More amber lanterns lit the way, swinging from terraces overhanging the street. They had electricity on the mainland, but Caldella’s locals preferred magic. It was more expensive, more lavish. The witches only used magic, and the witches ruled the island. “What’s good enough for them at the palace is good enough for the likes of us folk down here,” Uncle always said. It was about status. The more magic you could afford, the closer you were to society’s peak.
Lina caught the strum of soft music, paused, and looked back.
A group of islanders elbowed past, jostling and joking loudly. “And if the queen kisses you and takes you off to the palace, you remember to take a knife to bed with you. They say she has teeth down there!”
Lina bit her cheek and changed direction. There was the slightest chance Finley might have stopped, and even if he hadn’t—
She rounded the bend, took a path she’d rushed by minutes before. Though she knew what was coming, she still caught her breath. Caldella’s labyrinthine streets wound around hundreds of boxed-in squares, some hiding gardens and orchards ripe with juicy fruit. Others were stone plazas paved for assemblies and open-air markets. St. Casimir’s was the largest. Lover’s Square was much smaller but easily more beautiful, with a marble fountain made for catching moonlight, lush trees and blooming rosebushes, and a wide and twisting staircase leading up to streets and houses built on higher ground.
At the bottom of those stairs, a boy could be found singing for spare coins.
Fireworks burst overhead, explosions ringing in Lina’s ears in time with the pounding of her heart. She was already blushing, cheeks red as the fire streaking across the sky. There he was. Sea-tanned skin and sun-kissed hair, brown eyes that held a hundred untold secrets. Only one boy had ever been chosen as sacrifice and lived to tell the tale.
No one dared ask Thomas Lin how he’d done it, how he’d made the wicked queen care for someone more than herself. How he’d made her sacrifice herself instead of him two years ago. Certainly not Lina, who could barely look him in the eye without turning red as a lobster. Even when she’d turned her ankle and he’d piggybacked her home, she hadn’t managed to string together more than a stuttered thank-you.
He’d come back to them all as someone not quite real. A character escaped from a story. The boy who had seduced a queen. The boy who had won his freedom from a witch.
Another firework sparked, this one trailing pixie-green stars. Lina stood at the edge of Lover’s Square, palms going clammy. There were also people, like Finley, who said Thomas Lin was dangerous, who claimed he had broken the magic that kept Caldella safe, that no matter how many sacrifices their new queen made now, the island was doomed to sink.
He had traded his life for all of theirs.
Lina shook the thought away. She wasn’t here for the rumors or her hopeless crush. Tonight wasn’t about her. She crossed the square; Thomas Lin lowered his guitar.
Lina took a deep breath. “I need you to tell me how you made a witch fall in love.”
The words stretched in the silence between fireworks, like a plucked string ringing with the first note of a song. Lina sank onto the stone step beside Thomas, repressing a shiver as the cold seeped through her dress. The night was crisp enough to make her wish she’d worn a coat.
Glowing baubles and beads hung from the garden trees’ branches, but Thomas’s face was masked in shadow. His knuckles shone white where he gripped his guitar.
“Please. It’s for Finley.” Thomas knew her brother, even if they didn’t like each other. There were no strangers in Caldella—save for the witches, who kept mostly to the Water Palace save for nights like this one. Lina knew every islander’s face even if she didn’t always remember every name. The island was closed to outsiders. And Finley and Thomas had both studied music at the Conservatoire, the same school where she studied dance. “You could talk to him, tell him. He’s fixed on joining the revel tonight, and I—”
“You think the queen will choose him.”
Lina tugged her necklace, pulling the red beads so tight they bit into her neck. “We all know she takes the handsome ones. There’s no one left to compete with Finley. No one who’s going,” she amended.
Thomas’s mouth twitched. “Is that why you shaved one of his eyebrows off?”
“That was an accident. I meant to shave them both off, but he woke up.”
Thomas’s laugh filled the garden. People passing by stopped and stared. Warmth rushed through Lina despite the chill night air. It wasn’t as if other boys didn’t try to make themselves look unappealing. Finley should have thanked her.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so mad,” said Thomas. “And that’s saying something. We all thought you did it because he wore your pink gown to Josef’s party.”
“He what?”
“Oh. Shit. You didn’t know?”
Her brand-new pink dress that shimmered like the inside of seashell. With its zipper that had mysteriously, inexplicably, broken. Lina’s teeth came together with a click.
“He looked quite fetching,” said Thomas.
Lina punched him in the arm, then jerked her fist back as if she’d been scalded. She’d just touched Thomas Lin. She’d just punched Thomas Lin.
And he was smiling.
He put his guitar aside and shuffled closer. Lina couldn’t resist doing the same, angling her legs so their knees might accidentally brush. “You have to help. You can tell him how you survived, how you tricked the queen, how you…”
A faint crease formed between Thomas’s brows. He pressed a thumb to his bottom lip, then smoothed his hands over his slacks. “He came through here a bit ago, with Istvan and Josef. I told Josef they shouldn’t go, but he wasn’t having it. They’re already gone.”
“Gone,” Lina repeated. Wind whipped through the garden, ruffling her hair. There was something so gut-wrenchingly final about the word.
“Lina,” Thomas said gently. “I did try to stop them.”
“Did you? You didn’t do a very good job. Did you tell them what to do if they were picked? Did you tell them what you did to save yourself?” Lina stood. He’d never told anyone, and from the look on his face now, she knew he hadn’t told Finley. He’d kept the secret for himself.
“You can’t keep him locked up,” said Thomas. “He’s a grown man. I don’t think the queen will take him.”
“Oh, and you can swear to that, can you? No one thought she’d take Niko.”
Niko with his raven-black hair and dusting of freckles. Niko with his wild grin. Niko dead at the bottom of the sea.
Thomas reached for her. “Lina.”