Prologue - Marella #2
We moved along the surface, the shadows of buildings rising around us like sentinels, windows blackened and empty, stone covered in dark splotches that I refused to stare at for too long.
"Mother, where are we?" I hissed. There was no one around, but something about the place stifled my voice. If I spoke too loudly, the darkness itself might swallow me whole.
I was sure I’d never been here before, to this place of towering stone.
She silenced me with a glance, wet hair falling around her face in a tangled knot. It was the most disheveled I’d ever seen her, and that fact alone was enough to silence me.
Eventually, we came to a place where the canal hit a grate, and we could go no further. Here, the water was the thickest. Piles of garbage amassed around the grate, and the foul smell of something was heavy in the air.
I could see little more than the faint outline of my mother’s silhouette in the near-pitch blackness, but when she spoke, her voice was clear.
"I assume you’re already here," she said. The sudden noise made me nearly jump from my skin. "I’ve come as promised."
"I thought I asked you to come alone," a second voice, as inky as the night surrounding us, melted down from the walls.
"I’m entitled to a witness." Only I would be able to recognize the slight tremor in my mother’s voice. "You wouldn’t want the deal to be null, would you?"
A laugh like gravel echoed through the space. "As you wish, Your Majesty."
And suddenly, with the sound of snapping fingers, torches appeared all around us. Black braziers surrounded the flames, sending dancing shadows through what I could now see was a vast cavern. Even the stars above us were invisible.
We were trapped.
Before us stood a woman.
Not a human woman. No. To call her anything resembling human would be an insult to both her and humanity.
She was incredible and terrible to look at, so much so that I struggled to meet her eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.
Although she possessed the correct number of limbs and heads to appear human, there was something…
other… about her. Her skin was speckled and flaked, like weathered stone, and her hair fell in unmoving slabs on either side of her head.
When she leaned forward to smile at us, her lips cracked from the effort.
Her eyes, it seemed, were made of endless blackness, two unmoving black pools that reflected no emotion at all.
"Remind me," the woman said slowly, "of your proposal."
"I want my people protected." My mother didn’t hesitate, speaking with her back straight and squeezing my hand as if it were a lifeline. "I know you have the ability to offer that protection, Petra."
Petra.
I felt my blood run cold, and I tried, futilely, to pull my hand from my mother’s. She stilled me with a severe glance.
Petra. The Stone Witch. A demon of the modern world.
My mother had come to make a deal with a devil, and all I could do was glance between them, helpless and useless.
"I do," Petra mused, running a finger along her chin, sending flakes of gravel into the water. "But I don’t offer such services for free."
Those dark eyes slid from my mother to me, and despite their emptiness, I could feel them raking me from head to tail.
"But maybe that’s why you actually brought the girl." Petra’s smile grew wider. "You know I have a penchant for collecting pretty things."
My mother shoved me behind her forcefully. "Absolutely not," she hissed. "Like I said, she’s here as a witness to a blood oath. I’m offering only myself."
"Mother—"
"Hush, Marella."
I bit my tongue until I felt blood pool behind my teeth. The copper tang made my stomach turn.
The Stone Witch raised an eyebrow. "Interesting," she breathed. Behind her, I could swear that the shadows began to move in earnest. "You offer yourself to me. The sea queen would enter my collection of her own volition?"
A brief pause. Then: "Yes."
"And in exchange, all you want is for those of your people remaining in the city to be protected from the machinations of the humans?"
"I want them safe, yes," my mother answered. "I want to ensure that they’ll be protected for as long as they’re trapped within the city. I don’t care what it looks like. Give them legs. Make them walk the earth. Just don’t let them be harmed."
I knew in that moment that my mother had made a fatal mistake, but whether I was too stunned or too terrified to speak, I was unable to warn her.
"That is beyond a fair trade." The witch’s smile grew so wide that I thought her face might split in two. "Wouldn’t you say so, girl?" Those eyes once again shifted towards me, the terrifying smile never leaving her lips.
I didn’t answer for a long time, transfixed as I was by her gaze. The longer she looked at me, the slower my blood seemed to move through my veins.
"Your witness seems unsure." The corners of Petra’s lips fell ever so slightly. "Perhaps we should part ways until she’s had time to think things over. I can’t, however, promise to be as generous the next time we meet."
My mother shook me from my silence fervently, her gaze insistent.
"Yes," I finally croaked out, throat dry despite the fact that we were still submerged.
"Fantastic." Petra reached her stony hand towards my mother, a crack beginning to form along her wrist. Something poured from the wound there, but it didn’t look like blood.
My mother brought her own wrist to her teeth and bit into the soft flesh there with a sickening squelch. I winced as dark droplets of her blood sank into the water in front of us.
The two women reached for each other across stone and water, and when their hands met, the smell was like rain on hot sand.