A thin line of scarlet wet Lou’s blade. It colored the girl’s neck like a ribbon. “You once said I’m like my mother.” Lou stared at the blood on her knife, transfixed. “You were right.” Quicker than I could react, she slashed the girl’s neck, turning to face me as the latter choked and gurgled. Her movements slowed within seconds. Scarlet stained the white stone irrevocably. “You were right.”

Drink of the waters, and spill their truth.

“Yes.” The mist around my feet vanished with the word, and I strode forward purposefully, swallowing bile. I didn’t look at the girl. Didn’t memorize her face. My chest cleaved in two with the effort. This wasn’t real. Not yet. Not ever—not if I could help it. “Yes, Lou, you are like your mother.” I took her chin in my hand, forcing her to look at me. “But so am I.”

The second the words left my lips, a wide grin broke across her face. “Well done, you.” And then the ground began to crumble, the altar and temple falling away to white sand and still water. A rushing sound filled my ears, and Lou’s chin vanished between my fingers. I clutched only empty air. Sand abraded my knees, and I glanced down to my discarded iron chalice. I touched it gingerly. Still cold.

“You’ve returned.” Constantin’s amused voice punctured the silence as I sat backward, stunned. “After Coco, I might add.” He winked at her where she sat frozen beside me, clutching her knees.

At my anxious look, she muttered, “I’m fine.”

“Did you speak your truth?”

“Every word.”

“You aren’t going to repeat it, are you?”

“Never.”

Constantin chuckled before snapping his gaze to Lou, who started to stir. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Ah, excellent. Right on time.”

I moved to her side just as she opened her eyes. Her gaze darted from me to Coco, to the endless sand beyond us, and she bolted upright, craning her neck to look behind. “Lou?” I asked in confusion, lifting a hand to touch her forehead. Her bite hadn’t healed—I hadn’t expected it to, not yet—and her color looked paler than usual. As white as her hair. She scrabbled backward on her hands, still searching the beach wildly.

“Where are they?” Her voice pitched high, girlish, and my heart dropped. Not Lou at all, then. “Where are they hiding? Where are they waiting? They’re near, they’re near. They must be here.”

I stared at her in disgust. In pity. “No one else is here, Nicholina. Just you.”

“No, no, no.” She rocked back and forth as Coco had done, shaking her head frenetically. Wincing as she did. “It’s a trap. They’re here, oh yes, and they’re waiting, hiding, creeping through the mist—”