Chapter 27
By the time I crawl out of the sea, the others have retreated up the beach.
They’ve rebuilt the bonfire inside the Livyatan’s rib cage, five small figures huddling around it.
I recognize the silhouettes of Silas, Kit and Lydia, Ezra and Josephine; meanwhile, Teuila and Zimri are a little ways off, digging a hole in the earth.
None of them notice me at first as I straighten up and start to pick my way toward them.
Though it must be close to dawn by now, it’s still dark, thanks to heavy, low-hanging clouds that roll ponderously by overhead, spilling intermittent bursts of drizzle and occasionally revealing slivers of a red-tinged sky.
The world seems changed around me; colors are sharper, scents more muted.
I can’t smell blood anymore, though plenty must have soaked into the beach. Just salt water and smoke.
The cold wind bites at my face, scrapes my bare arms. The fires of Kielstraat have gone out, the embers hissing in the rain, sending plumes of smoke to join the clouds.
When I get closer, I see three dark shapes lying on the sand near where Teuila digs and realize what they’re doing; shock and grief roll through me.
Of course not everyone survived the skirmish with the finfolk on the beach. Certainly there are more bodies out in the bay—the sailors killed when the queen snatched the boats from the surface, or those who drowned swimming after the fleeing Heralder. But it hasn’t sunk in before this.
Every whaler on every voyage knows they might not return, I remind myself, but it feels hollow.
Silas, of course, is the first one to notice me when I’m some ten yards away. He stands, still unsteady on his feet, his gaze finding mine.
Then Kit shouts my name, and before I can think, he’s running down the beach toward me, Lydia at his heels. Even in the dark I can see the joy and relief on their faces. They must have thought I was gone, I realize with a pang.
Then another thought follows: the queen said that Kit, Lydia, and Silas’s love would be taken the first time I touched them. I’m not ready for that yet. I stumble back and hold up my hands in a stop gesture before Kit can barrel into me.
He skids to a halt, brow furrowing in confusion.
The others have risen to follow, but they stop too.
Over my siblings’ heads, I meet Silas’s eyes again and somehow, mercifully, he seems to understand what I need.
He motions for the Whistler crew to return to the fire, leaving just my siblings in front of me.
I swallow, looking back at Kit and Lydia as they take me in. “The queen took away my curse,” I say softly.
Kit’s face lights up, but Lydia looks wary, eyes skimming over my body.
Being healed didn’t cause the scales to fall away or the claws to retract.
But they have lost their greenish-gray sheen, turning a cracked, dead white.
I lift my arm and run my right palm down my left wrist, causing a shower of dead scales to fall away on the breeze.
All I want is for the three of us to be able to sit by the fire too, warm up and finally rest. But I can’t rest yet. I’ve been healed, but I still have to pay the cost. “Walk with me?” I ask them.
A long moment passes before Lydia nods and steps forward.
Throat tight, I turn and stride ahead of them toward the ruins of Kielstraat, not wanting to be observed by the others, not letting myself walk beside them lest Kit go in for a hug.
Even so, walking with them is almost like we’re back in Kirkrell, heading to church on a cold Seventh Day morning, except for the smell of smoke and the piercing grief in my heart.
I lead them a little ways into the settlement, until the ruin of what used to be the dining hall shields us from view of the Whistler crew.
The light of the embers paints my siblings’ faces, their wide, curious eyes.
I know they must have so many questions, but I can’t bear the thought of answering them.
Not now, when it doesn’t matter anymore.
Finally, I hold out my hand to Kit, inviting him in.
He blinks in confusion but doesn’t hesitate, taking my hand and letting me draw him in for a hug.
He’s warm and smells like the bonfire, his arms coming up around me just like always, as I bend down and kiss the top of his head.
I can almost hear the questions vibrating inside him, but he doesn’t voice them. Just lets me hug him.
Nothing happens until I finally make myself let go and step away. He grins at me, drawing breath, I’m sure, to finally unleash the torrent of questions—but then he freezes, blinking, the smile slipping away.
My own breath catches as a deep tremor runs through my brother, head to toe. When it ceases, he stands perfectly still, eyes blank, not moving except for the faintest rising and falling of his chest. Fear of a magic I don’t understand fills me, and my heartbeat pounds in my chest.
“Annie.” Lydia’s voice beside me is low and fearful. “What is this? What’s happening?”
She makes to step toward Kit but I throw out an arm in front of her, keeping her where she is.
“Everything will be okay,” I tell her, tears thickening my voice. “I promise.”
It starts slowly. A faint light appears over Kit’s chest—no, not over it, I realize with a shock, but inside him.
Before the heartbreak and the claws, I’d sometimes hold my hand up to the sun to see the pink light through my fingertips.
It looks like that now, but through Kit’s whole body.
It grows bigger and brighter, lighting the map of his blood vessels from the inside, and then rises through his face, making him look like a little saint in a stained glass window.
As I stand there, rooted to the ground, the light reverses course, flowing down into the ground and branching out under our feet in the direction of the sea. I feel the heat of it through the soles of my shoes. I squeeze my eyes shut as a roaring sound fills my ears.
“Annie?”
I’m terrified that I’ll find that the light has burned him up. But Kit’s soft, sleepy voice sounds like it always has. When I open my eyes, there’s nothing different about my brother as he blinks at me and Lydia. Not at first.
His expression when he looks at Lydia is normal, full of affection and admiration. But when he turns to me, those feelings drain away, leaving confusion in their wake. Like something is strange about me. Something is missing.
“You look different,” he says eventually.
I feel the burn of tears behind my eyes, but they don’t come to the surface. Maybe I’ve used them all up. “I’m not different,” I tell him, softly and with conviction. “I’m your sister. I’ve loved you since the very first time I saw you, and I always will.”
Kit blinks up at me. This is the part where he will tell me he loves me too, and he always will. That’s what I pray for, to the Maker and the Wild Ones and every other deity I’ve ever heard of.
“I’m cold,” he says uncertainly after a moment. “I’m going to go back to the fire.”
He turns and trots back toward the whale skeleton, toward the crew.
I wish I could sink and vanish into the earth like the light did.
The queen said I’d be immune to heartbreak now, but without the curse, the pain of grief almost feels worse, unmediated by the fog of bloodlust. Now there is only loss.
“Annie?” Lydia’s voice is soft and frightened. “What was that? Is Kit okay?”
Knowing what’s going to happen next doesn’t lessen the dread.
I swallow a sob and turn to look at my sister, really look at her.
She’s almost as tall as me now; in a few years she’ll probably be taller.
She’s fine-boned, but has Papa’s strong chin and Mama’s stubborn way of tilting it that should tell anyone not to get in her way.
After the cavern and the queen, swimming back to Kielstraat, I thought maybe taking her love would be easier than with Kit, because my relationship with Lydia has always been more prickly and complicated.
But if anything, looking at her now, it feels harder.
She’s the person who knows me best in all the world, and the one who’s most like me, yet she’s so different too.
Kinder, good to the core. And I won’t get to fix things with us, and she’ll probably never understand why I’ve done what I’ve done.
I want to say something, but I can’t think what.
The queen was right. Lydia is almost a woman, and more than that, she doesn’t need me. Whatever happens next, wherever they go, she’ll survive, and she’ll make sure Kit does too.
I reach out both my hands for Lydia’s. She tilts her head at me, concerned, but takes them and wraps her fingers around mine, heedless of the claws.
With Kit, his love didn’t drain away until after I stopped touching him. So I stay in that pose, holding Lydia’s hands for too long, longer than makes sense, hoping she can’t feel me shake. I try to memorize the feeling of her warmth, the sound of her breathing.
But it can’t last forever. Eventually I have to let her go.
She looks confused as she releases my hands, and then goes still, that same shudder moving through her. Her eyes go wide and unfocused, and her hands slowly fall to her sides, fingers twitching as though with aftershocks.
Again that light wells up from inside her, but she’s aware of it in a way that Kit wasn’t. She looks down at herself, breath coming fast as the light rises through her chest, illuminating her face for one blindingly beautiful moment before draining into the ground and flowing toward the sea.
“What—?” she whispers, voice high and cracked. “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” I say, as reassuringly as I can. I look on as the stillness breaks and Lydia stumbles back. A moment passes and she hasn’t met my eyes. She is breathing hard.