Chapter 21 #2
“Now what?” I bark at her, only to find she’s not looking at me anymore. Something above has caught her strange eyes. They dart like a viper’s, a longing in them. A desperation. When I peer up, a lone nightingale is swooping past the lagoon in circles.
“Pretty,” I say quietly. “Isn’t it?”
She nods, eyes transfixed. Melodic. I wonder if she listens each night to the creature’s nocturnal warble.
The songbird makes another swoop over the water, and some instinct has me lifting my finger to offer the bird a perch.
I wonder if Dawnmere’s magic infuses me with not just the essence of a fairy, but the relationship to nature as well.
My theory is all but confirmed when the little creature lands peacefully on my outstretched finger.
The mermaid’s expression turns to one of awe and fascination as I gingerly hold out my hand for her to see.
Without warning, she snatches the creature from my palm with frail, webbed fingers and crunches it into her mouth. The bird lets out one agonized squawk before going silent. Blood dribbles down her full lips. On the edge of the lagoon, I can hear stifled noises of horror from Landon and his men.
But I cannot look away as the spellbindingly beautiful creature devours her prey. A minute later she bows her head in shamed gratitude.
“You’re hungry,” I hear myself whisper. Carnivore. “Are you not able to feed?”
Mouth still smeared with blood, the mermaid shakes her head. She gestures once toward the Citadel hunters behind her. Her slitted, glowing eyes hold only fear and contempt.
Captives. The mermaids are as captive here as we are.
But I can’t wrap my head around how or why. Amid the fireflies floating past our faces, she doesn’t give me the chance to pry. She motions toward my soaked dress.
“Are you serious?”
She nods vigorously.
I twist to spy Deacon a foot away. He’s already shirtless, the Mer with the wavy hair swimming around him.
By the way the murky black water licks at the prominent V of his hips and the fine dusting of hair below his navel, he’s taken off everything else as well.
I force myself not to stare at the tattoos I haven’t seen before, the ones bathed in shadow and tucked into the intimate corners of his body like passed notes.
The way the sight kicks my heart rate up fills me with something worse than guilt. That’s Reid’s brother.
The mermaid swims into my line of vision, mercifully breaking up my thoughts. She stares at my clothes. Shy, and perhaps kinder now that I’ve helped her feed, but still severe. This is not up for debate, unless I’d like to end up like the bird.
So much for girls helping girls, I tell myself before pulling the half-soaked dress over my head. I sink deeper into the surprisingly warm pond to hide my bare chest from Landon and his men and slip my tights and holsters off too.
Despite my nudity, the fragment of Dawnmere’s wing seems to be working. Whatever Landon is waiting for hasn’t happened. I almost call out to him, asking if we’re free to go yet. I only have so much time before the fairy magic wears off.
But the Mer before me isn’t pleased. She glares down between my legs, the briefest hint of her fanged teeth flashing in the moonlight.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter, sliding off my thong and letting it drift through my fingertips. Soft water slides between my legs.
“Happy?” I grit out.
“Delighted,” Deacon purrs behind me. His breath is a warm caress against the wet skin of my neck. Goose bumps pebble across my body.
It’s unfortunate, what a vision he is when I turn around.
The iridescent glow of lotuses reflected in those devastating moonstone eyes would be enough to stall my heart.
But the silver gleam in his tousled wet hair, the strength of his taut, muscled abdomen, and the glitter of soft droplets like starlight along his arching shoulders?
Beneath all the lush petals, and lit with zips and pools of shimmering, waterlogged light, Deacon—captured and stripped bare—glows like a luminous deity.
A vengeful, crooked-smiled god, perhaps.
A cunning trickster born with a demon’s soul, but a god nonetheless. He takes my breath away.
“What?” A single bead of water drips from a strand of hair that’s fallen into his eyes. It lands on his full upper lip, and I recoil at my own urge to taste the sparkling drop.
“You’re glowing,” I manage.
But I’m not talking about his heartbreaking beauty.
His actual skin—every tattoo, both modern and ancient, every scar—is illuminated in ethereal silver.
And where he doesn’t glow, he’s smooth and pale like milk and honey.
The mermaids have waded away, giving him a healthy berth.
The guards have fallen silent behind us.
I don’t know much about why we are in this water or what Landon is hoping to see, but I know in my heart, no fourth-year nor demon is supposed to glow like that.
“You are too.” His voice is low and rough and reverent as he wades closer.
The water swells between us as he drifts the edge of his thumb across my shoulder.
My nipples pinch. When I lift my hand to rub away the memory of his touch, his eyes lower, troubled by something.
I glance down and find that the scrapes around my wrists from Landon’s chains sparkle like jewels in sunlight.
The mermaids say nothing, swimming around us. The leader, the one with the dark, slick hair, dips beneath the water and resurfaces on my other side. Their graceful splashing and the mournful calls of owls are all I can hear.
“What are they doing?” I ask about the Citadel hunters behind him, still watching us closely. “Haven’t I proven I’m not an aeon?”
“You’d think…” When Deacon turns to investigate, I forget all other words.
His back.
His beautiful, ruined back.
I’d seen him shirtless before, but only his chest. He’d never turned around. Perhaps on purpose. Perhaps to avoid this very moment.
My fingers reach out of their own accord.
They itch to touch the glowing silver scars.
The memories of unimaginable violence. Not lashings, not cuts, nor burns…
I don’t know what could have left a person’s skin like this.
No mortal instrument, that’s for sure. Something deviant.
Something hell-born. The raised, glowing slices are jagged.
One across his shoulders, another from rib to rib, another drawn above his tailbone.
Evidence that Deacon is not indestructible, as I’d once thought.
Evidence of his pain. My fingers nearly graze the damaged skin—
“Don’t,” he whispers gently, still facing away. His shoulders are coiled with tension. The Mer around us have stopped swimming, their heads bobbing up in unison to watch us.
I yank back my fingers. “What happened to you?”
He doesn’t turn. At this angle, butchered back to me and head bowed, he looks like he could be praying. The ancient Mer with the green hair releases a low, venomous cackle. “Deacon Graveheart,” she hisses slowly. “Deacon Graveheart.”
The one with black hair swims beside her. “White Stag. Buck of the North. Lord of Wild Things. Cernunnos.”
My mermaid, the one with the wet flowers braided into her hair, says nothing. But her slitted eyes are tight with nerves.
All Deacon says is, “In the flesh.” But the raw husk of his voice…
I stand, toes squelching in the mud at the base of the pond, bare chest be damned. I have to see his face. He needs to know I’m not—
Serpentine hisses rip through the night. Deacon spins now, eyes on the Mer. Poised for a fight. Only then, shaken out of my daze, do I realize that they’re hissing at me. At what I’ve revealed by standing.
My hour is up. I hadn’t even noticed the way time had passed in the strange, enchanted waters. But I can hear Landon’s holler of success. He orders his four men to take me prisoner as he races off for the Citadel.
I can’t see my own back, but I can sure see the way I’ve lit the entire clearing.
My skin glows softly all over—surely what Landon had been looking for, the sinful flesh of an aeon, meant to glow when submerged in this lagoon.
But it’s my scar that shines like a lighthouse amid a whipping storm. The Mer hiss, inching nearer.
“That’s close enough,” Deacon warns.
I have no daggers. My instincts have slowed in this cursed water. And the Mer show no interest in listening to Deacon’s command. When something thin and slimy glides across my bare thigh I jump back, my wet skin colliding with Deacon’s.
The Mer hiss and wail, reaching a fever pitch.
“Okay,” Deacon growls. “Bath time was fun, but we’re nice and clean now.” His arm muscles bulge behind me as he shoves a mermaid from his wake. Before I know what’s happening, Deacon’s grabbing my wrist and yanking me with him. “Time to go.”
We move through the thick water for the edge of the lagoon, but those slimy ribbons—seaweed or tails or something I couldn’t dream up if I tried—rope around our bodies and jerk us back. Black water fills my nose and mouth and I choke once—terrified, panicked—before I’m submerged.