Another whisper.
There’s still time to make amends. Still time to finish what you began in Gustan’s bed. Take your spear, bury the point in your heart and end the pain. A single thrust, and you will finally know peace.
“Has there been any word from Captain Varisto?” she asked.
Nilliar shook her head.
The human ship had showed signs of recent fighting. Most likely he too was dead. The thought brought new tears.
“I will stop Morveren for you, my queen,” Nilliar said. “Let me lead another attack against the humans. Their rudder is disabled. We can attack in small groups, so their explosions harm only a few at a time.”
“I should lead the attack,” Lirea said. “I can’t—”
“The tribe needs you. We can’t risk your safety again.”
Nilliar gently pushed Lirea away, a liberty no other undine would dare. But Nilliar was her spearbearer, and she had been Lirea’s friend for many years. “Go, my queen. Return to the spawning grounds and rest. Allow your spearbearer to fight in your stead, and I promise to put an end to Morveren’s threat.”
Slowly, Lirea nodded. She watched as Nilliar picked fifteen warriors to accompany her. The remaining warriors passed over weapons, rearming Nilliar’s force. They swam away singing a song of victory.
Long after that song faded, Lirea could still hear Morveren’s laughter in the waves.
A stabbing pain jolted Snow awake. She sat up slowly, touching the back of her scalp with one hand. Dried blood crusted her hair, coming away in dark specks on her fingertips. A bloody bandage had slipped from the wound, tangling in her hair. She pulled it free.
“How do you feel?” asked Talia.
“Like I drank too much pixie beer.” She looked around. Where . . . oh, yes, the cabin on the
Phillipa
. The movement made her queasy, and a second Talia sprang into being behind the first. Snow squinted, trying to force the phantom Talia back into the original.
Danielle was here as well. Two Danielles, rather. Sitting on blurry cots and watching Snow like a mother ready to reach out and catch her baby.
“What’s wrong?” Danielle asked.
“Nothing.” Snow’s vision still split the world in two, but the effect wasn’t as bad if she kept her eyes half-closed.
“Do you remember what happened?” Talia’s voice was deceptively calm.
Snow started to shake her head, but that only made things worse. She remembered climbing the wall to Lirea’s tower. After that, there was nothing but darkness.
Her hands were scratched and sore. Someone had dressed her in a rather plain shirt and trousers, and her hair smelled of salt water.
She must have hit her head. Loss of memory was normal for such a blow, as were problems with vision. Snow knew as much, but it was one thing to read about the symptoms. It was quite another to experience them. She frowned and sniffed her hair again. “Did I throw up?”
“Twice,” said Danielle. “Once on the way back to the ship, then again in the cabin when Morveren started singing.”
“Morveren—” That was right. Snow remembered Morveren’s song, the magic falling over the ship, pressing her down. She had tried to fight the spell, but the effort had been too much. She looked down at her sheets.
“I changed them for you,” said Danielle.
“Thank you.” She started to say more, but a faint buzzing sensation drew her attention to the knife on Talia’s belt. Lirea’s knife. “You got it.”
Talia nodded. “Lirea escaped, but we have the knife.”
“May I?” Snow held out a hand.
Talia hesitated but passed her the knife. As soon as Snow touched the hilt, she could feel the tension within the spells. The hairs wrapped around the hilt were taut, like the lines of the sails when the winds gusted.
Snapping those spells should be simple enough. Cut the hairs and the whole thing would unravel. Unfortunately, there was no way to know what that would do to the souls trapped inside. When lines stretched so taut finally snapped, they often did so with enough force to kill.
She brushed her finger over the blade. The abalone felt warm and wet to the touch, as though the blood it had tasted had never truly dried. She wiped her hand on her shirt.
“You should rest,” said Danielle. “Can we get you anything? If you’re still nauseated, I could prepare some of that tea you brought for me.”
“I need to talk to Morveren,” said Snow. “I need her help to—”
“Morveren tried to kill us.” Talia kept looking at Snow, then glancing away.
“I don’t understand.” Snow stared at Talia, then at Danielle, who nodded. “She
helped
us. She was teaching me—”
“Her lessons and advice nearly got you killed.” Talia turned away. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “She’s locked in the hold. When we reach Lorindar, you can work with Father Isaac—”
“No. It’s at least a day’s journey to Lorindar,” Snow said, trying not to think about Morveren. “Can Beatrice afford to lose another day? I assume you’ve already spoken to Armand?”
“While you slept,” Danielle admitted. “Beatrice is . . . she’s alive, but she’s not doing well.”
Snow touched the front of her choker, feeling the warmth of the mirrors. She squinted, trying to force the twin knives to blur together. Beatrice was inside that knife, somewhere. “Mirror, mirror in my—no, that doesn’t rhyme.”
“What are you doing?” Danielle asked.
The throbbing in Snow’s head grew deeper as she concentrated. “Mirrors with your silver sheen, help me speak with my trapped queen.”
Not her best rhyme, but the words helped. Morveren would have been disappointed, but right now Snow needed the extra power of her mirrors. Without that power, she didn’t know if she could cast even the simplest charm.
Both Talia and Danielle leaned closer, as if they too hoped to hear Queen Bea’s voice.
Snow did her best to shut out the sounds of the ship and the crew. There was something . . . a buzzing sound, like an argument in a distant room. She couldn’t concentrate enough to make out the words.
“I need privacy.” Snow stood, and the room shifted around her. She reached for one of the ceiling beams to steady herself, but her vision had doubled again, and she missed. Talia caught her by the elbows before she could fall.
“You need rest,” Danielle said.
Keeping one hand on Snow’s arm, Talia reached over to pluck the knife away. “How about I take that? You won’t do us much good if you fall and impale yourself.”
“Actually, that might work,” Snow mumbled. “The knife was designed to hold a single soul. Stabbing more people might snap the spells completely. That might still destroy the souls, though. Hm . . .”
She pulled out of Talia’s grip and placed one hand against the ceiling for balance. Pain pulsed through her skull, blurring her vision with every beat. “I’ll need a new bandage, too.”
Talia moved to block the door. “Do I have to tie you to the bed to make you sleep?”
She would, too. She was awfully stubborn that way. Snow sat back down. “Actually, Danielle, some tea might help settle my stomach.”
“Of course.” Danielle squeezed Snow’s hand, then slipped away.
Talia dug through Snow’s things, pulling out clean rags to use as bandages. Talia was more skilled at inflicting wounds than patching them up, but Snow knew she had also gotten plenty of practice with the latter.
“Thank you.” Snow leaned back in the bed and closed her eyes. She could hear Talia sitting down on the trunk. “You’re staying?”
“You think I’m going to let you sleep with that kind of wound and not keep an eye on you?”
“I’ll be fine.” Snow took a deep breath and began to hum to herself. “I’ll sleep better alone.”
“Since when?”
Snow grinned despite herself. Gathering her magic as lightly as she could, she nudged Talia’s mind. “Go. Captain Hephyra could probably use you in the crow’s nest, watching for undine. You wouldn’t want them catching us off guard again, would you?”
“That’s true enough,” Talia said slowly.
“You should probably leave the knife here.” Snow pushed harder. “We’re better off keeping it out of sight.”
The pressure in her skull squeezed tears from her eyes, and the pounding grew worse. Snow maintained her concentration until she heard Talia rise. The trunk’s oiled hinges made hardly a sound as Talia stowed the knife.
Talia started to leave, then hesitated. Snow held her breath, uncertain how much more she could push without Talia realizing what was happening. She opened her eyes, squinting at the sight of two Talia’s bending over her. Talia’s lips brushed Snow’s forehead, and then she was gone.
Snow had an easier time keeping Danielle away. She didn’t even need to use magic, which was fortunate. After Talia, she felt as though any magical effort at all would cause her head to burst like an overripe grape. She accepted the cup of tea from Danielle, took a few sips, then lay back with a fatigue she didn’t need to fake. “I’ll be fine. You should go check in on your son.”
“How?” asked Danielle. “He wouldn’t be in the nursery right now.”
Snow smiled. “Do you have any idea how many mirrors I’ve hidden throughout the palace? Your bracelet will find him.”
Danielle pushed back her sleeve and raised the glass to her lips.
“I’m sorry, but would you mind going elsewhere?” Snow said. “The magic . . . it makes my head ache.”
That much was true. Snow felt as though she had the world’s worst hangover and hadn’t even had the chance to enjoy herself first. She rested a while after Danielle left, until the pain began to ease. Before, she had felt as though six ogres were trying to dig their way out of her skull. Now there were only five.
She gently tugged one of the mirrors from her choker and studied herself in the tiny reflection. Wraps of white cloth circled her brow, and her hair was an utter disaster. How could her friends have left her in such a state?
She picked up a pearl-handled comb and went to work, carefully tugging through the worst of the blood and vomit. She surveyed the results with a grimace, then crawled out of bed to retrieve her hat. Ever so lightly, she lowered the hat over the bandage, concealing the worst of the cloth.
Much better, at least from what she could see in her mirror. Strange that her sight through the mirrors was so clear when the rest of the world remained blurred and doubled. More evidence that the mirrors worked through senses beyond mere sight. She would have to study them more closely when she got home.
For now, it was time to stop stalling. Snow locked the cabin door, then struggled to cast a small charm to prevent Talia from picking the lock. She leaned against the door until the pain receded, then moved to the trunk, digging through Talia’s things until she found the sheathed knife.
From her own trunk, she retrieved a small bundle wrapped with white leather. She returned to her cot, cradling the knife in both hands. There she waited, sweat dripping down her face, until the worst of the pain receded.
When she could move again without nausea, she unrolled the bundle on the mattress. A set of slender silver tools lay within. Knives and needles, mostly—all too small to serve as weapons. She picked a long needle, strong and sharp enough to pierce double-folded leather.
“I know you’re in there, Bea.” Carefully, she pressed the needle’s tip into the hair wrapped around the knife’s hilt, separating the hairs to reveal a crack of dark purple. More digging showed the edge of a scale. These were Lirea’s scales, similar in size to those from the doll Snow had lost at the tower.
The scales made sense, given the knife’s purpose. Morveren’s spell was meant to bind Gustan’s soul to Lirea.
And they had taken that knife away. What would happen to Lirea now? How far could Lirea be from Gustan’s soul before Morveren’s original spell claimed her life?
“You shouldn’t have made the transformation permanent,” Snow muttered. “Every kid thinks she’s in love with her first. Give her some time as a human and see how it goes. Don’t marry her off to a man she’s barely spoken to, save for a few clumsy nights together.”
She picked up a short-bladed knife, suitable for dissecting seeds and tiny creatures. She pressed the razor-sharp tip to her thumb, wincing as it nicked the flesh.
Fear and excitement quickened her breath as she dabbed the blood over the abalone blade. Nothing happened at first. She squeezed her thumb, spreading more blood onto the hilt.
If she hadn’t been waiting for it, Snow might not have noticed the knife’s magic reaching out to her. Morveren’s magic was both strong and subtle. Snow’s thumb grew cold, tingling as though asleep. She drew her hand back and sucked on the wound as she studied the knife. The magic felt like a cobweb sticking her thumb to the hilt. Right now, she could sever that bond with ease. With more blood, it would soon become unbreakable.
“Queen Bea?” Beatrice didn’t respond, so Snow fed the knife another drop of blood. She was rewarded with a soft buzzing in the back of her mind. Voices, too distant to make out. “Bea, it’s me. Please hear me.”