Me? What can I do that he can’t?
Impossibly, the sea king smiles. “Want her to live? Turn your polypi into merpeople.”
My polypi were formed from those who died that night I was made—castle guards, Anna. Alia is the only one added by the magic in fifty years. I’ve never questioned what they could be other than creatures subsisting here with me. Anna’s spying is painful enough, but turn her into a mermaid? Turn them all into mermaids?
“I’m not sure that’s possible. I—”
“You better make it possible or that will be a corpse in your arms.”
I look to his mother, thrashing out for oxygen.Stay with me, Ragn.
I take a deep breath and reach for the polypus farthest from me, the lions that lurk at the natural entrance to my lair.“Frjáls líf innan haf, minn polypi.”
I repeat the spell two dozen times over, as fast as I can.
With each repetition, there’s a flash of blinding light—and a soldier who fell during that final battle rises up, peeling off the largest branch of his polypus tree. And a new merman is formed—blank-faced and gray as an Øldenburg statue, but he’s undeniably beautiful, smooth and shiny as a bark-bald tree under the light of a full moon.
Each spell takes something out of me until my words are beginning to slur. Around us, the new mermaids are testing their bodies, moving in a spinning school around the dark waters of my cave, hurtling snatches of silver under the storm-filled sky.
Drawing what little strength I have left, I finish with the polypi closest to me and most important to the sea king—Alia and Anna.
Anna’s polypus is nearly vibrating with excitement, and as I get the words out and tip my fingers up to her branches, she peels off the tree and whirls around, yelling even during the blinding light of her transition, “I’m free!”
She dances around in a little circle, stretching her arms and tail, as I draw a deep breath and turn my attention to Alia, my little cluster of spindly flowers in the shadow of Anna’s tree.
“Frjáls líf innan haf, minn polypi.”
Alia appears in a final flash of brilliant diamond white.She’s instantly recognizable, a marble-and-moon version of herself.
The sea king’s hardened face goes slack with surprise. The magical hold he has on Ragn collapses, and I check her pulse—still alive, barley. Thank Urda.
He drops his hands and swims over to Alia, approaching as if he’s seeing a ghost. “Alia? Is it really you?” He takes her hands. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”
She doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t care. With a wave of his hand, he produces a tiara from seemingly nothing, placing it in her long, flowing hair. A gift, for a daughter who only wanted the one thing she couldn’t have.
Anna’s mouth drops open, jealousy set into her stunning features—unlike myself and my silver hair, she looks not a day older than when I last saw her in human form. When she speaks, it’s again in Alia’s voice. “I’m your daughter too. I was loyal to you. I helped you.”
“Gefa!”He snaps, eyes flashing her way, omitting the name he once gave her.
Before another word of protest, Anna’s voice is no longer her own. The weight of it sits in the sea king’s palm as he passes it to Alia, touching her cheek so gently I’m surprised he’s capable of it. This man as he is now is the kind who only leaves bruises. And he is, but on Anna.
“You’ve done your duty, distracting the witch with thoughts of land, goading her to think she could becomehuman again, but you are no daughter of mine.”
He sneers in my direction, where I clutch his failing mother to my chest. “Fifty years later, and you still don’t know your boundaries, do you, girl?”
The sea king’s eyes flick to his mother. “Not that I should be surprised: more than two hundred years old, and she never learned her boundaries either.” He raises a hand.
“No!” I scream, and try to cover Ragn, turning her pale face into my chest.
“Ykkarr dau∂adar, mó∂ir—mor∂vig!”The spell blasts out of him with the force of a meteor on impact, engulfing Ragn in a haze as dark as a starless night.
Around us, the new merpeople swirl, spinning in a ghastly churn, sharks smelling new blood. The sea king’s eyes are pinned on the shadowy mass.
Love and pain for her oma Ragn is etched plainly in the sadness of Alia’s eyes. Her hands flutter out, as if trying to stop what’s already been done. Sadness envelops Anna too. She was once close with Ragn, but behind the grief in her eyes, I know that fear is brewing. If the sea king will do that to his own mother, what will he do to her?
When the darkness fades, Ragn’s body appears encased in ash, fragile as an eggshell. Gone are her fierce eyes and wild hair. Her heartbeat is silent against my own.
“I didn’t need my mother,” the sea king says, as if he really was born the god of the sea. “She’s been a traitor to me as long as the sea witch has been in this place.” His lipsquirk up with righteousness. “Oh, I know about your little notes,Evie.Your visits. How she admired you for what you did to protect us—her words, never mine.”
