16 Imogen #2
We’d made it halfway across the lagoon, close enough to Raidne Keep—my mother’s castle—to make out its mortar lines. I could see its towering oaken door and the stones of the path that led to it.
Another churn of my stomach, and the shining pink skin of the monster rolled through the lagoon’s surface to my left. “I know the spell that animates it,” I said. “It’s the same one that I performed to keep myself alive. Perhaps if the reverse of it exists—”
“It does,” Halla interrupted. She gestured to Theodore beside me. “His Majesty marked the page.”
My attention snapped to Theodore, then to the book that he’d tucked beneath his hip. His hold on the oar was throttling, but his look was austerity itself.
“Did he?” He’d been reading the books, noting what spells might be useful. “And here I thought the king abhorred magic.”
“Oh, the king does.” Theodore raked the oar through the thick water with great effort, avoiding my gaze.
“But I’ve learned a new lesson and it’s that sometimes I must do things I abhor if I am to ever get what I want.
” His strong arms flexed with his next sweep through the water.
“A lesson, I assume, you learned long ago.”
Lachlan glanced tensely between Halla, Theodore, and me, then looked toward the sky with discomfort.
Theodore’s understanding filled me with gratitude. “Can you show me the spell, so I can teach Halla the steps?”
He dragged the oar, his eyes dissecting and tight. He dipped his chin. “I’ll show you. But there are no directions on how to perform it.”
“That’s all right.” I expected I could stumble through the steps well enough at this point.
Theodore reached for the book and opened it to the marked page, when a thunk sounded through the hull of the launch. We all jolted.
“Read it quickly, Theo.”
He blew out a tight breath, eyes darting across the water, before returning to the page. “A spell for death. To seize the lungs and stop the heart. These are the words: Goetia hecates thantos.”
The words were unlike any of the spells I’d learned so far, in a tongue I’d never heard. I shook my head. “Are you sure?” I asked. “What else does it say?”
Theodore ran his finger over the page, readying to read me more, when a thick tentacle shot out of the water right beside the boat and flew high into the air.
Theodore snapped the book shut as dark droplets rained down on us.
The boat rocked wildly, and then the tentacle was falling.
It happened so quickly, the way it fell over Lachlan’s shoulders, coiling, tightening, then ripping him straight from the boat.
Halla’s scream was shattering. Theodore stood, preparing to dive in after him.
“Stop,” I shouted. He froze, but his eyes were livid, his mouth agape. “Not you. It can’t harm me. Halla, perform the spell. Do it now.”
Fear had finally found her. She gawked at me, her head shaking harshly. “I can’t—”
“You can. It’s just like the prayer you performed on that beach. Intention is what matters most.” I undid my shirt and removed my boots. “You must do it now.”
She was speechless as Theodore grabbed a dagger and set it in her hand.
I stood in only my trousers and binding. “Cut your hand. Put your blood in the water. Swallow a piece of your flesh, then say the words.” I braced my hands on the launch’s edge, preparing to jump over. “You must set your mind on the monster and be determined to see it die.”
She gave me a jerking nod.
Theodore’s gaze was alight with terror. “Come back to me,” he ordered before he opened the book to find the spell.
“I will.”
Then I dove into the turbid water. It was the very temperature of my body, slimy and heavy.
With my vision occluded, I focused on my connection to Eusia, and this time I didn’t try to keep a clamp on it.
The scalding power in my middle burst forth and suddenly I could sense the whole of the lagoon.
Siren bodies—unanimated nekgya—were strewn across the seabed, alongside the old bones of sailors and their ships.
The monster’s every curl looped my own innards. I could feel Lachlan’s slowing heart.
With greater urgency, I dove straight down, following their vibrations through the midnight water.
I pushed, and fought toward Lachlan, but as I did the edges of my body began to blur with the salt and muck.
My power—in this place and unfettered—made me feel like I was dissolving.
Like I was becoming everything, and nothing, and for a clouded moment, I wondered if this was what it was like to feel ancient. Like the spirit of the Great Gods had.
The new vastness was intoxicating. This had to have been the sensation Eusia had spoken to me of, the enthralling rapture of power.
But as I transcended, as I went down and down, the hold I’d had on my goal began to slip.
I began to slow, wanting to bask in the heady sensations, to revel in the omniscience.
The euphoria turned suddenly to terror when I realized the sluggish thump, thump, thump I felt through the water was Lachlan’s heartbeat, growing weaker.
Frantic, I strained to focus once more on the monster. On the boundaries of my body. On Lachlan and Agatha and Theodore. I tried to fill the darkness with their visages, the silence with the sounds of their voices, and to give the formless immensity around me—in me—their shape.
Despite the way my power still roiled and filled the whole of me, clinging to them somehow helped to harness it, to construct it a limit and make it heed my will with a new ease.
I could feel my skin again, could feel the slide of the warm water against it as I dived toward Lachlan.
Somehow, through homing in on them, I found myself again.
Then I was upon it. I sensed, rather than saw, the undulating outline of the monster.
I reached out and felt its rubbery flesh.
The bond I shared with Eusia would not let me rip my talons through it like I wished to, but I searched for my tie to it as I swam around its massive folds and coils, looking for where it held Lachlan.
The tapping of his heart was coming slower and slower.
I commanded the thing to release him when I finally felt the hard edge of his armor.
He was wrapped in one of the immense ropes of intestine, over which suction cups and scales had grown.
I yanked on it, trying to loosen it from around Lachlan’s shoulders, waiting for Halla to complete the spell.
Time was slipping. Lachlan’s head was pressed against the fleshy coil.
I took it in my hands and blew a breath of air into his mouth.
It was slow to obey but finally the monster unspooled itself, letting Lachlan’s armor-heavy body sink lower.
I strained through the water once more, reaching for him while forcing a current to raise him up, when I felt a stinging against my skin.
A faint tightening through my muscles. For a moment, the strange sensation made my power falter.
The monster had sunk below us when I’d commanded it to release Lachlan, but I sensed it go suddenly still.
That unfamiliar ache crescendoed, just as I felt those long tentacles fling wide and go stiff, as if with rigor.
I gritted teeth as my power guided Lachlan toward the surface, but I could hardly feel his heart now.
My own had grown erratic.
Halla had completed the spell, I’d felt it, but the monster below me was not dead. It had merely slunk to the seabed as if chastised.
I broke the surface of the water beside the boat and swiped at the slimy wetness over my eyes and face.
Theodore had already heaved Lachlan into the boat and quickly sprawled him across its small hull.
He went to work straightaway. Removing Lachlan’s armor, rolling him, compressing his chest to rid it of water, but my gaze was set on Halla.
She was balled up at the bow, arms around her knees, paying for the spell she’d just performed. She pressed her forehead into the wood, her breaths coming heavy and loud. Tears poured from her red-rimmed eyes, and they were locked on me.
I lifted myself over the lip of the boat.
“You lied.” I grabbed the dagger, then took her white hair in my fist. Mucky water dripped across her snowy gown as I pressed the blade to her throat.
“You said you’d help. You said you wanted to ensure that no one else was harmed by Eusia and your mother.
” I’d felt the potency of that spell through the water.
I knew it had been performed correctly—it was her intention that had faltered.
“If your intention had been true, the spell would have worked.”
Halla swallowed against the blade’s edge. “I tried.” Her voice was still spell-roughened, harsh and crackling. “I meant what I said, but I… I cannot bring myself to kill her.” More tears poured from Halla’s bloodshot eyes. “I thought perhaps I could… but I find it is not in my heart. I’m sorry.”
Behind me, I heard Lachlan hack and pull in gasping breaths. I ripped the dagger I held away from Halla’s throat and let it clatter to the hull.
The launch was almost to the shore. Theodore had Lachlan breathing well but still held a reviving hand to the middle of his back.
We looked to one another. He seemed fractured and terrified, his mouth grimly set.
“Heartbreaking, isn’t it,” I said, sounding utterly hopeless. The launch scraped against the sand. “To have the spell, and no one to cast it.”