She cried out in protest at the same time as Thomas did. She stumbled and lost her balance. Her new partner picked her up by the waist and twirled her through the air, the world smearing into a dizzying blur.
“Wait, wait!” Lina looked back but only caught the flash of Thomas’s blond hair vanishing into the dark.
4
Eva
The day her sister died, Eva sealed her heart inside a bottle and cast it out to sea.
But sometimes, when she put an ear to the cold stone walls of her palace, when she tossed and turned at night instead of sleeping, she swore she could still hear it: a faint and steady beat. A drumming as she crossed an empty corridor, pounding up through the balls of her feet. She could hear it now in the rhythmic crash of the black waves at her back, a rushing in her ears as she trailed a hand through the fire.
Flames licked at her fingers, tickled the elegant curve of her palm. The air bent and rippled, smoke snaking up to meld with the star-studded sky. The thirteenth bonfire stood at a distance from the others, at the edge of the square leading into the tide, in the shadow of the great stone pillar where, a month from now, Eva would chain the boy she loved and leave him to be swallowed by the sea.
She liked it here, where it was not so crowded, away from the endless rush of revelers and dancers, away from the people she instinctively disliked for no other reason than that they were people and Eva did not like people. Here she could wait and watch her reflection change in the puddles at her feet. Could watch herself grow tall and thin or short and fat, young and old, in turn.
Her hair twisted into thick mermaid curls, tumbled sleek and straight down her spine. Skin paling and darkening in turn. She wore a thousand faces, but never her own.
And when the dancers stumbled near to catch their breath and warm their hands, she could listen, listen to what the city had to say about her.
“They say she has no heart.”
“They say the witch is cursed.”
“Frigid.”
“I hear she’s made of stone.”
“She’ll fail again this year, you’ll see. Soon.”
The last speaker smacked his lips as if the prospect pleased him. He stood on the opposite side of the bonfire from Eva, half-hidden by the flames. Thinning hair fading to gray. Leathery skin tanned by sun and sea. The end of his cigarette glowed red as he dragged in a ragged breath.
The men on either side of him echoed the action, each as timeworn and salt-flecked as the sunken ruins that filled Caldella’s harbor. Smoke rose like ghosts between their gnarled fingers.
“The island will sink, and all of us with it.” His voice was gravel grinding. The tide lapped at the city’s edge, spilling over and pooling at the pointed tips of Eva’s shoes. “It’s not a sacrifice if she doesn’t care. She has no love for us. No love for the boys she takes.”
“If it’s loving she needs…” The shortest of the three had a blue anchor tattooed on the side of his neck.
“You going to bed a monster, then?” The last man dug elbows into his companions’ ribs.
“Better a monster than your wife.” Snickers burst above the scuffle that broke out. “The witch’ll look like whoever I wish. Good thing, too, if she’s as hideous as they say.”
“Still, bit hard to bed a girl made of stone.”
Eva unwound one of several bracelets tied around her wrist. Threadbare twists of her black hair and bloodred string. Every charm required a little piece of the witch who cast it. Every curse took a little bite out of you until you had no magic left. She looped the strings around her thumbs and the tips of her fingers, as if she were playing cat’s cradle, what the islanders called the Witches’ Game.
“Oh, I’m sure I can get her going. A couple of pokes and she’ll be begging for more.”
Eva shaped a net and then a fish. A wave struck the edge of the square, and spray burst through the air. Ice-cold needles sank into her skin where her dress dipped low to show her back. The rest of the droplets seemed to freeze, sparkling. She’d formed a second shape, a third, strings glowing hot, before the world came rushing back.
Water soaked the cobblestones. Cigarettes dropped from gnarled fingers, sizzling as they hit stone.
Eva stepped out from behind the bonfire. Three seagulls stood where three men had once been, peering up at her with the gaping, slack-jawed expressions common to old men confronted by girls who stood up for themselves.
One coughed, a sound that morphed into a caw. The second flapped its wings in a panicked sort of way. The third took off, screeching, turning angry circles above her head.
“You look like you’re having fun.” Boots scuffed as Marcin seeped out of the shadows to Eva’s left. His hair as deep a red as the bonfire flames, a smile tugging at his generous mouth. “But if you keep turning every islander who irritates you into a seagull, we’ll soon have no one left.” He leaned his shoulder into Eva’s, tugging playfully at the braids crowning her head. “I found a good one for you. Brown curls. Tall. A real charmer. You’ll like him.”
Eva relooped her bracelets, pulled the sleeves of her black dress down over her fingers.
“Unless you’d prefer to let the city sink.” Marcin’s tone was mild. It held no judgment, no accusation. It was almost…a suggestion.
A second wave broke against the city’s edge.
It’s not a sacrifice if she doesn’t care.
No magic in sacrificing someone you cared nothing about. No sacrifice if it didn’t hurt you to give that person up. No power without a price.
Eva could feel the dark tide’s rage in every lash it made against the stone, a hunger that hadn’t been sated for almost two years. It gave her a kind of savage satisfaction. It was a petty sort of revenge.
You took my sister. Why should I give you anything?
“All great cities fall eventually.” Marcin twisted the thick silver ring on his thumb. “It’s the way of things. You can’t always fight fate.”
“But not this city. Our city won’t fall.” The words cut through the dark, but they quavered with a note of uncertainty. Yara had a way of speaking that made everything sound like a question. With dainty steps, pinching her long, glittery skirt so it wouldn’t drag on the ground, she slipped into her usual spot on Eva’s right. Firelight played off her soft brown skin, glinting where it caught the coral and pearls twining affectionately around her arms and wrists.
“It would only be temporary,” said Marcin. “We could rebuild someplace else.”
“Where?” said Yara.
“Somewhere across the sea.” Marcin shrugged. “The mainland. One of the coastal cities. Things are different there now.”