Beg the devil, little one
but the devil does not bargain with mortals.
~ Christopher Elliot II
I watched the sun sink into the ocean like a dying angel being swallowed up by hell.
The water fell dark again, as did the sky, and still, Dahlia had not opened her eyes.
It was feeling more and more like I’d lost her with every passing day.
A very familiar cavity was forming in my heart where the people I cared about were being taken away from me and leaving emptiness behind.
I had made an effort once not to hold people so close for that reason and I had failed without even knowing it.
An old rigidity was grinding at my soul and as I glared into the sea, I swore on my life that I would find him somehow.
Akareth. I didn’t care what he was or what he could do. I would find him.
The camp was more solemn that night when I returned from the beach.
The men were getting restless. We’d been on that damned island longer than I had intended.
That no xhoth or sirens had come to attempt an assault was either luck or part of a bigger plan.
Considering my current prisoner, I was inclined to think it was the latter.
“Does it exhaust you?” Lyla spoke through the silence as I passed her tight little prison. “Hanging onto hope when you know it’s useless? The longer you hold onto it, the more it will hollow you out when it’s gone.”
I turned slowly toward her, all will to react to her prodding comments gone and decayed. In front of her sat a plate of half-eaten fish. I was tempted to put the harness back over her face before she finished just so I could be rid of that conniving tone.
“I haven’t the energy to ask for your help anymore, Lyla,” I muttered.
“Perhaps you should sleep. I hear you slept rather peacefully the other night,” she giggled.
The urge to cut off her bottom jaw so she could not speak such taunting words whispered through my hands, but still, I did not act.
It was no use. And perhaps it was my lack of action that upset her the most. I could hear her shifting against her binds.
Being tied with her arms behind her for days must have been taking its toll, though she had not shown it.
“You know how to save her,” she whispered. “You are too much of a coward to do it, though.”
“There is—”
“You have to kill her. You realized it the first time you asked for my help, deep down. Why don’t you do it?
Give her that sweet relief. I’m sure she’s been begging for it in that nightmare she’s been living in for three days.
Imagine wanting it all to end and going unheard. If you care for her, you would—”
“That is what you don’t understand. Dahlia won’t break.
I know her too well. You,” I scoffed. “You may have shared a womb with her, but you know nothing of the woman she is. If he has broken her, she would be awake. You said it yourself. That’s what he wants, for her to go to him.
She sleeps because she is fighting. Because he cannot break her. ”
“You think too highly of her.”
I slowly leaned in, searching for any hint of regret in the monster before me. If it was there, it was less than embers.
“I do care for her. And I know her enough to be certain she feels sorry for you, even if you are the worst of it all. I love her and I know she will come back to me.”
“Do you know how pathetic you sound, wishing for more than impossibilities? Even if she comes back, Akareth is inside her. He’s a part of her and she will never be the same.
What use will you serve when she realizes Akareth has won?
You were her shield against his influence and now he’s wriggled past you. You failed.”
“Want me to gag her again?” Cathal asked.
I shook my head, exasperated with the whole situation.
Lyla huffed, trying to smile, but I could tell it was an effort to do so. Her eyes grabbed me like barbed hooks, and I could see she was searching for something. Something she wanted but could not find.
“What is love, hunter?” she whispered. “Why do you all cherish it so?”
“Something you’re incapable of feeling.”
“I know. Which is why I want you to explain it to me. Assuming you understand it any better.”
Narrowing my eyes, I shifted my stance to face her fully. “Love is what I feel for Dahlia. That is all I can define it as.”
“Why?”
“Because she is strong. She is resilient. She is vicious and yet capable of affection despite all that has been done to her. She protects those she cares about with every ounce of herself and plenty of us would do the same for her. It’s what makes us so different from you.
What makes Dahlia so different from you. ”
“Are you strong? Strong enough to do what you know you must?”
Our gazes locked together in a silent feud until I could not stomach her stare any longer. I turned, walking toward the treehouse, but every step I took felt like I was dragging anvils.
“David, I need you,” I said as I passed him. He was immediately by my side. “Nazario,” I called to next. “Your man, Aleksi. Whatever magic your doctor taught him, I shall need it.”
He looked to one of his crewmen, a thin man with cropped, tattered pants and a thin shirt tucked into a scarf that was tightly tied around his waist.
“Aleksi,” he said, waving him over. “Go with him.”
Aleksi nodded, no questions, and followed me to the treehouse.
“They say you can bring people back from the dead,” I said to him.
“I can try,” he shrugged. “I got lucky once. S’pose I could be lucky again.”
My body did not want to go to that cabin knowing what I would see, but I pushed forward, taking slow, steady breaths as I neared the door.
When I nudged it open, Meridan was by the bed, resting her head against the mattress.
She jumped up when I entered, her mouth dropping open with a start.
Mullins was startled awake by my presence and stumbled to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Meridan asked.
“Mullins. David. I need you to take Meri outside,” I said.
Meridan narrowed her eyes and immediately went rigid, reaching for the knife strapped to her arm.
“Whoa!” Mullins yelped, pinning her arms to her sides with his own.
David quickly jumped in to help, but both of my men looked as if restraining Meridan was pure sin. Snatching the knife from her belt, David jumped away. Meridan began to thrash, gathering that something was very wrong.
“She told you something, didn’t she?” Meridan said. “Whatever that Kroan whore said to you, she is lying.”
Ignoring her protests, I climbed onto the bed, straddling Dahlia’s wilted body.
“What are you doing?” Meridan demanded.
“Help me hold her!” Mullins shouted at David.
“Stop!”
I let the voices fade into the background, a distant hum in a room made cold by the absence of Dahlia’s energy. I stared down at her, barely able to tell whether she was alive or if she had been dead the whole time.
“I love you, Dahlia,” I whispered.
There was a great commotion happening behind me. No doubt Meridan was giving Mullins and David a challenge, but I could not stop. If I stopped, I would never find the will to do what I had to again.
I was Captain Bone Heart.
It was time to put my name to the test.
I leaned in, wrapping my hands around Dahlia’s slender neck.
She was cold to the touch. I felt as if I was defiling a corpse as I squeezed.
I pressed my thumbs into her windpipe and I did not let go.
Meridan’s voice came back into focus. She was screaming.
The walls shook with her struggle, but I did not let up.
I kept choking. And choking. Time passed torturously slow, but I stayed on course.
Dahlia didn’t so much as spasm or jerk to let me know she was alive enough to kill.
She did nothing. She just lay there, motionless.
God, perhaps I had lost her already and everything was pointless. All of it. My efforts. Keeping Lyla alive. Bringing my men deep into dangerous, siren infested waters.
All of it. It was all meaningless without her and I feared I had been without her for days and just not known it.
And then… everything went quiet. Meridan ceased her fighting. My heart seemed to stop in my chest.
“No,” Meridan whimpered. “No. Vidar, what have you done? Y—You killed her. You… you killed her! She trusted you! She trusted you!”
Her screams grew in volume and her writhing continued until she sounded like an animal in chains.
I stared at Dahlia’s dead features as I lifted my hands from her neck.
Already, bruising tainted her skin where my fingers had collared her.
Death’s teasing chill washed over me, laughing at my failures.
“Move, cap’n,” a voice said.
Aleksi pushed me off her and moved onto the bed, grasping Dahlia’s head in his hands and tilting it back.
I watched, dizzy with realization as he pressed his mouth to hers.
I could hear his breath push into her lungs.
I did not understand it, but I did not understand anything I was realizing.
I glanced back for a blink to see both Mullins and David pressing their full weight on a thrashing Meridan, trying to keep her hands from finding a blade.
I stood to aid them, my body moving on its own to do things that felt routine.
Helping my men. Fighting a siren. Preparing for violence. I was good at those things.
And evidently, I was good at killing the woman I loved.
Meridan’s face was in a way I’d never seen before.
Her teeth were sharp and she was baring every single one.
She had never looked so feral. So consumed with rage.
And why wouldn’t she be that way? I’d just killed Dahlia, perhaps the only person who meant anything to her.
She curled her fingers into claws, desperately reaching for me.
I was tempted to tell the men to let her go. To let her have her way with me. It would have relieved me of the guilt and shock that was curling inside me like the thorny stems of a rose bush.
But then Meridan’s face froze up. Her snarling lips relaxed.
Her brow flattened. She shifted her gaze toward the bed and something in me lit up with life.
I spun back around to see Aleksi patting Dahlia’s cheek as if trying to wake a sleeping child.
I sat on the bed opposite him, pulling her hand into mine.
He pressed his mouth to hers one last time, his fingers pinching her nose closed. Her chest expanded and then…
Aleksi pulled away and I heard a desperate intake of air enter Dahlia’s lungs.
Her gasp filled the cabin and silenced everyone else.
It was the most beautiful noise I’d ever heard.
She opened her eyes with a start, wheezing for a proper breath, and my heart leapt into my throat.
When her frantic gaze found mine, I saw a lifetime worth of horror reflected back at me like she just brought hell with her from wherever she’d gone.
She stared up at me, but she did not see me.
“Dahlia. Dahlia, it’s me.”
She wrenched her hand from mine, limbs flailing like a trapped bird, clawing her way up the bed until her spine struck the headboard with a hollow thud.
Her eyes devoured the room, every face, every shadow, in a single, ragged breath.
My chest splintered at the raw terror reflected in her eyes, splintered further as a scream of pure, unbridled agony, tore from her throat, shattering the quiet night.
She was awake. Dahlia was awake.
Her eyes went dark as onyx as she rolled off the bed, tripping over feet she hadn’t used in days.
I watched her scurry for the door, pushing past Meridan’s open arms as if she thought we were trying to catch her and eat her alive.
I ran after her, the sound of her terrified sobs cutting into me like knives skinning me slowly.
She ran into the clearing, unstable on her legs, and then toppled to her knees, retching and gagging until bile evacuated her mouth.
I stopped five paces from her and when Meridan attempted to run past me, I threw out my arm to stop her.
She shoved it away and rushed to Dahlia’s side despite me, crouching beside her, but as soon as her hand met her back, Dahlia recoiled from it like it was the source of her sickness.
I watched Dahlia, the ferocious, man-eating siren who’d endured the worst the world had to give, crawling away like a dying animal looking for a place to perish alone.
I did not think my heart could hurt so much.
I knew by the look on Meridan’s face that she was feeling it, too.
Something had changed. Something was missing and what had woken up in that bed was a ghost of the woman we both knew.
When Dahlia stopped again, I could do nothing but watch as she shivered, a hand pressed to her heart as she sobbed, unable to catch her breath. The urge to go to her ate me alive, but the way she fled from me…
I did not know the right thing to do.