27. Arthur
ARTHUR
I did not give myself time to think.
Thinking led to fear, and fear led to hesitation, and hesitation was how people drowned in ancient temples.
I shifted, scooped Artemis up, and launched for the dais in one smooth motion, wings snapping open as water surged around us. She clutched at my shoulders, trusting me without question, and that trust hit harder than any blow of Hadrian’s.
She had just saved our lives.
I landed hard on the stone platform, talons skidding for purchase before finding it. The dais held, but only barely. The water lapped at the edge, churning and impatient, as if annoyed we had not died on schedule.
The entity waited.
It remained in that unsettling, almost-humanoid shape, all liquid stone and dim light, chains wrapped around it like a reminder rather than a restraint. It didn’t move. It didn’t need to.
Artemis slid down my back, breath shaking, eyes still alight with everything she had just seen and understood. Awe and fear and brilliance braided together in her expression, and for a wild, unhelpful moment, I thought: How is she real?
The voice came inside my skull, smooth and expectant.
What do you offer?
I swallowed.
We needed the water gone. We needed a way out. We needed this thing satisfied without destroying what was left of the world.
I had no gold. No ancient secrets left to trade. No bloodline deal I would ever agree to repeat.
But I did have one truly cursed object.
I shifted back to human form, water streaming off me, heart still hammering from the fight and the fall and the miracle of Artemis standing upright beside me.
I put my hand in my pocket.
Artemis stared as I pulled it out. “Is that your phone?”
I looked down at the rectangular slab of glass and metal like it might betray me out of spite. “Yes.”
She shook her head. “Arthur.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “I know how it sounds.”
The entity watched with what might have been interest.
“You’re offering your phone,” she said slowly, “to an ancient, chained, primordial entity.”
I lifted it higher, addressing the creature directly. “This device tracks me. Records me. Connects me to people who wish me harm. It led my enemies to us. Repeatedly.”
Artemis’s mouth fell open. “You are not helping our case.”
“It also,” I added, warming to the argument, “contains more accumulated human knowledge than most libraries did a century ago. Maps. Languages. Histories. Entire systems of thought. It is… deeply cursed.”
Artemis snorted.
The entity’s chains chimed softly.
Accepted.
The phone vanished from my hand.
Simply vanished, as if reality itself had decided it was done dealing with modern technology. I’d never liked the thing anyway.
The water began to drain, reversing through the channels Artemis had identified earlier, drawn back into the ancient systems carved into the stone. The level dropped steadily, revealing more of the chamber floor with every passing second.
We both exhaled at once.
The room fell quiet, save for the low sound of receding water and our own unsteady breathing.
I braced my hands on my knees, laughter threatening to spill out of me in sharp, disbelieving bursts. Artemis clutched my arm, her presence warm and real.
We were alive.
The entity receded slightly, its chains settling, interest apparently satisfied—for now.
I turned to Artemis and felt the full weight of what she had done settle into me at last. She had run toward danger. She had read Atlantis like a living system. She had trusted me to follow.
I drew a slow breath, then another.
“We should leave,” I said, because that felt safer than everything else I wanted to say.
“No,” she said, voice steady in a way that made my chest tighten. “There are things you should know.”
I turned fully toward her.
She looked exhausted, and she was shaking a little now that the danger had eased. But her eyes were clear and focused.
“The being didn’t just take my knowledge,” she continued. “It gave me knowledge in return. That’s how I knew what to do with the water. That’s how I knew how to stop Hadrian.”
I swallowed. “What do you mean, gave you knowledge?”
She took a breath. Then another. Like she was bracing herself to say something that could not be unsaid.
"This is how your family got its power,” she said gently. “By bartering with the entity. Except they were not trading knowledge. The power your clan obtained was stained with the blood of those that have been sacrificed over the years. Unknowingly and against their will.”
The air shifted.
I felt it before I saw it. A pressure change, like the world leaning closer to listen. We both looked up.
The entity was no longer humanoid.
It had reshaped itself into a dragon. It was massive, ancient, and slightly transparent, as though it existed half in this world and half in some ethereal plane.
Its wings were vast sheets of shimmering light, its body etched with the same glyphs carved into the temple walls, chains still wrapped around it, still binding it no matter the form it took.
It was beautiful and terrible.
Artemis stepped closer to me, not touching, but near enough that I felt her presence like an anchor.
“Hadrian knew pieces of it,” she said. “He knew the ritual brought power. He knew it elevated your bloodline. But he didn’t know the sacrifice itself. He didn’t know what it demanded.”
My pulse hammered in my ears.
“Just like we saw through the trials, the Atlanteans built this place as a conduit. They used it to move power through the world. Your ancestor didn’t create anything. He redirected it. He made a bargain to siphon vitality into your clan.”
I shook my head slowly. “From where?”
“From everywhere,” she said. “From people. From magic. From life itself.”
The words landed like stones.
“He was shown the cost,” she continued. “Every alpha is. Every inheriting leader has to see it before the deal can be renewed. That’s why your ancestor ended it. He saw children wasting away. Crops failing. Eggs never hatching. Entire regions dimming so your family could stay strong.”
My stomach dropped.
“That’s why the records disappeared,” she said. “That’s why there are gaps. Because once the cost became too great, someone tried to stop it and erased enough of the trail so no one else could start it again.”
My family.
My blood.
I stared at the dragon, at the chains, at the temple built to enable this horror, and felt something in me fracture.
“We did this,” I said hoarsely.
She didn’t contradict me.
“The fading magic,” I whispered. “The decline. The sickness. I knew it wasn’t random.”
“No,” she said. “It’s starvation. The deal was severed, but the damage was already done. And the fading power is because of the lack of power draining from elsewhere.”
The dragon lowered its head. One massive claw extended toward me, chains rattling softly as it offered it.
I knew what it was asking.
I stepped forward before I could think better of it and wrapped my hand around the claw.
The world vanished, but I was everywhere.
I was a village watching its children sicken. I was a clutch of eggs that never warmed. I was magic dimming in the bones of dragons who didn’t understand why they became weaker every generation. I was plague. I was drought. I was grief passed down like inheritance.
I felt it all.
Every sacrifice made without consent. Every life shortened so my family could rule with unbridled power.
I tore my hand away with a broken sound and staggered back, nearly falling. Artemis caught my arm without hesitation, grounding me, steadying me as I sucked in air that felt too thin to sustain me.
Now I understood.
Now I knew why my ancestor had tried to break the chain and failed. The earlier alphas had been willing to pay the cost. Willing to trade lives they never had to witness directly. Power had made them cruel enough to justify anything.
I would not be that.
I straightened, shaking, heart raw and burning.
“It ends,” I said. “All of it. I don’t care what it costs me.”
The dragon’s calm voice rolled through me even as its chains rattled. What do you offer?
I laughed once, sharp and hollow. “I don’t have gold. I don’t have secrets left. I don’t even have authority worth preserving.”
I lifted my chin. “Take me. Take my life. Break the connection. Restore what was lost.”
The chains stilled.
Deal.
I stepped forward and lifted my hand.
And then Artemis jumped in front of me and extended her own hand toward the chains binding the entity.
“What do you offer?” she asked, her voice unwavering.
The dragon froze, then it disappeared.
Light collapsed inward, reshaping, condensing, until what stood before us was no longer vast or terrifying.
It was small.
A child-sized figure, genderless, glowing softly, features gentle and strange and achingly familiar. It looked like what Artemis might have looked as a child. Curious. Bright. Made of starlight and promise.
The chains were gone.
The voice was different now. Lighter.
Resolution.
Artemis didn’t hesitate.
“I give you freedom,” she said. “For the clan’s freedom. Do you accept the deal?”
The being smiled. It extended a small, glowing hand.
I accept.
She shook it once.
“Deal.”
Light exploded outward, warm and blinding, filling every corner of the chamber.
And then—
Everything vanished.