Sea Witch(45)

His thumb grazes her cheek in a delicate arc. “I must admit that you do resemble our old friend, but considering Fru Liesel has accused everyone—including me—of being Anna in the years since, I’d tell you not to worry about what she thinks.”

Nik and I allow ourselves a small laugh with the others despite how hard it is still to speak of Anna. And while my body is drained from arguing with Annemette, I can’t let go of the hope that somewhere inside of her is that old friend. I can feel it in my bones. In my heart. I’m right about this.

I’m right about her.

Tomorrow cannot be her last day, and if Nik can’t or won’t help me achieve what she needs, I will find a way do it myself.





FOUR YEARS BEFORE


The hero was too big for the room. That had been happening often of late, his new height making trouble with any doorframe or ceiling outside of the castle. Belowdecks on his father’s ships was definitely the worst, ironic considering the Viking blood thick in his veins.

It had been a week, and he had to see her again. She’d missed the entire Lithasblot festival that year, swallowed in blankets and despair. He’d visited her every night before his duties, entering a room cluttered with bottles and incense, Tante Hansa’s famous healing skills at work. He’d never been to this room before—she’d always come to him. Her house felt like another world—and it was.

It was weeks later now, August bearing down. And still she kept to her house, heartache confining her to her room.

That afternoon she’d improved a bit, sitting up with her back to the wall, reading some dirty old book in the low light. She glanced up as he ducked under the threshold, sitting at the end of her bed—his proper mother and her opinions about boys and girls far from here.

“How’s the world outside?”

“Still moving?”

She flinched. He didn’t blame her, he’d nearly flinched too.

Whenever anyone called him a hero for saving the life in front of him, his stomach curdled with the knowledge that he wasn’t quite heroic enough. Everyone had seen Iker pull him from the water. He’d been stopped, but everyone assumed he’d failed. Everyone, including Evie. He saw it in her eyes, wells underneath them as dark as this room.

Guilt was there too. It filled the space where Anna had been, just as large and unwieldy as an eleven-year-old girl. His guilt lay in his failure to save her, her guilt in the fact that she’d put Anna in danger in the first place. In some other part of Havnestad’s world, there was disappointment there too—that he’d saved the fisherman’s spawn instead of a friherrinde. He was a hero, but in dark rooms and hushed conversation, he was a traitor to his class as well.

“As are you, Evie. You’re here. There is so much outside these walls.”

To put a point on it, he took a tentative step forward into the tiny room. She watched him as if he might bust through the roof. But he made it carefully to the window, pulling back the curtain she had draped there, letting a sliver of sunlight stream in, blinding and white. The girl blinked so hard, her eyes stayed shut. He waited to speak again until she had the will to open them.

“The world is out there. It misses you.”

“That’s a lie.” And it might have been. But he didn’t care about the world. He missed her.

It took four more days of those visits, but he drew her out.

They avoided the beach and the cove, sticking to the market streets—at first. Even though he was there to shield her as much as he could, buying honey buns and the sweet man’s fresh saltlakrids with all the joy of a summer day. It didn’t stop the stares. Judgment radiated out of every street corner and doorway.

“Acts as if she were the one who drowned.”

“The sea takes as much as it gives; it’s just the way of things, young lady.”

“Saved by a prince and still can’t put a smile on that lucky face.”

Evie’s eyes kept to the cobblestones. There was no way she could enjoy the sun with those stares—even with him by her side.

So he took her away.

He tugged her wrist toward the mountains. Up and up they hiked, the trail twisting toward Lille Bjerg Pass.

There, in a clearing, a mile from the cobblestones, he’d found a sturdy log. One with a particular view of the farmlands sprawling out in the valley below, the sea and its troubles at their backs. They’d never truly been alone like this. Not since they were children, and even then Anna had been there nearly every moment.

Paper bag rustling, he offered her saltlakrids and a smile.

“Salty licorice for your thoughts?”

She didn’t touch the bag.

“I knew that was how they’d react.” She gestured aimlessly behind her, the entire town in a sweep of her palm.

There was no use in denying it—he’d seen and heard it too. He nodded. She went on.

“They were the same after Mother died and Father would take me to the market, unaware of how to buy for a household with Tante Hansa still away.”

She was six at the time, the hero knew. Old enough for memories to truly settle. She looked away from him then, out to the summer-burned pastures below.

“I just want to steal a ship and leave it all. I just want to be me—” She almost said more, but then he snatched her hand in his and gathered the treats in the other.