Hæra had tasted Madeleine’s blood last night. It had been thrilling, tempting, intimate—nothing like this. This was the absence of all joy and hope.

This was despair, and Hæra had brought it to the witch as promised.

The witch did not linger. After one lick, she rose to her feet and looked down on Hæra, her expression inscrutable.

Hæra’s neck ached. “Well? Finish me,” she croaked.

But the witch shook her head. “You do not belong here. The sea does not own your blood.”

“I don’t belong anywhere,” Hæra said wearily. “If the sea doesn’t own my blood, what does?”

Silence while the witch regarded her. Hæra’s heart pounded, sending more blood to cloud the water from her wound.

Then the witch said, “The sky.”

It must be a taunt. Somehow, the witch knew Hæra’s doomed desires and was mocking her with them before she killed her. If so, Hæra deserved it. She’d destroyed everything she’d touched.

“Go,” the witch said.

Hæra boggled. Had the bargain been fulfilled? The witch had only wanted a bite of her?

That was no mercy. “I have nowhere to go. I have nothing else to be.”

The witch said, “Wrong.”

Suddenly, Hæra’s vision swam. For a moment, she was in a car, a familiar one, Jonathan’s Vauxhall, as it rattled down a road. Madeleine, still wet and dirty, was in the driver’s seat. Her face was ashen.

It was just like the vision Hæra had had years ago, when her family attacked her. She’d been ready to give up until, across the miles, Sister Madeleine had called for her aid. Why did she look so frightened now? Was she in imminent danger?

Hæra groaned. One more chance. If she could protect Madeleine from whatever chased her…if she could do the right thing, just once, so it hadn’t all been for nothing…

“Is it real?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then please.” Hæra dipped her head until her muzzle touched the sand. “I beg you…please, I’ll return afterward…”

“You swear this?” the witch asked.

“I do.” Hæra was shaking.

“You would return,” the witch asked. “For this chance, you would return here to be imprisoned forever. Tortured forever. Why?”

Hæra looked at the dead man clinging to the witch’s hand. The man she had loved and betrayed, and for which crime she was trapped eternally.

The witch looked at him too. Then she laughed, as she had years ago, like the blades of two knives sharpening each other. “You know how they don’t let go of you,” she said.