Chapter Eleven Zephyra #2
Weaving after him through the wreckage, I laugh harder.
Of course he’s being serious. Of course he’s after a god’s heart.
Not just any god’s either, but Mortem’s.
The very first enemy of all merrow. The reason merrow are hunted and massacred the second we step foot on land.
It’s so fucking ridiculous, I can’t stand it.
And just like that, I’m no longer laughing.
“You want to know about your precious Abysses? You want the truth?” When he doesn’t answer, just keeps walking, I resist the urge to seize a chunk of rock and hurl it at the back of his head.
“Abysses was not created by any human god, and especially not by Mortem. It was created by our goddess. Vila. The mother of life and love and sea. And that traitorous mermaid you love to hate? A farce,” I hiss.
“Mortem was not tricked by any merrow. He fell in obsessive love with Vila, and when she didn’t return his love, he punished her for every lover she took.
He was arrogant, greedy, and evil. She had no choice but to—”
“You are mistaken.” Arion spins around again, the skin of his throat flushed with anger.
His jaw clenched. Even his wings flex and beat forward when I step too close.
I glare at the bristling feathers, daring them to try to hit me again.
“Mortem was God of Life before a common mermaid wretch deceived him. There has never been a goddess in our pantheon.”
He spits the word like a curse.
I force another laugh, only now the sound is devoid of humor.
“Four seas, four kingdoms, four gods—humans have split the world into a perfect square. Except the world isn’t perfect.
It’s never been perfect. There was one sea before humankind partitioned it with fucking walls, and there were five gods before one died.
Vila was the Goddess of Life. And then your precious Mortem killed her. ”
“That’s bullshit,” he snarls.
I lift my chin, refusing to back down. “No, it’s not.
Mortem tried to seize control of Abysses.
He tried to take everything Vila loved so he could control it—so he could ruin it.
He waged war. He slaughtered merrow. He turned Abysses into a bloodstained relic of the past, and Vila had no other choice.
When she called him to meet with her at the edge of her crumbling utopia, she deceived him, yes.
She carved out the source of his power—the source of his evil—because she thought it would save everyone.
Mortem loved her to the point that it hurt her, warlock, and it destroyed the entire world around them.
Can you… can you understand that?” My voice cracks with repressed pain, repressed memories.
The hideous darkness of an adamant castle edges my vision as I speak, and my hands tremble.
I swallow hard, forcing myself not to break.
“Merrow tell stories of how Vila buried his heart in a cursed chest so he wouldn’t ever access the full of his abilities again.
So he would be left with the Fathoms and only the Fathoms. But before he fell, he unleashed what terror he still could.
He murdered the Goddess of Life and dragged her down with him. ”
A curt shake of Arion’s head. “There is no evidence of that—”
“What good would it do for humankind to acknowledge the existence of a divine mermaid? What good would it do for you to know your god is pure fucking evil? Vila has never served the human narrative, and so you bury your heads in the sand and act like you’re all spawned from the seed of a saint.”
His mouth snaps shut, even as his muscles coil tighter with—not rage anymore, but frustration. His eyes rove my face almost desperately, and I know that expression as well as I know myself. He’s searching for a way out.
Until I save his sorry ass from sudden death, however, we don’t have one.
“Your idea of history is the fabrication of demons,” he finally says, voice low and rough. “You would cast yourself heroes in the story, as villains always do.”
“Villains?”
“You know what those merrow did at the palace.”
“I know it was probably in retaliation for something you did first.”
My skin flushes, and my chest heaves. I glare at him. He glares at me. There is no compromise here, no understanding to be reached. His people are murderers, and my people—we’ve risen above being the victims they created.
He shakes his head, shoving a hand through his hair with an exasperated growl as his wings flex again. “You are infuriating, and your problematic conspiracies aren’t helping.”
“My conspiracies are all you have, warlock.”
This idea seems to unsettle him more than the rest, and he leans against a cracked banister.
Dragging a hand down his face, he pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales.
“Yes,” he finally says, startling me. “They are. Whatever else is true, I can’t go back to Mortia, and you don’t stand a chance of moving through any kingdom with that fucking hair. ”
I plant a hand on my hip. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
He glances at me through his periphery. “It’s pink.”
“And beautiful.”
“It’s pink.” He repeats the word as if it alone is enough to wrench him into the Fathoms. “You’ll be spotted a mile away.
Our lives are tied. And…” He exhales again, this time even heavier.
His gaze lifts back to mine. “I need that heart, Zephyra. We need it. With it, I could access the magic of a god. I could break this damned bond and sever the debt between us. We would both be free.”
My eyes narrow. A convenient solution. For him. And when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. “How do you know that’ll work?”
“The elders who taught us. It was part of our lessons, learning about Mortem before we crafted ourselves in his image. Our wings. Our eyes. Our stature.” He gestures to each respective part of himself, and it’s no wonder I despise him so much.
He is an echo of a divine murderer. “We learned where magic comes from—warlock teachings are said to have been passed down by Mortem himself. We access it through a beating representation of our souls. Our hearts. Mortem’s heart isn’t just a story, Zephyra.
If your people have heard of it too—regardless of the differences in our tales—that means some part of it must be real. ”
I stare at him.
I could break this damned bond and sever the debt between us. We would both be free.
Of course we have to break the bond, but that word—free—silences me.
It rushes through my veins like salt and silt and blood.
Free doesn’t just mean escaping Arion. Free means escaping the sorcerer too.
And maybe… maybe with this heart and Arion’s warlock magic, there could be a chance.
A chance to leave him behind. Forever. A chance to move on.
I swallow hard, and a future flashes before my eyes that I’ve never been able to consider. Not hiding in the deep forest of some human kingdom, but me, my tail, my scales. Back in the ocean. The Syl. Swimming and sunning and seeing my family again.
I shake my head, even as hope clenches my heart between desperate fingers. “We’re chasing a dream.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I blink at that, startled over again. Mostly because no one has ever asked my opinion before. I’ve given it, sure, but never because anyone particularly wanted it. Rather than admit as much, I say, “I can’t swim, Arion.”
Now he startles, blinking too. “You’re a mermaid.”
“I mean, I can swim. It’s just not very smart for me to do so. Maybe you didn’t notice the vengeful clams and kelp”—I wave a hand toward the sea—“but I have my fair share of enemies. One in particular is… someone we need to avoid. Unless we want to be tortured within an inch of our lives.”
He rolls his eyes, unconcerned. “I am the world’s most powerful warlock—”
“Yes, and humble too. We’ve been over that.
” My gaze drifts to the black whorls on his chest, and with another start, I realize they aren’t whorls at all.
His veins have somehow blackened beneath his flesh.
Weird. I shake my head. “Trust me, warlock. This is one person even you don’t want to dance with. ”
He gazes at me in staunch refusal. “I need that heart.”
“And I’d love to sever our debt, but we shouldn’t linger in the ocean without any real direction…
” My voice trails off, and I bite my lip, another memory hovering at the edge of my subconscious, waiting for me to look at it.
Not a memory of him, this time. Not the sorcerer.
Someone else. Someone I’ve tried very hard to forget.
Arion’s eyes narrow. “What is it? What are you thinking?”
“No one,” I say quickly, too quickly, before stumbling back a step.
“I mean, nothing. I’m not thinking about anything.
” As if I’ve cracked open storm doors, the memory rips through me with all the wicked intensity of a cyclone.
I stumble another step. Trip and fall against the banister.
The scars on my body scream with renewed agony, and Arion must feel it, because he advances after me, eyes still searching my face.
“What is it?” he demands.
“If we can find proof, we could take it to the Merrow Council,” Jacin says, hope burning bright in his emerald gaze. “We could stop sneaking around. We could be together.”
“How are we going to dig up proof of an ancient romantic union? That’s impossible.
” I stroke a hand over his cheek, pressing kisses to his neck, his abdomen, his hand.
He reaches up and runs a thumb over my lips.
He is more certain than I’ve ever seen him, and, goddess—it makes him beautiful.
I nip his finger, and he smirks, then rolls us over so he’s suddenly on top of me.
His legs pin me to his bed. He smells like leather and wine, and he feels like heaven.
“Have you ever heard of the Illuminated Library, Zephyra?”
I force myself from the repressed memory, hands clenched tight around the banister. The stone cracks in my palm. Breaks. I almost lose my balance again, but Arion catches me with a strong hand around my waist. I throw myself out of his reach before his touch can brand me.
I’ve had enough of beautiful men.
“The Illuminated Library.” I stare at the sun’s reflection dancing on the ocean’s surface, trying to burn the mistakes from my mind. “They have records there. Ancient records.”
“In Lucia, yes.” Arion tilts his head, not quite understanding.
“Lucius, God of Earth, employed record keepers before Mortem’s Fall.
When war between land and sea waged, the record keepers locked themselves inside the library and perished with the key rather than allow enemies to abscond with our history.
” He pauses his textbook explanation. “It’s basically a tomb now.
Impenetrable and guarded by Lucia’s dryads. ”
A tomb. I smile around the bitter emotions roiling through me, the cruel memories. Each feels like a slap to the face. “Abysses thrived before the Fall. If there are any true records of its location, they will be there.”
He ponders this for a moment, still seeming more suspicious than not. “How can we be sure?”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“No,” he says reluctantly, scowling at his own turn of phrase. “However, you’re forgetting the part where the record keepers died, and no one has penetrated their library since—not with dryads at the door. We can’t just stroll up and ask them to let a mermaid and a warlock inside.”
“We’re not going to ask,” I scoff, despite the familiar clamp of panic on my lungs, despite Jacin’s voice wrapping around my chest and squeezing.
Because the warlock is wrong again; the library isn’t impenetrable.
Though I force myself to breathe through the memories, to breathe and breathe and breathe, it doesn’t matter.
Some doors, once opened, cannot be closed again.
“Oh?” Arion asks coldly. “What do you suggest?”
He already knows the answer. I’m a liar and a thief, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to rid myself of this warlock, this bond, this cage. “We’re going to break in, of course.”
“Impossible.”
“It’s not,” I admit softly. “I’ve done it before.”