Chapter Seven Arion #2
The king looms over her, and with the surrounding silence, the people’s attention rapt, his every movement seems to echo. A tremor. A threat. His fingers curl around a tendril of her hair. He pulls roughly, tearing it cleanly from her head, but she represses a cry. Her lip, however, still trembles.
He rubs the strand between his fingers before casting it to the wind. “Seems real enough to me, don’t you think?” The onlookers cackle. One catches the lock of pink like a bouquet, showing it off to his friends.
Though Zephyra’s eyes water, she doesn’t let the tears spill over as she struggles to her feet. “You’re barbaric.”
King Constane grabs her hair again, pulling her closer by the nape.
“I am the king. Nasty, loathsome creature. For what you and your kin have done to this kingdom, to these people, you deserve pain. You deserve death!” The louder he curses her, the louder the crowd grows, chanting their agreement.
Throwing shoes and coppers at her. The warlocks flick the detritus away before it can pelt the king, but it isn’t enough to protect her from the assault.
She still doesn’t cry. Not for anything.
“If you would like a trial, however,” the king murmurs suddenly, “let us have one.”
He releases her, and she nearly sinks to the floor all over again, though the noose catches her before she can crumble.
Her chest heaves with agony. Something like pain—like true, visceral sadness—flashes across her face.
My own chest tightens at the sight. Not because the demon is sad, but because my only path forward is about to die.
A fable, I remind myself fiercely, and a merrow.
King Constane plucks a roll of parchment from the inside pocket of his black brocade suit and unravels it at the edge of the platform.
“This pink-haired beast is heretofore accused of the following crimes: desecrating Mortem’s sacred temple, assaulting four Crestfall guards, breaking and entering into several fine city establishments, throwing a brick through a jeweler’s window, invading the city sewers, setting a bush on fire, dancing on the remains of said bush—”
“That one was an accident,” she argues sharply, “and I didn’t dance on the remains. I was trying to put it out!”
The crowd boos her, which elicits another grin from the king. He continues with more enthusiasm. “Parading around with a guard’s wooden eye, stealing a wig from Lord Duchovny, and”—he pauses for dramatic effect, reveling in the crowd’s excitement—“tax evasion.”
She blinks rapidly. “Tax evasion? Are you fucking joking?”
The king ignores her, choosing instead to address his rabid audience.
“Worst of all, she stands here, pretending to be human, pretending to be one of us, all while living and breathing as a wretched merrow.” Pivoting on his heel, he tosses the parchment aside and stalks back toward her.
“That alone is enough to condemn you.” The king claps twice, and Warlock Pembroke moves to retrieve someone from the front of the crowd. “Bring up our special guest.”
Even I am not sure what to expect at this point, but it isn’t the three hundred pounds of man that clomps up the risers beside me.
Slicked-back hair, a thick beard growing from his massive chin, and muscles rippling on every inch of his meaty body, he appears more like a walking earthquake than a man.
Zephyra stumbles upon spotting him. Something like a sob wrings from her throat.
“Say hello to your friend,” the king coos.
The audience devours the drama, pressed so close to the platform now that some reach up to try to climb it.
Warlock Mathis beats them away with the hilt of a sword while Warlock Pembroke burns their fingers on contact.
If possible, the king smiles even wider.
Incandescent now. “He told us everything we need to know about you, Zephyra of the Syl.”
She flinches at the sound of her name—Zephyra of the Syl, meaning from the middlemost sea—and at the furious look on the strange man’s face. “Stavros?” she breathes.
The man stiffens. He crosses his arms, and both warlocks glance apprehensively at the sight of his aggressively large biceps.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Stavros says to Zephyra, his accent muddled and thick.
Northern, if not by birth, then through ancestry. “You abandoned us. We trusted you.”
The mermaid doesn’t respond. How could she? Her death is assured. She has only seconds to live. My breath lodges in my throat, and this time—I can’t breathe through it. I can’t force myself to relish this moment, or even to look away. The mermaid is going to die. Now.
Abysses was beneath the sea.
She’s lying. She has to be lying. No matter what she claims, there is no way she knows about Abysses, and there is no way that poem was factual, and there is no way…
My chest gives a particularly painful throb.
There is no way to stop myself from dying.
Warlocks sacrifice everything for magic.
We embrace pain in exchange for power. We rid ourselves of the rest, of all other emotion—anger and joy and sadness and love—for strength.
But right now, I can’t help the flicker of knife-sharp desperation slicing through my stomach.
I can’t help the rabid fear crawling from the wound.
I am a warlock. I am strong and powerful. But I am mortal.
I’m going to die. Soon.
Deep in a chamber / A heart doth lay.
“You deserve everything coming to you,” Stavros says.
Zephyra holds his gaze, her teeth biting hard into her lower lip.
A sudden breeze blows her pink hair away from her face—and it’s only then that I realize my wings are moving, pulling, tugging.
The breeze is my fault. Her eyes narrow as she realizes it too, and she looks over her shoulder to find me.
I stare back at her, trying to keep my expression calm and unreadable.
“Yes, Zephyra, you do.” The king’s smooth, patronizing voice draws our attention as he reaches up to lay a palm on Stavros’s shoulder.
“And so do you, unfortunately.” At the enormous man’s confused expression, Constane shakes his head and tuts sympathetically.
“A crime is a crime, I’m afraid, and for the one you’ve committed, there is no recourse.
For aiding and abetting a merrow, Stavros Patridis, I must sentence you to death. ”
It happens quickly after that.
Zephyra screams a warning as the king steps away, and a sword slams abruptly through the man’s chest. No one else heard the guard step up behind him.
No one else saw the weapon unsheathed—not until Stavros glances down at the silver blade and crimson droplets marring his dirty white tunic, and his mouth falls open on a groan.
Then he collapses onto his knees, rolling sideways.
Lifeless.
The crowd cheers so loud, the ground shakes.
Fighting anew, raging like a bull, Zephyra bucks and kicks and screeches. The king only continues to smile. It twists my gut. Not because he’s wrong—because I am.
Commander Stone. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, and everything I’ll never have.
Because I am dying. Dying. Dying. The word builds to a roar in my head, louder than even the merrow.
But what if I can stop it? What if there’s another choice?
An unbreakable tether ties me to this city, to my divine responsibilities, but as I stare at the mermaid, I stop seeing her, and I start seeing me.
And that unbreakable tether—it snaps. All at once, painfully and terribly, it’s just… gone.
Maybe it makes me a fucking idiot, but I want to live.
“Hang her,” the king demands.
With cold precision, the warlocks begin to cut through the marble beneath her, to create an opening with which to snap the mermaid’s neck.
My jaw hardens. My desperation brews potent magic in my veins, and without much effort—as if my subconscious has been waiting to do so all along—I manage to penetrate her mind. “Zephyra of the Syl,” I speak into it.
She shudders at the intrusion. Her head twitches.
“Zephyra,” I repeat. “We don’t have time. You know of Abysses?”
She turns then, seconds from the floor being carved open. Her gaze fixes on mine, full of raw terror and anger and sharp despair. She nods once.
“Do you swear you know where it is?”
Another frantic nod.
I inhale slowly. Look at the surrounding merrow corpses once more. Feel the pain and exhaustion and death rotting in my blood. There is no other way. She is my best option. She is my only option. So I ask, “If I free you, will you lead me to it?”
One last, final nod. Right as the floor gives way and she drops like a sack of bricks.
There is no more time for speculation, for guesses and hypotheses and hope.
I need to act. Now. Lashing out with my magic, I cut through her rope, and she hits the ground beneath the platform with a thud and a harsh breath of relief.
Thank the gods.
The king’s brows snap together as he peers through the hole in the marble.
“What is the meaning of this?” He picks up the rope, examining the frayed end, then glances between the warlocks who stand before him.
He isn’t smiling any longer. His expression is the ugliest I’ve ever seen it.
“Explain yourselves!” His face reddens, and his blond locks spill in disarray around his face as he shouts, “I said, kill that mermaid! Kill her!”
I move. Even if it damns me, even if the last action I take on this earth brands me a traitor for eternity, I have to try.
A wave of thunder—of sheer sonic force—explodes from my hands and blasts through the crowd, the guards, the warlocks, and the king.
It knocks each and every one of them on their asses with an ear-shattering boom.
The mermaid pokes her head up through the hole as my wings begin to undulate, already straining toward her.
Her nails curl around the marble, and a feeble hiss slithers from her throat.
“Get me the fuck out of here, warlock.”
Quick as lightning, I scoop her up in my arms and fly her away from the crowd. Toward the docks. Toward Abysses.