Annemette. I want Annemette. I want my Anna back.
“Child! Evelyn, listen to me. Listen to my age and mistakes. Magic born of pride and spite is unwieldy. It is far too much for your little hands!”
My hands are not little—they are powerful.
I am none of those things, Tante Hansa. I come from a place of love.
Thunder pounds and the magic singes my veins with every crackle of lightning above. The magic is in my palms.
This is right—it will be enough.
From the beach, Tante Hansa shouts again, though her words no longer register in my ears. The men with daggers are almost upon us, the charging waves of the storm keeping them at bay just long enough.
I order the magic a final time.
“Skipta.”
I see Anna’s face at eleven. I see Annemette in my future.
I’m focused on all of it so tightly. All of my concentration. All of my power.
Everything I have is aimed at Urda. Determined. Ready.
The storm rages. My concentration is flawless.
But then a flash of lightning rips across the sky, so bright my eyes spring open.
And I see Annemette is smiling.
Not just smiling.
Laughing.
Her hands cup my wrists and pull them off her shoulders. Her strength is surprising. Her lips twist into a smirk.
“You studied, you tested, you planned, and your solution is to simply ask the magic for an exchange? Like you want a blue dress instead of a red one?”
Magic surges until it is swirling around us. It sparks and undulates. I realize it’s not mine. Not all mine, anyway. The storm was never mine—it has the same feel as the storm on Nik’s birthday. On Iker’s boat earlier that day. The storms are Annemette.
I am blind for the briefest of moments, and then I feel her cool magic welling up from the pit of my stomach, through my lungs, and clutching at my heart. When my vision returns, a cone of water surrounds us—shielding us from the beach.
They’re going to think I did that.
Annemette’s grip tightens as she leans into my ear, as close as Nik just minutes before.
“You know what I think? I think you didn’t really want to save me. You didn’t want to save me any more this time than you wanted me to survive four years ago.”
A gasp escapes my lips.Anna.My Anna. But there’s a knife twist in her words that my Anna didn’t have.
Between Nik’s love and Anna’s resentment, my heart stops beating for a moment.
It thuds back to life, tears stinging my eyes as I try to grab for her face, her hair, my friend. I’ve missed her for so long. Even with all my personal loss, I can’t imagine her pain. But her grip only tightens more and I can’t touch her. “Anna. Oh, Anna, I wanted you to survive. I did a spell that day, but I—”
That smirk twists into a sneer. “Failed. You failed because you didn’t understand, and you wrecked that too.” Her teeth are bared—I don’t recognize her face anymore. The torque of her grip on my hands is cutting off my circulation. “Instead of protecting my life, you caused the black plague with that magic.”
The Tørhed.The minnows at my feet, faceup and inked black, flash in my mind. Dead by my tears. My black tears. The look on Hansa’s face as she saved me. The Tørhed didn’t just start that summer; it started with me that day.
I did it.
