In the Veins of the Drowning(101)

She cradled Nemea’s crown in her crooked fingers. His sword lay on the deck before her. Beside it sat a mound of wet sand and a slimy ribbon of kelp.

“Where is he?” I croaked.

Her eyes were rimmed in deep purple skin, her irises the color of the water off Varya’s shore. “Do you truly care?” Eusia’s voice asked through the nekgya’s rot-smattered mouth.

I hated the man. I was relieved he was gone. And yet his death snapped a tether that had tied me to this world. Bits of my life—memories of me, of my mother—that only he held had died with him. That realization filled me with lonely grief.

“Tell me where he is.”

“The sea, of course.” She set the crown on the deck with uncanny, jerking movements. “Come. We must close that wound. You’re running out of time.”

“Why?” I said, in a groan. “Why help me?”

“If you die, in a short time, so shall my power.”

The impulse overtook me—to let myself fade, right there on the deck of Nemea’s bobbing ship. To let my death be the severance that finally brought an end to Eusia. But my selfishness was a stubborn, inextinguishable fire. My desire to live burned bright. I thought of Agatha and the danger she was in. Of Theodore, days away from marrying an enemy bride.

I rose to my knees, shaking from the pain, and crawled across the deck toward her. The ocean was calm, rolling the ship gently. I knelt across from her, with the sword and sand and kelp between us, and looked into her dead eyes. My voice trembled. “I’m inclined to die if it means your end.” She remained silent, unblinking. “Tell me how to get to you and I will agree to your spell.”

There was only quiet. Only her hollow stare, until finally she said, “It is not perfect.”

I shook my head. “What’s not?”

“Our bond,” she said, simply. “How I have used up Ligea is preferable. If I had you beside me, like I do Ligea, I’d be stronger. This bond we share—I can access your power, you sustain me. But despite how I’d like to, I cannot harm you.” The nekgya’s dead eyes met mine and ice shards sliced through me. “Do you feel that too?” Her voice was a scratching whisper. “The desire to end me? To win. But if I let you come to me, if you stood above what is left of my body, ready to sever our bond, you could not do it.”

“Is that why the empress tried to take me?” I asked. “To bring me to you. She is your aide. She can harm me. She can help you perform the spell to break our bond and help you make a new one that is just like the one you share with my mother.”

The nekgya’s pallid head tilted unsettlingly to the side, the movement almost human. “Yes. Her veneration and fear have served me well.”

Warm blood dribbled down my lower stomach. My head seemed to float and the tremors that had begun to rack my body were too strong to stanch. As hopelessness settled over me, I thought to curl up on my side beneath it. We had reached an impasse. There was no way for me to succeed.

“You’re dwindling,” Eusia said, her voice empty as ever, but I could practically feel her panic. A thrum, a worried sort of whirr that stirred my blood.

I clamped my chattering jaw. Pulled in a painful breath. And a spark lit my mind.

I was fearsome too. I was worthy of veneration, and if none would devote themselves to me as the empress had done Eusia—then I would make them.

And I knew precisely who I would take as my aide. Who I would make assist me in breaking my bond to Eusia and ending her.

“Permit me onto Anthemoessa and I will perform this spell. I will keep you alive,” I said in a rush, my heart thumping quickly. She didn’t answer me. “Quickly, Eusia.” My voice scraped. “I have a bride to steal.”

The nekgya stared at me for a long moment and I knew Eusia was considering my terms. I would come to her on Anthemoessa and one of us would win. Her nod was sharp and quick. She blinked, then moved like a spider, inching toward me on all fours, and Theodore’s warnings against spell work pealed through me. He’d outright refused to let me even consider performing more than one spell—the one to end Eusia. But there was no hope without it.

“Will I be the same?” I leaned my body against the mast. “After the spell?”

“What magic takes, it never returns.”

My vision began to smudge the sails and rigging above me. My pain began to numb. “What do I need to do?” I sounded like a terrified child.

Her empty eyes did not meet mine as she knelt beside me. She cupped the sand in her decaying fingers. “The sand meets the blood. The fat fills the mouth. The kelp knits the flesh.”

I looked at her own rotting body, at the smattering of kelp and barnacles, at the patches of gelatinous skin. My stomach turned at the thought of making myself into her likeness, but I clamped my teeth and pulled my damp tunic over my head. “I put my blood in the sand?”

She nodded. I shook as I cut the familiar line over my palm with a talon. I let my blood run into the sand she held, and she crawled closer to me, reaching for my wound. I shuddered as she pressed the bloody sand into it, sucking in a harsh breath from the sting. She shoved the kelp at me. I bit a piece of it off, set it over the spot, then looked at her for approval.

“Fat,” she said.

My stomach fell. “I… I don’t—”