I was a prisoner in my own body.
Something happened then. My eyes moved, of the Stone’s volition, to my father. He had something in his hand. He had taken it from me. He was running toward the ship’s rail, to where Valentin was about to make another attempt to board the ship. My eyes went down to my hand, where a moment ago the physical Stone had been clutched. It was empty now.
My body rose. Its movements were awkward and slow, but the Stone would learn to control it better soon, no doubt.
My father had reached the ship’s rail and held out the Stone to Valentin. He thought he could help me this way, by giving the Stone away. He did not know it was too late. We were joined.
Still, my body ran after him. The Stone made my hand seize my father’s arm, but he tore free, staggering away. He cried out again to Valentin, whose second grappling hook caught the rigging once more. He swung. A musket shot missed him, but a quick-thinking sailor in the Ariadne’s rigging cut the rope. Valentin fell into the water.
My father cried out as Valentin went down. Then he stared out at the privateer, perhaps assessing the distance. My body lurched toward him at the Stone’s command. He met my eyes, then staggered back, staring in horror. I wondered what he saw. It certainly wasn’t me.
He drew back his arm to throw the Stone.
My body hurled itself at him, but it was too late. Vellacott hurled the Stone toward the privateer and watched as it fell short, into the water.
My body climbed the rail and, before my horrified father could stop it, hurled itself into the water after the Stone.
I felt the cold and, as the pull of my arms dragged me down, the emptiness of my lungs.
I saw it, a flash of red sinking faster than I was. My arms pulled harder. My body gained on it, then caught it in its hand. My body clutched the Stone tightly.
But even if it had been lost, I would not have been free. The Stone had not wanted to lose a part of itself, but it was not terrified. Losing the physical Stone in the channel would have been like losing an arm or a leg for it. It would still have lived in me. Even destroying the physical Stone wouldn’t change that.
I felt my lungs burning, my senses blackening. My body had swum deep. The Stone turned it and made it swim up. I felt the Stone’s haste, and something else.
Fear.
It was afraid my body had been underwater too long. It was afraid I would drown.
Destroying the physical Stone would not free me from its grip. No.
But freeing me would destroy it.
And there was only one way for me to be free.
I summoned every bit of power I had left over my body. It wasn’t much, but the Stone was focusing its strength on propelling me upward with my arms and legs.
I forced my mouth open.
Terror had gripped me when the Stone took me. But this was another terror. The terror of death. The fear of what came next, especially if it was nothing. To live like this would be a torment, but a part of me would have chosen it over nothing at all.
But. To be a slave to a wicked thing was its own death. To be the vessel it used to do its evil will. I had brought it into the world. All the havoc it had wreaked along the way—what it had done to my mother and Dominic, and whatever it might do next—all of it was my responsibility.
Dominic would destroy it.
The thought came into my mind unbidden, but at once it hardened my resolve.
I would kill it. And perhaps that might undo its works. Might even free my mother and Dominic.
This was the only way we might all be free.
I forced my lungs open. I breathed in water. I sucked it down, filling my mouth, my throat, my airways. I felt my body shutting down, but from a distance. There was little pain. That was a mercy.
I thought of Dominic. He had said he didn’t fear death, because he’d confessed.
God forgive me, I thought, just in case.
My flooded lungs stopped working. Then, not much later, my heart.
The last thing I felt was the terror and fury of the Stone.
I died knowing it died, too.
22
A rhythmic pulse.
The beat of a heart.
Mine.
A mouth on my mouth. Then, a rush of water and the flow of air.
They had brought me back.
I cast about in a blind panic for the Stone’s presence in my mind. I did not feel it.
I was coughing. Then I was sitting upright. Someone had pulled me. But not from within me, from outside.
I looked up, my eyes following my mind’s command, and saw Valentin hovering over me and behind him my father. We were on the deck of a ship, but it was not the Ariadne.
“Is it you, Thea?” my father asked. “Are you yourself?”
I looked down at my clenched fist. I opened it slowly, finger by finger, savoring each one’s instant obedience. Inside was a fistful of wet black ash.
“Is that…?” Valentin asked.
I traced a finger through the ash. I did not quite know what I was feeling for. Some spark of life, perhaps. Some sign of what it had once been. There was none.
I had drowned myself to destroy this thing. Naturally I was relieved to find that I had succeeded.
And yet.
I had also spent my life trying to create it. Before Will, and then after him, every hope for my future had come from the prospect of its success. Until, like Will, it betrayed me.
The heartbreak was familiar, but no less painful for it.
“What happened, Thea?” my father asked.
I didn’t
