A shiver ran through Finley and found Lina. Josef looked suddenly very serious and sober, almost sad. A mournful note crept into his voice. “Didn’t I point him out to you that first time? Didn’t I introduce you? Why don’t you bring your friends round to meet me, Lina?”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Finley, tell your sister. That brunette girl, now, with the big…you know.” Josef gestured at his chest.
Lina aimed her next step to crush his toes, but Josef dodged and stole Finley’s violin and bow, wringing a sour wail from the strings.
Finley cursed. “Give me that!”
Josef darted out of reach. Blond hair flashed at the corner of Lina’s vision. She spun quickly. “Fin—” The word died on her lips. Finley’s back was turned, arms gesturing madly. Lina swallowed, staring straight ahead, throat dry as sand. “Finley.” Then more urgently. “Finley.”
Her brother didn’t respond. She didn’t dare look away. The roar of the bonfires, the pipes, the cheers and chants as another firework exploded—everything faded into the background, leaving only a ringing, a strange and soundless thunder, the pounding of blood through her veins.
Lina moved forward as if in a trance. Revelers, dancers, reeled and whirled out of her way. Spat insults and threw dirty looks. Liquid lashed her arm. A flask clattered to the ground. Lina stumbled on with more urgency, fear cresting like a wave as she chased after the girl in the pale blue dress. The girl with beads looped around her neck. The girl with bobbed blond hair and a peacock feather in her headband.
She chased after herself. Elbowing people, knocking them aside. The girl glanced over her shoulder once, then kept going. Panic reached out a hand to choke Lina. Dread came thundering back a hundredfold. The crackle of the bonfire flames sounded like laughter.
The Witch Queen comes on wings of night.
The Witch Queen has your heart’s delight.
Who had she danced with to look like that? Who?
Lina—False Lina, Not-Lina—called out a name. A figure turned, separating from the crowd, a second blond head catching bonfire light. Hands reached out, caught Not-Lina as she ran forward.
A body smashed into real Lina’s side, knocking her sideways. She snatched at their shirt to steady herself. Shoved someone else out of the way.
The crowd parted. Lina opened her mouth, but no sound escaped. For a single disorienting instant, her mind refused to comprehend what she was seeing; she couldn’t grasp the image. It shimmered before her like heat.
Not-Lina’s arms were wrapped around Thomas’s neck, her hands tangled up in his hair. His hands were on her waist, drawing her body flush against his. And he was kissing her, hungrily, desperately, as if it were the last thing he would ever do.
It was every dark daydream come true.
Except it wasn’t with her.
“Thomas.” The word escaped this time—a soft, inaudible whisper. The scene swam, rippled. Changed.
The girl kissing Thomas looked up, her hands still tangled in his hair, her lips swollen. She wore her black hair in braids that circled her head like a crown. Her gaze locked with Lina’s, and her eyes glinted like moonlight on dark water. She smiled. A flash of sharply pointed teeth.
Every bonfire in St. Casimir’s Square guttered and went out. A great gust of black smoke swallowed the revelers whole.
6
Lina
There was a moment of complete and utter blackness.
Darkness settled like silt at the bottom of the sea. A heavy, choking darkness. One Lina dared not disturb with sound or movement, because it was not an empty dark.
She did not wish to wake whatever else was in it.
The wind was a breath and a howl in one. Great twists of bitter smoke filled Lina’s nose and throat and lungs. Clawing its way inside of her, clawing its way back out. And still she did not move. She was frozen as a statue.
A body slammed into her back. Someone else tripped over her as she staggered forward, a splintering crunch sounding somewhere behind. An elbow caught her jaw and her vision exploded in a burst of blinding light. She spun, trapped in a dance of terror, shoulders smacking hers, turning her first one way and then the other. Shrieks rang out. Boots pounded.
She thought she heard someone shout her name.
Just as quickly, the press of bodies thinned. The smoke was lifting, light creeping through the haze, seeping back into the scene. The embers of thirteen bonfires flickered.
“Lina!”
Her eyes took a moment to focus. She was still seeing Thomas. And that girl.
Finley’s hand was shockingly hot on her arm. His mouth tight with worry.
Around them, people shared shaky smiles. A few started to laugh sheepishly. “Did you see it? Did you see her? That was the queen leaving. Did you see who she took? Did you see who she chose?”
Lina’s throat closed. The words came out in a whisper, but they cut through all the other sounds. “She took him.”
Finley’s fingers clenched around her forearm. “Who?”
“Thomas.”
“Oh. Well. That’s…” A medley of emotions warred for control of her brother’s face. Shock. Relief. Glee, and a hint of guilt.
Lina didn’t wait to hear him lecture her on why this was a good thing, the right thing to happen, didn’t wait for him to offer her comfort whilst hiding his grin. Her body filled with sudden furious energy.
“Hey, now, just hold on!” Finley chased after her, putting himself between her and the crowd, acting as a shield and clearing a path. “Hold—”
Lina sped through a shadowed arch, past the empty shops, pushing out of the arcade and into the misty, moonlit streets, cutting down the first alley to the left. A startled water rat streaked across Finley’s boots.
“Lina, calm down! Stop!”
She couldn’t. Urgency had its hooks in her. She’d never been able to sit still whilst a person she loved was in danger. When Lina got an idea in her head, she was physically incapable of doing anything but acting. “I have to get him back.”
The words drew Finley up short.
Lina kept moving, rushing through a mist that left wet kisses on her clothes. The kind of mist you wandered into knowing you might fall through it and into a completely different world, never able to return to this one. She turned down another narrow alley. The walls on either side shimmered and swirled with enchanted murals that made you lick the bricks if you stared at them too long. Caldella’s builders had a strange sense of humor. It was a side effect of living with witches.
Lina’s heart stuttered. Witches. Murderers. Queens who chained boys to stone pillars and drowned them on full-moon nights.