The Deepest Blue(80)

Destroy the island!

That would help end the test, wouldn’t it?

She didn’t think they’d succeed—the island’s spirits would defend against the wild spirits. But while the spirits were fighting one another, Mayara, Roe, and Palia could slip away.

Maybe.

But it was looking better and better. With luck, the Silent Ones would have their hands full reining in the spirits on the island and quelling the storm that Roe had raised.

Soon, Mayara, Roe, and Palia left the storm behind them and shot through the water. Glancing back, Mayara wished they could have searched for Lanei. She didn’t deserve to die like that. “Did she drown, or was it spirits?”

“Neither! She swam off of her own volition,” Roe replied. “Said she’d draw them away and that I was the one who had to get to the queen. Told Palia to make sure I made it.”

“And I will,” Palia said. “Keep going!”

Lanei could have left the island, but she chose to stay behind. That was brave. “I know she tried to kill us,” Mayara said, “but she wanted to do what’s right. I don’t think she was a murderer. I think she wanted to be a hero.”

“We won’t waste her sacrifice,” Palia said. “We’ll make it.”

“Wow, Palia,” Roe said. “That almost sounded like optimism.”

Mayara glanced back again. South of Akena, the Silent Ones were arriving at the storm. They rode on the backs of spirits, both in the air and through the water. Mayara saw their silhouettes for only the briefest of moments before wind whipped sea spray around them, obscuring them from view.

Mayara hoped they found Lanei in the storm and were able to save her, though she didn’t know what they’d make of a potential heir who had stayed beyond the end of her test. Would they treat her as a hero or a traitor?

Which was she? Hero or traitor?

The same question could be asked about Elorna.

As they sped across the water, Mayara kept looking back at the spirit storm. Elorna was somewhere in there, distracting her silent sisters from following her birth sister.

She remembered so clearly the moment she’d been told that Elorna had died. It was a rainy day, and she’d resented being trapped inside. She’d been sorting shells that she’d collected on the beach the day before. Three piles: good, broken, and smelly. Kelo had already started making wind chimes and mobiles, and she wanted to give him a present. Mayara didn’t know who had delivered the news to her parents, but she remembered that it was her father who had told her. He’d held her while he said the words: “Elorna isn’t coming back.”

She remembered the way the rain seemed to slow when she heard those words. She’d felt the thump of her blood through her body, so loud it drowned out whatever her father said next. But it was the next day that was the worst, when she woke up in the morning and the sun was shining and she remembered all over again. She ate her breakfast without tasting it and listened to her mother crying in the other room. Their mother cried for days, heavier than the rain, and she didn’t come out of her room, even though Mayara desperately wanted her to. Mayara didn’t want to be alone with her sorrow—it was too big and too scary. She spent the days instead with Kelo. Mostly, they sat quietly side by side. He seemed to instinctively know that words would make it worse, that there were no words that would fix the way her heart felt empty or the world felt dimmed.

But gradually, she’d resumed the business of living again, because you had to, unless you were their mother, who seemed to retreat more and more into herself. Leave her alone, everyone said. She needs her space. But she never seemed to have enough space. Instead she just created more and more space around herself—a buffer against having to feel anything.

Mayara attempted to push her way in anyway, mostly with things Elorna had loved. She taught herself to dive deep. She’d always been a strong swimmer and a good diver, but in Elorna’s absence, she tried to fill the world with Elorna’s bravery, as if that would make up for the emptiness.

It didn’t. Especially for Mother. Losing Elorna had shredded their mother, and no matter how fully Mayara had tried to live her life, it hadn’t been enough. In a way, Mayara had lost both her sister and her mother on that day.

But Elorna was never gone.

She chose to leave us.

She knew as she had the thought that it wasn’t fair. Elorna hadn’t wanted to leave them. She’d chosen to live, which was the choice that Mayara had planned to make until she thought Kelo was dead. How could Mayara blame her for doing as Mayara had planned?

Because I blame her for lying—for letting them tell her family she’d died.

If they’d known that Elorna still lived, maybe their mother wouldn’t have withdrawn so much. Maybe their father wouldn’t have nearly fallen apart trying to hold their family together. Maybe Mayara . . .

Actually, she didn’t know how it would have changed her.

She wished she could have talked with Elorna longer. There was so much she wanted to ask her and tell her. And now I may never have another chance.

A Silent One was sworn to not only hide her identity but reject it. Elorna shouldn’t have spoken—it was treason to tell Mayara who she was. Then again, sitting atop this spirit, Mayara was committing treason too. She just hoped she would have a chance to tell her parents that Elorna lived. She ached for that.