Sea Witch(70)

She doesn’t look at me. “It did not. It’s over. I’m over.”

“We’re both over if we don’t go now. The guards are coming. Let me help you, please.”

When she doesn’t answer, I move to stand. “The sea will give me what I want. And I want you to stay.”

Here, she finally glances at me. The look in her eye is all questions, but she seems relieved. I think.

I step into the water. The sea is crisp, and immediately it takes my boots, stockings, ankles, hemline—all of it—as its own. Grounding me in its power.

A shadow falls over us, and I look to the sky. Another sudden storm has swallowed the moon, the whole cove bathed in a shimmering silver darkness—the curtain drawn before the magic begins.

I measure the clouds. There’s lightning in the distance. This is good. I’ll need all the energy I can harness. My heart begins to pound as that familiar crackle sparks across my veins, warming me from my toes to the top of my skull. I raise my hands above my head, feeling the brewing storm’s charge on the edge of my fingertips.

“Evie, STOP!”

I turn. But only because the voice is Nik’s.

He’s standing on the sand not ten feet from us, all the finery woven into his jacket and the crown atop his head sparkling brightly in the moonlight. Shifting his weight, Nik lifts his chin, his stance so much like the one he uses in public appearances. It’s his practiced armor, and I recognize it in an instant. The next words are not his—they’re the crown’s.

“The guards are on their way. Annemette, if you are not gone from Havnestad before they arrive, they will forcibly return you to the water. You are a threat to Havnestad and all of the ?resund Kingdoms.”

Nik believed me. He remembered. As soon as my words tumbled out he must have seen his rescue—her tail.

And it’s ruined Annemette. And me as well.

There’s not a prayer of him helping us now. Even if my magic is able to keep her here, he’ll want nothing to do with her anyway. But if he believed my truth about her, he should believe her truth about me. And I know he does, deep down. He’ll want to protect me, but he can’t.

There are boots on the cobblestones now—thud, thud, thud—King Asger’s guards approaching. Coming for us. Annemette’s eyes return to the sea. Her shoulders begin to heave again, dry sobs coming fast, but she refuses to move.

I take one last look at Nik, standing there so regal, so good, so kind, but I’ve already made my choice. I turn to Annemette, my hand outstretched. “Get up! Let’s go! Don’t you want to live?”

Nik lunges toward me, his fa?ade crumbling. “Evie, please don’t do this.” He grabs my hand, and I’m pulled to face him as much by the desperation of his movement as by the look in his eyes. He knows that if he sees me perform magic—confirming Annemette’s accusation—then he won’t be able to protect me. We’re truly on opposite sides.

But we have been all along—I was just the only one of us to know it.

“Evie, please don’t do this,” he repeats, and I nearly push a finger to his lips to still the tremble there, despite my frustration.

“Nik, you forced me into this magic. Annemette will die if I don’t do it,” I cry. “If you’d given her your heart, it would have been so simple—”

“Evie, you don’t understand. My heart is not mine to give.”

His hand tightens, and despite the want in his eyes I expect him say something next about nobility, duty—all the things the ?ldenburgs hold dearer than their own feelings. But he doesn’t.

“My heart has been yours, Evie—always. Since Anna’s death. Since sandcastles and stick princesses.” His voice cracks and tears threaten his eyes. “I have always loved you. Every day. My heart is not mine to give because it is already yours.”

The truth crashes over me like a winter wave.

All this time, I’ve known. But the truth—the truth is always something I’ve struggled with, whether I’m lying to Nik or myself, or both. But his truth is the truth in my heart, too.

Then I’m kissing him.

Quick as a lightning strike, I press my lips to his hard enough that he takes a step back to keep us from falling to the beach.

In that brief moment, everything surrounding us stops—the sadness, the magic, the boot strikes on the cobblestones, the entirety of it.

His lips are warm, his hands gentle as they fold themselves over mine. He is delicate and strong at the same time, matching caress with intensity in a way I didn’t know was possible. In a way I don’t want to end.

I do love him. I’ve loved him as long as he has loved me. I’ve just spent so much of my life, so much of the last week, pretending it wasn’t true. So that we wouldn’t be hurt. That we wouldn’t suffer at the hands of class and expectations.

But love doesn’t work that way.

And with a sudden dip of my trembling heart, I realize I doomed Annemette from the start. I’ve taken her true love’s kiss.

“Step away from him, witch.”

Iker’s voice slices through my thoughts, and it’s Nik who pulls away, though the order was meant for me. Iker doesn’t need proof to know what I am; still the abandonment cuts deep.

The world comes flooding back in—twenty rifled soldiers on the beach, standing at attention behind Iker. Behind the only other boy I’ve kissed. Iker has vengeance in his eyes and armed men who can do something about it.