Previously
"I have fixed the trackers in the necklace," Otz said, his voice carrying the quiet satisfaction of a man who has done his best work.
Jokull did not look up. "That is good."
Otz leaned over his equipment, fingers moving across the screen with practiced efficiency. "Looking for her, looking for her." A pause. "Got her."
Jokull straightened. "Where is she?"
"At the beach."
He drove without hurry, the way he did everything when he had already made up his mind. He reached the beach and moved along the perimeter until he found what he was looking for, a vantage point with a clean line of sight, sheltered enough to disappear into. He settled himself there and drew out the sniper with the ease of a man reaching for something familiar.
He raised it and looked through the scope at the two chairs waiting on the sand.
"Anything?" Otz said through the earpiece.
"She is the only one there so far." Jokull kept his eye to the scope. "I will shoot Ravi the moment I spot him."
The crosshairs moved across the beach. Then a figure came and sat beside her. Jokull went still.
"It is Ravi."
"Relax," Otz said. "Give them five minutes. Let him settle. Then he dies."
Jokull exhaled slowly. "Sure."
"Time up."
He pressed the trigger.
The shot left the barrel before the word had finished leaving his mouth.
They had just risen from the sand, laughing, Tesni still shaking the water from her hands after the waves had caught them both off guard, when Tesni simply fell.
There was no warning. No sound that made sense of it until a breath later. One moment she was there, bright and grinning and entirely herself, and the next she was on the ground and Aine was already moving, dropping to her knees beside her before her mind had caught up with what her body already understood.
She turned her over and found the wound on her back.
"Tesni." Her voice came out wrong, too high, too thin. "Tesni, open your eyes. Open your eyes, do not do this, do not you dare do this to me."
Tesni's eyes opened slowly. Something moved across her face that was almost calm, almost a smile, and she lifted her hand and locked her fingers through Aine's with what little she had left.
"Go away, Aine." Her voice came out broken and quiet and more urgent than anything she had said all day. "Someone is after you. Go."
"No." Aine tightened her grip. "No, I am not going anywhere. Somebody help me!" Her voice tore out of her and across the beach, raw and desperate and enormous. "Please, somebody help! Tesni, do not do this. You are strong. You are so much stronger than this, do not leave me here."
The waves kept coming. Indifferent and steady and entirely unbothered by what was happening on the shore.
"A… ine."
Tesni's voice came out fractured, each syllable costing her something she could not afford to spend.
"Let's go." Aine was already moving, shifting her weight, getting her arms beneath her sister with a determination that had no room in it for the alternative. "I am big enough. I can carry you."
"I am b… ig." Tesni tried, her voice barely finding air.
"I am strong." The tears were falling freely now, dropping off Aine's jaw onto the sand without her stopping to acknowledge them, without her having the luxury of stopping for anything at all. "Say it with me. I am strong."
"I am st… ong." A breath. Then something that was almost a laugh, almost Tesni. "Aine, please… you ser… ious."
"Do you think," Aine said, her voice breaking cleanly down the middle and reassembling itself through sheer will, "that I am going to stand here and let my only sister die? Somebody please help us!"
Her voice tore across the beach and dissolved into the open air.
Tesni's hand found hers. Her grip was loosening but her eyes were still open, still present, still fighting to stay in the moment with everything she had left.
"Don't… close your eyes," Tesni whispered. Then something shifted in her face, something that reached back into a habit so old and so beloved it surfaced even now, even here. The corner of her mouth lifted. "Your favourite part… of the motivation… is coming." A shallow breath. "I am beautiful."
"Yes," Aine said, holding her tighter. "You are. You are beautiful. Keep going. Keep saying it."
"I am beauti… f—"
The word did not finish.
Tesni's eyes closed slowly, as though sleep had finally caught up with her after a very long day, and her hand went still in Aine's, and she did not say another word.
"Tesni." Aine's voice dropped to something small and terrible. "Tesni. Tesni, please." She pulled her closer, pressing her face against her sister's hair, rocking slightly without realising it. "Tesni."
Then her head came up and something shifted in her entirely, grief cracking open into something rawer and more desperate.
"The person is after Ravi!" she screamed to anyone, to everyone, to the open indifferent beach. "He shot Tesni. He shot her, she did not do anything, please somebody help me!" Her voice broke on the last word and rebuilt itself into something that was no longer a scream but a plea, low and fractured and utterly undone. "Tesni, do not die on me. You cannot die on me." She clutched her tighter. "Tesni is obsessed with me. She cannot leave me here. She cannot."
The waves came in. The waves went out.
And on the sand, Aine held her sister and refused, with everything she had, to let go.
"Jokull." Otz's voice came through sharp and urgent. "Come and see something."
Jokull returned to the scope and swept the beach. A figure was approaching from the far end, moving with a particular stride that Jokull recognised before he could see the face clearly. Then the face came into focus and the bottom dropped out of everything.
He pulled back from the scope.
"Fuck."