He caught her with the knife as they tumbled, a lucky stab of the blade considering he'd been so consumed with blind fury that he hadn't given a second thought to how close they were to the edge.

Elara supposed she couldn't blame him. She knew what rage could do, how extremities of feeling could mould and shape you with a click of your fingers, erasing a lifetime of caution, and destroying everything you'd worked so hard to achieve.

The dagger caught her just under the shoulder blade, what she hoped was a superficial piercing of her flesh—not that it didn't hurt like a fucker—sucking the air from her lungs, before the knife fell from his grasp as he realised what fate now awaited him.

His eyes bulged. His scream, as if terror had torn a hole in his chest and ripped his heart free with deadly claws. Elara couldn't blame him for that either.

Once, a person could have survived a fall such as this, as long as they didn't find their skull dashed against the rocks or had fallen into a storm-churned sea that dragged them under until the water choked their lungs.

But that was then. Before her foremothers cursed the Kingdom of Druvaria, and all those who lived here. Before the waters became poison for all those who were not like her.

They hit the water hard, not the graceful dive Elara was used to, but with a back-stinging punch to the spine that saw them both plunged deep below the surface, the breadth of their fall and their combined body weight sinking them like stone into the Setalah.

Bubbles streamed from Mirha's nose and mouth. Elara pulled herself free from his grasp, kicking backwards as he flailed his limbs. She watched as he began to swim upwards to the surface, the light dappling above them. It amused her, she supposed, to see him try, to believe that if he managed to lift his head out of the water and breathe air, that maybe—maybe—he'd defeat the inevitable.

But it had been too late the moment he had hit the water. In fact, the cold reality was that it had been too late as soon as they'd fallen from the edge of the black rock.

She surfaced not far from where he now struggled, desperately kicking his legs and trying to swim, even as the Naiad poison worked its way through his body, the blackened veins spreading under his skin, the rot steady and relentless, as always.

Exhausted, she swam towards him, keeping her distance but close enough to hear his strangled gasps, his whimpers and groans. Soon, his efforts subsided, the effects of the water taking their toll as the thin obsidian veins began spreading up the side of his face. Treading the water, she waited for him to notice her, to realise she hadn't perished below the surface.

When he did, he couldn't speak. His tongue was already black and thickening in his mouth. Bloody tributaries bursting across his flesh. But his eyes told her everything his lips could no longer say.

She'd been prepared to feel something. A touch of guilt, maybe. Regret. A sign maybe that her heart was not as blackened as the Naiad magic would have her believe.

But Mirha told her only of his fear, his repulsion, his disgust and a hatred that burned, even as the Setalah doused whatever flamed remained inside his poisoned heart. His silent mouth screamed it all at her.

She held her breath as he took his last, his body slackening, bobbing like rotting driftwood on the surface. And then, she sighed, weary, the pain in her back pulsing. Blood clouded the water around her and she knew she had to leave. Not every sea creature had been affected by the Naiad curse and the scent of her blood would draw some of those who usually sought sanctuary in the deepest stretches of the ocean. The sweetness would be too tempting.

The pain now wrenching ragged breaths from her mouth, Elara pulled herself up onto the jutting rocks in a nearby inlet. She wasn't used to wearing all her clothes in the water and the sodden weight dragged on her fatigued bones.

The climb to the top was slow and agonising, and she sent a silent prayer to her foremothers for taking Mirha Koh-Miralus down into the watery grave, but it was the prayers for herself that she knew would go unanswered.

Much like Mirha's death, the consequences of Elara's actions too, were inevitable.

Standing far back from the edge, Kelena waited, her whole body trembling, her eyes reflecting far too much of what Elara had seen in Mirha's. She supposed that Kelena had watched from above, believing that her friend had fallen victim to the curse and yet seeing her surface from the depths, seeing she could swim unharmed, climb free from the Setalah, alive.

Elara dragged herself onto her feet, tugging the cloak from around her neck and dropping it to the ground, heavy and drenched through.

In the distance, the roar of Grimefell continued unabated, matched only by the screams that carried across the citadel.

But here, on the clifftop, it was silent, save for her shallow gasps as she fought to control her breathing, each breath pulling on the wound under her shoulder blade.

"I wanted to tell you," she said, finally, even though it was a lie.

She'd never once wanted to tell them. Never once thought about how she could force those words out of her mouth and reveal the truth. She'd always known what the truth meant and there was nothing she had desired less. To lose them all? To lose the only people she could count on in this Kingdom? The only ones she cared for?

Silence was better; the lie, far preferable to this—to the way Kelena was looking at her now.

"You're...you're a..." Kelena croaked, but Elara didn't let her finish. Couldn't bear to see the way the word would twist her friend's mouth into something hard and cruel.

"Yes. The last," she said.

She took a faltering step forward, her throat tightening when she saw Kelena retreat, her hand held up as if to ward her off. It was all so gut-wrenchingly predictable.

"My mother concealed me in Grimefell when I was a child. Before she was killed by Ban-Keren. I could never tell you; you understand?"

Kelena blinked back tears, disbelief tugging on her brow. "I told you everything. Everything. Every awful part. Every truth, no matter how ugly."

"My truth is not the same as yours!" Elara insisted, her voice rising. Behind her, the Setalah did what it always did, only she couldn't respond to its call, couldn't be soothed by its presence. "My very existence makes me an enemy of Druvaria. Not just the King, but the people too. Do you not think I have lived with that knowledge every day of my life? Do you think I don't know that Grimefell's hatred of my kind, is as strong as their hatred for Ban-Keren himself? Maybe stronger? I have lived it, Kelena. I have tasted their fear and their loathing. I have breathed it in as easily as I breathe..."

She trailed off, seeing Kelena's eyes widen.

"As you breathe underwater?" she said, her tone accusing. "Is that what you were going to say? That you can breathe under the very water that would kill us? The very water that does kill us?"

Elara said nothing, just watched her friend with a steady, wary gaze.

"You lived among us. You lived with us. All this time."

You lived among us. Elara hated that because it sounded very much like us and you. Two separate entities. Two separate species. Forever to be pitted against each other. Forever enemies. You lived among us. Almost as if she didn't belong and any remote possibility of their acceptance of her would always be on their terms.

"I was no danger to you. To any of you. Not as long as I kept my identity a secret."

"Except, that's not true, is it?" Kelena glared at her. "You killed him, Elara. You went to his home. You used your position as trade runner to gain access to him and you killed him."

"He deserved it."

"How?"

For a moment, Elara thought Kelena was asking her to justify it, but she quickly realised that she wasn't asking her that at all. She wanted to know how she did it.

"Don't ask me that," she said, glancing away, her gaze drifting towards the sea and finding no solace in its unfathomable depths.

"Why not? Are you ashamed of how you did it?"

Elara's attention snapped back, anger igniting inside her chest, burning her throat. "Ashamed? Of what I can do? By my foremothers, no, Kelena. I will never be ashamed of that. I will never be ashamed of what I am, because what I am is everything to me."

"Everything?" Kelena nodded, hurt tugging her pretty mouth into a frown. "Yes, that is clearly evident. So much so, it seems, that you would do this thing, this monstrous thing, not because I asked it of you, but because you can, Elara. Because you can."

"Think me monstrous?" Elara balled her hands into tight fists at her side. "More monstrous than him? More monstrous than the man who had your love thrown into the water, the catchpole holding her there as you watched her die? If it makes me a monster to do the same to him, to use my powers to hold him under the water and watch him die, then let me be a monster in your eyes and the eyes of everyone in this fucking citadel! I care not!"

She wiped angrily at the tears that spilled out hot onto her face.

"This place, Kelena...this whole stinking, festering fucking place. It's like a pox, I swear. It soaks up the false King's lies, blaming my foremothers for everything that has befallen Druvaria, while refusing to see that the fault lies solely with he who sits above us—he who has always sat above us—when it was Ban-Keren who brought the curse down up your heads when he slaughtered my kind. Yet you all seek to lay blame entirely on those whose bones this citadel now sits upon, whose ash you crush under your feet, whose names are assigned forever to darkness."

Kelena's brow raised in stunned surprise. "It was the Naiad who cursed this place, Elara. There was a choice and they chose to condemn Druvaria to this desperate, grasping life. Do you think its hurts the King? The nobles? It hurts us." She slapped a palm to her chest. "We are the ones that suffer. We are the ones who thirst. Look at what happened here today. Look at what is happening even now. This uprising will be nothing but a nightmare on the next tide and people will be dead, but not the nobles. Never them and never him."

"You think I do not know that?" Elara gasped. "You think I don't see it? But you are wrong about this uprising just as you are wrong about how it will not hurt Ban-Keren. There are people working against him even now, people he does not suspect and even without them, I will be the one to ensure it is his bones and his ash that the new Kingdom will be built upon."

Kelena's eyes clouded with confusion and shock, as she shook her head. "Do you even hear yourself? Do you understand how insane this sounds? You said it yourself. You are the last of them. The last water witch. The last Naiad. What can you do on your own?"

Elara jabbed a finger in the direction of the slums. "And do you hear that? I did that, Kelena. Me. I got Riggs to rouse the people, to force them to finally think for themselves and do something, instead of sitting back passively as the King demands, don't look up, look down. Don't you see? For the first time since the curse befell Druvaria, the people are looking up. They are looking up."

"And the Order will take their heads for it," Kelena said, sadness and bitterness souring her features. "If what you say is true, you have condemned them, just as your foremothers condemned them before you. So yes, be a monster if it means everything to you. Do whatever you please just because you can, because you have the powers to do so, but how does that make you any better than the King himself?"

Elara felt her knees weaken, the shock of her friend's words driving a blade not into her back, but into her rib cage. It prised apart her bones, seeking purchase on her heart.

"You cannot mean that?" she whispered. "Say you don't think that? Please."

"I don't know what to think," her friend replied, her face crumpling. "I don't know who you are. You talked of his death like it was a beautiful thing, Elara, like you savoured every morsel, as if you could still taste it on your tongue. I hated him, that much is true, but death is never something to be marvelled over. I have seen death up close and it is not beautiful. You talk of this citadel—the place you have known your whole life, the people you have known your whole life—as if you despise it all, as if their lives are nothing but part of this big game of vengeance. All disposable as long as you get what you want."

Elara inhaled sharply. "That's not true."

"Isn't it? And then what of us, Elara? What of your friends? The ones who have trusted you in everything, and yet you did not trust us? You assumed we would betray you, is that not why you didn't tell us the truth?"

"You don't understand..." Elara began, but Kelena shook her head, shooting her a look that crushed her like bone dust. Like ash.

"The rest of Grimefell, I can understand," she said, her voice breaking. "But us? We would have had your back through everything, Elara. Everything. And yet you considered us no better than the rest of the people you despise so much. I would never betray you. Even now. But you betrayed us. You betrayed us the moment you decided that we could not be trusted with your secret, the moment you decided that we would not stand at your side and fight to the end to protect you."

She looked towards the citadel then, and sniffed, blinking back the tears.

"So you enjoy your uprising, Elara. Enjoy your vengeance. None of it will save us. It will just hold us all under the water until we drown in its poison."

With that, Kelena turned and walked away, back to the chaos of the citadel, leaving Elara exactly as she always believed she was, but never truly understanding until then how wrong she had always been.

Alone.