“Would a wicked man bring you this?” Sami asked, proffering the brass button in its mother-of-pearl serving tray.

She gasped, then folded her arms across her chest. “I suppose he would, since an honest man could never have come by this.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder, then moved closer to Zadie. “You like it, don’t you? Please say you do. I wanted to make you a cloak to take with you to Ilara. It will be cold in the mountains.”

“You don’t know I’m going yet,” she said, though her posture softened. “Besides, where would you get cloth for a cloak?”

“An honest man would never betray his source.”

“An honest man wouldn’t have a source to begin with.”

I pretended to stir the stew—even watered down, it was barely enough for the four of us—while I watched them from beneath my lashes. I was grateful Zadie hadn’t chided him for wasting money that could have gone toward food, but they should be distancing themselves from each other, if they knew what was good for them. If not for my scar, perhaps I would be the one going to Ilara. Then Sami and Zadie could marry as they pleased, and I would get to see more than an engraving of a rose on a silly brass button for another girl.

Maybe in another life, I thought bitterly. But not in this one.

“What’s that wonderful smell?” Father asked as he entered the house behind Zadie, sending Sami stumbling away from her. Father had just come back from fishing in deeper waters, judging by the sea salt crust on his brow and his wind-chapped cheeks.

“The same thing we eat every night,” I said. “Unless you caught something today?”

He gave a small, sad shake of his head, and my stomach grumbled in response. I tapped the spoon on the side of the pot to cover the sound. “That’s all right, Father. The last time Zadie cooked fish, the house stank for a week.”

Sami laughed, and Zadie pretended to be offended, gently pushing Sami aside. Even my father allowed himself a small smile at my attempt to lighten the mood.

My parents had noticed the way Sami and Zadie acted around each other—it was impossible not to—but Father was a little more tolerant than Mother, who wanted nothing to distract Zadie from fulfilling her ultimate purpose in life: becoming queen, since Mother herself had not. Twenty years ago, that honor had gone to another young woman, and Mother wasn’t about to let history repeat itself. I was her safeguard, though in the past year or so, when it became more and more clear Zadie would make it to the ceremony unscathed, she’d focused the bulk of her attention on my poor sister.

Father cleared his throat and turned to Sami, who quickly hid the button behind his back. “I believe your father is looking for you. Something about you being missing earlier today, when you were supposed to be delivering firewood to your aunts?” He arched an eyebrow, but I could hear the amusement in his voice.

“Yes, sir. I was just leaving.” Sami turned to give Zadie a kiss on the cheek, then me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow,” Father reminded him. “The girls will be preparing for the ceremony, remember?”

He wasn’t a particularly imposing man, at least not to me, but Sami flushed. “Of course. At the ceremony, then.”

I wished Father would leave and give Sami a chance to say a proper goodbye. The next time he saw Zadie, she would be as good as betrothed to the Prince of Ilara.

“Goodbye,” Zadie and I said in unison as Sami ducked out onto the balcony, where a rope ladder led down to the water. Our house, like all the houses in Varenia, was made from the wood of a sunken ship, but every few years we painted it an orangey-pink, a shade Mother favored that was also easy to see on the horizon, guiding us home during the daytime when a lantern would be of little use.

Father settled down onto a low stool carved from driftwood. “I see Nor is cooking tonight. Does that mean Zadie found the oyster?” He gestured to the shiny gray glob of flesh I’d laid in one of our cracked porcelain bowls. Some of our possessions were traded for, but others had been pulled up from shipwrecks. Mother never asked how I came by such items, particularly if I found her something that appealed to her vanity, like a hand mirror or a tortoiseshell comb.

Zadie and I shared a glance. To admit Zadie found the oyster meant admitting that she had been swimming today, against Mother’s orders. She was counting on the impressive bride price the prince would send to the chosen girl’s family once they married, but we had to eat in the meantime. And who knew how many oysters there would be tomorrow, or next week? Sami had overheard his father speaking to the elders at night in hushed whispers, so we knew things were worse than our parents let on.

“I found it,” I said. “But I bet her there would be a pearl in it, and there wasn’t.”

“That’s a shame. Well, as long as I get to eat the oyster, I suppose it doesn’t matter who found it.” Father winked at Zadie as she handed him the bowl. “You’re good girls, both of you.”

As he tipped back the bowl and let the oyster slide into his mouth, Zadie and I came to stand on either side of him. “I’ll miss whichever one of you is taken from me,” he said. “But I always knew this day would come. That’s what I get for marrying the most beautiful girl in Varenia.”

Mother stepped into the house from the balcony, twisting her own freshly washed hair into a braid. She had never dived deep enough to burst her eardrums—something many of the older villagers did to help with the pressure—and her hearing was some of the sharpest in the village. Only a few fine lines pulled at the corners of her eyes and lips, a testament to the benefits of wearing a sun hat (and of rarely smiling).

“Our beauty is a reflection of the favor Thalos has bestowed upon this family,” she said, gazing out the window at the darkening waves, as if the ocean god himself were watching. A sudden burst of sea spray shot up through the cracks in our wooden floorboards, and Mother’s eyes blazed with satisfaction.

“We will honor him with our sacrifice,” Father added.

I squeezed Zadie’s hand behind his back and wished the sun would never set. The ocean never gave gifts without expecting something in return, it was said, and Thalos was a hungry god.

      2

   The next two days were spent in the large yellow meetinghouse with the other girls of marriageable age. I personally thought it was silly to spend two full days preparing ourselves for the ceremony when some of us had been preparing our entire lives. Each elder had already made his or her decision, and for most of us, no amount of primping and preening could possibly make a difference. I would have rather spent the time alone with Zadie, knowing she’d be leaving me soon. But it was tradition, and in Varenia, tradition was as much a part of our world as the ocean.