Chapter IV
IV
That night, my dreams are violent.
In the first, I find my father in our great hall, though I realize at once that it is not a version of him I’ve seen before.
The god that sits before me on a pale driftwood throne has scaly gray skin and eyes that burn a lurid yellow.
His long white beard is tangled, his tattered robes sewn from dried green kelp.
Though he is inert, there is a frightening wildness about his person.
I understand that this primordial creature is what my father was before he altered his true likeness to make himself more palatable for human worship.
He does not speak as he surveys me, but I need no words to know that he is full of ancient rage and power, more than capable of hurting me.
When he rises, I do not hesitate. I turn on my heel and run until I reach an empty corridor.
At its other end stands Maheer.
The prince is dressed in that same fine black tunic, still smiling with too many teeth as he assesses me. He looks me over, and his expression turns mocking.
I would never have picked you. I hear his voice in my head, though his lips never move. No one would ever pick you.
I turn away from him quickly, screwing my eyes shut. When they reopen, the corridor is gone and I’m standing on the shores of the island, mere inches from the water’s edge.
“Meddy!”
Even in my dreams, Euryale is lovely. I’m surprised to find, as she approaches me across the sand dunes, that the copper crown atop her locs suits her.
She is a true queen, smiling at me, her expression full of painfully bright hope.
She does not see the lion trailing in her wake, its bone-white teeth bared.
Run. I feel the shape of the word in my mouth, but it lodges there. Panic swells in my chest as the lion draws closer. I try to point, to warn my sister, but Euryale takes no notice.
Run, I want to shout. Run.
My sister is still smiling at me when the lion attacks.
Her body crumples instantly beneath its weight.
I watch as her neck snaps, as the beast tears at her body while my own is rendered immobile.
A terrible grief grips me as I watch my sister die, then beneath my anguish comes a white-hot rage—rage because I can do nothing; rage because I am helpless; rage because I’ve always been helpless.
Whatever power holding me firm loosens its grip, and a scream tears from my throat, long and raw.
The last thing I see as my vision fades is the lion, staring back at me with something in its goldenrod eyes that looks like pity.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first started walking along the shores of the island.
What I do know, when I wake the next morning in a sweaty tangle of blankets and bedsheets, is that the urge to head for those shores feels less like a conscious decision than an old instinct.
The muscles in my shoulders relax as I slowly follow an invisible line along the coast, focusing on the press of my toes against the cold, wet sand.
The incoming tide laps at my ankles, and my gaze drifts east, past the wave breaks, to the place where the sea turns a deep, abiding blue.
It isn’t the first time I’ve stared into those depths, wondering how far I might swim before fatigue found me.
I’m so occupied by that reverie that I don’t realize when I’m no longer alone.
“I might have expected to find you here.”
I turn, then tense. Euryale is making her way toward me across the sand dunes, her black locs lifting slightly as a breeze ripples through them.
She isn’t wearing a copper crown, as she was in my dream, but the sight of her on the beach now is so strikingly similar that I actually glance behind her, half expecting to see a lion.
She misinterprets the anxiety on my face, and her smile turns rueful as she stops before me.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she says, pursing her lips. “You’re not the only one who likes to walk this beach.”
It’s true. I may not remember how old I was when I first started walking along the shores of our island, but I do remember that Stheno and Euryale always walked with me in those days.
They were the ones who showed me where to find the seahorses hiding in the tide pools, where to look for blue crabs and pebbles of sea glass.
As if she’s privy to my thoughts, Euryale gives me a self-satisfied nod before settling on the ground and patting a spot beside her.
“You know, the first time Stheno and I let you walk with us here, it was because we had to.” She stares out into the open sea as I sit down next to her.
“Mother was having one of her ‘headaches,’ and you were being a terror, so she told us to keep you occupied. We brought you to this beach and decided we’d teach you how to swim. ”
“How inspired.” I roll my eyes, then smile. “What could possibly have gone wrong?”
“We were children, too,” Euryale says defensively. “And it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea, at the time.”
I turn to her, brow raised. “So, how exactly did you go about it?”
“Oh, Stheno tossed you right into the sea,” Euryale recalls cheerfully. “That was the way we’d learned.”
I frown.
“You did well at first,” Euryale goes on.
“There was a great deal of kicking and some rather gratuitous splashing, but you steadied. Stheno and I were quite impressed, actually.” Her smile fades.
“But then you got caught in one of the currents, you were pulled too far out to sea. We didn’t really understand that you were mortal then; we thought you were only playing when you cried out for help.
If Stheno hadn’t figured it out and gone in after you just in time…
” She looks down, ashamed. “That was when I realized you weren’t entirely like us, that we had to be more careful with you. ”
I gnaw on my bottom lip, discomforted. I’ve never heard this particular story before, but I can recall plenty of others like it.
All our lives, my sisters have taken great care to make me feel included, as if my mortality were only a superficial difference between us.
Sometimes, though, that difference becomes impossible to ignore.
I study the clouds overhead, looking for a way to change the subject. “I didn’t get to speak to you yesterday, after your official proposal from Prince Maheer,” I say carefully. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but something in Euryale’s affect seems to change slightly. She’s still sitting up with perfect posture, regal and poised like the queen she’ll soon become, but some unnamed emotion lingers in her eyes. When she offers nothing else, I try again.
“A few months ago, you said you couldn’t wait to be married. Are you excited to marry Maheer?”
“I’m excited to leave this island,” Euryale says with a pealing laugh. It’s only because I’ve known her my whole life that I can tell it’s not her real one. Something about it is forced.
“But surely you’ll be happy as a queen, too,” I press. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
My sister’s face grows impassive. “I suppose.”
“Eury.” My voice is soft. “If you don’t want to marry the prince—”
“What I want doesn’t matter, Meddy.” Euryale sets her mouth in a firm line. “It’s decided. Prince Maheer is a good match for me, and this marriage is good for our family. I should count myself fortunate that he chose me to be his bride.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Her dark eyes flash, and for one breathtaking moment she is the exact image of our mother.
I reach for her, but then my eye catches on something.
The tear in the neckline of my sister’s light blue tunic is small, almost negligible, but I peer closer when I note the unmistakable flecks of gold dried near my sister’s shoulder, on her jaw.
“Eury…is that blood?”
My sister’s eyes widen at once as she registers what I’ve seen. She stands, hugging her arms around her middle and turning so that both the blood and the tear in her tunic are out of view. “No. It’s nothing.”
I wince. Euryale has always been a terrible liar. “Was it Mama?” My anger builds as I stand, too. “Was she drinking? Did she—?”
Euryale only scowls at me. “I said it’s nothing.”
I draw myself up to my full height, so that my sister is forced to meet my eyes. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll go to Stheno.”
She studies me for a long moment, and I imagine she’s assessing how seriously to take my threat. Abruptly, though, her bravado seems to abandon her, and her shoulders slump. She doesn’t look at me. “It wasn’t Mother.”
“Was it Father?”
Euryale shakes her head. “Prince Maheer found me, late last night. He’d been drinking. He asked me to come to his chamber, and I declined. I didn’t think it was appropriate to be alone with him before we were married.” She pauses. “He…didn’t like that.”
I hear Stheno’s voice reminding me that most men are cruel, reminding me that some men are just better at hiding it, but I still stare at Euryale in disbelief. “He hit you for that? Tore your dress?”
“He only hit me once,” she murmurs. “And he immediately apologized. I don’t think he really meant to. And he’s promised to have new dresses made for me, once we return home to his—our—kingdom.”
I gape at my sister as a terrible truth sets in.
Euryale is immortal, ever young, ever perfect.
I’ve seen with my own eyes what happened when my mother threw a goblet at her.
I watched her split lip heal itself within seconds, leaving no trace of either the wound or the violence that caused it.
I see now exactly what life awaits my sister.
If Prince Maheer dares hit her now, before they are even wed, I know it will only worsen.
I know he will hit her many more times and that my sister’s face will never betray so much as a hint of his barbarity.
He is mortal and will eventually die, but the idea of my sister suffering that kind of treatment for even a few decades makes my fists involuntarily clench at my sides.
The anger that ignited in me before courses hot through my veins until my whole body is warmed.
I imagine finding Prince Maheer and punching him in his own face as hard as I can before realizing that it would change nothing.
Once again, there is nothing I can do. Once again, I am helpless, and so is Euryale.
“You can’t marry him,” I say in a low voice. “You can’t marry a man who hits you, Eury. If Mother and Father knew, surely they would—”
“They would do nothing.” Euryale says the words evenly, but there’s a savage bitterness in her voice.
“Do you honestly think Father cares at all about what Maheer will do to me once we’re married?
Do you think he would allow anything to stop this union?
” She shakes her head. “When Maheer picked me, I’d hoped that I might be marrying someone kind, but if he can’t be that…
” She sighs. “Marriage still gets me off this loathsome island.”
I’ve sometimes thought that Euryale, with her soft voice and easy laugh, was the gentlest of us three. Now I think she might be the strongest. She takes me by both shoulders, so that I’m forced to hold her gaze.
“Be happy for me,” she says. “That’s all I ask. Please.”
I glance at the tear in my sister’s tunic, at the golden blood speckling it, then I look into her eyes again.
There’s an acute desperation in them that I recognize because I’ve felt that very same desperation myself.
Euryale has weighed the price of freedom from this place and deemed it one worth paying.
I wonder what price I would pay, for that same freedom.
“Please, Meddy,” Euryale whispers. “I’ll be all right. I promise. Once Maheer and I are married and I’ve given him a few sons, I’m sure I won’t have to see him much. Just look at Mother and Father; they barely see each other at all.”
Those words give me little comfort.
“I’ll be a queen.” She adds that last bit with a smile, as though she’s trying to cheer herself up. “I’ll have my own palace to do with what I please. Mother won’t be there to bother me, and I can drink wine and eat honey cakes all day if I want.”
I raise a brow. “Don’t you already do both those things here?”
She swats at me, laughs, then pulls me into a hug so tight it leaves me breathless.
“You’ll visit me,” she whispers into my locs, “won’t you?”
“Of course. If Mother and Father allow it.”
She squeezes tighter, so I wrap my arms around her and hold on.
I know, in my heart of hearts, that what Euryale says is true. I know that everything will be all right.
Just as I know, in my heart of hearts, that I will do everything in my power to stop my sister’s marriage.