Chapter Eight Zephyra
CHAPTER EIGHT
ZEPHYRA
Men are stupid—especially men with wings.
After several horrifying seconds flying in his powerful arms, the warlock—Arion Stone—finally sets me on my feet, and it takes every ounce of restraint in my still-trembling bones not to draw back and slap him the way his king slapped me.
If I free you, will you lead me to it?
First of all, he is the prick who locked my unconscious ass in prison to begin with.
It’s his fault we’re even here, creeping toward the edge of the docks, checking over our shoulders for the guards who are minutes away from hunting us down.
Screw a trial or another trip to the gallows. They’ll murder us on sight.
Second of all, Abysses isn’t real.
Well, it was five hundred years ago, before Mortem reduced it to cinder and ash. There’s no fucking way we can find the ruins now. No one—man or merrow—has ever found them. And even if I could do it, I wouldn’t help Arion Stone if he fell to his knees, kissed my feet, and called me goddess.
They almost killed me. I almost just died. After everything I’ve survived—a greedy king and his foul puppet almost just stole my fucking life.
“Hurry up,” Arion says in that cold, controlled voice, and the bastard actually grips my elbow as if to tow me along faster. I’m done with sick and sadistic men handling me. Controlling me.
Emotions well in my chest. Anger, humiliation, terror, and grief, so much fucking grief.
They explode out of me with a primal shriek.
I rear back and throw a hard punch into Arion’s chest regardless of the consequences.
He glances down at me, his brow furrowed, dropping my elbow as his wings continue to undulate.
His silver-gold gaze flashes lethal cruelty, but I don’t care.
I don’t fucking care.
Treacherous tears well in my eyes, but I can’t let them fall. I can’t transform. Not in front of Arion Stone. Not in front of fucking Mortia and all the sick, sadistic men it harbors.
Stavros is… he’s dead. They killed him. I blink rapidly, forcing myself to keep it together for just a little longer, but breathing is difficult.
Each breath jagged, sharp. Because Stavros—he betrayed me, and—and they still killed him.
I shake my head incredulously, stumbling after Arion as he stalks forward once more.
They killed him they killed him they killed him.
The memory of the blade splitting his enormous chest rears its ugly head, and I nearly double over as if they pierced mine instead.
I never meant for Stavros to die. I never wanted Stavros to die, yet they killed him for even knowing me. They almost—
They almost killed me.
I suck in another breath, glancing at the shorewall to ground myself. It rises in the near distance, obsidian stone as black as night, and casts a shadow like a coffin over us. I shrink away from it, shuffling back into the sunlight as Arion glowers at me over his shoulder.
“If you’ve finished hyperventilating,” he says brusquely, “you can lead us to your den, or nest, or whatever shithole you call home. We need a place to regroup. The guards will be after us now, as well as the other warlocks—”
“I know.” Goddess, I’d love to smack him again. I’d love to take his head and smash it against the cobbled ground.
One look at him, however, and it’s clear I have no chance at overpowering him physically.
Not magically either. Not with those wings.
His power is too potent, and I’m too weak.
I’ve been weak for so long. My teeth grind at the admission, at the realization that this time, I’ve landed myself in deep shit. Probably even deeper than the gallows.
I glance back at the shorewall, at the port beside it, bustling with carriages and ships and Pegasi attached to gilded reins, then down at my hands. Still bound, like the rest of me. I’m a minnow in shark-infested waters.
“Cut me loose, birdman.”
Arion tilts his head, and his wings spread menacingly wide as if to strike me down.
“Birdman?” His voice darkens. It betrays his rapidly thinning patience.
“I saved your life, mermaid. You owe me.” And then, as if sensing something in my own voice, my expression, he takes a step closer.
His eyes burn like molten lava. “Tell me the way to Abysses.”
“Cut me loose first.”
“No.”
My eyes narrow on his. I prowl closer, feeling more graceful—more terrifying—now that I’m no longer dangling from the end of the king’s lure.
I hold out my wrists, frayed rope wrapped so tightly around them that my skin is mottled red.
Old silver scars have begun to pucker with pain.
The sight of them reminds me what I have to lose.
Fucking nothing. “Cut me loose,” I repeat with a hiss, “and then I’ll tell you. ”
His jaw clenches tighter. “I am not a fool—”
But he is. He really, really is.
I scoff, interrupting him with a cool shake of my head. “You saved me, didn’t you?”
At his withering stare, I change tack with the brutal speed of a riptide. Even sighing mournfully, batting my lashes, I blink up at him and raise my wrists. “I can’t very well lead you to mythical ruins beneath the ocean if I’m tied up like a lobster claw.”
He studies me, his gaze moving from my eyes to the rope to my neck, before searching behind us again. The breeze picks up, pushing so much hair in front of my eyes, I almost can’t see his apprehension through the pink. Warlock wings, I’d guess. The others must be on their way.
“If I free you,” Arion says in a low, terse voice, his control finally slipping, “we are flying straight to Abysses. I won’t hesitate to burn you if you so much as think about betraying me.”
“Me? Betray you?” I laugh as if it’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. “The entire kingdom wants to scoop us up and lash us both to a pyre. Untie me so we can leave.”
Still scowling, he seizes my wrists and tugs me forward, our bodies flush and his skin suddenly hot against mine.
Too hot. Too strange. Too wrong. The touch steals my breath, and his hands practically sear straight through my dirtied tunic.
Also strange. Also wrong. Trying not to recoil, I glare up at him.
He’s massive—a mountain of man and muscle and power and strength—but there’s a sudden light in his gaze that feels…
different from the rest of him. It feels unsure. Nervous.
By saving me, he’s just damned himself.
“I rescued you,” he repeats, his voice harder, firmer, now.
“I am Warlock Arion Stone, and you will help me, or you will die.” He leans down to stare directly into my eyes, far too close for comfort.
And though it turns my stomach, though I think about flicking him on the nose, I can’t help moving closer still.
When I lick my lips, he tracks the movement, and his pupils dilate.
He looks like he wants to devour me. The thought springs unbidden, and yet—he does.
My stomach pitches at the realization. He looks as if he wants to swallow me whole and spit out my bones.
His eyes flash again. “Do you understand, Zephyra of the Syl?”
And maybe it’s how he says it—almost a snarl—or maybe it’s that deadly gleam in his eyes, but my name on his tongue sends a shiver down my spine.
I nod and hold my wrists higher, my elbows accidentally grazing his wings with the movement.
He stiffens at that, as if I’ve shocked him, and growls.
Conjuring a glass blade, he quickly cuts through my binds and shoves me backward.
Away from him.
Good.
An all-too-familiar pain in my wrists recedes as the ropes drop to the cobbled street.
Sure enough, Arion’s gaze snags on brown wings in the near distance, and his own breeze grows more insistent.
Stirring our hair and clothes and urging us to move.
Because if the warlocks haven’t already spotted Arion’s wings or my hair, they will within seconds, and—
Their shouts rend the street. If possible, my stomach plunges further.
They’ve found us. Already, they begin to cast arrows from the sky, but Arion’s breeze sweeps into a gale, throwing the missiles off course.
They’re still advancing, however. They won’t stop coming until we’re filleted on their swords, and—and I have mere seconds. Seconds to get away. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Arion tenses. “We need to fly—”
Before he can finish speaking, I bend over and grab a loose handful of dirt. When he glances back at me, I fling it into his eyes. He snarls at the impact, at the sudden deception, but I’m gone before he can retaliate.
As I said—men with wings are fucking stupid.
I race up the street, throwing myself forward on feeble legs, using any and all of my surroundings to propel myself faster—trash bins and fruit stands and people.
Arion roars my name down the street. Faster.
Who does he think he is anyway? He knocked me out.
He locked me up. And now I’m supposed to, what—serve him?
Just because he saved me from the noose he forced around my neck?
Yeah, right. I pump my legs faster, my arms too, dodging strewn bodies on the street, commoners soiled and fermenting with the stench of cheap liquor.
He’s lucky I didn’t find a shard of glass and stab him in the throat.
No, Arion Stone can’t have me. He’ll never have me.
I already belong to someone else. Someone more magical, more powerful, than that winged beast could ever hope to be, and one master is more than enough. Even now, the thought of him locks my knees, and I almost tumble to the cobblestones. Almost.
I escaped the sorcerer.
I can escape this warlock too.