Page 24 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

“I—I agree.”

“Miss Dahl-Saida?”

She didn’t know what to do. For an eternal moment she said nothing, just stood there stupidly, motionless and numb. The wind howled outside, seeking some crack in the stones. The rain fell harder.

“Saving you,”came her mother’s voice in her mind. She watched her spiral out into darkness, watched the sea swallow her up.

“Miss Dahl-Saida?”

Talia jerked herself out of the memory and lifted herchin, channeling her mother’s fierce elegance. She would tell these fools what they wanted to hear, and find a way to extricate herself afterward. That’s what her mother would have done.

“I agree,” she said. But her voice shook.

Wen dropped her hand and stepped back, his face tight with panic.

“Then it is done,” said the Baron. “You will wed in the spring.”

She faced the Baron, despising him,and curtsied low, as if he were an Emperor and she a slave.

And then she turned and swept out of the ballroom.

She made it all the way across the vestibule and out the front door before her resolve crumbled and the tears came.

Chapter Eleven

SHE WALKED OUT INTO THE RAIN ANDwas instantly soaked through, the gown clinging to her legs in a mess of silk and ribbons.

But she didn’t care.

She crossed the drive and began to run, her shoes slapping hard against the flagstones as the cold rain stung her face and a chill crept down into her bones.

She ran faster, past a low outbuilding that was probably a stable, then downthe slope of the hill and onto the shore. White sand stretched west as far as she could see, scattered with jagged black rocks that looked as though they had been thrown there in ancient times by a god. To the north there was nothing but ocean, waves crawling onto the shore and shrinking back again, yearning always for something they couldn’t have.

She pulled off her shoes and dashed throughthe sand to the water’s edge, letting the icy sea wash over her bare toes. She stood there, the rain biting hard into her skin, the waves lapping at her ankles and splashing up to her knees.

An eerie music whispered to her out of the storm. She could hear it, as clearly as she’d heard Wen playing in the back of the house: a song, tangled in the rain and wind and sea. It sounded to her like alament. She shut her eyes and let it fill her up.

The waves crashed higher, breaking against her waist, crawling up to her shoulders, yearning to pull her down into the depths. She had the sudden sensation of fingers, like spots of ice against her neck, and she thought she heard a voice at her ear, whispering words in a language she didn’t know. But she understood it anyway:Come to us,it seemedto say,come to us.The sand shifted beneath her feet and the waves battered her, knocking her to her knees and choking all her breath away. She fought through the water and scrambled up to the safety of the shore, her pulse erratic and too quick.

She stared, shuddering, out to sea, her mother’s words echoing in her mind.

The waves are singing. Can’t you hear it?

Had the sea called to her mothertoo? Is that why she’d jumped?

She gulped a breath and started running again, westward down the shore. She pushed herself faster and faster, trying to outrun her fear of the sea and her longing for it, the creeping dread that her mother’s madness would become her own.

The ground began to rise steadily to her left, climbing up into sheer bluffs that blocked out half the sky, but the shorelinestayed true. She ran on, between the cliff and the sea, rain at her back and sand spraying up into her face.

She ran until she thought her lungs would burst, and then she dropped to her knees in the shadow of the cliff, sobbing for breath. The world tilted around her.

Only when she raised her head a few minutes later did she realize she’d run partway into a little cove, shells and bits of seaglass scattered over the wet sand. It had stopped raining, though the clouds still roiled uneasily in the sky. The respite wouldn’t last.

Talia stood shakily and paced farther into the cove, hugging the cliff and grazing her hand gently across the rock. In the deepest part of the cove her fingers brushed over a tangle of seaweed and trailing vines that hung from the side of the cliff. Her handpassed through part of it, grasping empty air.

The wind whipped loose strands of hair into her face as she scrutinized the cliffside. There was a hollow cut into the rock, perfectly concealed from anyone who didn’t know to look, and she tugged at the vines, trying to create a hole big enough to climb through.

But the plant was stubborn and impossibly knotted up. She wished Wen had given hera knife instead of a ring.

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