Fail? May the depths save Hæra if this creature could see the future. There were all kinds of rumors about her abilities—but if she could do that, wouldn’t she have foreseen her own doom? She couldn’t be right, not when Sister Madeleine herself had appeared in what must have been a vision.

“I won’t, Ancient One,” she pleaded. “She calls to me. She needs me!”

The witch stared at Hæra, spinning in time with her. Hæra looked back into those black eyes, as voracious as the whirlpool she’d created. She was a creature of hunger and need, like Hæra herself. She might understand, she might show mercy, and…

“Try, then.” The witch’s voice sounded as if it had been dragged across a seabed full of broken shells. How long since she had last spoken? “Try, fail, and despair.”

“No. I’ll succeed, and⁠—”

“Fail. Despair. Come back.”

Hæra stared at her. With every passing second, as the water battered her and she lost more blood, it became more difficult to focus, much less make sense of those words. “Come back?”

The witch’s eyes, for a moment, held more than darkness. They held fire, hotter than anything in Jonathan’s home, hot enough to turn the sea to smoke if she didn’t bank it.

“Bring me your despair,” she said.

Hæra’s head spun like the whirlpool. That wasn’t a prophecy—and something about the way the witch said it didn’t even sound like a command.

It sounded like a bargain.

She didn’t know what the witch was bargaining for. Perhaps she only wanted to see someone else fail as she’d done and thus share in her suffering. It didn’t matter. Hæra would take any terms.

“I will,” she gasped. “If I fail, I’ll come back. With my despair.” Whatever that meant. Despair wasn’t something you could carry in a treasure chest. Not that it mattered, because she sure as sunlight was never coming back here. The vision of Sister Madeleine had given her all the hope she’d ever need. “I promise!”

As soon as she’d said the words, the dead man’s mouth opened. So did the dead woman’s. Together, they began to scream. Their long-silenced voices were louder than the howl of any tempest. Hæra’s head tossed backward and she was lost in the water again, buffeted by its uncaring power. It was still less terrifying than the sound of the murdered lovers.

The witch’s voice cut through the screams as if it were slicing through a wave to the other side. “Agreed,” she said.