I’ve learned of your life, it has suited you least of all.”
She gave a thoughtful, melodious hum. “And why would you say that?”
I stared at the monstrous creature before me. Not Siren, notwoman, not fish, forced to linger, half alive, and my anger rose on a violent tide. “You are cruel. Your body is ruined. You have lived almost the entirety of your life alone—”
“Cruel.” Her mocking cackle echoed in my head, in sync with the laughter of the blank-faced nekgya before me. “Kindness does not keep one alive, Imogen. Magic does. It has given me everything I have ever wanted.” The nekgya’s lips curved like she was trying to smile. “I know what you want,” she said softly. “Better than you do, I suspect.”
“I only want to stop you.”
“You lie.” The nekgya leaned in. “I had beauty once, and a robust body, but they brought me nothing of consequence. I had a home and companionship too, for a time, but they could not endure.” The nekgya tilted her head, and her round eyes flashed in the sunshine. “I was always less than her—than my sister—and so it did not take me long to learn that it waspowerthat I truly craved, darling. Power, and the reverence and fear that came with it.”
“I don’t want that kind of power,” I snapped. “And there is more to life than—”
“Oh, do tell me. What else is there?” Her voice was undeservedly lovely, warm and smooth, but now it grew brittle. “The body fades. Even good love changes and leaves. Homes crumble. None of them can be trusted, Imogen. None of them can keep us alive and safe.”
Alive. Safe.I was desperate for those things, surely. I’d spent my life in pursuit of them. Perhaps it was foolish, but I wanted to believe that the sweet, fleeting moments life could offer were not frivolous or pointless. That even though bodies and love and homes decayed, we did not fight like mad for them so that we could have them forever. Having them for a time was enough.
But Eusia spoke with such conviction, with a surety that made me feel weak.
“Very well.” My heart felt so heavy. I lifted the cup of Halla’s blood and the dagger between me and the nekgya. “If you believe magic is what Itrulywant, then teach me a spell.”
Eusia went quiet. The nekgya went still. “Hmm,” she finally said, thoughtfully amused. “If you answer a question, then I will teach you, dearest.”
I scowled. “I do not wish to play games.”
“But you will.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “For you need me as badly as I need you.”
I sat quietly, jaw tightening, as the boat bobbed and the waves lapped. “What’s your question?”
“The realm believes magic to be crude and ugly, the exact opposite of Gods’ power, which only picks a few from each generation to make great. But I will tell you: Magic is choosy too. It must suit the body that hosts it. I remember when your mother performed her first and only spell—we were young, and she’d wanted me to teach her how I’d filled a hole in the ground with seawater. She didn’t like that I’d done it; she couldn’t understand how, when I had no God’s power to speak of. So I showed her—”
A sunray must have pierced my gaze because I saw a bright white flash. Suddenly the wind muffled and the sound of the waves dulled. In a beat, my consciousness slipped from my body entirely.
I watched two young women in the sand. The image was strange, wavering and bright. One woman sat in a wide hole that had been dug up the beach, far from the water. Her hair was waving, a warm, honey-edged brown. Her eyes were like coins of amber—like mine. In fact, the angles of her face, the bow of her lips, the line of her neck were all like mine as well.
Ligea.
Beside her, at the edge of the hole, knelt the second young woman. Her hair was the darkest brown, twisted into a heavy braid. Her skin was fairand smooth and dotted from the sun, and while her eyes were very like Ligea’s, coppery and fierce, they glowed with somethingdifferent. Something hard and terrifying.
She watched Ligea, unblinking. “No cheating now.”
“I would not have spent all morning digging only to cheat, Eusia.”
Ligea’s voice had a rasp to it that mine did not. Her nose had a slightly longer slope. From wherever I watched, I tried to strain closer, only for the image to ripple and break. I saw only flashes of Ligea. Her hand at her mouth. Her head thrown back on a scream. Water pouring into the hole from beneath her—
Then I was back in my own body. On the launch. Staring into the awful round eyes of the nekgya.
She’d moved closer, taut with interest. “What did you see?”
My body shook. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, I cannot give you visions, dearest.” She reached up with her maimed hand and swiped a clump of hair from where it hung over my eye. “Tell me now. What did yousee?”
I thought better than to tell her, but I was so shaken, so disturbed at the mention ofvisions,at the thought of being a proper Mage Seer and not just a lost woman playing at one, that I told her about Ligea in the sand, and of her, young and vital beside her.
Eusia was quiet for a very long moment. “Ligea filled the hole with water, but the spell put her into a stupor for days,” she finally said. “It was a strange sickness. She said there had been a screaming between her ears that she could not quiet.” Eusia watched me through the nekgya’s eyes and made a contemplative sound. “But when I perform a spell, I am sating a depthless hunger. I am wider than the realm and deeper than this little sea. Even the pain of it satisfies me now. What need have I for a home, or a whole body, or a lover when magic has become all of that to me and more?”
