“You earned only one question,” the Great Mare said. “Ask yourself if your kind can change instead. And then ask yourself if your kind are wiser than mine.”

Madeleine staggered a little, knees unsteady. She knew the answer to that.

“I don’t know if I can forgive her,” she said slowly. “But I’ll talk to her. I can do that.”

The Great Mare’s body shimmered. Was she about to vanish? “Then you must hurry. She goes to the witch.”

“The…witch?” Hæra had referred to a witch, when she’d knelt in the mud before Asgall, in tones of deepest defeat. The thought cut through Madeleine worse than any wind. “Do you mean the one in the whirlpool? What⁠—”

“And even if she escapes that fate, the witch is not all she has to fear. There is one other in her family.”

Madeleine froze. Hæra had told her that she’d almost been killed by Asgall and… “Her mother? Beathag?”

The Great Mare’s watery body was rippling, becoming transparent. “The Each-uisge all carry some aspect of myself in them. Hæra is like one of my heartbeats: swift and strong. Her brother is like one of my ribs, hidden and frail.”

Madeleine gripped the collar of her sweater. Her own heartbeats were out of control. “And—and Beathag? What part of you is she?”

The Great Mare’s body rippled again, and its shape began to dissolve. Her tail and hindquarters spun, again, into the waterspout that had first arced up into the air from the cliffs. Ocean spray struck Madeleine’s face.

The mighty head was the last to melt away. But before she turned into the tide, the Great Mare had time to tell Madeleine one last thing.

“My teeth.”

CHAPTER FORTY

The beach was deserted. There were no fishing boats here, no houses or structures, no reason for anyone to rush here in the wake of a storm. Only one man would.

Atop the seawall, Hæra looked wildly down across the beach, seeking what she didn’t want to find. It was too dark even for her. She had to get closer. Her leg aching, she picked her way down the stone steps to the shore.

She couldn’t see anything but rocks that faded into sand that disappeared into dark water. The storm had cast flotsam on the shore, along with human debris like a broken old dinghy.

“Jonathan?” she called.

No reply.

Oh, how foolish of her, of course he wouldn’t be able to hear her over the wind and water. She needed to be louder. She screamed, “Jonathan!”

His name disappeared into the wind. No sign of him.

Had he gone into the water? He wouldn’t be so reckless, would he?

He wouldn’t leave her?

Hurry to save a life.