Page 97 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“Lorelei!” Sylvia called as she struggled with her bonds. “A little help would be appreciated!”

She crashed back into herself with a gasp. “Can’t you make them stop?”

“I’m afraid not!”

Lorelei’s hands were trembling violently. She was drenched in cold sweat. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t go near the water without completely losing her senses, but she couldn’t let Sylvia die.

Johann had left his backpack abandoned on the ground. Her hands were utterlyuseless, numb with terror and nerve damage both. With a shout of frustration, she struck them against the earth. Pain shot through her so ruthlessly, her vision whited out.

Still functioning, then.

She fumbled to open the pack, then found a scalpel tucked into his medical kit. She hesitated only a moment before taking Sylvia’s confiscated saber as well.

A nixie surged from the depths of the pool, reaching for Sylvia. Lorelei threw an arm out, tugging on the water with all her willpower. She had not accounted for how easy it would be to manipulate water this aether-dense. It leapt to her call like a well-trained hound. A wave burst from the surface, knocking the nixie back from Sylvia with far more force than Lorelei intended. When it resurfaced, it snarled with thwarted rage.

“Incredible,” she murmured.

But she didn’t have any more time to waste. Lorelei hurried to Sylvia’s side and grabbed her elbow. Although it was excruciating to hold the scalpel, she sawed through Sylvia’s restraints as quickly as she could. The rope came undone with asnapand fell to the ground in a heap. She yanked Sylvia to her feet.

“Come on,” Lorelei shouted over the scream of the nixies.

Hand in hand, they ran.

They didn’t make it far before Sylvia stumbled on an upturned root. A strangled sound escaped her, and on instinct, Lorelei reached out to catch her. By some miracle, she managed to steady them both. Even through her gloves and layers of linen, the heat of Sylvia’s body was searing.

“Be careful,” she murmured, if only to fill the fragile silence between them. Her breath stirred the wispy curls around her temples.

For a moment, Sylvia stared dazedly up at her. And then she blinked, and her anger was like a dam breaking. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

Once again, Lorelei was confronted with how deeply and utterly she had ruined things between them. Now, she knew, was the time for groveling penitence and heedless self-immolation. And yet, old habits were far harder to quash than she’d ever imagined. Try as she might, she could not take the high road. She could not be wrong with anything resembling grace. Her temper spiked hopelessly, and she dumped Sylviaunceremoniously on the ground. “I suppose I should have left you to die, then!”

Sylvia recovered instantly. Before Lorelei could take a step back, she had sprung to her feet and drawn her saber. The point quivered a bare inch from Lorelei’s nose, winking in the dull sunlight. “Maybe you should have. I should kill you for what you’ve done.”

They made a sorry pair. Both of them were breathing heavily, drenched in blood-soaked water. Sylvia’s hands were as wrecked as Lorelei’s now. Every finger was swollen and mottled blue from the pressure of her restraints, and the wound the alp had given her was weeping again. Her arm trembled with the effort of holding up her blade.

“Do it,” Lorelei said.

Sylvia hesitated. The look in her eyes was something likeregret—likepity. “It’s dishonorable to strike an unarmed opponent.”

“Fuck you. Fuck honor. Look around you! There is no honor in this world.”

“Excuseme? How dare you speak to me so crassly?”

“I am not unarmed,” Lorelei snarled. With a flick of her hand, water burst from herwaterskin—easierto command here than it had ever been before. It spiraled around her menacingly. Never before had she felt as powerful or as wretched. “Once a viper, always a viper. Isn’t that right? So kill me. You would be a fool not to. This is how it was always going to end between us.”

Sylvia’s expression was unreadable. “No.”

“Then strike me, at least!”

Punish me. Lorelei couldn’t do it herself, not in a way that mattered.

At Sylvia’s silence, Lorelei seethed. She wouldn’t even do her the honor of a dueling scar. Maybe that was the greatest punishment of all: that after all this, Sylvia found ways to remind her of her station, of all the things she could never have because of it. “Even now, you’d spite me?”

Sylvia’s face crumpled. And then she started crying.

“I...ah. . .” All of Lorelei’s anger extinguished in an instant, replaced instead with an obliterating panic. “What is this? What are you doing?”

“I can’t bear it.” Sylvia dropped her saber and slumped to the ground again. Burying her face in her hands, she groaned. “I killed Johann.”