this?” I hold my scepter sideways, so hard that my knuckles are white.
“How did you know?” Her voice is dry, amused, and full of venom.
“Everything has a price.”
“So true,” she says. “But I am no oracle. I do not require anything but your devotion. Your love.”
“Look at what you’ve done!” I spit over the ship at her. “How could anyone love you?”
“I didn’t start this, Tristan.” She’s serene in her confidence. “My children know the things I did to make them well when no one else would take them. All our creatures are precious. I do this for our kind. I do this for us.”
“That’s why you sent Jesse to die for you?”
“That’s why I sent Jesse to distract you.” She turns the staff in her hands. “You’re as impulsive as my brother, never stopping to look. You see only what’s directly in front of you. Only what you want in the moment.”
“You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”
“Don’t you dare…” Behind me, Adaro’s voice comes in an angry whisper. “Don’t you dare give in to her.”
That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? If I let him die, it’ll be my fault. Like Ryan, like Marty. No, Marty’s fine. I saved Marty, like I couldn’t save the others. Everything that’s happening here is my fault. In the dark of the night, the silver witch waits for me to devote myself to her.
Deep in my heart, I know what my grandfather would do. He locked her away for a reason, but she found her way out. Everything she does is calculated, studying us like prey before she swoops in and swallows us whole. She’s one step ahead of me, knowing that I won’t let her kill Adaro. If I were my grandfather, I would have done things differently. Then again, I’m not him. I’m me.
“I thought you’d hesitate.” She squeezes her hand, and when I turn around, Adaro screams like he’s burning from the inside. It’s cut off abruptly as, little by little, he erupts into bubbles, trickling away on the deck until he’s nothing but a pile of sand. Everything he ever was. Everything he would ever be is blowing away in the wind. Poof, just like that.
On the deck of the ship, I point the quartz scepter at her.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Tristan.” She lifts herself in the wave again. The wind is drying her hair, giving her the effect of flying.
I ready myself on the ledge. “Get off your wave, and we’ll settle this once and for all.”
“You can’t kill me. You must know that.”
“Because Archer brought you the spring water.”
She nods. “And the more I drink it, the stronger my magic and the more I can help our kind.”
“I can still hurt you,” I say, hoping it’s true. Hoping Layla is safe.
“This is all wrong, Tristan. Don’t you see? I don’t want you dead. I want you with me.” The rains start up again. She lifts the staff over her head and pulls at the sky until the lightning returns. “And the scepter, of course. If Adaro’s life wasn’t enough, then perhaps this one will make you feel differently.”
She casts light over the pier.
Gwen stands at the edge, a small silver knife in her hand, the blade pressed against Layla’s neck.
Gwen!”
She won’t look me in the eye. Like inside the reef house. Like before and after she tried kissing me on the beach. “Gwen, look at me.”
She doesn’t.
But Layla does. Her lips are trembling. I can smell it on her, anger like kerosene, like the blue fire eating away at the ship now that the rain is settling.
I ready myself to jump off.
“You stay put.” Nieve wags her finger at me, and my body feels like it’s wading against the current. I grip my scepter tighter, fighting against the force of her magic.
“Don’t look surprised, Tristan,” Gwen says, finally meeting my eyes for a second before looking back down at Layla.
That’s the thing. “I am. How can you do this?”
“I don’t understand,” Nieve says, “how you can pass over my Gwenivere for this creature. When Gwenivere told me her advances were futile against your human, I pictured something a little more—lush.”
“You fought alongside me—”
“No.” Gwen’s eyes, the gray eyes that stared right into mine as she helped me find Shelly, are shadowed. “I fought against you. You were just too blind to see it.”
Everything crashes over me. The way Archer tried to save her when the merrows attacked us in Florida. The way she helped