Page 114 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
Hate that I’ve forgotten so many others.
But Onyx doesn’t care about them. She never had.
“Indigo is the one I dream about,” I tell Onyx. “Every night, I watch her boardSaturn.And Iscreamat her to stay on the land. I’m running for her, trying to stopSaturnfrom sailing. But I can’t. I watch it explode. And I see her caught in the explosion. She’s scared and crying and begging for help. And I tryto help her, but no matter how hard I run, or fast I swim, the sea takes her from me.”
Tears rake across my brain.
Onyx’s eyes are cold, like steel, when I bring my gaze back to her.
“I have these dreams every night,” I say. “Even on the nights when I don’t remember what a ship is, or why she was on one.”
“Good,” is all Onyx says.
“I don’t know whySaturnexploded, Onyx. I tried, for weeks,to figure it out. I ran through the blueprints and talked to the staff from its previous voyage, asked them if they’d noticed anything. A flaw either in the magic or the technology,somethingthat would’ve explained what happened. They hadn’t. They said the ship had run like a dream. I wanted to knowwhyit happened just as much as you did. But I never will, and it willhauntme. For however long I live. There were sixty people on that ship, Onyx. Their blood is onmyhands. And I’ll never forgive myself. That day destroyed me.”
“Ach, it didna destroy much. Absolved of all blame?—”
“In the eyes of the law, only.”
“‘Twas an accident, they said. Bollocks. It wasyership, Alistair. Yer invention. It killed my sister. And ye walked a free man.”
“The only thing that verdict did was keep me out of a physical jail. It didn’t absolve me of anything.”
“But it did. Everyone forgave ye, eh? Even the families of the other sods ye sent to die. Theypitiedye. I seemed to be the only one to care yer were guilty.”
“So because I couldn’t rot in a steel jail cell, you trapped me in an aquatic one.”
“Exactly.”
“And what about the others? What unforgivable crimesdid they commit to earn a place in jail beside me?”
She raises her chin. “They worked for ye, didn’t they? Helped ye with that ship.”
“Guilty by association, huh?That’scruel, Onyx.”
She turns away from me.
“Have you found peace?” I press. “Now that we’re off the streets, locked away, where we can’t hurt anyone else?”
Her lip quivers. “Yes.”
It’s a lie.
I don’t need her ability to sense her pain.
“I hope you do manage to find that peace, Onyx. Life is too short and too precious to live it in turmoil. But you should letthe others go. Keep me here, if you must, but free them. They’re innocent.”
There is remorse in her eyes. “I can’t.”
And I know why.
Sheisn’t the one who placed this curse.
She drafted it, I have no doubt. Onyx has a deep love and appreciation for magical history, and this curse is modeled closely after the one that struck the Scottish island all those centuries ago. The one that created the legends.
But Onyx is unable to wield the magic to enact such a curse. Someone else did. A Sorcerer, one powerful enough to weave an intricate spell, and reckless enough to break about a hundred laws and regulations.
A Sorcerer who will not willingly throw away theassetsthey risk so much for.
