No more lies, but that didn’t mean Madeleine had to know every insignificant detail. Like how Hæra had originally intended to eat her to become a Stormhorse. She wasn’t going to do that anymore, so it wasn’t relevant. She’d be able to tell Madeleine eventually and deal with whatever look came into her eyes. Just not now.

“Let me tell you first about what I am,” she said. “Instead of what I’m not.”

The explanation ran long. By the time Hæra had finished telling Madeleine about the Each-uisge, they were sitting on the side of the hill, the damp earth soaking into their trousers.

“That explains a lot.” Madeleine wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. The wind whipped her hair. “Everything you said about your family being nomadic, and how you don’t…”

When she didn’t finish her sentence, Hæra prompted, “I don’t what?”

“How you don’t fit in,” Madeleine said slowly. “How sometimes you sort of…miss the mark when we’re talking. Behaviors that are just a little bit off, basic things you don’t know that most people would.”

Hæra’s face grew hot. Madeleine wouldn’t do much better if she suddenly became an Each-uisge. She snapped, “I’ve not done badly. I help to run a farm, don’t I? I even learned to read and do maths.”

“That’s impressive, yes.” Madeleine pursed her lips and turned back to Hæra. Her beautiful eyes missed nothing now that they’d been opened. “I want to know how you did all that,” she said. “But first, I want to know why.”

She and Hæra looked into each other’s eyes. For a moment, Hæra’s foot seemed to dangle over the edge of a cliff—the highest one on Jorsay, maybe, with a sheer face down into the sea.

“For you,” she said.

Madeleine’s face went from pale to red. She flinched but didn’t look away.

“That night changed me too,” Hæra said, her heart thundering like a storm. “Like it did you and Jonathan, all three of us. You know who I am, don’t you? Not only your rescuer, but the horse you cut free from the dock, too.”

Madeleine picked at a loose thread on her jeans. “I thought I’d drowned you when I was trying to save you.”

“You did save me. If I’d stayed stuck, either a human or an ocean predator would have found me. You cut me loose, and I was going to swim away, but then you fell into the water.”

Madeleine grimaced.

“A life for a life,” Hæra said. “I couldn’t let you drown after you’d rescued me. I dragged you ashore.”

After a pause, Madeleine said, “And then you became human.”

“No, I didn⁠—”