Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 9 of 21

The debt with Peter was paid. Agatha packed a bag before the ink was dry. She took a rose-wreathed candelabra from her hall, its silver arch curling around a tiny royal figure, its candles already lit. She would need light where she was going. Ursula still held her name, and the sea witch had no reason to keep it now. Agatha meant to walk in and demand it back, finished business for finished business. The sea witch's lair sat under the water, a huge shell over a hall of grey stone. Lanterns hung between coral and old barrels. Agatha carried her candelabra down the steps, flames burning steady though the air was wet and cold. Ursula waited inside, small and still, her big dark eyes fixed on the door before Agatha reached it. "I paid Peter," Agatha said. "The debt is settled. I've come for my name." Ursula did not move. "Show me." Agatha set the candelabra on a drowned statue's shoulder. "He took a game and left the mirror. No debt hangs between us. You said you'd hold my name until it cleared. It has cleared." "It has," Ursula agreed. Her voice was flat, no softness in it. "That was the price of the charm. The charm is used." "Then give it back." Ursula looked at her for a long moment. "I said I would hold it. I did not say I would return it." The candles hissed. Agatha felt the cold go into her chest. "That was the bargain." "The bargain was that I hold it until the debt cleared. It cleared. Now I decide what to do with what I hold." Ursula turned toward a wall of shelves lined with jars and bottles. In one small vial, something pale drifted, curling like smoke. "Names don't rot down here. I keep what comes to me." Agatha's mouth was dry. She had traded her name to trap a king and never once planned this far. "You knew," she said. "When we made the deal, you already meant to keep it." "I collect voices. Names. Souls." Ursula's dark eyes did not blink. "You gave me yours in open water. That is how it works." Agatha stepped closer to the shelf. The vial hummed faint when she neared it, tugging at her like a thread pulled from her own skin. Her name. Behind glass, out of reach, one more thing in a sunken hall of stolen things. "One woman tried three years for her voice," Ursula said. "She left without it." A warning, not a boast. Agatha took her candelabra back. The little royal figure gleamed in the light. She would not beg on a first visit. She climbed the stone steps with her name still trapped below her. She had cleared one debt to a king. She had walked straight into the jaws of a goddess who did not trade names back. Now she had to steal what she once gave away.