Page 28
Dread crawls up the walls of my belly as I shuffle over patches of salt meadow rush and arrive at the only house sitting this far back on the white sand. The home looks pleasant enough, with its grey clapboard siding and cream shutters, but I get a sense of foreboding whenever I’m near it.
Visiting the sea witch is almost always a bad decision.
Her front door creaks open, inviting me in. I pass the pitcher plants on her front porch and slump a shoulder against her doorframe, breathing in the sailor’s stench to mask the sickly sweet scent of death.
Cosette is standing at her wide window, watching the tranquil waves ripple in the bay out back. The ends of her flaxen-blonde hair curl in toward the nipped waist of her ivory bodice. She’s fully dressed, as if she’s expecting company.
“I thought you might pop in for a visit,” she says without looking at me. “Don’t you want to come in for a minute?”
I tap my flask and glance at the rack beside the window. The shelves are lined with clear jars arranged around a burning candle. Grey-blue souls swim inside containers, small transparent versions of the people they used to be.
Sitting on Cosette’s bone-white sofa is the last thing I want to do.
I study my dirty fingernails, feigning nonchalance. “I just dropped by to remind you our deal is complete. The Mer-Princess has nothing to do with it.”
“I never said she did.” She turns slightly, her pale lashes fluttering above her upturned nose. “I was only helping a friend escape a tough situation.”
A tough situation I should have seen coming. I’m at least partially to blame for this mess. “Isn’t there another way out? Could she possibly marry someone else?”
“No, her intention was set on her sailor when she drank the potion,” she explains. “It has to be the Duchess.”
“You knew who she was.”
“Cordelia didn’t?” She spins around, her blue eyes wide with fake surprise. “Oh no, her true love never told her who she was. How unfortunate. What do you think I should do about that?”
Cosette toys with the shell necklace resting in her cleavage. She’s wearing Cordelia’s Ocean Voice on a cord around her neck. It would be too easy to rush her and snatch it.
I flick my gaze to her face, not falling for the trap.
The sea witch is objectively gorgeous, but the longer I look at her, the more her beauty frightens me. Her eyes never quite match her expressions, and her fair white skin has an uncanny sheen to it.
When I made a deal with her, I didn’t realize what I was risking. Anyone I care about will always be in danger, so I’ve made myself care less.
“I don’t know.” I take a drink and shrug. “Maybe you could be a nice witch and let her out of the deal.”
She laughs mirthlessly. “Do you know why I like you?”
My wings pinch between my shoulder blades. “Because I got you what you wanted?”
“No. It’s because you amuse me.” She’s standing too close for comfort. Her perfume smells like funeral flowers, and it makes my eyes water. “What did they call you during the Queen’s War again? Oh yes, Zephyr the fearless.”
“I always thought that was a silly nickname.”
“Ironic, isn’t it, that you helped so many others escape the realm and still wound up all alone and forgotten?” she ponders. “A great hero wasting your talents in soggy taverns without a thought in your head for anyone else.”
I give her my best shit-eating grin and raise my flask. “Friends are more trouble than they’re worth. I’d rather look after myself.”
“And yet, here you are, coming to your little mermaid’s defense.”
I swallow hard. “That’s not why I’m–”
“Why do you care enough to get involved?”
She traces her nails along my cheek, but she might as well have her hand wrapped around my throat because she has me. Her chokehold tightens until I can barely breathe.
I remind myself there’s a thin layer of aether between us. She can’t actually touch me. No one can. Not unless I let them in, and I rarely drop my guard these days.
“I don’t care.”
