Chapter Twenty Five
PEDR
Ashattering blasted Pedr in half.
Twice.
Thrice.
The internal rending cracked his chest and birthed a black monster. From the moment the arcane took his soul, a sense of darkness already consumed him, but now he plunged deeper. As before, a distant, cackling laugh filled his ears with a reverberative hiss.
Stinna?
Impossible. She lay on the ocean floor, anchored, locked, cursed. It must have been the memory of her, embedded within the final, hateful layer.
Pain swept him. His stomach rolled as he dropped into an awaiting fathomless abyss, entering almost willingly.
There was nothing for him here, nor there.
The falling sensation happened again. Tumbling, head over legs, he spun.
A stabbing pain attacked his chest, and a flurry of voices whispered in his ear.
When your lips taste the forbidden fruit, you shall start the last of your days.
Count them well, Arcanist.
There is no stopping your obliteration now.
They were the voices of various Siren Queens, for certain, full of utmost loathing. Nothing inspired fear like a vengeful siren. He recognized Amalia’s poetic terror in the first, Drotta’s hiss in the last. Through his haze, he understood: his life was counting down.
A warm sensation crawled across his cheek. The whispers faded, leaving him alone in the dark.
A new voice arose.
“Pedr?”
He surfaced the oily midnight pool and opened his eyes.
A beautiful face hovered over him with an anxious stare. Mila. No that couldn’t . . .
. . . it was.
Mila pressed a hand to his cheek. Her touch, so delicate, registered as real. Shite, but it hadn’t been a dream. This wasn’t a waking nightmare that gripped him while lost in the throes of the sea, alone for weeks on end, no path back to her, no way to stop his pain.
Mila was here.
He croaked, “Mila?”
She smiled, head tilting. Her touch reached the hollow of his cheek, then his neck, warming him through. He wrapped her wrist in his hand.
“I didn’t dream it?”
“No, Pedr. I’m real,” she quickly said, then amended with her usual smile. “Very real. None of this was a dream, not even a bad one. Everything is . . . well . . . it’s not fine. But we’re forming a plan.”
An odd sense of determination filled her declaration.
Weight existed in his chest now. A different kind.
Everything felt smaller, more difficult.
Restricted. Though he just regained consciousness, fatigue threatened him again.
Almost like it would as a human when he didn’t get enough sleep.
He pushed onto his elbows, skimming his cabin.
This is not what he last remembered.
“How did we get here?”
Laughing, she cried, “I can’t believe you kept the same ship after fifteen years! How did you manage it?”
He recognized her attempt to divert the conversation, but decided to answer her question first, because he’d give her anything.
“Sheer grit and a lot of arcane.”
Chuckling, she sprawled her fingers out, letting them caress the top of his cheekbone. She sobered when he captured her wrist in his hand again.
“Answer my question, my love. How did we get to the ship?”
Swallowing, she whispered, “You kissed me and collapsed.” He remembered that. Tears sparkled in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Draven came. He flew us here.”
Draven.
Right.
She leaned closer to him, eyes fluttered closed, her breath a hot whisper. “Did you collapse from the Noxaris curse? Is the final layer active?”
He recalled the activation with horrifying clarity. The last time he felt this way was fifteen years ago, when Amalia activated the first and second layers of the curse at the same time. Such torture would have destroyed a human. It had nearly destroyed him, an Arcanist.
He forced himself to smile, because Mila didn’t deserve any of this. “Your lips are so shattering that you took my breath away, my love.”
Her laugh sounded like a hidden sob.
“C’mere,” he murmured, pulling her close. She came willingly, and Pedr had just enough energy to gather her in his arms. She melted against him, boneless. He lifted a hand, toying with her hair.
While enjoying her nearness, he turned his attention to the arcane, the folding of one thought to another as instinctual as it was intentional. But the expected response didn’t come. There was a slight throttling of his ability to manage the power. A difference.
With rising panic, he recalled Amalia’s words, tangled in the post-curse flow that he’d experienced too many times now.
At the end of your allotted time, your bond shall shatter.
Your soul shall obliterate.
He tried to extract from the mess, but it held him close. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He tried to sit up, but Mila held tight. He was too weak to fight. When had he ever felt this puny?
“Lay down,” she murmured. “I’ll call for the others. They want to speak with you, too.”
If she was willing to stop a cuddle, it was bad.
Mila stood, slipped to the window, cranked it open, called out, and returned to his side.
Within a minute, Einar tromped inside the cabin.
Something unreadable lived in his eyes. Pedr sniffed, but less scent came to him than usual.
Einar had big emotions and big ideas, thus big odors. Except for today.
Also odd.
To Pedr’s greater surprise, Draven followed behind Einar. When his stare met Pedr’s, Draven imparted an uncanny resolve. It smelled a little like fear. Now Pedr had a myriad of reasons to worry.
Mila sat next to Pedr on the bed. Despite her protests, Pedr pushed to sitting. He swung his legs around the edge, ignoring the dizzying wave that slid through him. Gritting his teeth, he stood, enduring a swimming light headedness. Surely, he’d experienced far worse over the last several years.
Hadn’t he?
Mila scuttled to follow him up, her arm around his waist. Several moments passed while he attempted to regain his bearings. On the other side of the exhaustion was a sense of normalcy. He couldn’t sit up forever, but he could for now.
He nodded to the Father King.
“Draven.”
Draven inclined his head.
“Pedr.”
Einar’s surly glower heightened when he muttered, “Glad you’re alive, you bastid.”
“You finally listened to me when I commanded you to do something,” Pedr quipped, unable to express his relief any other way. “Thank the seas for that. You managed to save your own life while we achieved our ends.”
Eyes glittering, Einar grinned.
“Yes, you did.”
Pedr turned to Draven and hid a sniff, barely catching a whiff of relief wafting from the old wyvern. Why relief? Seeing Mila for the first time, probably. Did she know Draven’s relationship to her?
Probably.
He’d ask her later.
“The odds must be uglier than I expected if you’re here, Draven.”
“I would hazard that circumstances aren’t ideal for you, Pedr,” Draven said in a quiet, yet commanding way. “We have the very big problem of your curse activation and the seven days of life you have left, assuming my guess is correct. That is the end result of your Noxaris curse?”
Draven asked because he must know the process of such a horrible curse, and that the final details of the curse were given in the whispers Pedr endured. Recalling Amalia’s instructions, Pedr nodded.
“You’re correct.”
Draven gave no visible response beyond deeper pondering. Mila’s hand squeezed Pedr’s. He hadn’t realized he’d clasped hers.
Einar extended a paper.
“For you.”
Pedr unfurled it with tension across his lower gut. He cleared his throat and frowned as Britt’s handwriting came into view.
Pedr,
I sincerely hope this letter finds you well. It was hard to leave without seeing you. I feel as if I’ve abandoned you and hope that one day you’ll forgive me, or understand.
There is a big story behind this note that Einar will explain, but I promised Onskar to deliver a message to you. Onskar saved my life, taking me to another place, while the landslide descended from the mountain heights.
While in that other place, he demanded I give you an offer on his behalf: if you surrender your position as Arcanist, burn the Rosenvatten, and choose a human life again, Onskar will break the final curse layer. He promises that you can live exactly as you want with Mila at your side.
What you do with this information is yours. As your sister, allow me to request that you play your hand carefully. I will say only that.
I did not care for Onskar at all.
All my love,
Britt
He read it twice, the second time more thoughtfully. Britt’s carefully coded message of don’t be a coward was clear enough in the words play your hand carefully. He snorted and rolled it up.
Of course he wouldn’t surrender to Onskar. There wasn’t a question of that. Onskar shot wild, broad, and incorrect in his assumption that Pedr would sacrifice anything. Pedr would never forsake Mila nor his ship, and he didn’t desire a human life.
He desired Mila.
By all accounts, she was as immortal as Onskar, so surrendering to a human existence was a step backward for Pedr, anyway. If Onskar turned Pedr human but obliterated Mila, all was truly lost. There was information in the fact that Onskar offered such an offer, however.
Einar re-engaged Pedr’s interest when he began a recitation of all events that happened since Pedr entered the mountain, including Britt’s retelling of her time with Onskar.
At the end of his summary, Einar explained Britt’s journey with Onskar.
In fact, he described the Otherworld to a startling degree.
Einar finished with, “Before Britt left . . . whatever that place was . . . she meant to ask Onskar about Agnes. She said the desire was at the forefront of her mind, but Onskar interrupted her. He commanded her not to ask about Agnes and became threatening.”
“Why?”
Einar shrugged, and Pedr stewed. A discomfited Arcanist of Souls, all right. What harm could Agnes, of all souls, pose against Onskar? Pedr’s rumination blunted into a deep fatigue.
“Shite,” he muttered. “Okay. Well . . . my soul is on the line.”
“Mila’s, too,” Draven said.
Pedr cast him a wary stare.
“What?”