Chapter Twenty-One

Twenty-One

Adelheid seized his elbow, and with fury steeling her voice, she said, “That’s quite enough, don’t you think?”

The effect was immediate. Johann shuddered violently, then jerked a step back from Lorelei as though he’d only just noticed her there. “She saw me in Ludwig’s room. It’ll pose too many problems if she’s allowed to live.”

“What were you doing in his room?” she asked sharply. “I told you to wait .”

Johann looked chastised. “If he talked—”

Adelheid held up a hand. “We’ll do this without more senseless bloodshed. Go. I will deal with Lorelei.”

He did not answer her, but Lorelei could feel his shadow pass over her as he left.

Once they were alone, Adelheid knelt on the ground beside her. There was something darkly tender in the way Adelheid looked at her now. With a wave of her hand, the ice pinning Lorelei to the floor melted. It dribbled cold into her wounds and chilled the exposed skin of her wrists. Adelheid touched the hems of her gloves and tugged as if she meant to remove them.

“Don’t,” Lorelei bit out.

“Don’t be a fool. If you don’t remove them, your wounds will get infected.”

As if that mattered now. Lorelei sprang, knocking her to the ground. With the adrenaline coursing through her, it was a simple thing to pin her to the floor. The pain was excruciating when she locked her mangled hands around Adelheid’s throat, but she refused to back down.

“You killed Ziegler.”

It wasn’t wise to take your eyes off a dying thing. Johann had told her that once. She finally understood what he meant. When you had nothing left to lose, you could afford to be recklessly, violently unpredictable.

Squeezing the life out of Adelheid would perhaps be the most satisfying thing she’d ever done. But having the target of her rage before her made her feel horribly alive, more focused and clear-eyed than she’d felt in weeks. She couldn’t kill her without learning why exactly she’d done it.

Adelheid looked remarkably calm. She hardly even struggled, save for the barest application of pressure on Lorelei’s wrist. A polite reminder that she was indeed suffocating. Her lips parted wordlessly once or twice before Lorelei finally let up.

She wheezed out a breath. “You want to know why.”

Lorelei sneered. “Not more than I want to see you dead.”

Adelheid’s gaze was flatly disappointed. “Sylvia is injured from your journey up the mountain. You’re effectively alone on this ship—and in the capital. You may have her support, but you know as well as I do that Wilhelm isn’t interested in the truth of what happened here. When presented with a Yeva, the daughter of his father’s greatest enemy, and the woman he loves, who do you suppose he will believe?”

There was no smugness in her voice, no victory. Her matter-of-factness made it all the more painful. Lorelei’s wounds pounded in time with the thrumming of her heart. For a moment, she could do nothing but gaze hopelessly at her own blood staining Adelheid’s throat. Her eyes fluttered shut. “So what, then? Why have you spared me?”

“I wanted to talk plainly with you,” she said. “Viper to viper.”

Lorelei’s eyes opened wearily. The image of Adelheid’s face wavered in front of her as though she lay at the bottom of a pond. “I’m listening.”

“Like you, I have done what I must to survive. Like you, I know what true desperation feels like. That is why I killed her. Wilhelm can never be allowed to have the power of the Ursprung.”

Lorelei wanted to see it as pure manipulation. It was pure manipulation. And yet, the cold determination in Adelheid’s voice compelled her. “Why? You told me—”

“I lied to you.” She clenched her jaw. “Wilhelm is unfit to rule. Maybe once, I believed he had a vision, but I’ve come to see it for what it is. Nothing but a fantasy. He is willing to sacrifice many for his own selfish gain. Continuing his father’s pointless wars is testament enough to that.”

“Once the kingdom is stabilized—”

“There will always be another war.” Adelheid spoke with the world-weariness of a woman who’d been burned many times before. “Once he stabilizes his reign, others in the region will see him as a threat—and Ebul is a convenient weak point to target, just as it always has been. He will conscript our people to fight his battles, and then what little harvests we have will rot in the fields with no one left to tend them. And when the dust settles, he will send no aid.

“That,” she said flatly, “is what awaits us in a unified Brunnestaad.”

Horror unfurled through Lorelei slowly. “Then what do you plan to do?”

Adelheid canted her chin. “I will claim the power of the Ursprung. I will return to Ruhigburg. I will deliver him his murderer: Sylvia. I will marry him. And then, while he sleeps, I will drive my lance through his heart.”

It was a scheme befitting a fairy-tale heroine. Lorelei could think only of the tale of the Dragon Prince.

Back in the days when wishes still held power, the queen gave birth to a dragon. When it came time to find a wife for the Dragon Prince, no woman in all the kingdom’s vast lands would consider his suit. They were terrified of him, for he was hideous—and the rumors of his cruelty and hunger preceded him. Only one girl, the daughter of a shepherd, was brave enough to offer her hand. Not only was she brave but clever, too, and knew hunger like an old friend. On the day of her wedding, she dressed in every gown she owned—and wore a knife against her breast. When the Dragon Prince took the girl to their marriage bed, he asked her to bare herself to him.

A layer for a layer, my love, she told him. With every gown she shed, he shed his scales. Beneath them all was a beautiful young man.

One without armor or teeth.

“You mean to stage a coup,” Lorelei said.

“No.” She met her eyes steadily. “As soon as Wilhelm is dead, I intend to return to an independent Ebul. Whoever wishes to squabble over the remains of Brunnestaad may do as they please.”

“Does Heike know?”

“No.” Her expression shuttered. “She never would have agreed with this course of action. It’s too direct. Besides, if I failed, I did not want any of this to touch her.”

“And Ludwig?” she asked bitterly.

“Ludwig was a regrettable casualty.” Her mouth was set in a grim line. “The curse is unfortunate, but Johann did what he had to.”

“What he did was monstrous!”

Adelheid’s expression settled back into its usual cool politeness. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because you and I can work together. What I ask is simple. Look the other way. Help me find the Ursprung. Let Sylvia take the fall.”

“If you think I would ever —”

“Wilhelm is a snake,” Adelheid cut in impatiently. “When his reign is threatened next, do you think he will spare even a moment to give you what you’re due? Do you think he would even hesitate to throw the Yevani to the wolves if he thought it would gain him an ounce of public approval? Trusting Wilhelm to protect you is the greatest mistake you will ever make. I will not see someone else fall prey to his lies.”

She couldn’t deny it. She’d already seen the depths of his ruthlessness when he wrote her that letter. Unity requires sacrifice. Anger rolled through her anew. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand. Why me? Sylvia would be a far more valuable ally.”

“Yes,” she conceded, “but Sylvia would never resort to something so underhanded. She’s too idealistic to believe Wilhelm is a lost cause. Besides, I have something you want.”

Lorelei curled her lip. “What do you know about what I want?”

“I will give you—and all your people—your freedom and your safety in Ebul. Your cooperation is all I ask.”

Lorelei’s breath shuddered out of her. That was all she wanted.

If Wilhelm lost control of Brunnestaad, then there was no telling what would happen to the Yevani of Ruhigburg—or those in the other Yevanverten across the kingdom. Sylvia had offered to bring Lorelei with her to Albe, but such generosity could not extend to all of them. Her mother’s betrayal would make her position precarious enough. Far safer to throw in her lot with a ruler delivering her people from ruin.

But to allow Sylvia to take the fall? She could not live with herself.

“There has to be someone else. Johann would sacrifice himself for you gladly.”

“And lose Herzin’s support—and my dearest friend? No.”

“Heike, then.”

Adelheid only looked at her pityingly.

On some level, Lorelei had always known it would come to this: her survival or Sylvia’s. Ever since Wilhelm’s letter arrived, she had run from it. She’d thought she could find some way to change her fate, and for a time, Sylvia made her believe she could. Listening to her was like being led by the hand through a dark, enchanted wood.

But she was not so na?ve anymore.

Adelheid’s fingers closed around her wrist, as if they were two friends sharing confidence. “This is an easy choice. Make it.”

Beneath the cold stare of the moon, the room glowed with a cold, spectral light. It glinted off the silver handle of Ziegler’s walking stick, leaning against a corner as though waiting for its owner to return. Through the impossible pang of grief, Lorelei could not help thinking that betrayal had been an easy choice for Ziegler to make. Even now, she could not escape the reality of just how thoroughly she’d molded herself in her mentor’s image.

For years, she had fought for her own safety and for the safety of her people. And now, she would have it. Any cost was worth that. Sylvia’s life was worth nothing against hundreds. It was worth nothing at all. She could not live only for the dead. She had to live for the people she could still save. That meant herself.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

Sober, Lorelei might have felt more dread at the prospect of stabbing Sylvia in the back. But she’d blunted the sharpest edges of it with half a bottle of schnapps she’d nicked from the galley. The whole world seemed wrapped in gauze, which made it difficult to focus on much of anything at all.

She’d laid out her evidence before she asked everyone to meet her in the war room. A half-empty bottle of sleeping draught. A shard of ash. Ziegler’s travel documents—and every correspondence she could find from Anja von Wolff, bound in rough twine. Arranged on the altar of Ziegler’s desk, it looked like an offering to some darker god.

Heike arrived first, looking rather like herself again. Her auburn hair was arranged in neat ringlets, and she’d donned the armor of her red lipstick. How had Lorelei ever suspected her? She’d never felt more like a fool.

With a vague gesture at her tableau, Heike asked, “What is all that ?”

“You’ll see.”

“Huh.” Heike snapped open her fan and gave her a very unsubtle once-over. “Good heavens, Lori. You look dreadful. Couldn’t sleep?”

Lorelei didn’t care to imagine the state she was in. “Something like that.”

As if on cue, Sylvia’s voice thundered down the hallway. “Where is she? Tell me where she is this instant!”

Heike blew out a thin sigh, as if she wished she could remove herself from the situation. Lorelei was of a similar mind. But she had to face what she had done. There was no stopping what she’d set in motion now.

Johann shoved Sylvia through the open door with Adelheid following close behind them. She stumbled into the room, her hands bound and spitting like a doused cat. Her hair was an unmitigated disaster, and the side of her face was in ruins, caked in dried blood and smeared with bruises. Lorelei’s breath caught out of sheer rage. She had not considered that they’d needed to detain her. No doubt, she hadn’t gone without a fight. Lorelei allowed herself a private moment of satisfaction to see the bleeding wound on Johann’s temple.

“Good God.” Heike covered her mouth. Horror shone in her eyes. “Sylvia?”

But Sylvia only looked at Lorelei. “You’re unharmed.”

Sylvia’s whole bearing changed. Her relief was as warm as sunlight, and even the alcohol couldn’t dull how much it hurt to see. Even now, Sylvia trusted her.

You romantic fool.

Steeling herself, Lorelei hooked her ankle over her knee and leaned back in her seat. The room lurched sickeningly. “I’ve cornered you at last, von Wolff.”

Sylvia’s smile faltered.

Heike slammed her palm flat on the war room table. “Would you care to explain what the hell is going on?”

“The von Wolff family played us all for fools,” said Lorelei. “Allow me to read you a passage from Ziegler’s journal.

“ The Ursprung is in Ebul; it’s indisputable. But Anja von Wolff will not be denied what she wants. However, I believe I have found another spring that will be a convincing enough replacement for her. ” Lorelei flipped the notebook shut decisively and tossed it on the desk. “If you want to read all the documents, be my guest. You’ll find there is ample evidence to suggest that Anja colluded with Ziegler. She intended to falsify the findings of the Ruhigburg Expedition for their own political and financial gain. Although it seems von Wolff here did away with their loose end.”

“Lorelei, please,” Sylvia said breathlessly. “You know I had nothing to do with this.”

“No more of your lies,” Lorelei replied coldly.

Adelheid was watching her with an intensity that frightened her. All last night, she had turned over every move, had shuffled every chess piece on the board in her mind. But she could not brute-force her way out of this, nor could she contort the evidence into the shape she wanted. All of it pointed to Sylvia. She could do nothing with Adelheid’s confession, but she could do something with her protection.

She had seen what happened when men descended on the Yevanverte: broken windows, broken skulls, broken spirits. She couldn’t allow it to happen again, even if it meant enduring the look of naked confusion in Sylvia’s pale eyes. No, it was far worse.

It was betrayal.

Magic crackled through the room, and the vase of flowers on Ziegler’s desk burst into shards. Water coiled around Heike as she fixed Sylvia with a look of open hatred. For a moment, Lorelei was certain she’d strike her. Sylvia took a step back.

“What was last night, then? Some sort of play?” Heike’s expression twisted with revulsion. “I thought you…Never mind. God. I could kill you for what you did to Ludwig.”

“Heike,” Adelheid said wearily. “She is the only one among us who knows how to subdue nixies. We’ll die crossing the Little Sea without her.”

“And how do you think that’s going to go?” Heike snapped. “As soon as we’re on the island, she’ll be free to roam the ship. Who knows what will happen while we’re gone?”

“Not if we bring her with us,” Lorelei said. “She will be our prisoner.”

“And if I refuse?” Even with her arms wrenched behind her back, Sylvia broadened her shoulders defiantly. Lorelei could practically see her fingers itching for her saber.

“You will face the executioner’s block one way or another. At least go with the last scrap of your honor intact. No one else needs to die on this expedition.”

For a moment, Sylvia stared at her in astonishment. And then she lunged, so quickly that Lorelei flinched. She hated herself for it. Johann grabbed Sylvia’s elbow, halting her before she could close the gap between them.

“You can’t do this.” Her voice was thick with desperation.

“On this ship, I can do whatever I want.”

Sylvia’s breath shuddered out of her. Her eyes were livid, burning as bright and wild as an open flame. Sparking within them was something Lorelei realized then that she had never seen before, not even when they first met five years ago. It felt as though she’d been struck across the face with the shock of it. She had been a fool if she thought for even one moment she knew what hatred looked like on Sylvia von Wolff’s face before now.

“One day,” Sylvia said, “you will grow tired of this thing you’ve made yourself into. One day, all there will be to content you is ghosts.”

Good. It made it easier if Sylvia despised her. If she wished this pain on Lorelei, then Lorelei could endure it for her. “Put von Wolff in her room. I don’t want to look at her anymore.”

Adelheid nodded at Heike. “Come with me.”

Together, they led Sylvia out of the war room. Johann lingered by the door, watching Lorelei like she might fly across the room and bite his throat out. It was admittedly a tempting prospect. But with everyone out of the room, without adrenaline pumping through her, she suddenly felt very drunk and very miserable. She rested her forehead on the desk.

“How are your hands?” he asked.

“Oh, fuck you.”

When she turned onto her cheek, she saw him smirking down at her. He lifted his medical kit like a white flag between them. “Let me clean your wounds. It’s the least I can do.”

Lorelei said nothing, only peeled off her gloves with her teeth. The agony of leather pulling against her broken skin whited out her vision. When she blinked the world back into focus, bile rose in her throat. Her palms were such a mess, her mind refused to process it.

“Careful,” he said, clearly irritated. “You’ll hit your head if you faint.”

She hadn’t realized she’d nearly pitched forward. “Right.”

While her pulse thrummed sickeningly in her fingertips, Johann procured a rag doused in antiseptic. “This will hurt.”

He sounded far too pleased about it. “No more than it hurt last night,” she said.

With a shrug, Johann dabbed at the wound. He hadn’t lied. It stung far worse than she’d anticipated. Every tendon screamed in pain as he manipulated her fingers—at least, what she could feel of them between the troubling spots of numbness.

In the daylight, his features were almost completely transformed. The sun smoothed away all his harsh lines with a gilded brush. His brows were furrowed in a preoccupied little frown as he worked to pack her wound. The pressure of bandages winding around her hands made her head swim. Spots danced across her field of vision.

“Are you afraid of blood?” he asked with a touch of amusement in his voice. “How curious.”

“As I’ve said, I’ve conducted no blood sacrifices,” she muttered. “You’re pleasant today. Calmer, at the very least.”

When he met her eyes, they were haunted. “Then you understand why I must protect her.”

“Because you’re a lovesick dolt who’s never had an idea of his own.”

He tied off the dressing with more force than she thought strictly necessary. “Because when I’m with her, I can almost believe that I really am human.”

Lorelei curled her lip in disgust. “You are just a man. That’s what makes you so despicable.”

“And you’re just a woman. If there’s any justice in the world, you and I will one day get what we deserve.” Johann’s lips twitched in a thin smile. “How fortunate for us there isn’t.”

As soon as he left the room, Lorelei flung open the doors to the balcony and promptly emptied the contents of her stomach off the side of the boat. As she draped herself over the railing like a sheet left out to dry, she gazed miserably down at her own pallid reflection. Two faces wavered on the surface beside hers.

Ziegler. Aaron.

Each of them had one hand on her shoulder.

All there will be to content you is ghosts.

By the end of this, maybe she really would get what she deserved.