“What—” She’s a little breathless. “What are you going to do? Stab me? You’ll regret that.”
“You…” My mouth is very dry. “You don’t have it. The blood magic.”
“No!” she says. “I don’t! That’s why I’ve been trying to tell you the whole time! For the love of—”
“Then show it to me,” I say. “Your true magic. Your water magic.”
She straightens up, all defiance and pride. And for a split second, I think she’s going to raise her graceful hands and shower me in water, and I’m already trying to figure out what it would mean for Occhia and me.
“No,” she says.
I blink at her. “No? After all that carrying on about your miraculous powers, you’re just going to—”
“No,” she repeats. “I gave you the chance to see it before, and you turned me down. You stuffed me in a trunk. You threatened me with scissors—which you’re still doing, by the way. I don’t have to show you anything.”
“But—” I fumble. “Don’t you want to convince me? Because I’m still not convinced.”
Her nostrils flare.
“Look at all this water.” She gestures widely. “If I didn’t make it, then who did?”
She says it with so much confidence. Because in her mind, she’s talking to Tatienne du Brodeur, a seamstress from Iris who only knows one city and one ruler who makes water.
But she’s not talking to Tatienne du Brodeur.
I glance at the doorway to the catacombs and think about Occhia, mysteriously connected to this place by the maze of tunnels. I think about the grim set of Paola’s face when she told me our underground well was empty, and no one knew why. I think about two little girls crammed into the same cell of the watercrea’s tower, like the watercrea had become desperate to get every last drop of blood she could.
A few feet away, Verene is hesitating. Her eyes are searching my face, and I don’t want her to read what’s written there, but it’s all coming too fast for me to hide it. Realization. Bewilderment.
And a sudden, blinding fury.
Verene isn’t like the watercrea. But she’s not a miraculous saint who can create something out of nothing, either.
She’s a thief.
And I’m already running at her. I’m already attacking.
She tries to fight back, but I’m angrier. In an instant, I have her on the floor, the point of my scissors in the hollow of her throat.
“You—you—” I seethe, unable to finish the sentence.
“Who—” she chokes out, disbelief in her voice. “You’re not—Who are you?”
I dig the scissors deeper, and her breath catches. She’s trembling underneath me. I can feel it as I try to gather myself. I swallow down my anger so that I can regard her with the coldest hatred I possess.
“My name is Emanuela,” I say. “You’re going to tell me how you stole my city’s water.”
And I’m going to steal it back.
Verene’s breathing is ragged. Her gaze flits down to the scissors pressed into her throat and I notice, irrationally, how very long her dark eyelashes are. Then she looks back at me, and somehow, her eyes are even more defiant than before.
“No,” she says.
My grip on the scissors tightens. “I’m not afraid to draw blood.”
I’m not. I’ll push these scissors in and ruin her perfect skin. It’s what she deserves.
“And I’m not afraid of you,” she says.
“This water was made in my city,” I say. “It’s mine.”
“My people need it.”
Her words still have an unsettling conviction to them. She may not have magic, but she really believes she’s the savior of her city. I can see it on her face. I can feel it radiating off her body.
I want to destroy it. I want to destroy her. I want to see her lying in the ruins of this place, while I bring my people the water that they died for.
“Aren’t you wondering where my accomplice is?” I say.
“I assumed he was hiding nearby,” she says. “As part of some trap you thought you could set, perhaps?”
“Actually,” I say, “he’s with your own accomplice. I’m referring, of course, to your brother.”
Something flickers in her eyes. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know that I’ve found a promising avenue.
“Your brother designed your so-called fountain system,” I say. “The one that lets you distribute water all around your city. It’s such an impressive feat. I wonder if he has any information about the way you’re getting water from my city to yours.”
“Even if he did, you’ll never get it out of him,” she says.
I smile like I know something she doesn’t. “Well, my accomplice is very good at getting information out of people. You thought he was sweet and innocent, didn’t you? You were practically courting him earlier.”
“Courting him?” she says. “Please. I was being kind to someone I thought was my new friend. But you’re obviously not familiar with that concept.”
For a moment, all I can think about is the way she made courting a boy sound so ridiculous, like the thought has never occurred to her before. But it’s beside the point, of course. The point is that I’m on top of her, and my scissors are making a dent in the soft hollow of her throat, and she’s going to give me what I need.
“He’s not sweet and innocent,” I say. “He’s almost as dangerous as me. If I were you, I’d start thinking about what you’re going to do when he gets down here with your brother in his captivity—”
In the distance, a door cracks open. It’s quickly followed by the sound of someone moving down the stairs. I freeze. I can feel Verene holding her breath. And for a second, we just wait to see what’s going to happen next.
After a moment, I realize it doesn’t sound like a person walking down the stairs at all. It sounds like a person falling. Falling while simultaneously attempting to juggle a variety of heavy objects that keep slipping out of their grip and thudding onto the steps.
I glance at Verene. She looks just as perturbed as I am.
Then I hear a familiar, muffled voice.
“Emanuela! He got suspicious—I’m trying to stop him—”
It distracts me. I don’t even realize it’s distracted me until Verene takes advantage of it. She knocks the sewing scissors out of my hand, and they clatter to the floor. We both dive for them. She gets there first, because of her long arms—I decide that I also now have a personal vendetta against how tall she is—and she tries to jab them at me. I leap up and kick her in the nose, and she falls back, dropping the scissors and clutching at her face.
I scoop up the scissors just as Theo stumbles through the door. He’s breathing hard and his crisp white shirt is half-untucked. He looks, to put it mildly, displeased.
Verene is on her feet again. I catch a flash of her white gown, and I have just enough time to calculate my move. I back up to the edge of the well. She charges, and when she throws herself at me, I leap out of the way.
She hits the water hard. There’s a loud smack and a splash, and then she’s thrashing. Her heavy skirts are already pulling her down.