Chapter 1 Now
1
Now
When my eyes crack open, the world is veiled in shadow. It’s a darkness I remember, the same shade as the pit that swallowed Proserpina, and it’s just as cold. After all these years, did the Underworld finally claim me? I brush my lips with trembling fingers and find no coin for passage placed between my teeth. But the relief that swells in my chest at this fact is crushed by the memory of climbing into my small boat.
If I’m dead, I died alone.
Shapes slowly emerge against that inky blackness: a billowing white fabric, so much like Proserpina’s gowns, with hundreds of tiny lights blinking into existence behind it. My mouth falls open in awe as I remember the sight of her in that pool surrounded by fireflies. But I taste salt on my tongue, and the illusion is shattered. It’s not my long-lost love descending to greet me at the Underworld’s gates. It’s a sail swelling with a fresh gust of wind, and behind it, a blanket of stars. There are some familiar faces in the constellations, although they twinkle down without offering any hope.
So I’m still alive.
Nothing delights the gods more than a cruel twist of destiny, so the Fates must have been gleeful as they wove and apportioned my life’s thread. A tragedy written across centuries, full of more despair than a single human life can hold. And now Morta’s shears finally tease along its fibers. The old goddess is surely salivating as her sisters press beside her, their shared eye wide with anticipation as they wait for my final, most humiliating moment to reveal itself. That will be when the blades clamp down, when the stars go dark.
The moon emerges from behind a veil of clouds, as if Luna’s decided to revel in my plight. She’s already over halfway full again. When I left, she was a sliver in the sky, barely more than a dark void in the heavens, but I’ve been in this boat long enough to watch her swell into a perfect circle and then fall back into shadow once more. One precious full moon lost to the sea, and my second only a little over a week away.
A cold breeze blows across my cracked skin as I slide onto the floor for another trying night. Coins clink as I settle atop them, and the sharp edge of an ornate ruby ring presses into my back. I push it aside with a frustrated sigh. How many more mornings do I have left? The stars of Cetus, fellow monster, scintillate in sync with the waves that slosh against the boat’s edges. But the gods won’t honor my death by hanging my image in the heavens like they did hers. I’ll turn to carrion, and this tiny skiff will be my grave—the punishment that I alone deserve.
A dry sob escapes me, splitting open my bottom lip on its way out, but I’m too dehydrated for any tears to join it. I should have known it would end this way. When has fate ever been on my side, truly?
Ceres will be thrilled.
My mouth falls open to the sky for one last plea. The words dig their claws into my throat, fearful of the pain that speaking them into existence will bring, but I force them out anyway.
“Let me save them.”
The voice that fills the air is one I don’t recognize: It’s scratchy and weak, a far cry from the sonorous one capable of driving men into the sea. The wind carries it away as if it never existed at all. Overhead, Luna retreats behind another gauzy cloud. I must be too pitiful to look upon.
Damn them all.
My tongue tastes copper, and I raise a weak hand to wipe away the blood that oozes from the crack in my lip. But my fingers falter before I can. Instead, I roll onto my side and press my mouth against one of the planks. When I raise my head, a gory kiss looks back at me from the wood.
Take it. May this small offering seal my prayer.
I owe my sisters this, and I beg all who will listen for help: the waves, the stars, Proserpina.
The boat shudders around me. A monster must have heard my cries, drawn to the surface by the promise of an easy meal. An awful scratching fills the air, so much like claws on wood, and my shaking hands grab hold of the gunwale in a poor attempt to steady myself. Immediately, my knuckles turn white.
What waits for me below the water’s surface? Perhaps Scylla, human from the waist up like I was, but with a monstrous bottom half too maddening to behold in its entirety—the giant serpentine tail used for dragging ships into her vast sea cave, the snarling mouths of rabid hounds that encircle her waist. Or maybe I’ve found myself on the lip of Charybdis’s infinite maw just as she’s poised to turn this section of sea into a whirlpool that will swallow me down into her rows upon rows of glittering, concentric teeth. Will my final resting place be among the cemetery of ships she holds in her belly? It takes the last of my strength to muster my courage to peer into the depths below.
But there are no gleaming scales, no eyes of an angry leviathan looking back at me—there are only stones. I’ve washed ashore.
“Thank you,” I whisper as my eyes sweep over the rocky beach before me. Luna reappears, her silvery light glinting off the white sea-foam that collects where the waves meet land. A tangled mess of trees sit just beyond the beach. Their empty branches sway in the chilly late autumn air.
A shaky laugh escapes from the back of my throat. It hurts, but I don’t care. I did it. I survived. Despite the cold wind that swirls all around me, an unfamiliar warmth gathers in my belly. Is this what being blessed feels like? I wouldn’t know—I’m not used to my prayers being answered.
When a light flickers in the trees ahead, I can’t help but smile. A man stumbles out onto the beach, lifting his torch in my direction. He’s far enough away that his face is buried in shadow, but when his body straightens, I know he’s caught sight of me. I don’t move until he’s standing over me, his confusion painted orange by the torchlight. He wears simple linen clothes, though they’re soiled, and his smell, a mixture of stale sweat and even staler alcohol, burns my nostrils. He slurs something down at me, but his words are undecipherable. Instinct brings my fingers to the small pendant around my neck, nestled above my heart. Only then do the consonants that fall from the man’s lips warp into a shape I recognize.
Does this small miracle belong to Jaquob’s saint?
“Wh-who are you?”
My mouth splits open instinctively to let my song pour out, but my throat is too raw to make music. The sound that escapes instead is ghastly—it’s wind blowing over dead leaves, it’s the beating of locust wings. The man hears death in it and runs back into the woods without another word. If he returns, he won’t be alone.
Good. I need more than one.
The stars above don’t have time to move across the vault of the heavens before I hear them, a whole mob, and I lie back down and close my eyes. My lips fall open just so, as if asking for a kiss. Even without magic, men are easily manipulated.
“S-see! I t-told ya!” the familiar voice rattles. I picture him pointing at me with a victorious smile splashed across his reddened face. “But she was…she was awake!”
A different man guffaws. “Are you mad, John? I’ll concede that there’s indeed a woman here, but look at her! She’s dead. You let the alcohol get the best of you. Again.”
“I didn’t, Thomas. I swear it,” John says, but even I hear the hesitation that now laces his voice.
“See all the treasure?” Rocks crunch beneath Thomas’s feet as he draws closer. “This is a funerary ship.”
Gods, I can feel him standing over me, feel his eyes examining the sight before him. Somehow, my parched mouth grows even drier.
“A funerary ship?”
“Of course. The Vikings used to send their dead to sea with all sorts of riches. Perhaps the Croatoans do as well.”
The boat creaks as Thomas grabs hold of its edges to lower himself beside me. He scrapes together a handful of coins and gems and lets them slip through his fingers slowly, reveling in the clinks and tings they make as they fall into place among the other treasures in my hoard. Then he touches me.
His caress is light at first, but it still burns through my gown. Cold fingers flatten into a heavy palm that takes its time crawling up my midsection. Suddenly, I’m that young girl again, and it’s the first time sailors arrived on our shores, all those unknown hands grabbing for me—except now I have no way to protect myself from him. From them.
How much of me would he feel entitled to explore if there wasn’t a crowd behind him?
His palm finally settles atop my heart and finds what he wasn’t expecting—a beating organ; his shock is revealed by the slightest hitch in his breath.
“She’s…she’s alive!” His voice is now clipped, controlled. “Quick! This woman is alive!”
Murmurs erupt through the crowd, and a few seconds later, a gentler hand lifts my right wrist to find the artery at its base.
“We must get her inside.”
Though her speech is hurried, it still sounds like music, like the lyres that graced the halls of Ceres’s palace. The glittering sound is both a balm and a blade—I never considered that women might be caught in my plans.
“Hurry!” she says, and the lyres play louder. How would our lives have been different if I’d followed their notes instead of sneaking from the palace that fateful night? If I’d joined my sisters in the throne room to sing songs so beautiful they made the gods weep? Would our voices have been even half as lovely as this woman’s? I don’t think so. It sends stars exploding across the blackness behind my eyes, and when they fall, the shadows in their wake are heavier than they were before. It’s all so strange, confusing, but I can’t make sense of what’s happening to me, can’t open my eyes, can’t breathe—
Then the music is gone, too, and all is dark and quiet.
I can save them.
She speaks, drawing my consciousness forward again. It’s my stolen princess, Proserpina, rousing me with the voice I’ve been so desperate to hear.
“Are you awake?” This voice is different. The lyres have returned—the woman from the beach. A fire crackles gently behind her music. I’m warm. Cramped and sore, yes, but no longer cold.
I don’t know, I say, or I think I say, but all I hear is a groan that emerges in place of words. Am I? You tell me.
“Who are you?”
I don’t have an answer for her. Someone—no, something—scarred by loss, a monstrous shell that once held a girl. But that’s not exactly true, is it? It’s not the loss that wears on me. It’s that face, those hands. And, above all else, it’s my traitorous finger revealing her location to him.
We were children. I was scared. I didn’t mean to—
Mean to. Mean to. Mean to. A bitter laugh racks my chest. How little intention matters when the consequences are so great. No, it’s not the loss that destroyed me. It’s the guilt. I’d hoped that the years, the centuries, would wear down its edges into something softer, a stone at the bottom of the riverbed. But instead that ever-present weight in the pit of my stomach grew teeth and talons of its own.
It’s mutated into rage.
My eyelids are heavy, and the voice has fallen quiet. Did I imagine her? My hands reach out into that still darkness, desperate to find anything to anchor me to this place, this realm. They find nothing, and a broken cry shatters the silence. The sound is pitiful, an animal toiling in its final, terrible moments. The rush of skirts accompanied by a gentle shhh, shhh, shhh… makes me realize I was the one who made it.
There’s a warm hand on my forehead, followed by a murmur of approval, and then the blessed cool of water against my lips.
“Slowly, slowly,” the voice cautions. “Drinking too quickly will make you sick.”
The water is delicious enough that it could belong to the dream world, and its effect on my raw throat is nothing short of miraculous. But I can’t focus on that little wonder—not with this woman so close I can smell her. Roses doing their best, but failing, to mask the salty sweetness of sweat. The heady scent is intoxicating.
I can save them, but I need more blood.
“Proserpina?” I whimper softly, my newfound sense of calm already shattered by the desperate need to hear her voice again. But Proserpina speaks when she pleases, not when I want her to. Again, she falls silent.
“What was that?” the unfamiliar woman asks, but a knock at a door draws her from my side. She’s swallowed away in a flurry of whispers, leaving only her scent in her wake. Without her to anchor it, the essence slowly dissipates, and then there’s nothing left but my own rank odor to offend my nostrils. It’s particularly upsetting after hers, but also oddly comforting, for it offers at least one concrete answer: The Fates still haven’t cut my thread.
I open my eyes, and again, the world takes its time coming into focus. I’m alone in a small room. The walls are made of wood, and a fire flickers in the hearth directly before me. Its gentle snaps and pops obscure the creaks from the bed that accompany my shifting. The warm glow it casts signals that it’s still night.
Footsteps and muffled voices filter up from below. Slowly, I ease myself down onto the floor, my muscles screaming. Tears have collected in my eyes by the time I place my ear to the wood, along the seam where two boards meet, and wait. Breath rattles through my lips, shallow inhales and exhales that I keep as quiet as possible. There are two people speaking, I think, but their words are garbled together. At first, trying to untangle them is as futile as trying to separate commingling vapors, but then, slowly, they each begin to take their own form.
“She must be royalty—” It’s a male voice. Thomas’s.
“But from where? The francs could hint to trading with the French, but there are no reports of a civilization here…” a female voice murmurs. This one is new, distant, and calculating. It holds no music.
“A place of great wealth, apparently. To send her to sea with all that treasure…”
“A place like Spain, perhaps?”
Thomas laughs. “You think she’s a spy?”
“I think ”—the woman’s voice climbs an octave on the word—“it’s quite an incredible coincidence a mysterious woman has arrived on our shores with such a hoard, along the very route their treasure galleons travel.”
“So what would you have me do?”
“She belongs in the pillory until we know exactly who sheis.”
“Have you been drinking seawater? Our purpose here is to find this land’s riches—to find that exact gold! And you want me to lock up the best lead England has ever had?”
“Thomas, please. Think! Bringing a strange—possibly dangerous!—woman into our home…”
“Master Sutton inspected her. She’s starving, in desperate need of water. What kind of spy is that?”
“And you’ve upset your betrothed.”
“Putting her in the pillory would have upset Cora more! She knows it made the most sense to bring her here.”
“Is that why she kept vigil until Will finally came to collect her? Don’t be foolish. She didn’t want you alone with her. The amount of treasure stays the same no matter where this woman sleeps.” Her voice drops a register. “I don’t need another mess to clean up.”
“Now, hold on—”
“I’ve said all I have to say on this subject,” she snaps, killing his reply mid-sentence. “It’s late. We’re both tired. We’ll determine the best course of action tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mother.”
The house creaks as they cross it and ascend to my floor. I hold my breath as their footsteps pad past my door, but thankfully, no one stops before it. Only now, under the weight of their suspicions, do I notice how my palms are slick with sweat.
I don’t know if I am safe. I’ve already lost a moon. It’s not only men who live here, wherever here is, but women as well.
In the hurry for my departure, I never considered what living with them would be like. How dangerous it could be.
I don’t try to stand until I’m certain everyone in the household is asleep. It hurts more than lying down did, but I still manage to pull myself to my feet and tiptoe to the door. Its wooden latch is rough in my hands, and I lift it slowly to peer into the hallway.
The bedroom opens to a small landing. To my right, a narrow set of stairs leads down to the floor below. The hallway continues to my left, a dark place with no windows. The only light, the moon’s, filters through a tiny window straight ahead of me. Underneath it sits a small wooden table with two matching chairs on either side. Dust hangs suspended in the air like slow-falling snow, visible only because the exact angle of Luna’s beams has exposed it.
I take one more look down the depressing corridor. Two doors line the opposing wall. Beside each door is a sconce, but the candles are no longer lit. Thin trails of smoke rise up from their wicks, weaving transparent ribbons in the air. Someone blew them out before retiring.
I hear my heart beating in my ears, and my first instinct is to soar down the stairs, to flee from this home. Instead, I take a deep breath and retreat into my room. Disappearing into the night would be dangerous, and I must keep calm. Raidne and Pisinoe are depending on me.
But from where?
Despite everything, the woman’s question brings a smile to my lips, for how could I ever possibly begin to answer it? I’d love nothing more than to describe Sirenum Scopuli to her. To explain that my prison was an archipelago formed by three islands: the main landmass, Scopuli, and two smaller isles. One we call Castle because of its three stone spires that look like turrets against the setting sun, and the other Rotunda simply because it’s round. I’d tell her that Scopuli looks like aporpoise from the air, and that its sweet half-moon body creates the archipelago’s eastern boundary, with Castle and Rotunda completing it to the west. It’s inside this net that ships break upon our reef, the lucky sailors smashed to their deaths against the cliffside of the porpoise’s belly, the unlucky ones washing ashore alive onto the beach located, quite fittingly, inside its mouth.
But her son will learn all about that soon enough.
I crawl back into the bed. It doesn’t take long for Proserpina’s voice to find me one final time.
My dear Thelia. I can save you all, but I need more blood.
What would it feel like to be the girl who balked at such a request? The question leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. That girl died for the first time on her hands and knees, clawing at scorched earth that swallowed the one she loved, and she’s died a thousand deaths since then. She was weak; there’s no place for her here. Not with one full moon already lost and the next only a week away.
Six turns of the moon, Proserpina had said, and now I’m down to five. That’s all I have before her magic wears off, before my sisters and I will be officially sentenced to death.
When I speak, there’s no hesitation. “Then you shall have it.”