A Dark and Drowning Tide

by Allison Saft

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

Sylvia still looked like a specter. Like something that might slip through Lorelei’s fingers if she held too tight.

if you couldn’t be the strongest creature in the woods, you could be the slyest.

“But I do know about loss. Grieve her,

but do not let this become an obsession. It will sink you in the end.”

Her story had been written long ago, in indelible ink and blood. There was no hope of changing it now.

It was unfair, Lorelei thought miserably, that someone could be so effortlessly beautiful.

Like this, with all the starlight reflected in her eyes, she looked almost divine.

“If you must know, it’s—” “Amethyst. I know.” Sylvia blinked at her. “Oh.”

All those years spent watching Sylvia, dissecting her, envying her . . . It left a window open for something else to slip through.

“How could you not know I wanted you?”

“What were you going to give him, then?” “A fatal dose of morphine,” he said with unsettling calm. “What do you intend to do now?”

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

there was never anything wrong with someone like me loving someone like you.”