Chapter Fifteen Zephyra
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ZEPHYRA
After Arion catches up to me, just past the marketplace, we don’t speak.
We don’t discuss being swindled by shopkeepers, just as we don’t discuss the sudden tightness of the silver cord.
He fixes his gaze on the surrounding orchard, weaving in and out of fat trees, his wings dislodging ripe apples and broken twigs with every other step.
I maintain a steady pace behind him, focused solely on the grass beneath my slippers.
I count the blades. I track the different shades of green. Anything—anything—to stop thinking.
All we have to do is enter the library. I won’t take anything this time.
We can read what we need inside, and then Arion can fly us out.
It will be easy. We will survive. My stomach turns at the thought, because it’s never that simple.
Nothing in life has ever been easy for me.
And survival—it’s not always guaranteed.
The unbidden memories continue to strike hard and fast. I can’t outrun them. Not here.
And just like that—another dryad uproots.
Smaller than the others, with ashen bark and skeletal branches, it charges with a rumbling groan. Root-legs wallop the earth. It swings its branches manically, round and round and round, a cyclone barreling toward me. Shit shit shit.
Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.
Arion flies in front of my path before it can attack. Flames dance on his fingers in threat.
“No.” My mouth splits into a horrid marionette smile, as if the corners have been stitched, and I grab Arion’s sleeve, yanking him away from the creature. “No violence. Happy thoughts, warlock.” I say it more for myself than for him. “Muffins, kittens, curtains, potatoes—”
Arion exhales a soft, startled laugh at the latter, and the dryad stills. Its spindly branches freeze mid-wallop. Even its mouth—a small hollow in the center, flashing sharp bramble teeth—quivers.
It’s… it’s working.
“Salt,” Arion adds.
“Peppermint,” I say, and the dryad’s mouth closes. Thank the fucking goddess.
Arion’s rough voice rises as he flings words as he would daggers. “Porridge.”
“Pie.”
“Parsnip.”
“Penis.”
He stops at that, whirling to glance at me with a judgmental brow. I blink innocently in response. Just as in the dress shoppe, I swear his lips twitch with an honest grin.
“Debauched,” he says now, an arrow loosed at me instead of the dryad.
I cross my arms, which only stands to enhance my magnificent cleavage. “Envious.”
“Absurd,” Arion counters, and now he does smile. A small dimple—an actual pinprick of joy—carves his left cheek.
I glance at the beastly tree to be certain I am not, in fact, absurd, and am shocked to find that it remains utterly still.
A raven caws above before pitching downward and landing atop the dryad’s branches.
The tree does not wince, flinch, or so much as twitch at the disturbance.
Relief eases the tension in my spine. We actually did it. “That was close.”
“Thank Mortem.” Arion shoulders past me, continuing the trek through the orchard. “We finally found a use for your wicked tongue, wife.”
“I was running out of P words. Besides, it worked, didn’t it?
” Plucking a ruby apple from the nearest tree, I clean it on my dress before taking a huge bite.
My hunger riots at the first taste of it.
Sweet white juices dribble over my lips, down my chin, and onto my aforementioned cleavage.
I can’t eat it fast enough. When Arion hears the crunch, he turns.
Then tracks the path of juice with his metallic gaze.
The cord between us tightens further, drawing me closer.
Forcing my feet to move until he’s inches away.
We walk in silence again for a moment, as I try my best to wipe the sticky mess from my breasts, and Arion’s gaze locks on to the horizon.
His hand tenses at his side. Which is, coincidentally, near my side too.
Heat radiates from it. From him.
I eat the apple faster. Mindlessly. Desperately. Arion glances at me, at my mouth, and tears his own apple from a nearby branch. He devours half in one bite, core and all, his throat bobbing with a hard swallow.
“Pumpkin. Periwinkle. Papaya,” he says, seconds later. “Plague. Persimmon. Preposterous—”
“Yes, yes. You’re very clever, warlock.” I snatch the remaining apple from his hand and lob it between the trees, managing a more natural smile. “However, I thought of P words under duress and saved our asses. So I am, technically, still better than you.”
“You are the reason we almost—” He cuts himself off before we can anger another dryad, choosing instead to say, “I cannot wait to venture elsewhere.”
“You mean your sparkling personality doesn’t thrive here?”
He glowers at me.
“Well, our next stop is probably a sea infested with merrow.” I dance around a log and the family of bunnies nestled inside it. “Don’t get too excited.”
“At this rate, I’ll gladly take the demons. I’ve expended more magic than should be necessary for a short isle visit. Disguising us. Paying those charlatans. Trying to smother your emotions.” He tilts his head to study me. “Are all merrow as volatile as you? You’re a hurricane with a tail.”
“A beautiful tail.” I lift my skirt completely unnecessarily and hop over a fallen beehive. Arion’s gaze drops to my bare legs.
I expect him to admonish them. To ask what his kind always wonders—why would merrow be granted human limbs? In truth, the conception of legs being strictly human is foolish. They do not make me any more human than my arms or elbows or chin.
A tail isn’t all that separates us from them. Scales. Gills. The magic of the goddess in our veins. The heart of the sea in our chests. A swift ability to transform in the right climate. Just as he can swim in the ocean, I can survive on land.
But Arion doesn’t inquire about that.
As the Illuminated Library emerges from the dense orchard, gilded spire by gilded spire, he reaches out to stop me from continuing.
His palm splays wide against my belly. The touch scorches through the gossamer and pearls, straight to my core.
He doesn’t remove it though. And the cord—it knots, fastening us in swathes of silver.
His gaze narrows on mine. Darkening.
For some stupid reason, I lick my lips, and my stomach clenches. He still doesn’t remove that hand.
“The last time you were here,” he murmurs. “What happened?’
The cheerful light inside me dims once more. I twist away from his touch. “I told you. It wasn’t successful.”
“I deserve to know—”
“What? What do you deserve to know, warlock?”
His teeth grit. Through the sheer white of shirt, it almost looks like the blackened veins along his chest are moving. It almost seems as if… as if it hurts him. Indeed, exhaustion pummels my ribs as if in response. “Your emotions, mermaid. Try to control yourself.”
I inhale deeply before merrily saying, “I have told you everything pertinent. We get in. We fly out. Okay, husband?”
His wings beat a steady rhythm. Seemingly eager for the impending task. But Arion doesn’t appear quite as convinced. “I need to plan for all the variables in this equation. If it will require more magic, I need time to prepare. We can’t have another ordeal like that shoppe happen again.”
“You said we don’t have time.”
“And we don’t.”
“So then pray to your precious god and take a leap of faith.”
“Zephyra,” he growls.
His frustration doesn’t stir the dryads, doesn’t wake the bumblebees from their hives, doesn’t even seem to leave his chest, as if he’s tethering not only my emotions, but his as well.
I don’t know what he wants me to confess though, and I sure as shit don’t want to confess it to him.
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.
I don’t want to be here. It’s been eight years.
Eight horrible, brutal years without light, or hope, or…
anyone. Anything. And the only reason I have to do this now—face my nightmares, confront my mistakes, drown in my regret—is because Arion arrested me.
Because I fucked up a grave robbery. Because nothing in life has ever been easy and survival has never been guaranteed.
“Someone died.”
The two words shrivel into ash on my tongue, but I say them. I say them for the very first time without crying or screaming or thrashing. I say them even though they make me wish it had been me.
It should have been me.
“We were inches from freedom.” The confession spills from me, unbidden.
“Inches from the water. But I had a thought. Just one stupid thought. I worried whether anyone would find out what we’d done.
I worried we’d be arrested. Beaten. Separated.
That’s all it took for the dryads to realize we had stolen from them.
When they did, they didn’t go after me. They went after the one who was holding the book.
They were just doing their job. It took seconds.
Thirty. Maybe less. Once the dryads reclaimed the book, they didn’t even look at me.
They didn’t care. It was my fault. And—someone died. ”
Thirty seconds to wreck everything.
Thirty seconds to ruin my life.
I try to ease my breathing, but my lungs ache. My body aches. I’ve never had to tell this story before. I’ve had no one to tell it to.
My gaze clashes with Arion’s. Pent-up devastation roils inside me, obliterating everything in its wake, but the warlock simply wraps the cord around his hand.
Not to pull me closer but to take them. Every damning feeling.
Every ounce of my misery. He doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t react. He just waits, either for more information or for me to collapse in a pathetic heap, all while continuing to grasp that silvered cord.
I don’t.
Calmly—coolly—I manage to say, “That’s it.”