A Dark and Drowning Tide

by Allison Saft

In Lorelei’s weaker moments, she imagined that grabbing hold of it would feel like plunging her hands into cold water.

When Lorelei looked at her, she felt sick with an emotion she preferred not to name.

The starlight found Sylvia, even in a place like this. She had an infuriating knack for looking utterly at home or at peace anywhere she went.

It seems to me you’ve far too much potential to waste it making shoes and moping. How would you like to be extraordinary?

She knew Sylvia. Her tells and her fears. The way she wrote and how it exactly mirrored the overexuberant way she spoke. The way she took her tea—with a teeth-rotting amount of sugar—and her favorite color—amethyst, not purple—and the tenderest spots to dig the knife of her words. She was irritatingly forthright. When she was happy, she laughed. When she was sad, she wept. She wouldn’t know subtlety if it threw a dueling gauntlet at her feet.

What depths would you sink to? Lorelei wanted to ask. How will you convince me?

Over the months they’d known each other, she’d come to associate him with the folktale “The Wolf and the Fox.” It was short but brutal, with a simple message: if you couldn’t be the strongest creature in the woods, you could be the slyest. If you were agreeable enough, you could call in favors like debts. You could persuade people into revealing their weaknesses and make them feel like they’d given you a gift. That was what made Ludwig dangerous. He had a face that begged to be trusted and a smile as sharp as a knife in the back.

“In Herzin,” he said after a long moment, “from the moment you can walk, they take you by the shoulders and point you toward an enemy. They place a sword in your hand and call it purpose. She is the only one who has asked me to set it down. I don’t know what you call that.”

“Because you despise me! You think me beneath you. I could see it in your eyes, and I…God, I would have done anything to earn your respect, your attention. I just wanted you to look at me.” Sylvia floundered for a moment. “When you do, I…It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. You’re like something out of a nightmare.”

“One word from you, and I shall be the happiest woman in the universe.” “What.” “Not that one,” Sylvia said.