Page 57 of Pearls of Salt and Sacrifice

“You need to get away.”

“Not without you.” Reva yanked at the ropes ineffectually. Then she reached into her boot for her knife…but her fingers found an empty sheath where her blade usually rested.

Her eyes closed involuntarily.

“Raging seas, what are you doing?” Jareth’s voice rose in the darkness behind her closed eyelids. “Get out of here before you get yourself killed!”

She rose and opened her eyes to glare at him. “Not without you.”

Anger and fear battled for control of his expression. “You need to leave, Reva. Now! Before—”

“I’m not leaving you, Jareth.” She tore at the knots with trembling fingers.

If she could just untie him…

“Reva, please go.” Jareth’s voice shook. “Better for me to die than you. I have three sisters to take my place—and you’ll help them, I know you will. But your kingdom only has you. Please, go!”

“No!” The knots would not surrender to her bare fingers. Not only were they tied tightly, but the rain had made the ropes hard and slick, virtually impossible to untie. “Stop telling me what to do!”

“Reva—”

“I need to know something, Jareth,” she said as she scraped her nails against the unyielding knots. “What I feel for you—and you for me. Is that just magic?”

Thunder crackled in the distance. She lifted her head to stare into the sea elf’s face, searching for the answers she needed.

Something flickered in his eyes, the pain and hope and despair mingled into one tumultuous emotion.

“Is it?” she pressed.

His lips parted as rain dripped over his high cheekbones and down his stubbled jaw. “No,” he said, the word a guttural cry. “No, it’s not. The siren kiss bound you to the sea—not to my heart. Magic can’t make you love, Reva. That’s—that’s you.”

Relief expanded inside her. Reva’s heart jumped in her chest, and then immediately began to ache. If only they had more time to explore what this meant, what it could be.

“Reva, you need to go—”

She leaned forward and pressed her mouth hard against Jareth’s, silencing him with a kiss.

There was no magic in her kiss, no power to bind or save—only her heart, her hopes, her regrets. Rain and tears ran together down her cheeks as she said goodbye to the only person she could ever imagine ruling alongside her.

When she pulled back, she whispered desperately, “Whatever happens, I want you to know that I love you, Jareth Elesti, and I think you would have made a wonderful king for my people.”

The surprise on Jareth’s face transformed to horror. “Reva, no—”

A thundering roar cut him off and assaulted her ears, ten times louder this time. She twisted, horrified, toward the shadow kraken. Its monstrous shiny eyes hovered only a few dozen yards above them, its toothy maw gaping wide as it roared.

It was staring straight at her.

Shaking, Reva dug in her pocket and yanked out Cassandra’s pearl. By the sands, how did it work? She lifted the pearl toward the beast.

“I have your pearl!” she shouted into the monstrous face looming over her. “I order you to leave my island and never come back!”

The kraken’s colossal mouth merely howled back at her wordlessly. Its face was larger than the entire side of the castle, its mouth displaying rows of sharp teeth. She placed herself squarely in front of Jareth and held the pearl high for the beast to see.

She longed to twist and look at Jareth once more, but there wasn’t time.

What had Cassandra said, that only a blood sacrifice would sate the beast?

Well, let it be her blood and no one else’s.

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