Chapter Five Arion
CHAPTER FIVE
ARION
The most powerful warlock in five centuries should not be performing guard duty, but with a probable siren in our midst, the king refuses to take any chances. So I am here. Even though I have bigger problems about which to worry.
Lapis lazuli walls glow darkest blue in the prison beneath Tower Arcana, more than merely decorative as the elders enchanted the gemstone bricks to repel scent and sound.
It’s like being underwater without the pain of salt and worry of merrow.
No one outside the door can hear me. No one outside the door can hear anything that happens in here.
I glance at the archaic torture devices arranged in a neat row on the stone table before me.
Pliers. Serrated knives. A rusted metal tube for bloodletting.
Traditional. Unnecessary when you have magic, but the oldest forms of torment are often the most painful.
I am not here for them, however. Although, I’d much prefer it to the alternative.
Shifting on my stool, I pick up another tome from a musty stack and open it with a careless flick of my fingers. The pages whip themselves into a frenzy, dust clouding the air as they search for the words I want, the words I’ve spent days seeking: Heart. Mortem.
Death.
My wings beat away the clouds of grime, feathers bristling with repulsion.
I feel their movement like a dagger twisting between my shoulder blades.
The right curls inward at the bend, furious, and shakes itself at me like a fist. I swat at it, but it doesn’t stop until I suck in an aggrieved breath and clear the air with a bolt of magic.
Wings are a pain in the ass.
Their surgical installation occurs before a warlock’s Rise.
Ripped from a Pegasus and implanted in our bones, the wings are meant to challenge our fortitude, our ability to withstand torture under the most horrific circumstances, as well as grant us the ability to fly.
But that pain never goes away. The wings never actually merge.
We are forced to live, opposed and out of sync, for our entire shared existence.
It’s a test. One that most initiates fail.
Most initiates, but not me.
The elders said I would break the world and re-form it anew if I so chose. They said one day the king might bow before me. They said I just need to survive. Fucking laughable. No one has ever bowed to me. No one will ever have the chance.
More powerful than any other warlock in five centuries, and I’m stuck with these gods-damned books. I scan the tome impossibly fast and land on a single page of interest near the end.
Before the creation of the Fathoms, Mortem is said to have established Abysses, a utopian society for humankind.
Though assumed to have been erected somewhere outside the four continents, there is no evidence of its true location or its history.
In the year AF (after Fathoms) 335, pieces of strange ruins shrouded in algae washed up on the black beaches of the Kingdom of Fax’s eastern shore.
They featured a crude design of man and merrow entangled in a blasphemed union.
Sensible historians believe these pieces to be a hoax and an attempt by Fax to sow discord among the Kingdom of Mortia.
Whereas uncredited historians believe this is evidence that Abysses was not only real but also connects the Fall of Mortem to the rumored utopia.
In AF 337, a new historian, Dima Vasiliev, theorized, “Based on the recovered artifacts, I have concluded that certain men and merrow lived together in harmony. While Mortem’s Fall was not a true death, we know, thanks to some of Mortia’s earliest artworks, that a mermaid was responsible for the theft of his heart and thus, the beginning of the Fathoms. Abysses seems to be entangled with both our kind and mer-kind. ”
Could this very Fall have occurred in a fantastical kingdom of legend and mythos?
Could merrow and humans have once coexisted in peace and harmony?
It’s an interesting hypothesis, but unfortunately, Dima Vasiliev died mere weeks after sharing it.
Conspirators believe this to be the work of Cultus Mortis, a well-hidden group of Mortem’s most insidious followers, although historians agree the untimely death is more so linked to Vasiliev’s addiction to divinity salts.
None of Dima Vasiliev’s claims have ever been founded. No further evidence of Abysses or the Heart of Death have since been discovered.
Magic gnarls my gut, coiling like snakes round and round my organs until I release the pressure burning deep down. It slams the book shut on a dangerous gust, and I throw the tome onto the pile of others I’ve read since last night. A pile so tall, it nearly reaches the desk. Useless.
I’ve not found a single answer, and I’m running out of time.
“You can’t keep ignoring me,” the merrow complains from her cell. “I want out.”
My wings bristle at the sound of her soft melodic voice behind me, both pulling and tugging as if they can’t decide whether they want to confront her or flee her presence entirely.
I don’t blame them. Though she’s attempted silence since she first awoke—an ambitious goal for such a foulmouthed merrow—her pulse hasn’t stopped racing.
I can smell her desperation from here, feral and all-consuming.
It’s disgusting.
“You will be released when it is time for you to die.” I pluck up another book from my unread pile and scour the pages for salvation.
Heart. Mortem. Death.
Heart. Mortem. Death.
Four hundred pages fly by, and there’s nothing. Nothing at all. A growl builds in my chest as I shove the tome to the floor and hurry to pick up the next one.
“Come on. What do you say you let me go?” The mermaid’s voice takes on a sweeter note.
I wait for a dooming melody to follow, a song to coax me into her submission.
But it doesn’t. There is a warbling hitch to her voice.
Her breaths are shallow and inconsistent.
She doesn’t sound like a siren right now.
She only sounds afraid. “You won’t ever have to see me again,” she offers even more pathetically.
I imagine her blinking those wide turquoise eyes, plumping up her lower lip. Begging like the filthy coward she is.
Instead of answering her, I keep my eyes trained upon the pages. I read, and I read, and I read. To no avail. All the while, she has started ripping off bits of her cot to throw at me. My wings bat away most of the harmless missiles, but the odd one or two lands against my neck. They feel wet.
“That’s my spit,” she announces when I reach up to brush them off.
I shut my eyes on a smooth exhale, trying my best to remember the meditation practices taught to us by the elders.
However, my blood has begun to boil with repressed magic.
With an ache to spend it and damn myself further.
Her spit is on my neck, and if anyone else dared such a thing, they’d be viscera on that filthy cell floor.
When my hands tighten on the book in front of me, she adds with a snarl, “You missed a piece behind your ear.”
Heart. Mortem. Death.
I hear rather than see her hands clench before she pelts another chunk of mattress at the back of my head. “Have it your way. I can do this all night.”
Heart. Mortem. Death.
But I can’t push her voice from my mind. I can’t ignore the need in my chest.
During the Trials, a warlock does not simply undergo torment for mere discipline’s sake.
We become magic. Magic becomes us. It winds itself into the fabric of our bodies, our bones, our blood.
It becomes irrevocable, compulsive, and necessary to our survival; I need to expend it as much as I need to release my next breath.
If I don’t, the magic will consume everything.
Such is the pact of a warlock.
When she hisses from her cell—and the next piece of wet mattress grazes my cheek—I snap the most recent tome in half and throw it behind me.
Torn pages soar through the air like plucked feathers.
“The king permitted me to torture you as I see fit. If you cannot be silent, I will have no problem silencing you myself.”
There is a sharp pause, and then she snarls again. “If the king told you to lick plum jam from between his toes, would you immediately fall to your knees?”
A muscle feathers in my jaw. Breathe. Focus on the wellspring of magic inside. Draw energy from it. Draw strength from your center. “I prefer strawberry.”
She snarls again, and the bars of her cell shake as though she’s throttling them. Trying to throttle them. But she is too weak to escape. Too pathetic. “I refuse to spend my last moments on this earth talking to a fucking warlock.”
“No one is making you speak, demon.”
She sucks in a harsh breath. Her desperation only seems to grow by the second. “Isn’t Mortia supposed to be a just and righteous kingdom? I… I demand a trial. I demand a fucking trial with your fucking king, you fucking asshole. I’m—I’m not even a mermaid!”
The dam inside my chest breaks on her lie.
Frustration and magic explode out of it, hot enough, it feels as if I’m simmering in my own flesh.
Between one breath and the next, I appear inches from the merrow’s cell.
Inches from her face. She startles with a frightened yelp, tripping backward and landing on her newly torn cot.
I stand there, muscles taut beneath my black tunic, wings splayed wide, and glare down at her.
Pink hair falls in haphazard waves to her waist, and her ocean-blue eyes spark with a vicious mixture of fear and rage.
Her pert nose twitches. Her full lips twist into a frown.
Every single emotion she experiences plays out like a song across her face.
Anger, desperation, terror. She can’t hide them; I’m not even sure she’s trying.
I tilt my head, examining her as one might examine a foreign substance on their shoe.
Perhaps that isn’t a fair comparison.