Her mouth downturns and she nods, filing that away. Then she cups my chin and studies me as if reassuring herself of some rare and pleasing constant in the world. I hold very still.

  Her eyes twinkle, and she lightly squeezes. “Consider it done,” she says at last. “Then we’re going to chuck her over the side with Adrian’s blessing, and get back to hunting. All right?” She waits for my nod. Then her lips pert in that mysterious way of theirs and she slips out the door.

  I lie back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling, trying to breathe around the terrifying lightness in my chest.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I break my self-imposed exile as night is falling.

  It’s as if something immense and long-dormant inside me shifts, answering some inscrutable summons. I need light and air; I cannot think without it. I throw back the curtains to the suite’s expansive windows and squint at the twinkling contours of pure whiteness that greets me. Snow. A wall of icepack glides past my window. Where the hell am I?

  I need to go abovedeck and see.

  I bundle myself up into a fur-fringed parka and unlock the door and crack it open, poke my head out into the hall. Nothing. No slinky, lurking shadows. No Evangeline.

  I slide one foot out into the hall, tentatively, as if edging out onto the ice of a pond that may or may not be safely frozen over. Then wait, listening, eyeing both ends of the hall. My heart pounds in my ribs. My breath hangs in my throat. The Lair, suddenly, has the feel of a haunted ship.

  Where will she be waiting for me? Will I scream if I see her? Will I have time to?

  Will anybody hear me if I do?

  I’m shaking as I pad to the spiral staircase that’ll take me abovedeck.

  But it’s my thoughts, not Evangeline, that catch up to me as I hurry up the steps. I’ve been avoiding it, I know. Thinking about what Mrs. Colding told me. The import of it. Don’t stop fighting for yourself. Because I know what that means. What she had in her indirect way been getting at.

  You have to trust in a relationship, but there’s a line. I have thrown myself into doubts and agonies, thinking I was unfair for not trusting Adrian enough. But I’ve reached that line. If he cannot choose—will not choose—I’ll have to choose for him.

  I’ll have to walk away.

  A deep and furious refusal meets this. How could I think this way? How could I not? Perhaps it was something that had to do with my outlook on love. Ordinary love, ordinary affection, was not enough. It was something that had to be painful beyond bearing, beyond hope, to give it meaning. To make it true. But perhaps—perhaps—that was not true. That was a fiction I have told myself all these years to get through the horrific bumps and dry patches of life.

  (This is worthwhile. This pain has meaning.)

  I have a dramatic notion of getting down on my knees. This, I think to myself. This is important.

  I have come to the edge. Where the questions you’ve been afraid to ask yourself—the questions that have lain in wait sharpening themselves like knives—press now into the ribs, deep into the heart.

  (How long will I bear this? Do I have to bear this?)

  (No.)

  The unwelcome revelation. That my journey to save Adrian has taken me so far, and the last step now would be to step beyond him, where he cannot go, and continue on without him.

  That I’d only been fooling myself into believing I’d changed if I didn’t stand up for myself now and do what has to be done.

  When I step out onto the main deck, I find I’m freezing and hug myself in my parka. Why is it so goddamn cold? I’m so lost in my thoughts that I’m nearing the bow of the boat when I look up and the blood drains from my face.

  All about me a cold sea stretches, broken up by floating icebergs, scalloped whorls of ice glowing like unearthly sculptures in the hushed and eerie twilight. And in the bemirrored calm of the water, a whorling of eerie green, shimmering like a mirage. A reflection of what’s above in the sky.

  The Northern Lights.

  It happens slowly, like an oncoming fever: a prickling of rage, tickling and itching my scalp, my cheeks, down my arms, growing in power as I stare up at those petty-dancers flaring overhead.

  When I hear the footstep, I know. I know he’s behind me.

  My teeth grind.

  “How could you?” My breath pants out in a fog of misery in the arctic air. I am one solid accusation. “I can’t believe you’d bring me here with her onboard.”

  But he does not speak. Somewhere, far away, an iceberg cracks and groans in the silence.

  A sudden brimming of tears blinds me.

  “I can’t do this anymore, Adrian,” I whisper. “I can’t keep trusting you if you can’t—” I look down, my lip betraying me, beginning to tremble. I bite it. “So I’ve made a choice. I don’t deserve this. I refuse to be treated this way.” I turn about, my whole body locked and hands clenched in righteous fury. “So if you don’t see how lucky—”

  But the words catch in my throat, because he’s not standing behind me. No. Adrian Voper, his face aching and nervous and pure as snow, is not standing. He’s on bended knee. And something I cannot understand is happening. He’s holding a little black box before me, and it’s open, something flashing out of it. A diamond. A ring. An engagement ring.

  Adrian Voper is proposing to me.

  The world quivers. “What . . .” I breathe.

  “Aurora Strand,” he says, and my heart swells in my chest at the formality of that address. What it means.

  No. This can’t be happening.

  “You’re the best thing in my life. The best thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’ve been an idiot.”

  A horrifying laugh slips out of me. I nod, blinded with tears. “Yes. Yes, you have.”

  “I’m so sorry for putting you through that. You do deserve better. And you’ve stood by me through all of it. If there’s any way you can forgive me, I’ll prove to you I can be a better man.” His face tightens as he hesitates. “When she came back . . .” The words tremble with self-loathing, and he swallows. “It made me question everything. Maybe, even, whether or not I wanted to go through with freeing myself.” His eyes flick away in shame, the muscles in his sharp jaw flashing like minnows in the water, and he meets my gaze again.

  “But you were right. You were always right. She’s not who she used to be. And even if she was, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was infatuated with an illusion. I was in love with an idea of who I was before I became this, indulging her out of some twisted sense of marital obligation, while she tried to turn me into what she had become. Whereas you . . .” The line of his mouth crooks up in a wondering smile. “I’m who I want to be when I’m around you, Aurora. You’re my Northern Light. You fight for my best self, not my worst. You make me me. I never thought I’d feel that again.” His eyes glass up, his voice growing hoarse. “And the thought of losing that—of losing you—I wouldn’t be able to bear that, Aurora. Not that.”

  I hold a hand to my chest. My heart wants to pound out of it. There’s a ringing in my ears.

  Please keep talking, I think.

  He settles his shoulders, hands tightly gripping the velvet ring box. “So I told her. It’s done. She’s leaving the boat now—a helicopter is coming to pick her up. And I took you here so I could ask what your father asked your mother under the Northern Lights.” He straightens his spine. “So.” And his face lights up in that brilliant smile of his I can never get used to. “Aurora Strand,” he says, “will you marry me?”

  It almost knocks me over, the size and power of it. The happiness. This is immediately followed by a springing pressure of tears. My laugh is cracked and disbelieving, and he laughs as he stares into my eyes. “You mean it?” I say, holding a hand to my mouth.

  Yes, he says with his eyes, nodding. Yes. I do.

  I hold his face, his skin like frost, and press my lips to his in a series of tender, mewling kisses, hiccupping laughs as we rest our foreheads together. His vivid blue eyes lock with mine. “Yes?” he asks, and I nod.

  “Yes,” I manage back in a thick voice, laughing. “Yes, yes, yes . . .” The sickening knot of betrayal and accusation in me loosens, setting me aglow. I have been wiped clean, borne up, freed.

  Now he is sliding the ring onto my finger, snug and secure, a perfect fit. The sight of it there steals my breath away, causing a succession of fluttery quivers to overtake me. It’s surreal, and yet somehow so instantly right. And then he is holding me, he has caught me up in his arms and is kissing me under that dazzling northshine, dispelling all my forlorn vapors in a blinding swirl of happiness as he whirls me about, laughing, folding me in. Together. Us again.

  Us.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  We hold hands as we walk back from the bow, the ring sparkling on my finger. We can’t stop grinning at each other; I’m light and unsteady with giddiness. I feel as if a sword has been drawn out of my throat and the world has rushed back in.

  Everything—everything—has been restored.

  I bump Adrian with my hip. “So. We’re getting hitched on the Lair, right?”

  His face breaks into a series of irresistible dimples. “Naturally. And we’ll have to come back here, so I can marry my Aurora under the aurora.”

  I glow, feeling ridiculously melty inside, and savor his nickname for me as if it has taken on a whole new, special meaning: “Your Northern Light.” Then, switching to bantering humor again, “Naturally, Mrs. Colding will have to be the wedding planner.”

  “Naturally. How would we survive without her?”

  We eye each other sidelong, bursting with happiness. I can’t get over it. The thought keeps hitting me, over and over: I’m his fiancée. I’m engaged to Adrian Voper. I am going to marry Adrian Voper.

  I have never felt prouder. To be with him. To be his.

  His woman.

  Wait till I tell Mrs. Colding.

  I don’t have to wait long. There’s a padding of soft-soled deck shoes, and down the starboard gangway hurries that distinctive silhouette: elegant, narrow-skirted, with that swan-like neck and severe upsweeping of hair. I’m lifting my hand with a smile—Look, you did it, we did it, it’s happened—when I freeze. For Mrs. Colding’s face, as it glides into the foredeck lights, is white with fear.

  The feeling seeps into my gut like poison: Something’s wrong.

  She must have run here. She’s out of breath, a fine sheen of sweat on her face. She presses a hand to her stomach as she speaks. “There was never a child.” And she holds up a phone, Evangeline’s phone, its display alight with a stream of texts.

  Adrian stiffens beside me.

  “She’s been texting Volok,” Mrs. Colding explains in a rush. “She lied to you. She was never pregnant.”

  Adrian takes a step back, his hand lifting to steady himself. He shakes his head once, futilely. “That can’t—”

  “Adrian.” She fixes him with her eyes. “She was his pet all along. He sent her here to manipulate you into joining the coven again.”

  All the muscle tone goes out of Adrian’s face.

  But I don’t hear this—because my eyes are trying to make sense of what’s behind Mrs. Colding. Something is moving. Something is crawling down the side of the boat, a glowing white dress spread out behind it like the wings of angels. It clings to the polished fiberglass of the Lair like a lizard, nose scenting the air. It moves in sudden, jerky movements, as if time were stuttering.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  But I don’t have time to move, to do anything more than make a funny wheeze, a kind of sad rattle. For the thing has flowed onto the deckhead running above Mrs. Colding’s head, hanging upside down, and scuttles straight toward her.

  I grip Adrian’s arm, fingers digging through his sleeve into flesh.

  “You have to hurry,” Mrs. Colding says. “I think she saw me snooping—”

  And Adrian sees now. His whole body tenses. The words come out of him in a ragged shout. “Mrs. Colding!”

  She cocks her head; that’s all she has time for. Because Evangeline Voper has stutter-flowed right above the chief stewardess, and letting her upper body fall away from the deckhead so that she’s hanging straight down by the knees like some monstrous bat, she seizes hair and shoulder and nuzzles a mouthful of fangs into Mrs. Colding’s neck.

  All the oxygen leaves my lungs.

  I feel it as a kind of physical jolt, an unthinking flinching away. My pulse hammers behind my eyeballs, making everything twitch. My insides knot into a sick, bunched feeling as blood gushes in a glistening fount down Mrs. Colding’s button-down, the white cotton blooming a lurid red. Her eyes widen as if she were in the grip of a miracle worker.

  I hold a hand to my mouth, tasting a hot surge of vomit in the back of my throat.

  Then Mrs. Colding is kneeling on the foredeck, blinking and brow drawn in confusion, one hand held to her neck with the blood pumping in lazy ebbs through the fingers. As if not yet understanding how her world has changed.

  How my world has changed.

  That glowing white shape drops down, and Evangeline rises to malevolent height behind Mrs. Colding, head thrown back and eyes rolled up as if in orgasmic relish of a prime rib steak. “God, I’ve been wanting to do that,” she groans, chin bathed red and dripping, and smiles dreamily at the sky like a little girl whose birthday party has come early.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I blink in place, and it’s all still there before me. Mrs. Colding kneeling in her own blood. What has been done to her neck. And Evangeline standing over all like some dread conductor, smiling. Her virtuous choir girl’s dress is freckled crimson. She looks like a bride from hell.

  This isn’t happening, I think. This isn’t real.

  Adrian seems to struggle with the same thought. He blinks as if he can’t comprehend it, his eyes the widest I have ever seen them. He takes a staggering step forward, like a drunk in a hard crosswind. As if his heart, if it hadn’t already, had stopped beating.

  Somewhere far away there’s a scream, a howl of such pure rage and grief it sends a chill down my spine. Then Captain Redfearn is charging past like a loosed bull, a vein pulsing on his brow like a fuse.

  Adrian comes to life, dread like a live-wire in his voice. “Arnold, wait!”

  Too late. Evangeline’s arm blurs in a vicious, almost lazy backhand swipe, and all two hundred plus pounds of Captain Redfearn flies across the deck, crashing over a sunbed with a grunt.

  The wrath finally grips Adrian. His whole body fills with it, a muscle twitching at his eye. He starts forward with hands clenched, but Evangeline grips Mrs. Colding’s head by the hair and gives it a little shake. “Try it and I’ll break her neck.”

  Adrian freezes, nostrils flaring. Evangeline sneers and looks up at the sky.

  That’s when we hear the faint whup-whup-whup of a helicopter.

  Those sly eyes swing back to us, full of gloating spite. And Evangeline Voper begins to drag a half-conscious Mrs. Colding behind her, leaving a red smear on the teak deck, edging around us for the lit-up helipad.

  Adrian’s molars grind as he tracks her with his eyes. “Evangeline!” he snarls, then bites down on the fury in his voice, tries to smooth it out. “Evangeline. You don’t have to do this.”

  I have, I find, sunk to my knees on the foredeck. When did that happen? My breath is short and labored. My hands tremble. As I watch Mrs. Colding’s body slide past, I shake with fierce spasms of rage, with sounds too harsh to be grief. It comes to me, with foggy sluggishness, that I am out on the extreme edge of shock.

  Then I remember: Captain Redfearn.

  I crawl over to him on hands and knees, shivering as if I’d just dragged myself out of a lake. He’s out cold, a nasty four-inch gouge carving across his brow in a faint gleam of bone. I feel his pulse. Still alive.

  Then my eyes fall to the crew radio clipped to his belt.

  The blood pounds in my ears.

  But Evangeline knows exactly what I’m thinking. My hand hasn’t strayed halfway to it before she lifts a finger. “Don’t even fucking think about it.”

  I freeze, lips peeled back from my teeth, and share a look with Adrian. He has the exact same expression on his face.

  He turns to her.

  “So, it was all a lie,” he grits out. His voice wavers, choked with the force of his disgust. “Even the baby.” His clenched teeth shine white. His eyes are bright, as if he’s close to crying. “Was any of it real?”

  For the briefest of moments, regret flickers across Evangeline’s face. Her response is so soft I can barely hear it. “My love was.”

  But Adrian only shakes his head at this, grasping at understanding. “Then why? Volok is your maker. If you help us end him, you’d be freed, too. You’d be free of all of this.”

  The whupping of the helicopter is swelling to a roar now. It’s close, a gleaming black object gliding out of the sky, lights winking. But still, I can hear her cackle. It’s the demented laugh of a madwoman.

  “Oh Adrian,” she croons. “You still don’t know what you’re up against, do you? You still don’t know what he is capable of.” She leans forward. “Even if we could pull it off, why would I? It would only take you from me.” Her voice gets away from her on this last part, and she has to draw herself up again, undergo a reassertion of identity. Her tone turns sly. “Besides, I never had any teeth in this world before.” She shows a sharp and pink-stained smile. “Why would I give them up now?”

  I watch Adrian take it in, the unavoidable truth: This is what she’s become.

  His face convulses, the corners of his mouth trembling; he can barely look at her. Then his gaze falls to Mrs. Colding slumped at Evangeline’s feet. Her eyes wander, unfocused. She seems infinitely tired.

  He swallows, jaw muscles flexing. At last, he lifts his hands, palms out in a calming gesture. “Just leave her out of it,” he shouts over the noise, his tone careful. “Please.”

  Evangeline lifts her chin and looks down her nose at us, at the ring sparkling on my finger. Her lips peel back in a sneer. “Why throw eternity away for a child?” Her head juts forward, her shout over the chopper’s blade slap almost a whisper, the breathy entreaty of a lover. “You could still come with me.”

 

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