She hated Hæra. Jonathan was dead. All Hæra loved in the world was gone, and it was all her own fault. Her lies had driven Madeleine away, and she hadn’t been fast enough to save Jonathan from her own brother.

And in the sea, the rest of Hæra’s kin would tear her to pieces. Her own mother would be the first to do it. There was nothing left for her anywhere.

Hæra’s lungs ached from her cries, and her whole body trembled. Her head weighed more than it had before. It was too heavy to hold up. She could only stare down at Jonathan’s and Asgall’s bodies, empty shells now. The Last Current had torn away everything that mattered. There was no love, or comfort, or peace.

There was only despair.

The witch had known all along how this would end: that Hæra’s ambitions could only poison everything she touched. What began with a lie could never end happily. Maybe that had happened to the witch herself. Maybe that was why she was trapped forever with the people she’d murdered.

Hæra might find out quite soon. She had a bargain to fulfill.

That was all she had. There was nothing left for her here. She’d go to the ocean and swim for the whirlpool—the witch had said she’d bring Hæra to her, somehow. She would or wouldn’t, if the Each-uisge happened to see Hæra first. What did it matter? What did anything matter now?

She bent to Jonathan once more and sniffed his cold forehead, inhaling his beloved scent one final time. It was mingled with Asgall’s smell. Polluted. If Hæra had the strength, she’d rend her brother’s human body into pieces for daring to intrude on Jonathan this way.

She had no strength. Her leg ached—it must be nearly broken. She’d use the last of her energy just to make it to the ocean, much as she had years ago when she’d washed up on shore. She’d been shattered then too.

There was no Jonathan to put her back together this time.

Head bowed low, Hæra limped toward the ocean. On her back, she carried her despair like a rider: a cold, thin thing that dug its heels into her hide. It urged her on without mercy or grace.

Good. She deserved neither. She deserved only the whirlpool. Only the witch.

Madeleine found Connor by the beam of his flashlight. He crouched by the fence near the sheep pen. The winds had torn out a couple of posts. Behind him, the half moon shed just enough light to reveal the corpses of two lambs.

She glanced around as she approached. The pen’s metal roof was intact, but one of the doors had been blown off the hinge and hung loosely to the side. Straw lay all over the ground.