Sister Madeleine pressed her clasped hands to her lips. She murmured, “I’ll return to you. I swear it.”

Hæra opened her eyes. Asgall was right there. His mouth was open, his teeth razor sharp.

She struck him in the mouth with her hooves. When he reared back, blood flowed from his muzzle.

And then she fled.

Each-uisge did not flee, but they also didn’t do a lot of the things she’d done already, and she knew exactly where she was going. There would be no more pleas for mercy, no more curling up and waiting to die.

Her woman had called to her, for her, and Hæra was not nothing.

She wasn’t as strong as Asgall, but she was faster than he was, and for sure she was both stronger and faster than their mother. She was injured, but not yet broken, and although she couldn’t fight, she could try to escape.

Rage could drive her. Betrayal could fuel her. But nothing, nothing could propel her forward so powerfully as hope.

For it had been no hallucination—Sister Madeleine had called to her. Hæra didn’t know how, but Jonathan had said something similar when they’d met: that he still heard Asgall calling to him sometimes. Perhaps that had been more than idle human dreaming. When the bond formed between an Each-uisge and its chosen human prey, if it didn’t consummate in a feast, then what could resolve it?

Of course Sister Madeleine was crying out to her, promising to return to her. Hæra couldn’t just give up and die. That wasn’t their destiny.

Return to me, she would have called to Sister Madeleine if she could. I’ll live for you. I’ll survive this, for you.

She could hear her mother and brother pursuing her. Her destination seemed an age away, but it was getting closer with every stroke of her tail, and then, suddenly, the swirling waters were in sight.

Behind her, Asgall shouted, “You’re mad!”

She said nothing to that, just plunged on, and by the time she’d reached the edge of the whirlpool, they’d stopped chasing her. They’d have to be the mad ones to follow her this far. Everyone knew the Witch’s Whirlpool was a deathtrap.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. This was still a better alternative to being killed. Hæra threw herself into the current and wondered if she’d snap in two when it took hold of her, dragging her downward to a pit where no creature was meant to go. She curled into the inside edge of the current, extending her neck as much as she dared through the wall of water into the eye of the vortex, and then looked down.

The witch looked back up at her.