16 Imogen
Imogen
The anchor fell with a clanging that shook through my bones.
Across the deck, sailors continued their work, but now soldiers had come up from the lower decks too. Courtiers had slipped from the safety of their cabins and Theodore’s council had emerged, all to take in with their own eyes the transcendental world we’d slipped into.
Debris and ropes still littered the planks, and I began navigating through the maze of it all, toward the launch hanging over on the ship’s starboard side.
Trepidation crept up my spine. I could see the shoreline, the faint shape of the ruins of my mother’s keep. Its towers and ramparts. Now that I was here, the truth that I’d not wanted to acknowledge reared its grisly head: we might be too late.
Lachlan was already climbing into the launch.
By the horrible look on his face, the gray of his cheeks, I knew he had the same fear.
The monster in the water was the least of our worries now.
The empress’s ship was nowhere in sight.
She could be lying in wait among those ruins, ready to ambush me and help bind me to Eusia, or she’d already done what she’d come here to do—gift Agatha to her saint—and left. Both prospects made me feel ill.
I heaved myself into the launch behind Lachlan. As I settled onto the bench, Halla approached me. She still wore the white shell-and-crystal-strewn gown from her wedding feast, but now its silk was deeply creased.
She looked tired, mussed. “I told you I would help.”
I hated that I needed it. Hated that I was willing to trust her.
“If I have come all this way,” I said, “only to find that my friend is not here, or worse…” My stomach twisted once more, and I lost my words.
When I found them again, I spoke though my teeth.
“I will have no qualms with treating you precisely the way your mother has treated Agatha.”
Halla blanched. Nodded quietly. I’d meant the threat and she knew it. The guards helped her into the launch, and she settled onto the bench farthest from me, her gaze stuck on the misty outline of the keep. “What spell will you need me to perform?”
I pressed a hand to my churning guts. “We’ll discuss that later.
After we find Agatha.” I’d hardly slept trying to decipher the answer to that question.
What would break our bond? The inverse of the spell that had forged it felt most likely, but I expected we would have to fumble through many attempts to get it right.
Lachlan was readying the launch, checking his weapons, doing all he could to keep himself busy. “Let’s go.”
A flash of pale, shiny flesh broke through the water below us as the monster writhed. “I need to get us past that first. Then we’ll start our search in the keep.” I remembered the stones and torches surrounding Eusia’s pool from my vision. “Eusia’s inside somewhere.”
Halla’s head snapped toward me. “How do you know that?” It was remarkable how still she went. She all but trembled with interest.
“Halla,” I said, in a tone that forced her to meet my eye. “The spell I need you to perform will kill Eusia, do you understand? I cannot do it. Only you. And I will only take you with me onto that island if you agree to perform it.”
Her gaze was unwavering, but I noticed how her breaths went thin, how her fingers twisted into her wrinkled skirt. She nodded her agreement. I had no choice but to believe that she meant it, for my alternative was one that I’d not yet let myself fully accept:
That in order to kill Eusia, I would have to kill myself.
Halla looked longingly toward the island. “What I said to you was true,” she said. “I do not wish to see any others harmed by my mother’s schemes.” She straightened on the bench with an ethereal sort of grace. “My husband will join us. In case I’m injured in some way.”
There was no stifling my jolt. “Absolutely not.”
Halla tipped up her chin. “Then I’m not going.”
Before I’d even realized he was there, Theodore gripped the side of the launch, preparing to climb in.
I pushed hard against his shoulder, swaying the launch on its lines. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Those on the deck watched us. Marshal Baros and Steward Gabros. Courtiers, soldiers, crew.
“Your Majesty,” Theodore said with skilled composure. In his hand he held a small, leather-bound tome. Its gilded title read A New Age of Terrible Magic. He lifted the book slightly and gave me a meaningful look. “As Halla said, I am coming to see that everyone remains safe.”
The hot air between us charged. My stomach sank with certainty. Theodore knew, or at least suspected, what I would do if the spell failed. And he was going to try to stop me.
Lachlan was starting on the pulleys. “Quickly.”
My mind was already decided. Eusia was desperate for Theodore’s blood. There was no way in all the kingdoms that I’d deliver him up to her so easily.
Dark locks of hair stuck to the sweat on his brow. He’d removed his black coat, and his white shirt was undone at the neck, the sleeves rolled high.
“You cannot come,” I insisted.
He narrowed those green eyes in a stony challenge. “What if Agatha needs healing?”
I scowled, and spoke under my breath. “Don’t do that.”
Theodore’s resolve hardened. He glanced at all the faces watching us, then in one strong movement climbed into the launch.
He sat right next to me and spoke quietly.
“Are you upset at me for applying some reason to these circumstances?” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, book still in his fist. “Gods forbid.”
“I don’t want you using my worry for Agatha against me like that,” I hissed. “I am trying to keep you safe too, you brute.”
Despite his frustration, his gaze clung to my lips. “Why is it that your worry for me gets to be wildly reckless, but not mine for you?”
“Because you have more to lose than I do.” I spoke in a rush of emotion. “You have an entire kingdom to keep safe, a council to keep placated and convinced that you are a sound ruler. Leucosia cannot spare you, but it would carry on just fine without me.”
Lachlan made a frantic groan and yelled for the sailors to start lowering us down. Halla jumped at all the racket, her hand clinging to the side of the boat. I nearly protested Lachlan’s order, but we were wasting too much time as it was.
Theodore’s ardent gaze held mine for drawn-out seconds. “I wouldn’t,” he said. “Nor would your own kingdom and people. You’re needed just as much as I am.”
The boat jerked and swung as I stared at him, trying to keep the pressure of my crown and duties and his safety from choking me. “You’ll stay in the boat.”
He shook his head. “I’ll go where the danger is,” he said, soft but unyielding. “Because that’s where I’ll find you.”
No doubt he saw the rush of warm emotions on my face. There was no earthly way I could hide them, so I looked away, focusing on the ominous horizon instead. Then we were untying the ropes and bobbing freely over the thick water, beside the Eleuthios’s hull.
We employed the oars to tug us through the sludgy waves.
The boat was supplied with some spare daggers and swords for us to carry, and I lifted the largest dagger into my fist. The monster hadn’t shown itself yet, but I could feel its mirrored movements in my stomach.
It writhed and bent, and I prayed to the bloody Gods that it wasn’t what I suspected.
I scanned the surface of the water as we rowed. “I have a feeling it won’t hurt us while I’m in the boat.”
Lachlan’s mouth had flattened with unease. “Why’s that?”
The humid air had my hair sticking to my neck, had my lungs feeling heavy. “I think it’s tied to Eusia, and since I am too, it can’t cause me harm.”
Lachlan scoffed. “That only means you’re safe, not the rest of us.”
An unsettling quiet filled the boat. The only sounds were the shifting winds and the slosh of the oars.
There was no denying that the spell that had infected this place was abominable.
We all took in its effects with disturbed amazement, but to my growing horror a look very much like veneration had begun to fill Halla’s wide blue eyes.
She’d positioned herself at the very front of the boat, farthest from me.
My breath stuck as I watched her reach out a hand and trail a finger over the surface of the black lagoon.
She became lost to the rest of us, caught in her wonder.
Not far ahead, a fleshy, suckered tentacle rolled across the surface of the sluggish waves.
Halla was the only one of us who did not flinch.
She spoke softly into the silence. “I’d been taught they executed her here.
They sliced her from sternum to groin, spilling her entrails into the water.
They threw her in after.” She turned to look at us.
“Did you know that a gutting is not an instant death?” Her voice sounded far off, as if the gory scene was a reverie.
A chill stole over me. Halla had figured it out, just as I had. I knew Eusia had performed a spell to keep herself alive after her execution. I knew she’d washed up on Obelia’s shore, still living despite her empty torso. They had named her a saint for it.
The spell she’d used must have kept all of her alive.
Halla’s gaze locked with mine across the boat.
An air of loss and betrayal hung about her.
“I was taught that she performed miracles. That’s what my mother told me, that my flesh was paying for miracles.
That Eusia’s power was singular, unable to be replicated.
Then I meet you, who can perform magic that looks just like hers, and I—” She choked on a burst of emotion.
Shook her head. “Last night, when I could not sleep, I read through the books piled on the king’s desk.
The pages were littered with spells. Spells to perform mundane tasks, and impossible ones. And I find… I find myself angry.”
I understood the wounded heart of her words like they were my own. I’d been used, just as she had.
Though I remained wary, I nodded. “I’m angry too, Halla.”