They enter in a heap, blackened with sand embedded in their skin like soot—Ola is worst off, the length of her right side a full rash of pits and protrusions.
“What happened to you?”
“A mine. Stupid humans. Some bull fish got too close and it went off not feet from us.”
I swim up to Ola, hands out. “May I?”
“May you what?”
“Heal you.”
The girls exchange a look. I press. “My aunt was called the Healer of Kings for a reason. Let me try. It won’t hurt, and your father won’t be able to tell when he visits you in your captivity.”
In response, Ola turns her head away, the sand-blasted portion of her body edged toward my hands. I press my palms lightly on the curve of her neck up to her ear, where the grains of sand first appear embedded in her skin.
“Forsjá, afli, fullting, li∂.”
Ola braces and then melts under the press of magic. Her quick breath slows; her heartbeat normalizes. In a shimmering shower, the sand dislodges itself, falling to the sea floor below. The micro-pits in her flesh smooth over until there’s nothing left but unblemished skin.
I remove my hands and face the other girls. “Who’s next?”
Once they’re clean and whole again—a simple matter of minutes later—I can’t hold my questions back anymore. “Did you make contact with Runa?”
“Yes,” Eydis confirms. “But we don’t have your ring.”
“Runa went to fetch it right before the blast,” Signy explains.
“Fetch it? No retrieval spell?”
They shake their heads. “We got the sense that even being in the open was dangerous for her, let alone doing that sort of magic.”
Of course it would be. The palace must be on the lookout for both her and Alia after the incident.
“But we did learn your knife is safe!” chimes in Ola, rubbing a hand over her newly healed arm.
Eydis explains. “Runa says the knife slipped from Alia’shand on the balcony and went into the waves beneath the king’s window. There was a little cove she was always yammering about to Runa late at night, something that butts up to the kingdom.”
I know exactly where that inlet is. I could look down on it from the cliff where my home sat under the watchful eye of the castle. Father would bring particularly unwieldy catch—a full whale and the like—straight up to the castle through that inlet rather than carting it through the streets. The kitchen maids would meet him, and they’d carry the thing on a shoulder apiece like pallbearers at a funeral.
“Thank you,” I say.
“She seemed to think if you were able to get the knife, plus the ring, she might be able to satisfy the magic... all she’d need is the king’s blood.”
“Which she might have!” Ola pipes in.
This is news to me. I saw that boy dead in his bed myself, his lifeblood wasted. Still, the hope in the sisters’ voices is so tangible, I wish I could tell them that with the king’s blood, Runa would return to the sea—to them. But I can’t. Not with any confidence. Alia didn’t kill Niklas—Runa did, and their deals were linked.
I shift my tentacles beneath me. Is it possible? A sacrificewasmade to Urda, but no, I can’t give these girls false hope. If Urda accepts this boy’s life for Runa’s, we’ll know for sure in one day’s time.
“I’m afraid she’s mistaken,” I tell Eydis, and I’m trulysorry to do so. “But were you able to warn her about your father’s plans?”
“Yes,” the eldest confirms, her eyes far away. “She says the remaining witches are weak and in no state to fight him. They’re barely holding it together in trying to undermine the human war already raging.”
“They’re going to destroy something... U-boats?” Signy adds.
The fire spell, failing repeatedly in my view, comes to mind.
“But we don’t know how. She says they can barely spell soup, whatever that is,” Ola says, lips pinched. “And that’s exactly when she started talking about trying to come back. She believes if she can grow Father more ríkifjor, it’ll prevent an attack.”
