Chapter 25
The shell shatters between our pressed-together hands, pieces slicing into my palm as I yank back from Silas. He lunges after me and grabs my wrists, holding both of us down on our knees.
I was wrong to think the finfolk didn’t favor him.
All along, when the rest of us had to guess what favors might please the finfolk enough to lift our curses, he knew. They told him exactly what he had to do, had to give.
He’s saying my name, over and over again with increasing desperation, but his voice sounds muffled, his face blurred by the tears in my eyes.
As though I’m underwater, I’m sinking down, away.
I’m still dimly aware of the finfolk queen watching us, trailing us, our boat drifting gently toward shore. But none of it seems to matter.
“You lied to me,” I hear myself say. I try to pull away, but his grip on me is iron, even as his voice breaks.
My whole body shakes, paralyzed by a world that is suddenly overwhelming in every sense.
I can hear my own skin tearing as the scales erupt all over.
I can see the tiny veins in Silas’s eyes.
Hear the sounds of battle raging onshore and the mournful clicking of whales in the far deep water.
“I’m sorry,” he says desperately, his breath coming fast. “I’m so sorry.” Behind him, the queen watches us, her head tilted and her eyes shining with something like curiosity, or maybe hunger. Flames reflect in them. Past the dissipating fog, Kielstraat is burning.
“You—” I break off with a gasp as pain surges through me, a tide of needles rolling through my limbs.
My hands twitch violently in the circle of Silas’s hold.
The events of the past weeks warp and splinter in my memory—the night of the shareholders’ meeting, the shape of him in the doorway of my room.
How strange it seemed that he would risk everything to take me to Drekja, with nothing but a promise in return.
My chest aches. Physically aches, like someone has cold fingers in my ribs and is prying me apart. I know this feeling. I had it when my parents died and then again when I learned August meant to kill me. Everything is coming apart.
“You never believed I could end whaling,” I say, speaking the realization out loud. My voice sounds distant. “You never meant for me to come back to Abbonheim—”
Silas gasps and at first I think it’s because of the words, until I smell the blood. I look down to where our forearms are clasped together. Blood wells up where my nails have sunk through his skin.
“It’s different now,” he pleads, staring into my eyes. His breath hisses out through his teeth as I sink the claws into him, but he doesn’t let go. The monster in me stretches, scenting the air. Whispers to me to let it out, that it’s time.
“Why? Why is it different?” My pulse charges in my veins, every slamming heartbeat sending a burning sensation through me, gathering in my fingertips, underneath my skin.
A monstrous queen wants me for unknown purposes.
Whalers and finfolk clash on the beach of Kielstraat as the settlement burns behind them.
Silas has been lying to me this whole time.
Before when my heart started to break, I told myself Kit and Lydia needed me. When I learned about August, I told myself it was a trick. Now I’m all out of lies to tell myself. Maybe I need to be a monster to survive this.
His lips move soundlessly for a moment before the words form, a pained whisper. “I just wanted silence.” Tears track down his cheeks; I can smell the salt of them. His grip remains painfully tight, pinning me in place though I struggle. “I wanted sleep. I didn’t know I could want anything else.”
“And now you want me,” I spit. “Is that it?”
He flinches, the truth in my words hitting him like a blow.
Because whether or not he changed his mind at some point, everything Silas has done is perfectly in line with his bargain.
Moving my siblings and me like pieces on a chessboard so that we would end up here, alone in the far north, dependent on him for survival as the other humans scream and scatter and our enterprise burns down.
“I trusted you,” I say uselessly. Another tidal wave of pain breaks through me, bringing tears to my eyes. “We all trusted you.” Finally I manage to wrench away and scramble to my feet in the little boat, stumbling back from him. But I can’t get far enough. The smell of his blood is dizzying.
“Annie,” Silas whispers. He shifts slowly from crouching to standing, keeping his eyes on me all the while. Wide, unblinking, fearful eyes.
He’s afraid of me.
I’m afraid of me.
All of us cursed are the same, I think bitterly.
Faced with a fate we cannot accept, we’ll do whatever we must to escape.
Rats chewing off our own tails to get out of a trap, even if it means bleeding to death.
And Silas is no better. All his noble talk about accepting the visions, of living with the nightmares, it was all a bluff.
He wanted to escape his curse just like anyone else.
What did it matter if it cost the lives of three people he hated? What will happen when our boat hits the beach, looming ever larger in front of us? Will he go find Kit and Lydia himself?
He takes a step toward me, off-balance.
“Don’t,” I snarl, stopping him in his tracks as a wave of pain sweeps over me, washing my vision in red. My hands twitch with the desire to tear into something, anything. I turn to the queen and shout as loud as I can, “What do you want with us?”
She turns to look directly at me for the first time, and it takes everything in me not to flinch away.
The force of that voice directed at me is bone-shaking. YOU ARE THEIR LEADER, ARE YOU NOT, LITTLE ONE? she intones, a pleased curl to her voice somehow. IF I HAVE YOU, I HAVE POWER OVER THE WHALERS.
I howl a desperate laugh. “They don’t care about me!” The wind steals my words away. “They don’t need us.” I fling my arm out to point at the beach. The whalers of Kielstraat are abandoning the burning settlement, sprinting for the ships tied at dock. “Look, they’re leaving us behind!”
Those black eyes rest impassively on me, and I realize with a swell of dread—she doesn’t believe me.
I think of the whale we killed and its calf.
How the hunter’s motives are always inscrutable to the prey.
I could just as well ask Mance to explain to the whales why we need their magic as I could convince the finfolk queen that we Fairfaxes are useless to her.
That the whalers won’t trade anything for us.
The world moves slowly around me, fear slipping away in the face of something darker and colder. On shore, the buildings are in flames and the small shapes of men sprint for the docks as the finfolk stream after them, fluid as smoke on the wind.
“Give me another bargain,” Silas begs the queen, dodging her giant hand as our boat comes up on the beach where we butchered the whale, sliding between the spindly shapes of docks. “Please, anything.”
BE STILL. BE HEALED. The queen’s words, bracketed with bone-jarring clicks, slice the air. I can hear the frustration in them. IF YOU WILL NOT, I’LL TAKE THE FAIRFAX CHILDREN FIRST AND COME BACK FOR YOU.
Horror sinks into my stomach as the finfolk queen turns from us and rises out of the water, gliding toward Kielstraat, toward my siblings. Water streams off her body, shiny and supple like a seal or a shark, as she unfolds herself to her full height.
Taller than any of the flames devouring Kielstraat.
Tall as a whale is long. Her limbs move in a rhythmic lurch over the beach.
Tendrils of water wreathe her feet, her arms and legs and hands.
They move with her and expand and contract as she breathes.
The sailors on shore scream and scatter, falling over themselves to get away and get to the docks.
She ignores them. She will find Kit and Lydia and take us all, to what end I don’t want to think.
Silas’s task was to deliver us three Fairfaxes to her. In return, she promised to lift his curse. A promise she said was binding.
The finfolk abide by their bargains. That’s what Mama always said. If the queen is unable to lift Silas’s curse, if her side of the bargain goes unfulfilled, will she let us go?
The monster uncurls inside me. I can’t physically stop the queen. The only thing I can do is make it impossible to lift Silas’s curse. And the only way to make sure of that—
The spindly shadows of the docks, outlined in flame, play over Silas’s face as he looks at me and seems to read my thoughts even as they turn and click into place. His eyes fly wide. “Annie, please—”
The bloodlust in me rears up hotter and higher than ever, finally given a purpose, as he spins and leaps from the boat. My clouded mind turns red as I spring after him, the enchanted boat disintegrating under me.
It’s him or us. It was always him or us.
“Cast off ropes!” a man yells as I hit the water, from above on the deck of the Heralder. Mance—I distantly recognize the harsh, rough voice. “Shove off!”
The Heralder creaks and groans as I chase Silas through the shallow water. Ships aren’t meant to move from stationary to full speed ahead, and it lurches jerkily forward as the just-dropped sails catch the wind.
Not everyone makes it. One woman is on the gangplank when the ship decouples from the dock; the gangplank clatters into the sea, and she with it.
Two more men launch themselves off the end of the dock as the Heralder pulls away; one catches himself on a stray rope and clings to the hull; the other falls short and starts swimming, but the ship leaves him behind.
And there’s a glimmer of red-gold on deck: August leaving me behind too.
My senses register all of it, each sound and smell and color impossibly sharp and clear, but none of it matters. All that matters is Silas stumbling out of the waves.
He betrayed us. Turned us over to the finfolk.
It’s him or us.
He gets a few steps up the beach before I catch him, claws tearing at his shirt and skin and bringing us both down together.
I land heavily on his back, bracing my legs on top of his, the tide licking at our heels.
Hang on tight as he heaves beneath me, trying to throw me off.
He’s taller, heavier, but the monster coils through my veins and gives me strength.
I feel high, victorious, entranced by the smell of his blood.
“Annie,” he gasps as I sink fingers into his hair and wrench his head back, exposing his throat. “Please.”
Him or us.
My other hand pins his wrists down in the sand, but I’ll open his throat with my teeth if I have to. I bend down to press my mouth to his neck, red raging in my head—
“Annie! Stop!” This second voice isn’t Silas’s, and it’s familiar enough to freeze me where I am, looking up for its source.
Lydia sprints full tilt from the burning settlement to the beach, Kit and the rest of the Whistler crew at her heels.
She hardly even seems to notice the finfolk queen looming a short distance away, or the Heralder fighting the tides to abandon us.
Her anguished voice wakes up something in me, shame and grief. They can’t see me like this.
Silas takes advantage of my moment of hesitation, bucking me off him and twisting to shove me away hard. The breath is knocked out of me and I sprawl backward in the sand, rage lighting up my insides and pushing away the doubt.
“Get away from here!” he yells at the others as he scrambles to his feet. I don’t know if he’s warning them away from the queen, or me. “Run!”
Up the beach, the others falter, but it doesn’t matter where they run as long as Silas draws breath. The only way to save my siblings is to nullify the queen’s bargain. I tense my muscles, gathering strength to spring at him again, when a boom from behind me jars my focus.
Kit screams, the sound cutting through me, cold awareness flooding me in its wake. Silas staggers forward.
At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Metal sprouting from his right shoulder blade. The smell of gunpowder and blood. A quivering rope stretched across my field of vision.
As Silas goes to his knees, I turn around, following with my eyes the rope, sagging with slack, that rises all the way up from the harpoon in Silas’s back to the deck of the Heralder.
August stands at the gunwale, easing the harpoon rifle off his shoulder. Each movement twitches the rope as he braces it in the railing, smiling. I stare up at him, disoriented. After everything, is he trying to help me?
Then Mance hands him another rifle as the Heralder churns forward through the unnatural tide.
The second harpoon misses my head by inches; I feel the displaced air on my cheek as it flies past. August’s eyes meet mine, full of malice, as the rope tethering Silas goes taut.
The monster is still hotly alive under my skin, it still wants Silas dead, but his choked cry as he’s pulled backward shreds something in me. He scrabbles to brace the rope with one hand, leaving a bloody furrow in the sand. But the ship pulls him inexorably toward the water.
Fire and ice fill my veins, my head full of fog. The others sprint toward us, yelling, but they’re too far away to stop this. I can’t move, immobilized by the fight raging in my head between me and the monster.
A bolt of lightning forks down to the Heralder’s mainmast, setting the sail ablaze. Thunder booms, and a chorus of screams rises from deck. The queen erupts to her full height, fog flanking her and lightning crackling at her fingertips.
Another bolt strikes between the beach and the Heralder, incinerating the rope tethering Silas. The thunder echos as he collapses in the tide. The queen’s shout shakes the earth, a wordless scream of rage. The Heralder’s flaming sail shudders with it; people clap hands over their ears.
FLEE TO YOUR SHORES, LITTLE CREATURES, the queen shrieks into the burning dark.
A wave rises up all along the bay and trembles there as if held up by strings before washing outward from land, tipping the Heralder dangerously on its side as the ship is shoved out to sea.
With my sharpened vision, I see sailors lose their feet and grab for the rigging as the mast dips so close to the water that the leaping waves put out the fire.
TELL THE HUMANS TO LAY DOWN THEIR BLADES, the queen screams as they flee, UNLESS YOU WISH FOR YOUR GREAT CITIES TO BURN TOO.