I expect her to say it but then she signs something else.
Why? Why are you here? Why, if it’s true, did you do this? Why did you see the witch? Why did you make a deal?
Yet another “why” in the shape of her fingers, she finally falls into wracking, silent sobs, and collapses into me. The heaviness in her heart pulls her off-center. I nearly fall back under the weight of her, but I will my new legs to be strong. Her shoulders heave and shake as I lean us against the nearest building.
I kiss her hair with all the love and fierceness I hopeshe can see. “Alia, listen to me. I didn’t sacrifice my voice, no. But I did make a deal with the witch.”
She pulls back and points a finger to her chest.
For me.
“Always for you. Without you, there is no me.”
Alia shakes her head hard enough to rip free of my embrace. She falls against the wall.
No. No. No—you shouldn’t have.
“It’s done. I’m here.” I grab her hand and will her to look at me, not to get stuck in the weeds of guilt. “You want me to survive? You need to survive too.”
Alia draws in a breath as big as the sun, closing her eyes as her lungs fill and then release. She opens her eyes, and they’re on mine—ice blue on amber, two pieces of one whole. Alia remains still long enough that I wonder if we’ll spend the next two days like this, in a silent showdown. Finally, she pushes my hair behind my ears, and I can tell she is distracting herself from this decision by focusing on my haircut.
What must we do?
And so I tell her. Of the knife. The ring. The blood. When I’m done, she raises a brow, still trying to make sense of the exchange. Of how what she gave equals what I did in the witch’s magical equation.
It’s then that I tell her the rest. Of Father’s wrath. The injured witch. The ríkifjor seeds from her garden. Our sisters’ sacrifices—surely if I can’t magic my hair back,neither can they... and Father will notice.
Your hair really does look stupid,she says, but it’s just a deflection.
With each passing detail it all seems to sink in. The flush in Alia’s cheeks pales, her lip trembles. The cords of her neck tense and release. She signs a final question.
If we fail, you won’t die, like me? Instead, you’ll be human?
I thought Niklas’s rejection would hurt her the most—that I came because I knew she wouldn’t be enough to gain the love she wants so badly—but now my opinion wavers. By the looks of it, the fact that I will be human if I fail when she would be human if she succeeds is just as heartbreaking.
“Yes,” I say softly. “If I fail, I’m doomed to be human. But if you fail, I won’t want to live—above or below, it will all be too painful.”
When I’m finished, she’s looking me straight in the eyes. And maybe it’s because she’s realized now that we’ve always been together and always should be. Maybe it’s because she knows there’s no other way. Or maybe it’s just because she loves me. But she nods.
King Asger Niklas Bryniulf Øldenburg V must die.
11
Runa
WE MUST SATISFY VERY SPECIFIC MAGICAL CRITERIA.IFwe do anything else, we’re murderers plain and simple. Maybe we are anyway. I don’t know.
All I do know is, we don’t have a choice.
Still, it’s not easy to think about. If I break it into its components—murder, blood magic, theft, fleeing the scene of the crime—it becomes hard to see the good in it. The point. The ends, justified by the means.
If we fulfill the magic’s requirements, Alia will live and I will go home. But a man will be...
I can’t—we can’t—think of it as anything other than what we must do.
All that remains now iswhenthe deed will be done.
If I’d thought we could’ve gotten out alive, I would’ve grabbed Alia’s hand the second she nodded, marched intothe castle, and made her end it. But that would’ve been a mistake—we returned to an impossible parade of banquets and teas and beach bonfires with literally everyone in the kingdom, witnesses all.
