Chapter 39 Twilight of the Gods
The sea does not forget.
—A sailor’s warning
What happens next is as wild and uncontrollable as the sea itself.
Tons of icy water pours down on us, flooding the cavern.
At first there are screams. Terrified shouts from both Rowan and Cyprian and maybe the other guard, too, but they’re quickly lost—turned to breathless heaving, to the desperate, forced concentration fighting ravaging currents demands.
The water, cold and relentless, pulls at their limbs, slams their bodies against the brutal rock of the walls and cavern floor, stealing breath and any thought beyond survival.
The water’s rising and rising. Soon it’s over their heads, and then encasing my dangling feet where the salt burns my ruined skin.
Tiny gasps of panic rip through me as it steadily climbs its way up.
Will my power hold? Keep me alive under the surf?
How will I escape the chains binding my wrists?
All things I should have considered sooner, but Rhyland’s life hung in the balance.
A thought that may have come too late bleeds through the terror.
Everflame—if I could just summon it, I know it would be hot enough to melt through the iron.
But the sealine is at my knees now, and more water’s careening through the blown hole in the cavern.
I shake and desperately rub my fingers together.
Please, please, please. I don’t want to go under. Not again. Not like this. Please.
I watch as the others break the surface, gasping and fighting the strong flow of water that doesn’t relent.
A stab of blind panic ricochets through me.
Where’s Rhyland? I don’t see him in the swirling monsoon.
Maybe I miscalculated. Maybe he only got the everflame magick.
Or the godsbane in his shoulder wound was too much.
His absence, the alarm it stirs, is a distraction—a costly one.
Before I know it, the water’s up to my chin and not slowing.
More fruitless struggling. Pulling down the wall has taken so much out of me, I know the everflame won’t come, and resign myself to a deep breath as seawater closes over my head.
Something rushes by, a sheen of silky fabric; the Cloak of Shifting Tides, but then it’s gone, whisked away by the current.
I blink against the salty sting, into the would-be dark, if it wasn’t for the runes glowing with warm sunlight off his muscled forearms. Seems the water has washed away the coal markings on the wall, freed Rhyland’s power.
He’s swimming toward me in desperate, slicing strokes, but Harlow’s managed a hold on his leg that slows him.
My own rune stays dark and flesh colored against my chest: a bad sign, I take it.
There’s not enough strength or magick left to preserve me, no brilliant silver light.
A breath in would spell death and my lungs are beginning to burn like all-fire.
The sea is determined—it’s been so since the beginning.
She wants me back, clutched in her bewitching embrace.
Salt and sea, she calls to me.
I’ll tell her no, I’ll make her go.
The sea is fear, the sea is death
And I’ll not yield my final breath.
She claims the weak, the lost, the drowned,
Where silent ships lie ‘neath the sound.
Her depths will take, her grip will hold,
A chilling end, a story told.
So turn away, and do not dare,
To seek her depths, or breathe salt air.
For in her arms, your soul will cease,
And find no hope, no lasting peace.
Our dead drink the sea.
Moeir’s song takes its final bow in my head.
I see the outline of her warm face in the water and think maybe she was wrong.
Maybe there’ll be peace in this after all, if Rhyland survives and Harlow drowns.
I don’t know if Cyprian actually nicked him a second time with the Godsbane or not, but his power still looks intact as he fights Harlow off, sending him cascading through the water with a swift, powerful kick to his chest. He turns back, making a frantic bee-line toward me.
Halfway there when the cavern explodes with blinding light.
A figure takes shape in the water—one I know well, that I couldn’t forget if I tried.
As if this could get any worse.
Harial grins. A swell of emerald light—a shade to match his eyes—encases us, and in it, I suck a lungful of much needed air down. It hurts, breathing. But it’s a good kind of pain, the best. The pain of being alive.
The trickster god. His features are all impish arches and clever angles, the deceitful type that might look entirely different with a simple crane or shift of his head. Golden blonde hair flows around him, and he tucks a lock behind one pointed ear.
“Avalon.” There’s malice hidden in the way he says my name.
Anger that doesn’t quite touch the surface.
“Why does this feel so familiar—” He pauses, then turns his head to look over his shoulder at Rhyland, who is suspended in water outside his glowing sphere, moving slower than could ever be natural.
“—yet somehow very different.” A flick of his wrist sees the gag gone from my mouth.
Evidently iron is not a detriment to his magick.
I don’t know what to say and instead focus on breathing in and out, savoring the way the air feels in my burning lungs. At any moment he could take it all away.
Harial crooks an eyebrow. His movements are phantasmal.
An illusion, or a projection of himself.
Like Mór, he’s not really here, but he’s still powerful enough to grip, hold, and dangle my life over the cliff it was about to slip off of.
“You’ve had quite the adventure. Made some piss poor choices, I see.
” Those bright green eyes assess the silver band still wrapped around my ring finger.
“Took me ages to find you. I hope you weren’t planning to go back on our deal, after all the care I’ve taken to keep your mother alive and well. ”
The threat in his tone brings shivers over my skin. How can someone who looks so playful and innocent strike a fear like helfire into your heart with just a few words?
“I–I wasn’t,” I manage to choke out, surprised I can speak at all. “I was getting you the crown.”
His expression morphs into something far from convinced. “Really? Because it seems to me that the scarred mortal has two pieces, and the godling queen has the third.”
“I—” I really don’t know what to say. I tried? Something tells me he won’t be pleased with that. Not one bit. “I can still get them. I can fix this.”
“Oh?” He looks bored. “I was under the impression you were minutes away from death, which really does me no good at all.”
“Help me.”
He laughs. “Help you? After you broke our bargain? You’re a bold one, Avalon.” A pause stretches between us in which I can’t help but stare past him to Rhyland, easing through the current as though time itself has been wrangled and subdued. Can he see me? His brother? Anything?
Harial leans in, his pointed white canines gleaming.
“You’re lucky I like my women bold.” A fresh shiver caresses me and he gives a short laugh.
“You’ll need to make a new vow. An agreement to do whatever it takes to secure all three crown pieces, no matter the cost, and bring them to me.
It’s the only way I’ll let your mother live and spare you a painful end for the second time. ”
Her face springs to life behind my eyelids again. It’s impossible to deny the urge to save her. To fix this all…but I need more if I’m going to sacrifice my freedom and betray the pirate so monumentally that I doubt there will be a shred of forgiveness left in his heart.
“I will if—”
“If?” he repeats scathingly, mystified.
And I have to rush the words out before I lose my nerve. “If you agree to get Rhyland…” I hesitate. “...and Rowan safely out of the cave, too.”
Harial scoffs and rolls his eyes, but there’s hardly a beat missed and he says, “Done.” He snaps his fingers.
Rhyland vanishes. Rowan, presumably too, though I have no clue where she was in the cave.
“I can free you from the irons, but you’ll have to get to the crown pieces before I portal you out.
My father’s…conditions keep me from manipulating them myself.
But if they’re on you, or you’re touching that mortal man, the magick from the vow should work to override it. ”
“I can’t swim.”
He rolls his eyes a second time and sighs. “I’ll propel you toward him. Just find a good hold; he’s half dead. Doubt he’ll fight much.”
You’d be surprised. I hold my tongue, luck already pressed thin as a web in a windstorm. “Alright, set me free.”
His eyes harden to vicious dagger points. “The vow.”
Of course.
I tug one of my hands; the chain holding it breaks like thin ice.
I hold it out expectantly towards him, and even though I’m certain he’s an illusion, not really here at all, he reaches for me.
Where the skin meets skin an unnatural coldness seeps in.
A numb, tingly feeling that spreads through my hand and up my arm.
I grit my teeth against it, fighting not to pull away as brilliant tendrils of emerald smoke start braiding their way around our clasped fingers.
A burning erupts behind my ear—blinding, white pain. Does it have to hurt so bad?
My thoughts are thrown to the cliffs in Elaris, my wedding day with Rhyland. That didn’t hurt, not one bit. Why?
He begins a chant in the old tongue and I know, from the first time I swore myself to him, I’ll have to repeat each line.
"Vie skugga falli og Harials flugi,
Lofa ég ore mín,
í dvínandi ljósi.
Ef Harial kallar,
hvar sem ég er,
Mín sál skal svara,
tegar í stae.”
The words taste of magick, hollow and metallic. The burning and the green mist intensify then vanish altogether.
“Deep breath,” is the only warning he gives before the sphere goes and cold water rushes back around me.