Chapter Two Zephyra
CHAPTER TWO
ZEPHYRA
In Mortia, deceased commoners are burned on pyres along walls that run from continent to continent in order to protect humankind from traversing merrow-infested seas.
Nobles, on the other hand, are buried beneath the Temple of Mortem in a special antechamber blessed by both the High Priest and a warlock elder during elaborate funerals.
When the floor rumbles and the entry to the stairwell releases, thanks to Eos, the bitter stench of liquor and the sweet scent of divinity salts—drugs—confirm every rumor we’ve heard about those indulgent celebrations.
It almost doesn’t feel sanitary to open the doorway.
“Smells like fornication,” Stavros says, shielding his nose with the gunpowder.
I don’t disagree. Neither does Vesper, though she still crawls toward the latch.
It spans six large marble tiles, and she slips two fingers under the fissure to pull it the rest of the way open.
Doing so releases another gust of nauseating air, this one tinged with rot, and it takes everything in me to not gag.
“Eos?” Vesper whispers. “You okay?”
There is no answer.
“Eos?” she repeats desperately.
Silence.
My stomach churns with anxiety. “It’s deep.
She probably can’t hear us down there.” But even as I say it, I know it might not be true.
Truth is, none of us has ever attended a noble’s burial before, never entered these crypts.
We’ve heard stories though—horror stories of revelry bordering on hedonism down below.
And although we watched a procession of drunken nobles parade out of this very stairwell earlier this evening, we don’t know if every single one of them left.
We don’t know what’s waiting down there.
Stavros grabs Vesper’s arm before she can descend into the darkness. “Do not worry, Vesper. If your sister is hurt, we will bathe in the blood of her assailant.”
Vesper presses a palm to his cheek. “Thank you, Stavros.” She sucks in a sharp breath, then steps below.
Stavros treads immediately behind her. For some reason, the sight of them disappearing together—always in unison, perfectly in step—fills me with inexplicable unease.
It lifts the hair at my nape, and it makes me hesitate. Just for a second.
You are not and have never been a real part of this crew.
Their relationship has always felt strangely intense, and not in a particularly romantic way.
The two share a tent with Eos, pitched between two ramshackle buildings using shredded clothing and cypress branches as a makeshift awning, and Stavros doesn’t sleep.
Instead, he watches over them. Three nights ago, when I tried to slip inside and share news about the masquerade’s siren massacre, Stavros had me pinned to the floor with a rag shoved down my throat before I could even scream. He nearly lit me on fire.
I shake off my hesitation and start forward, ignoring that tight, itchy feeling across my skin.
I can’t imagine what they’ve lived through together, or what Stavros will do if something happens to Eos.
I can’t imagine what I’ll do. I haven’t been part of their crew for long—and I’m clearly not always a welcome member—but Eos is the best of us.
Her sunshine smile. Her tinkling laugh. She gave her last three coppers to an elderly woman, just so the woman could feed her dog.
None of us will ever do better—be better—than Eos.
She’s the only one here who believes in me.
Praying to the goddess for Eos’s safety, I follow Stavros down silent steps and pull the latch shut tight behind me.
Stavros strikes a match on his jaw, and the sudden burst of flame casts the antechamber in stark relief. Thank the goddess. I hate the dark. No. I hate the things that hide in the dark.
Silence presses into us as we pivot, searching for any sign of Vesper’s sister in the cold dampness of carved sandstone and sediment. Finally, unable to stand it, I whisper, “Eos?”
“I—I don’t see her.” Vesper whirls toward the stairs, panic strangling her voice. “Maybe she ran back up. Maybe we missed her.”
“Not possible. She is not magic,” Stavros disagrees with a firm shake of his head.
Vesper ignores him, peering into the shadows of the stairs. “Eos? Eos, please—”
“Boo.” Eos leaps out from behind the stairwell, a teasing smile bright on her cherubic face, and I nearly leap out of my skin. Her blue eyes gleam with mischief. “You should see your faces. Scared, much?”
Vesper raises a hand to her heart, her gaze watering with relief as Stavros staggers back a step and almost falls in a heap of gunpowder. I throw my hands into the air with an exasperated hiss. “What the shit, Eos?”
“That’s what you get for calling me a child,” she sings sweetly.
A rush of nerves ignites my chest—at the dark, at the mission, at Stavros and Vesper and Eos with her hilarious fucking jokes—and bile burns my tongue. I force it down with a swallow. “It’s not funny. We thought you died.”
For once, Vesper agrees with me. She stalks up to Eos and tugs hard on one of her little sister’s braids, her expression stonier than the walls around us.
“Pull that shit again, and you’ll wish you had.
Do you know how dangerous it is to be down here?
If we’re found… if they catch you—” Vesper’s voice breaks on a rising sob, and her touch lightens as she strokes Eos’s silver plaits.
Perhaps they can pass their hair off as blonde on the streets. Perhaps no commoner looks twice under their hoods and cloaks so long as the girls aren’t making trouble. But the king—his guards and soldiers—won’t be so oblivious. They won’t be so kind.
I reach up, fondling a blonde curl of my own, my throat still tight with anger and—and something else. “Let’s just find the fresh bodies and get the fuck out of here.”
“This place is bad,” Stavros says plainly, in that deep, ragged voice of his, before he starts moving toward the far wall.
I stay close behind him, desperate to follow the light. Desperate to avoid the pitch dark and the terrible memories hiding within it. “Couldn’t agree more, big man.”
Still, this place—it’s nothing like the prison I fled.
Nothing like the craggy adamant of jagged black walls and sharpened gables.
This chamber is smooth. Flat. Wide as the eye can see, but open.
I force my breathing to remain light and even.
Calm. Because there is no punishment hiding within these shadowy alcoves. There is no him.
However, it’s still dark. It’s still quiet. My heart pounds beneath my rib cage, begging me to run. To flee. This place might not be the prison of my nightmares, but it’s still dangerous.
The ceiling hangs low overhead, pressing down as if to remind us that we’re below the earth—us—where we wouldn’t belong even if it weren’t illegal for commoners to come here.
And the architects certainly didn’t make it easy for us to trespass.
There is only one entrance; therefore, there is only one exit, and the chamber sprawls so far that we have to walk and walk and walk before we reach anything new.
And walk we do. I manage to step on Stavros’s heel only twice.
The third time, he turns to snarl at me, and I force myself to grin, to slow, to allow a bit more space between us.
His match casts flickering light upon the western wall, where murals painted in shades of crimson depict Mortem at every divine stage of his celestial existence.
A new god with burgeoning wings, arms stretched toward the sunshine as he smiles serenely, peacefully, with his three godly brothers at his side.
Then older, a great kingdom rising above him as he wipes sweat from his strong brow. Contemplative. Wise. Powerful.
And finally, Mortem kneeling at the foot of a dais, holding his heart in his hands as a second imprint of him—a shadow self—floats down an icy river.
I laugh bitterly under my breath. Mortem erected the underworld—the Fathoms—only after he fell. After he slaughtered innocents and incinerated half the world.
Now everyone, human or merrow, must answer to Mortem when they die.
It’s why this kingdom celebrates Mortem so loudly, so effusively.
It’s why they bury their nobility within his temple.
It’s why the wealthy don their most expensive jewels and regalia before being encased in these very walls.
All in the hopes of impressing—bribing—their renowned god.
Humans are fucking idiots.
“Wherever they entombed the bodies, it isn’t here.” I gesture to each of Mortem’s hateful faces along the mural. “They wouldn’t desecrate the bastard.” That, and there’s no evidence of this wall having been rebuilt in the last few hours.
“Rather hideous.” Vesper stares up at the paintings with me. “You’d think someone in this damn kingdom would understand Mortem was a savage prick.”
I stiffen. Glance at her through my periphery.
This is the closest we’ve come to an honest conversation with each other.
And though we’ll never speak our truest admissions aloud, I can’t help adding, “I think their heads are shoved so far up Mortem’s ass, they’re snorting his shit and calling it divinity salt.
They don’t care about the truth. They’re too afraid. ”
They can pretend it’s respect. Reverence.
But the Kingdom of Mortia renamed itself after he created the Fathoms—when the wealthiest began to worry how eternity would look in a place like that.
With Mortem on its throne, what else could they do but kneel and slaver at his feet?
No, Mortia doesn’t worship Mortem out of deference.
They worship him out of fear.
“Cowards,” Stavros says, echoing my thoughts. “Mortem is a dickhead.”