By the time Sabine arrived in the Lower Banks, out of breath and sun-flushed from the journey, the water glittered gold. The sky was streaked with pink, shadows swirling on the sand. The land was deserted. There were no bustling attendants ready to welcome her home. No sly-faced enemy awaiting his prey.
Sabine peeled off her boots and socks and wandered into the water. She was flooded with the same charged possibility she’d felt the first time she stepped foot on this soil. A knowing, all the way down to her bones. This place had birthed the New Maiden, and from the New Maiden was born Sabine.
“You came.” Tal loped forward through the low tide, an unfamiliar smile on his lips. His eyes shone gold; no glimpse of green remained. His posture held no hint of the brash but unsteady boy beneath the noise. This was not the Second Son’s prophet, but Sebastien Himself.
Rather than the dread Sabine had expected, she was engulfed by a wave of nostalgia, like a scent that sparked a memory. As she took a step toward the Second Son, she felt not fear but familiarity.
“Sebastien,” she called to Him, her voice even despite the thundering of her heart. To the shock of them both, Sabine held her hand out to Him. “Let me look at you.” The gentle words felt right, as though the New Maiden was commanding her tongue.
“You delay the inevitable,” Sebastien said, but still He stepped forward to place His hand in hers.
Sabine gasped at His touch. The air around them crackled, and clouds swirled in the sky above. Between them were many lifetimes of history, bleak and terrible yet wide and wonderful, too. They could both see it, memory made tangible, bitter like an herb on the tongue.
“You always were too defensive,” Sabine said, glancing meaningfully at His other hand, which had moved instinctively to the hilt of Tal’s sword. “Always too ready for a fight.”
“How would you know what I was?” He breathed, but He did not sound angry. He sounded awed.
“I know you,” Sabine replied just as calmly. His touch had woken up the darkest depths of her heart. “I have always known you.”
“Then you know I have wronged you,” the Second Son said, removing His hand from hers. “And you know I intend to wrong you again.”
“You do not scare me, Sebastien,” Sabine heard herself saying, and was even more surprised to find it was the truth. “You only make me sad.”
His face clouded over, a storm beginning to brew. “That has always been your curse,” He said, shaking His head. “Your softness makes you weak.”
“Why does that anger you?” Sabine asked, frowning. “You, too, could be free, if only you allow yourself to feel.”
“You speak as if it were easy,” the Second Son said sharply, resentment blooming bold and bright. “But not all of us are entitled to that same release.”
It was clear now where His shame stemmed from. The New Maiden had been a modest girl with magnificent feelings, who had never been cautioned against experiencing the full range of emotion. Sebastien’s hurt—His envy—came from the fact that where He had been ridiculed for those feelings, She had been revered.
“Then I failed you,” Sabine said gently.
“You did,” He agreed, moving closer. “But not in the way you think. You failed me when you were unable to relinquish my darkness, when you were too weak to return my own pain to me. I never wanted to become a murderer.” He clucked Tal’s tongue against the roof of His borrowed mouth. “But that is what you made me.”
“And from that accident, you continuously betrayed me,” Sabine said. “You killed me a hundred times over. Every third daughter who died at your behest sent another piece of me off to sea. You chipped away at my soul until there was next to nothing left.”
As soon as Sabine spoke of Her soul, she felt the final piece of it nestled inside her rib cage—hardened like crystal, its edges rough and jagged, no larger than a baby’s tooth.
Tal’s head nodded. “I know, though it pained me every time. I could not bear to see my darkness rise anew into the vessel of a third daughter.” He pursed His lips in a muted frown.
“Oh, Seb.” Sadness poured through Him, like a boat that had sprung a leak.
“This is exactly why I worked so hard to keep you from returning,” He accused softly, His expression shuttering. “I knew it would hurt too much to look at you. And I was right.”
“It hurts me, too,” Sabine said honestly. “Why did you not trust me with your darkness sooner? Why did you let it simmer and stew until you turned cold and cruel?”
Sebastien looked ashamed. “I did not tell you because of what it made me. For who could love someone so damaged as this?”
The Second Son extended Tal’s arms out wide, as though they were wings. He closed Tal’s eyes, clutched Tal’s fingers into fists. And then darkness pushed its way to the surface.
At first, Sabine thought it was a trick of the light. The way the shadows curled gently about Him, wrapping around His wrists, shining across His skin. As the boy’s fingers unfurled, the darkness leached outward, draping Him like a shroud. She knew exactly what sentiment He carried with Him, what slippery voice whispered in His ear.
Sabine could hardly find words through her astonishment. “You would wield my own darkness against me?”
“This magic is mine,” the Second Son said, Tal’s face twisted with frustration. “You could not bear it, and so I took it back.” He flexed Tal’s fingers, then clenched them again into fists. The darkness mirrored His actions, first swelling, then compacting. It followed His every breath, just as much a living creature as Sebastien once was.
But it moved inelegantly. Pain was written across Tal’s borrowed face. It was so different from the way Sabine had contained that hurt.
She had learned to love the darkness. She had embraced it, let it settle within her in a way the Second Son had not. Even now, it slithered about the boy like a snake, rather than curling up like a house cat as it had done with her. There was a difference in how the two of them allowed such a force to live within. It bristled and snapped against Sebastien’s skin. It welled and expanded within Sabine’s veins.
She understood now why the New Maiden had first offered to hold the darkness for Him. He did not know how to nestle it beside His heart. It could only overtake Him. Harden Him. Hurt Him. The Second Son was fragile, aching to fill a most painful void.
“I cannot bear to look at you,” Sebastien said, voice pained. “Please, let me end this.”
Emotion rose in Sabine as He raised Tal’s arms, as He dared to turn His hurt toward the only person who had ever offered Him comfort.
Sabine had not asked for this—any of this. She had not chosen to wage war with someone so frightened by the vastness of his feelings. She had not offered to carry the anger and darkness of another, had not planned to fall in love with the woman Tal had worshipped all his life.
She had simply lived, and by virtue of her existence, had been drawn into this tangled web of history and hurt. The New Maiden had cursed her. Had given her no choice but to fight.
This was the anger She had told Sabine to harness. But even without the New Maiden’s pivotal instructions, in this moment Sabine was certain she would have known what to do.
Anger spiked within her, sharp as knives. Her ears buzzed with all the whispers in the world, everything that had been or ever might be. Her mouth was dry, but her eyes were not. They welled with rage, for all that had been taken from her. For the pounding, twisting wrongness Sabine had felt for simply existing, not knowing that it was the darkness she carried that made her special.
It was a gift, to be able to offer up space in one’s heart for another. To protect them against the weight of the world. To be trusted enough with the truth of their hurt, and in sharing that burden, set them free. But she could not be expected to hold it without recognition. To let it root around inside her and then rot. It was a fine line. A tentative balance. One in which she deserved a say.
Sabine now contained enough anger to draw forth the swirling magic she had rediscovered in the place where the two of them now stood. It tingled in her fingers, begged to be let loose, to take its mark and strike. And yet, when Sebastien sent His darkness toward Sabine, instead of retaliating, she smiled.
