Madeleine had no idea what Beathag needed, but she knew all too well what Beathag had started: the murder of her own child before Hæra had escaped. She lifted her chin and sent one swift, silent prayer to whoever was listening: Give me strength to do the right thing.

She said, “I wouldn’t help you even if I could. And if there’s a hell for your kind, you can go straight there.”

Beathag’s tail tossed. She pawed the sand, lowered her head, and snarled. Asgall had done that when he’d prepared to charge. Madeleine was about to be torn to pieces, and it was going to hurt a lot, and⁠—

“Mother!”

Madeleine whipped around to behold Hæra staggering out of the ocean in her human form, naked as the dawn. She’d wrapped her right arm around herself while her left arm dangled at her side. She barely seemed able to stay on her feet.

Beathag extended her head toward her daughter. The wind blew into her face, and she sniffed it. Then she recoiled, stamping a hoof.

“No,” she said.

Madeleine turned the flashlight fully on Hæra. She looked different. It was hard to say how. Her body was the same, tall and lean and muscular, but she seemed smaller. Maybe it was the way she hunched over as she stumbled toward them.

“Stop,” Hæra called. Her voice cracked with strain. She shivered as she clutched herself, as if she were freezing cold—but Hæra was never cold. And she was never weak, especially this close to the sea.

There was a small, dark patch on the side of her neck. As she got closer, Madeleine gasped to see it was a bleeding wound.

“What have you done?” Beathag’s voice was a whipcrack.

“The witch in the whirlpool.” Hæra stopped, swaying in place. “She changed me. Now I’m…I’m…”

Beathag spoke it like a curse: “Human.”

Oh.

That was it.

Madeleine stared at Hæra. Of course. Of course that was it.

“You don’t want Madeleine.” Hæra took another shaky step forward. She slipped on a rock but righted herself at the last second. “She’s never wronged you. Or anybody. But I have—I—” Her shoulders slumped even more. “I betrayed everyone. It’s me you want. You want to finish me.”

Beathag said slowly, “You would surrender yourself to protect this…thing? Have you lost your warrior’s instinct?”

“If I could fight you,” Hæra said, “I would.”

She turned her haunted eyes on Madeleine. In them, Madeleine saw more longing than ever before, even when Hæra had wanted her most fiercely. But this was different too. For the first time, next to the longing, Madeleine saw grief.

If she’d needed any more proof that Hæra was now human, that was it.