Chapter Six Arion
CHAPTER SIX
ARION
Why won’t it work?” The boy’s brow pinches in palpable frustration over a bowl of flopping, panicked salmon. “I’m doing everything right.”
“You are not.” Elder Branche waves a withered hand over the fish. “You must focus on the lightning in your veins, that spark of strength, and you must unleash it.”
The boy closes his eyes. The pressure inside him builds, and builds, and—
The boy hisses. Pain bruises his bones. It sinks vicious hooks into his mind. He freezes on instinct, and the magic recedes with the agony. “It—it hurts.”
He knows he is being weak. The other initiates call him such every day. They say he won’t survive past the first Trial.
Elder Branche is kinder, however. He does not call the boy names.
He places a hand on the boy’s shoulder and curls hard fingers into his collarbone.
This hurts too. But it hurts in a way with which the boy is familiar.
“Pain is strength. It is proof of endurance. It is proof of what you will overcome with magic. You cannot be anxious or afraid, just as you cannot experience anger or joy. Emotions have no place in a warlock’s life.
The magic is in control—you, your base human self, are not.
Magic is as Mortem wills it, and only as Mortem wills it. ”
The boy still hesitates. He was raised to be good. He wants to be good. “What about the fish?”
“They cannot interfere with destiny. And for this continent, child, for Mortem’s kingdom, that is what you will become—destiny.
You will help cleanse these streets. Purify this world.
Magic will bind with your blood and soul, and a power will touch your lips that only gods have tasted.
But first, you must find the strength inside yourself.
Feel the pain; never hide from it. Breathe”—Elder Branche’s grip hardens further—“and unleash greatness.”
The boy listens. He may not be the bravest or the strongest, but he is the most obedient. He does not want to fail.
The magic sizzles in his veins. He feels the pain like claws tearing through his flesh.
And—he breathes through it. He lets it shatter the glass of his bones, lets it escape outward.
Mortem’s will. The magic slices through the salmon.
Flaying half a dozen before the boy can even open his eyes.
Blood fills the rest of the bowl. Scales and guts.
“Very good, Arion.” Elder Branche pats the boy’s head with a cold, emotionless touch. “Very, very good.”
The boy grins. He can’t help it. He only ever wanted to be good.
The prison has become a mausoleum of books.
Torn parchment and broken spines litter the floor.
Ink stains the stone desk. The more the mermaid chatters away—the more my search proves futile—the more magic churns inside me.
Pain sparks like flint against rock in my chest. I swallow it.
I refuse to acknowledge it. But exhaustion smokes between my ribs all the same, curling around my spine. It won’t be long until it claims me.
WARLOCK CASEAN TITUES
Risen: AF 106
Fallen: AF 199
WARLOCK ADRIEN SEVERI
Risen: AF 243
Fallen: AF 367
WARLOCK MARKUS CICERO
Risen: AF 389
Fallen: AF 498
Not one other warlock has fallen—died—fewer than ten years after their Rise.
In all history, the youngest ever to fall was forty-three post-Rise.
There is no antidote, no cure, no proof of anyone healing the degeneration of their bodies.
Which leaves me to hunt down gods-damned fables.
Bedtime stories and legends and drivel; nothing that could ever possibly be real.
But I can’t just let myself die. Not this soon. Not after everything I’ve sacrificed.
“What will your superiors think about the mess you’ve made?
” The mermaid hangs upside down over the end of her cot.
Her pink hair brushes the filthy floor, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
Or perhaps she doesn’t care. Her gaze stays fixed on the exits, shifting between them every three seconds like clockwork.
“I thought you warlocks were supposed to at least pretend to be higher beings.”
“We are higher beings.”
“You’ve ruined at least thirty books in the last hour.
To a librarian, you’re a monster.” She runs her tongue along her teeth in another clear threat, fully ignoring her reddening cheeks and the blood rushing straight to her head.
Maybe she’ll fall. Bludgeon herself and save me from the torment of her loathsome company.
“What are you looking for anyway? Pretty pictures of pretty ponies?”
“You’re awfully chatty for a dead girl.” I slam my way through Official Warlock Records and Histories, Volume XVII.
“I’ve been a dead girl for a long time,” she murmurs, her voice cold as ice. “I’m comfortable with the position.”
I can imagine. She’s been nothing short of a nightmare since I first found her on the street, threatening the leader of the nastiest gang in Crestfall.
If I hadn’t knocked her unconscious and locked her up, Magnus would have done so himself eventually.
He would have hit her when she least expected it, and his crew wouldn’t have been gentle.
I whirl to tell her as much, if only as a distraction from my own problems, when the door to the prison opens with an ominous creak.
Fucking finally.
With a quick exhalation, I straighten the books around the room, sweeping the floor clean as the loose parchments vanish.
The merrow watches me now—not the door—disdain gleaming in her ocean-blue gaze.
I stand up, anticipating the king or his guards or perhaps an elder to herald the demon’s execution.
Instead, however, a lanky historian marches into the room.
Gavriall Praesepultus, the newest historian of Tower Historia and a debatably reformed criminal, balances a porcelain plate of fresh fruit atop a stack of particularly ancient texts.
Leather covers flake off on his exposed arms and hands, his uniform-black robes sheared short at the sleeves to expose the wiry muscles and smooth tawny skin beneath.
He tries to blow the flakes away with weak, shallow breaths to no avail.
“You aren’t meant to be down here,” I say in lieu of a proper greeting.
Gavriall rolls his eyes, shaking straight locks of jet-black hair away from his face. “You sent a gull to Tower Historia requesting more books. I am here with said books. Seems aboveboard to me, Arion.”
“Everything seems aboveboard to a gambler.”
He rolls his eyes again. Then a third time for good measure.
“I’m a historian now.” When I glare at him, he drops the books onto the desk, scooping the plate up and away before I can so much as snatch a grape.
“Perhaps I might use my new position to remind you what to say in situations like this: ‘thank you’—a polite expression used when acknowledging a gift, service, or compliment. ‘Much appreciation’—an expression used to signify one’s recognition of the worth of a person or situation. ‘I cherish you’—”
“You can proclaim your position as much as you’d like; I will always remember you broken and bleeding in that alley, rubbing your last two silvers together as if they might save your miserable life.”
A frown carves deep into Gavriall’s bony face. For a moment, it looks as if he might argue, but instead he turns sharply on his heel and stalks over to the mermaid’s cell. “Breakfast delivery.”
A growl reverberates through my chest, followed by the bittersweet heat of magic, as I stalk after him. “We don’t feed the monsters.”
“I’m not a monster. I am Zephyra.” The mermaid grins a sinister smile and snatches the plate before I can stop Gavriall from sliding it through the small gap beneath her door.
She hurls it at the wall, shattering the porcelain and dousing the cell in strawberry and orange and pineapple juices.
She ignores the fruit completely. Just as I knew she would.
Snatching up a jagged edge, she hoists the porcelain weapon in our direction.
“Now set me the fuck free, or I’ll kill you. Both of you.”
I meet her gaze and snap my fingers. Instantly, every single piece of porcelain disappears.
Including the makeshift knife between her fingers.
“Ignore the demon,” I tell Gavriall, even as she shrieks and hurls herself at the bars again.
Again. She claws at the steel to no avail.
I turn away from her, and after a few seconds, Gavriall does the same.
“She isn’t any danger to us,” I explain shortly. “So long as she doesn’t use her song.”
Gavriall arches a manicured brow. “Has she… tried?”
“No.”
“Then I’d wager she can’t sing at all.” He glances back at her. “Not much of a threat, then, is she?”
I don’t respond. Because he’s right: If the mermaid hasn’t tried luring me into a bloody oblivion with her voice already, she probably can’t. But I refuse to admit as much. Gavriall is everything wrong with Crestfall. With Mortia. He—and all those like him—are why warlocks exist.
Gavriall maneuvers around me to slide onto my stool and thumb through my books as though he no longer cares about the unthreatening mermaid losing her sanity behind us.
Throwing shiny leather boots onto my desk, he weaves his hands behind his head and leans back as far as possible without tipping himself over.
Then he grins at me. The smarmy, half-cocked smile of a criminal. “Any luck with your research?”
“No.”
“I’d say not if you’re still putting in requests.
” Gavriall glances pointedly at the spines.
“Official Warlock Records and Histories, Volume XVII—boring. Phantoms of Universe Past—mildly interesting, aside from the author succumbing to the third-century plague, pages before finishing the novel.” He pauses, and the smile carves deeper across his face.
His brown gaze gleams. “What’s this? Second-Century Children’s Fables: The Butterfly, the Snake, and the Bird. ”