Marcin sprang to his feet, maps and cigarette abandoned. Eva ran to the windows. Wind rattled what glass remained unsplintered, howling, screaming to be let in.
“An attack?” said someone, shrill and high pitched.
“They made it past the anchors! A fleet from Skani?”
“Whoever they are, they won’t make it far.” Marcin’s voice was lethal, a blade scraping bone as it thrust through flesh to pierce the heart. Everyone’s heads snapped toward him, eyes aglitter with fear. “And if they’ve come for our magic they won’t get it.”
His face was the pale heart of a fire. The Amber Salon darkened at the edges, folding into shadow. Other faces flashed with relief, then hardened into resolve. Witches around the room turned to Marcin for orders, for reassurance.
Not to Eva.
She had the sudden pressing urge to hurt something, someone. “Don’t be ridiculous. Skani has no reason to attack us. If it’s anyone, it’s mainlanders.” She kept her voice low. She didn’t need to raise it in order to be heard; a queen’s voice made its own silence, Natalia had taught her that. A queen never panicked. Even when she had no damn idea what was happening or who was attacking her home.
The hollow in her chest expanded.
She raised a hand, gave a rapid series of orders. No prisoners. No mercy for mainlanders.
Mainlanders who boiled witch bodies down to the bone.
Her sisters dissolved into smoke, twisted into chill salt winds, grasped each other’s anxious hands dashing out of the room to gather and hide the witchlings. There were still those who hesitated, too many who whispered and cut glances at Marcin for permission first. Eva pinned each whisper to a face and each face to a name, filing them away to be dealt with later.
If there was a later.
Stay calm. Keep your head.
A boy with silver-dyed hair tumbled out of the press of bodies at her back, blinking and rubbing crusty sleep from his eyes. Jun had a witch’s ladder already in hand: skeins of his hair tied around a length of cord, ratty gray gull’s feathers and shards of shell and bird bone tethered to seven large knots.
Like Eva, he worked magic the island’s way, mixing small pieces of himself with sand and salt and seashells, tying sailor’s knots and playing string games like those who had taught them. Although he, like Eva, also mixed in old, half-remembered charms from the places where they’d been born, like Eva’s red string, a nod to the red ribbon Natalia had tied to her wrist as a child to ward off wicked spells. Caldella’s magic was a tangle of traditions carried here by people who had fled from all across the world.
Jun’s arm brushed hers. Eva waited the briefest second, watching his tanned fingers thread a loop, his furrowed forehead press to a pane of window glass in concentration. More witches joined him, ready to banish the storm, ready to bend its wrath to serve their own purposes. Eva forced herself to return to the scarlet chaise lounge. To sit with ankles crossed. A queen took command of the battlefield, devised a strategy; there was no point in lashing out blindly, not knowing where to aim or where to sink your knife. What was her enemy’s weakness? Was the city under attack, too? Should she release the sea serpent? Had the attackers already breached the Water Palace’s walls?
“Yara.”
Yara rushed forward with a tray, a teapot, and three delicate teacups rimmed with sugar. She set the tray on the oval table in front of the chaise lounge. Rain was thrashing the windows, and the Amber Salon grew murky and glacial as unnatural roiling clouds rolled in to engulf the palace. It took every ounce of Eva’s self-control not to snap at Jun and the others to hurry, not to rip another red string bracelet from her wrist and seize control of the storm herself.
The walls shivered with each fresh crash of thunder. Wind battered the tower with angry fists.
Yara sat on her right. Marcin on her left. Yara filled the trembling teacups, handing them out on pastel-painted saucers. “Sour cherry liqueur. For clarity. I already added a few of my tears, so you don’t have to”—Yara grimaced as Marcin spat into his cup—“do that.”
People claimed witches were nightmares, dreams, but Eva felt they were closer to plants; wild magic grew inside of each of them, waiting to be harvested in the strands of their hair, their salt tears, their spit and blood.
She stirred the concoction with the tip of her finger and watched the cherry liquid ripple.
Yara licked a dash of sugar from her teacup’s rim.
The rain and wind cut off abruptly, leaving behind a quiet so deafening it seemed to sing.
“That was fast,” said Marcin.
“I am just that good,” called Jun from the window.
“Shh,” shushed Yara.
Clouds continued to shade the salon. Eva shut her eyes and concentrated. Yara and Marcin did the same, all three going perfectly still. When the liquid in all three cups was also still, mirror still, Eva opened her eyes. Three teacups reflected three different skies. Night, day, and dusk. Starry, stormy, clear.
Yara let out an irritated huff. Eva leaned in next to her to peer at Marcin’s stormy-skied cup. He had always been able to conjure the clearest visions—Eva told herself it was only because he was older. Thirty-two to her nineteen years. Ancient, practically.
Jun shuffled across the room, peering over their bent heads. “Children?”
“Oh.” Yara clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, that’s him.”
“You know them?” demanded Marcin.
“The boy was my pick at the revel. The one I told you about, that I found for E.”
“What’s he doing here? How did they get here? How did they conjure a storm?” Marcin looked at Eva, a lock of red hair falling across his brow.
But Eva didn’t respond. She was too busy watching the girl from the revel. The blond whose face she’d worn when she’d stolen Thomas away.
She leaned closer to the image in the teacup. The girl and boy were in another tower, far below the Amber Salon, in one of the lowest levels of the Water Palace, one half swallowed by the sea. Their battered broom boat knocked against the bottom of a wide stone staircase flanked by faceless statues, steep gray steps climbing up and up and up.
They were drenched. And they were arguing. The girl’s lips were white and pinched, her shoulders hunched defensively, making her body small. The boy was shouting and waving his fists.
“Islanders,” said Jun with so much relief it sounded like a sigh. “Ordinary islanders.” A beat passed in silence. “Do you think they’ve come after Thomas? It’s been a long time since anyone tried to save a sacrifice. At the spring regatta, wasn’t it? That mother who begged for her son’s return. No one’s ever breached the palace before though.”