Page 49 of Tides of Shadows

In a blink, pain flared. I hissed. She sliced my skin with a steel talon hidden beneath her thumb.

She released me and brought the claw to her mouth, licking the blood from it.

I looked at her with disgust.

“Your brother,” she murmured, humming under her breath. Her fingers moved across the beads of her necklaces and bracelets, touching them one by one, searching. She stopped at a small sapphire. She murmured to herself more.

“He paid your price,” she said at last. “And what did you do with it? Nothing! You let the darkness spill.”

She sounded more and more like my mother.

“You want to save a life?” She continued, pointing at me with a crooked finger. “You have tried before. But drowned your heart at the bottom of the sea with him.”

My eyes widened. How could she know?

“Do not fear,” she went on. “You are not cursed. Not the way you think. That heart of yours may yet save someone. It may yet be of use. Perhaps it is time to pull it from the depths. So, you can save him. If not you, then only death will end his suffering.”

I stood frozen, unable to speak. How could my heart save my brother? Had my love for him never been enough?

“You may go,” she said. “I have nothing more for you. The White Lord paid already.”

I stumbled back onto the street.

Aidenar sat perched on a crate with a cluster of street boys, around nine or ten years old, the ragged sort that haunted every shadowed quarter. They played cards, games I recognized from a dozen ports. The sort of games designed to liberate a guest from all the money. Playing them was near enough to a voluntary theft.

With a theatrical curse, Aidenar slapped his cards onto the crate, left a generous pile of coins behind, and rose. The boys whooped and divided the spoils among themselves.

He noticed me and waved farewell to them before joining me.

Despite having just lost a fair sum, he looked relaxed. Almost content.

“You know they cheated you,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, smiling. “How did it go?”

I stared at the ground. “Not well.”

His expression softened. “I am sorry. I hoped she might have better news for you.”

“Have you been to her as well?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, glancing at his hand, at the same place where she had cut me.

“And what did she tell you?”

He gave a quiet snort. “That I will lose something I did not know I loved. But it sounds like a useless fortune.”

On our way back to the palace, my gaze caught on a tailor’s show window. A stunning red gown dominated the display. Perhaps too bold for my taste, but impossible to ignore. Alarics’s words echoed in my mind: “Buy yourself a nice dress in the White City.”

The coin was already running thin. I had no need to parade in more gowns. And my brother...

Only death will end his suffering.

“Are you coming?” Aidenar called from farther down the street.

I tore my gaze away and hurried to him.

When we returned to the Palace, we encountered Velena in the main courtyard. The diamonds in her diadem caught the light when she saw us. She approached with measured grace, every step deliberate.