“No, no, no,” Ola says, emphatic. “We need to tell Father. If we go behind his back, it will only be worse for us.” She rises from the bed and heads for the door that leads from our chambers into the family wing.
“No!” I snap, jumping from bed and physically cutting her off. “We can’t tell him. He’s already assaulted the witch. If he finds out that she’s willing to help us and not him, he won’t be pleased.”
“Are you kidding?” Ola says, crossing her arms over her chest, one brow cocked. Her voice is still too loud. “He’ll reward us.”
Eydis sweeps forward and places her hands on either side of our sister’s cheeks, forcing Ola to look her in the eye. “Ola, the last thing Father is interested in is positive reinforcement. He’s not going to start now.”
Ola doesn’t answer her, looking to me instead. “How do you know he assaulted her? How do you know she’s not lying? We all know the tales—she’s powerful enough to ruin the sea as soon as save it. Why would she rescue Alia after sending her to her death? Maybe she just wants ríkifjor to become more powerful. She nearly destroyed us once. What could she do with the power of those flowers?”
All of it could be true. But we have to try.
I believed the witch when she said that Father stormed in, angry that he couldn’t get Alia back himself. That seems exactly like something he would do—our whole lives he’s been paranoid, what with the disaster that almost befell us with Annemette. The ríkifjor augments his power, which makes him feel more in control, but it also makes him volatile. He’s not the king he was the first hundred years of his reign.
“Ola, you have to trust me,” I say. “I met the witch, and I believe her. I have to try.”
“I want to try with you,” Eydis says. “Signy?”
Behind us, she nods. Then all our eyes turn to Ola. She shoves a stray curl behind her ear. “Fine.”
Eydis looks to me. “What’s the plan, Ru?”
“To get the flowers, I need to go alone. The four of us can’t travel in a pack through the castle. Even in the dead of night—Father will sense it.”
The three of them nod as one. Then Eydis speaks. “Signy and Ola will come with me. The ríkifjor will buy us the witch’s strength, but it won’t get us the antidote. She’ll want more.” Eydis says this with certainty. At nineteen, she believes she knows more than all of us combined, and maybe she does. She touches their shoulders. “Together we will meet the sea witch’s price—there’s always a price for these things.”
Then she looks to me. “How did Alia pay?”
“With her voice and most likely her life.”
“Not if we can help it,” Eydis says, and checks the night clock’s swirling dial in our shared chambers. A quarter till midnight. “Let’s get going. Meet us by the canyon in an hour, Ru, and we’ll go with you to wake the witch. Alia can’t wait much longer.”
“The canyon?” I ask. It’s a strange place for a meeting, this crag that runs across the strait like an old wound, cool reams of water whispering from its depths. It’s also in the opposite direction from the sea witch’s murky lair.
My oldest sister nods, the ends of her diamond-dusted hair sparkling like the snow the winter brings above. “By the red coral. You know the one that looks like a hammerhead on a pike?”
“Yes, I know the one, but why—?”
“Because that’s where I keep what the witch will want. Where do you think I get my diamond dust from? I have a treasure trove, Ru.” I always figured Father gave her the dust she loves so much, eager to marry off the next in his brood, what with all the suitors Eydis sees on a regular basis. A shiny prize for the king’s second-wave eldest. “My diamonds and pearls can be replaced. If the witch demands a payment for Urda, she can have my treasures, but no one is taking my voice.”
The family gardens ring the grounds, a patch for each of the sisters from the king’s two wives—Queen Mette, gone in the tide long ago, and Queen Bodil, my mother, who’s young enough to be the same age as our older half sisters. My patch sweeps the long way around the royal chambers, where Father and Mother’s patio bleeds into the soft turquoise sand. It’s the largest garden, the final connection in the ring, swinging around for the ten sisters like a short-handed clock.
My garden is nearly all ríkifjor now, blanketing the sands in their ghostly way. The only other flowers are roses with exaggerated points edging the borders, sharp enough to scare away any curious fingers on sight alone. The guards are there, even in the dead of night, planted three around, spaced like slices of pie. The public believes the security is because of the garden’s proximity to the royal chambers, and that is a very good cover story indeed.
I stick to any shadow I can find, careful not to draw the guards’ attention, and careful to not to disturb the aura of magic surrounding the ríkifjor—an extra security measure. My heart thuds tightly in my chest, and my swim stroke falters for just a moment.
There are so many ways my plan could crumble. The guards. The magic. The possibility that I don’t know Alia as well as I think I do. Still, I push forward. Shadow to shadow, I wind my way through the serpentine layout of garden plots, thankful when I arrive at the edge of Alia’s garden.
Though I’ve seen it a million times, my heart drops at the life there. So much life, in every color: ruby red, yellow as bright as the spring sun above, velvet purple, cloud-white. All as shiny as a new day, they’re every bit as bright as she is. As romantic as she is. As full of hope and promise and sunshine as she is.
They’ll die without her. If not now, soon.
There, in the middle of it all is the massive statue she acquired after rescuing the boy this summer. Like his father, brothers, and the rest of the ship, it sank to the sea floor and lodged itself in the sand. Until a day later when she returned to the scene of it all and wedged it out, using the very limits of her magic to move the thing all the way from the wreck site to this garden.
The statue is as bold as the fact that she brought it here, thumbing her nose at what anyone thought—even Father, who likely only allowed it because it shows exactly how ridiculous the Øldenburgs are. The statue was meant to make a statement on land—Look at this would-be king! Standing tall on a ship’s prow, one foot hiked up as he looks out, eyes searching for new lands to pillage!—and it does so here as well. It’s a trumpet-blast declaration of what Alia did.
I slink into the shadow of the statue and look up at him.
“I hate you,” I whisper to his stupid, handsome face.
The statue stonily accepts my words, but there’s so much more I want to say to him. That he’s already broken my sister’s heart and he’s nearly broken mine, which is hanging on by the thread that I can save her with these seeds and the sea witch’s help. That he doesn’t know how lucky he is that Alia was already in love with him when she rescued him or he’d be bones like his father and brothers—one more Øldenburg fed to the sea.
That he never deserved her and never will.
Looking around just to confirm yet again that I’m indeed alone, I crouch below the statue and dig, the crux of my plan hinging on the next few moments.
Although Alia could cultivate the most gorgeous blooms, they weren’t what she really wanted to grow. Not once she realized Father’s penchant for ríkifjor. And so I gave her a chance to try, squirreling away seeds for her to plant. Yet, as I had suspected, nothing ever came of them. I only hope she’s left the remainder where she hid them for safekeeping.
It