Chapter 33
Leaf
Ithrow myself out of the house, storming towards the cliff, turning in a circle, listening for any sign of this piece of berley bait. Mei and the Sirens come out, fanning around us.
“Rowanee,” Deux calls.
The wind snatches his voice and twists it all around us. I can’t catch his scent, the ocean salt is too strong.
“Mei, you should-”
“Finish that sentence, and I will show you what the Healer can do to a man’s gut.”
Lirin cackles and pulls out a long, thin sword that looks light and airy.
“Ready to dance, Princess?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps.
The ocean is getting rougher, responding to my fury, trying to come defend me. To protect our mate.
The bond sits heavy inside me, but I can feel something changing in me. Something twisting and making me more. Stronger.
Mei turns slowly, cocking her head at different angles to catch the wind.
“Where is he, Mei?”
“I don’t know,” she says in frustration.
I wait, ready to shift shape at any second. Deux is fast, but we can be faster. The wind howls louder, whistling over the cliffs and then roaring.
Mei’s hair is snatched up and whirls around her head.
Ronit turns and makes eye contact with me. I can hear what he’s saying loud and clear.
Don’t let anything happen to her.
And I won’t. If worse comes to worst, I will throw us both into the ocean to get away from him.
But I don’t think so, not this time.
We’re stronger together.
Deux appears by the side of the house, watching us with his eerie white face. Or maybe he’s been there the whole time. His black robes float around him, and the white mist that has poured in hides his feet and up to his knees.
“Wait,” Mei says. “He comes to us.”
I wait, but it’s hard. I want so badly to go to him and tear him to shreds. Every motion of his bone-wrapped hair has me flinching.
The wind brings us the thick scent of his decay. It brings death on the air.
“You don’t have to do this,” Ronit says to Mei.
“Yes, I do. We do.”
The fog thickens, and when I blink, he’s gone. I tense and scan the area.
“Ronit,” I growl.
“I know,” Ronit barely breathes.
We spread out, forming a circle around her. The air is cold and full of scents that are wild and wrong.
Mei turns in a circle and stops, facing the cliff.
For a second, I see her flying out off the cliff. I scream her name, rushing to get to her, but I can’t get to her in time, and she dies.
I shove the vision out of my mind because I don’t want to be seeing her die. She’s not going to die. I’m not going to let that happen. I am the Ocean’s Teeth, the Great Dragon. I won’t lose my mate.
I catch movement and spring towards it. Deux doesn’t do what he did last time. He doesn’t engage. He disappears and vanishes into the dark, leaving me confused about what game he’s playing.
With an uncertain glance around, I retreat back to the group. Ronit and Lirin attack next, but again, Deux doesn’t engage, and I notice that we’re spreading out a bit, giving each other more room to fight.
Mei turns her head, swiveling it around. The wind lifts her blond hair, and when the moonlight hits it, it looks white.
We’re silent, listening through the howls for something that doesn’t belong.
Reed rushes the dark, and this time, he’s lifted and thrown so hard and far that he almost tumbles right to the edge of the cliff.
“Reed!” Lirin shouts and rushes to him.
I move closer to Mei, but Deux charges us. Brio is tossed in the opposite direction, and Ronit goes after him.
Canto glances at me. We don’t leave her. I nod.
Deux feints in, his hair lifts on its own, rattling like the coils on the ends of rattlesnakes. That is unnerving.
Mei laughs.
“Terrified, Deux?”
“You will be, Rowenee,” he taunts.
“Do you know why we call him Deux?” Mei says to Canto and I.
“No, why?”
“Because he’s second in everything he does.
Two. It’s who he is, not strong enough, not scary enough, always in someone’s shadow.
He will always be second to Styx. Second to Sorrow.
Second to the Grim. Second. Second. Second.
” She drives the point home, and with each word she says, Deux’s rage increases, and I realise she’s trying to make him angry.
Deux’s rattling hair gets even louder and then stops completely. For some reason, this makes Mei falter, as if she wasn’t expecting it.
He cocks his head to the side and then fades into the dark.
He doesn’t come at us; he goes and slams into Lirin. Reed attacks him, and they go around for a moment before Deux slams him to the ground. He lifts his foot, but Lirin shoves him before he can break Reed’s ribs.
Mei is tense, waiting, listening. I wonder how much of the fight she can actually understand.
Suddenly, he reverses direction and comes right at us.
I brace, but he jumps high into the air and slams into Canto.
The blow he levels on the Siren makes my teeth ache, and Canto falls back, but Mei is there, driving him back, attacking with sharpened claws, ripping hair and skin off him, fighting him in a blur that is faster than anything we could manage.
I attack from the back, and Canto joins in.
When he breaks away from us, he finds the wall of Lirin, Reed, Brio, and Ronit, and he can’t get past them or through them.
Over and over, we dance, cutting him down piece by piece.
And it seems…too easy.
He breaks away and runs to the edge of the cliff.
“You can’t win. I will have you.”
Ronit laughs. “Go back where you came from, monster.”
Deux blinks black, black eyes, and I get this horrible sense of wrongness just for a moment. That he’s smiling at us, that he thinks he’s won.
“Do you want to make a deal?” he asks and then throws his head back and laughs.
His laugh is like all the wrong things in the world. My scales crawl, my whole self recoils. It’s a terrifying laugh.
He lunges at us, and we attack again, driving him back, this time to the edge of the cliff.
He screams at us and howls, desperate, scratching, clawing.
Then he tumbles off the cliff and falls onto the hard rocks below.
I go to the edge and look down, watching his body, making sure it doesn’t move.
His body lays there for a second before the ocean reaches out and snatches him from his spot, and he’s gone.
It’s over.
“He’s dead, Mei,” I say.
She turns to me. “Are you sure?”
“We saw his body. He’s dead,” Canto murmurs.
She throws herself into his arms, squeezing him hard. “He’s dead?”
“Yes, very much so.”
She laughs, and that sound. It’s so light and full of relief. It’s the sound of freedom.
I go to her but stay back because I don’t know. I’m not sure, and I don’t want her to feel it. It was too easy.
I walk back to the edge of the cliff and look down, but there’s nothing to be seen. I could go and check, but-
“Leaf, come on, we’re going to celebrate.”
I turn away, pushing the problem of Deux out of my mind. We won. He’s dead.
She’s safe.
That’s all that matters.