The strength drained from Hæra at once, as if Beathag had sliced a hoof across her jugular. She floated uselessly in the water, blood drifting slowly from her salt-stung wounds.

“My son,” Beathag said. “She tried to take what you should have had.”

Behind Hæra, Asgall snarled. She’d nearly forgotten about him.

“You failed me too,” Beathag said. “With that selfsame human, was it not?”

“He tricked me,” Asgall rasped. “I wasn’t like her. I didn’t go ashore or betray our kind!”

You transformed and got on a rock, Hæra thought, but didn’t say—Beathag cut her off.

“And you never will. No more of my family will I lose to those stinking creatures. You both are mine. You’re for the ocean, my son.” Beathag glanced at Hæra, who floated and ached. “Your sister’s bones will be too. That is all the kindness I can offer.”

Jonathan’s kindness was different. That was a strange thought to have just now. It had to come from blood loss. To think…the sea held her death, but on land was a human who’d made her tea and taught her to read…

“End this now,” Beathag told Asgall.

End it. Yes. As she began to sink toward the ocean floor, her tail limp, Hæra thought an ending wouldn’t be so bad. Her body might feel like one big bruise, one long snapping bone, but her mind was mercifully numb.

She looked up at the surface and closed her eyes. Her last sight shouldn’t be the family that hated her. Until now, she had not realized they did. I am nothing at all.

Asgall’s teeth snapped at her neck. “You dared approach him,” he whispered. “You dared.”

Jonathan, again. Of course Asgall would punish Hæra for taking something he didn’t even want, something he’d surrendered. Typical. What was the point in responding? All was lost, wasn’t it?

Then, behind her eyelids, appeared a woman in a nun’s habit, her eyes closed and her face pale with sorrow. Her hands were clasped at her breast. Sister Madeleine. Tall and graceful, and…

And beautiful, the most beautiful thing Hæra had ever seen…

“Angel,” Sister Madeleine whispered, “I’m so afraid.”

Afraid? Afraid of what? What could threaten her when she stood alone, praying?

“If you’re there, if you’re good, please guide me now. Protect me.”

Sister Madeleine needed protecting? Hæra curled more deeply into herself as Asgall dealt her a particularly vicious blow. She could protect nobody like this, least of all herself. What good would she be to Sister Madeleine? Nothing…I am nothing…

Asgall swam backward, beating his tail, building up force to turn on her. Hæra closed her eyes again, listening desperately.

“I’ll do what you said, as soon as I can. It might take a while, but⁠—”

Asgall laughed. The current shifted. He was closing in.