Page 51 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“After Sylvia turned me down, IbeggedMother to let me attend university with the others. They like their girls educated in Gansland, after all.” Heike scoffed. “I thought I could find another suitable match by the time I finished my degree. I took as long as I possibly could. Alas.”

Lorelei refrained from inquiring about Adelheid. She supposed there was little favor to gain in Heike’s mother’s eyes from the heiress of a crumbling province.

“I thought I couldn’t stave him off any longer. Then, the opportunity for this expedition arose. I simply couldn’t refuse a request from our king.”

The Ursprung being found in Sorvig was her final gambit. And now her options had officially run out. “And if you went against her wishes?”

“I would surrender my inheritance.” Heike looked at Lorelei as though she’d well and truly lost her mind. “I would sooner die.”

“Is status truly worth more than your life?”

“You wouldn’t understand. Itismy life,” Heike said lowly. A wash of sunlight had set her auburn hair ablaze. “I am a princess. Outside my mother’s home, that is the only thing that protects me.”

But Lorelei did understand.

As Heike stormed ahead of her, all Lorelei could think of was the tale of “The Girl in theTower”—thestory of a beautiful girl locked away in a tower by her cruel, controlling mother. Every evening, the girl let down her long hair, allowing her mother to climb up to her lonely window. It was a wretched, isolatedexistence—until,of course, a prince happened upon her.

But no prince had come to rescue Heike.

Heike was beautiful, and she had suffered. If the tales her nursemaids told her had any truth to them, that should have been enough. But life was far crueler than stories, and so she’d hatched a plan to rescue herself: sabotage theexpedition—andprevent Sylvia from stealing what was rightfully hers.

Now Lorelei had to prove it.

***

After five days of hiking, morale was low.

The first three days of their efforts had been rewarded with steady upward progress. Over the next two, however, it became clear that they were wandering in circles. No matter how far theywalked—evenif they walked in one direction, according to Heike’scompass—theyinevitably found themselves back where they began: a clearing surrounded by a grove of firs.

Lorelei expected to see it again soon enough.

She trudged along at the rear of their grim, single-file line. Everything ached, and at this point in their ascent, the air almost hurt to breathe. Frigid mist poured steadily down the mountainside, and frost glittered in the long shadows the trees cast over the earth. She’d never experienced cold like this before. She could feel it in hernose.

The sound of Ludwig’s desperate laughter filtered back to her. “Home sweet home!”

“Are you joking?” Heike groused. Then, a few seconds later: “I’m going to scream.”

“Have we gone in a circle again?” Apparently, Sylvia’s optimism had not yet been crushed; she sounded equally disappointed and surprised. “This is an extraordinarily powerful enchantment. I have never seen anything quite like it.”

Johann and Adelheid only exchanged a weary look. Lorelei followed close behind them, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch. Lo and behold, she found herself standing on the edge of their clearing.

Adelheid reached up to pluck a bramble out of Johann’s hair. She sighed thinly. “Well, I suppose I’ll prepare dinner.”

At this rate, they’d run out of food before they reached the summit.

As Johann and Adelheid made a fire, Sylvia set to work warding the area, nailing iron into the ground around the perimeter and hanging bells from the low-hanging branches. Ludwig began unpacking his tent and their cooking supplies. Heike dropped her backpack on the ground and laid her head atop it. Content, as always, to do nothing useful for anyone but herself.

Wind gusted through the clearing, carrying with it the cold, bright scent of sap and evergreen. As it died down, Lorelei could smell woodsmoke wafting from the cooking fire. It might have been pleasant, if not for the unsettling cast of the sky. For days, no matter what time it was, it was dusk-purple and lit with strange stars that sparkled like crushed glass. If Lorelei’s pocket watch was to be believed, it was early evening.

She settled herself on a flat stretch of stone and pulled out her notebook. She had checked every night for some detail in a folktaleshe might have missed, some trick that would free them from this endless loop, but nothing new revealed itself.

Perhaps it was frustration, or perhaps it was despair. But out of some long-forgotten impulse, she began to write to her sister.

Rahel, the youngest of them, had been a sickly child. When Lorelei ran out of books to read to her, she had made up stories to keep her occupied on the days she could not rise from bed. Little tales of adventure and danger, most of them heavily inspired by Ziegler’stravelogues—whatevercaptured the imagination of an antsy, eager child. It did not require much creativity now to describe the exploits of the Ruhigburg Expedition. And yet, the more she wrote, the more certain she grew that she could never send this letter.

At sixteen, the cruelty of this world had not yet touched Rahel. She was too young to remember Aaron, and it wasn’t as though Lorelei was in the habit of confiding in her family about the treatment she endured at university.

Sylvia’s question haunted her even now.Where is your sense of wonder?