“The most worthy.” Hæra looked at her bare knees, poking above the water and flecked with goosebumps. “I knew it from the moment I saw her. And when she returned—when I got to know her—I knew I was right.” She shuddered. “Now I look back on it, and I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t think I ever could have hurt her, not even at the start. Or maybe I could’ve, if I hadn’t…”

“If you hadn’t what?”

“Spent so long trying to understand her,” Hæra said. “Coming to you and living here for years so when she finally came back…I saw her, and it was as if…” She pressed her right hand, her good one, over her heart. It didn’t stop the ache.

Madeleine had looked at Hæra as if she hated her.

Jonathan didn’t reply but stared into the distance. Maybe he saw Asgall there. She was almost done cleaning herself when he said abruptly, “I always wondered what you’d do when you didn’t age. But all along your idea was to eat Madeleine and then grow those wings?”

“I suppose.” Her wrist burned.

“So you could go back to your herd and not get killed, or have to breed and all the rest?”

Hæra swallowed. Her stomach felt as if it had another ice bag inside it. “It made sense at the time.”

“Would it work?” Jonathan’s gaze was suddenly, unusually sharp. “If you ate a worthy human, would they take you back? He just talked as if they would—a reward for killing the three of us.”

“I-I don’t know,” Hæra stammered. “Nobody’s ever tried. But I won’t hurt Madeleine.” She leaned forward; the water sloshed. “I swear it on whatever you need me to swear. I must⁠—”

“Then eat me.”

Now was not the time for Jonathan’s jokes. Hæra had to find Madeleine before it was dark again, make sure she was safe, and apologize. She’d run in the opposite direction of Asgall, and Asgall was hurt, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t encounter some other danger.

“Very funny,” she growled. She dropped the washcloth into the water with a plop. “Will you help me up? Madeleine’s out there somewhere in…”

Jonathan grabbed her right bicep and squeezed it, hard. He’d never done that before. “I’m serious. Look at me.”

Hæra looked. She hadn’t seen such a wild expression on his face since the night they’d met on the beach, when he’d been drunk and screaming for Asgall to come ashore and face him. “It’d save your life, would it? You’d go home and be all right?”

“What?”