Chapter Fifteen Zephyra #2
Arion nods once. Not unkindly or tersely, but as if in understanding. His expression, even his voice, soften now. “Okay, mermaid.” And he waves that wrapped hand for me to continue ahead of him without another word.
As I pass him, one of his wings pats me gently on the shoulder. The cord caresses my cheek. Both make me want to shriek. “I don’t need a warlock’s pity,” I say instead.
“Good. You don’t have it.”
Horseshoe crabs, baby gulls, coral reefs, I think fervently, nails cutting into my palms. Cocoa trifles. Saltwater taffy. The foamy whitecaps of cresting waves.
The less I think, the faster I walk, trying so hard to shed my past in the same meadow where I lost everything else.
The library rises in the midst of an evergreen field.
Swaying stalks of lavender stretch up toward the solid-gold fortress.
There are no windows. There is no entrance.
It looks as if Lucius plucked the library straight from the universe, a shining star in a faraway night sky, and then dropped it here without pretense or ceremony.
I wouldn’t notice a door if Jacin hadn’t found it last time.
A slender curve in the gold, seemingly decorative, slopes in a perfect semicircle.
“What are you doing?” I ask with a soft laugh.
“Criminal, remember?” Jacin winks at me, pulling a knife from his pocket in a deft maneuver that spreads heat low in my abdomen.
He stabs the imperceptible fissure to pry open the door.
The wiry muscles of his arms flex, and I can’t not stare at it.
At him. He grins then. A knowing smirk. “You have a lot to learn about villainy, love.”
I sidle up beside him to help open the doorway. Not a single bad thought or ill intention rises in my mind; I have never been happier. “You stole one basket of pastries. A single crime does not make you a dastardly villain.”
“Ah, ah.” He releases his knife from the crevice to drag my chin toward him with the hilt. Emerald eyes far greener, brighter, than the surrounding foliage. I lean in to kiss him, but he presses the cold steel to my lips instead, stopping me. “You’re forgetting I stole your heart.”
I laugh at the cheesy line, and he claims the sound with a toe-curling kiss.
Hooking fingers in the lace ties of my bodice, he drags me closer.
His hands slide up my waist. I rake my own through his hair.
He pushes me against the gold wall, and the icy breeze mixed with the cold metal sets my nerves on edge.
Goddess, he’s perfect. He’s so perfect for me.
I stiffen at the thought. Was that truly the last moment I felt happy? Not a duplicitous facade, but real joy? Bile stings the back of my throat. I’m going to be sick.
“Help me open the door.” I crush the lavender underfoot and reach for the indiscernible seam.
The sooner we’re inside, the better. “We’ll have to pry it,” I say over my shoulder, but he’s already there, elbowing me aside and examining the fissure.
Blue flames curl around his hands as he lifts strong fingers to probe the edges.
“Any traps?” he asks in a low voice.
“None that I remember.”
He gives a short nod, and I wait, breathless, for his magic to penetrate the door—except… it doesn’t. Instead, he hesitates. Just for a second. Just long enough for my smile to falter. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The word is curt, confident, despite that second of hesitation, and his magic shoots outward, wreathing the door in blue flames. Thank goddess. The metal groans in response. When it starts to buckle toward us, relief suffuses my chest.
We’re almost there. Once we’re in the library—with the door closed firmly again behind us—we’ll be able to relax, to search in relative safety without dryads watching our every move.
The tendons in Arion’s throat strain with effort, however, and a bead of sweat trickles down his temple.
I frown at the sight. “Are you sure nothing is wrong?”
This time he doesn’t answer except for a single, vicious “Fuck.”
And the door slams shut.
His expression darkens as the blue flames vanish with it, and a shock of pure fear pulses through the cord. His fear. My eyes widen as realization descends. If his magic failed on the door, where else is it failing? Shit. “Arion, your thoughts, our thoughts—”
His gaze crashes into mine, and he shakes his head. Right as an alarm sounds.
Earsplitting.
Like a thousand wails of a thousand corpses, screaming to the skies.
No, no—
The ground quakes violently. No longer a short tremble, but a deep, jarring rumble.
It throws us forward, and I land hard on my knees with a curse.
Roots lash from the newborn cracks—just as they did then—and the earth splinters beneath me.
It’s familiar. Too familiar. Trying not to hyperventilate, I push onto my feet.
Not again not again not again. It doesn’t matter how hard I wish, hope, pray—when I turn, it’s the same sight.
A row of dryads emerges from the orchard.
Colossal. Formidable. Claws sharp and hungry for vengeance, for blood. Jacin’s blood.
It’s the same ending.
But we—my vision spots, weeping into black—we haven’t even gone inside.
We haven’t stolen. I brace myself for impact, scrambling for a weapon, a shield, anything with which to defend myself, but…
it’ll happen too quickly anyway. Jacin died in seconds.
And isn’t this a fitting end? Isn’t this what I deserve?
Instead of the slash of their long, sharp fingers, there is only chilled wind—it blasts my cheeks as they rush past. As they ignore me and head straight toward—
Straight toward Arion.
Of course. His magic failed. His negative thoughts are probably the ones they detected first.
He realizes it the same second I do. Panic flares through the bond as he hastens to conjure another flame, but it dissipates to smoke in his fingers. “What the fuck is going on with you?” My scream can hardly be heard through the howl of the trees. “Now is not the time for performance anxiety—”
He falls to his knees in answer, and his exhaustion—it washes through my chest, over my limbs, and the darkness creeping over my vision isn’t mine at all. It’s his. And now he’s going to die and take me with him.
No. Not like this.
Sprinting toward him—racing the damned dryads—I pick up an apple and hurl it at the nearest tree.
“Hey, you termite-infested piece of kindling!” At least two of them whip their branches toward me, and I seize the closest, propelling myself up the thorny limb and into its canopy.
Searching wildly for any way to distract it—to distract them—and buy Arion time to recover.
“Touch him, and I’ll find a volcano in which to throw you! ”
It groans in response. Probably because I’ve snapped off a limb and shoved it into the gaping hole of its mouth.
Now the others converge on me too, and—and perhaps I should’ve thought this through.
Clambering backward, deeper into the canopy, I shout, “Now would be the time to decimate something, warlock! Anything!”
He snarls a curse, pitching forward, collapsing, and I swear to Vila, if he passes out while I’m elbows-deep in this tree, I will find him in the Fathoms. I will make him rue the day he saved me—even more than he already does—and wreak havoc on his eternity.
Except he doesn’t pass out.
His fists slam upon the ground. Into the ground. Tiny cuts lacerate my hands as roots crawl over his own, but more than that—
All the exhaustion erupts from my body in a single, agonizing breath. His breath. I cling to the dryad’s branches as Arion roars, and the earth detonates at his fingertips.
There is no time to react, no time to respond to the agony snarling my organs because of him.
Before I can drag in another breath, the force of his magic obliterates the dryads.
Obliterates everything until I’m flying, soaring, spinning through the air as the world beneath me turns to ash.
What was once jade and gold has withered to a blur of black.
And there is nothing—nothing to grab on to; I’m going to crash, to splatter into viscera at Arion’s feet.
When he catches me a second later, holding me above the earth, I’m still screaming.
I’m clawing up his chest and shredding his brand-new shirt, wrapping my legs around his waist and clinging for dear life.
I close my eyes. I bury my face in his chest. “You can… put me down… now.” When he doesn’t answer, I scream, “Down!” as if he’s a dog instead of the powerful warlock who just saved my ass.
“Are you satisfied?” he growls.
“Satisfied? You just catapulted me across the isle—”
“You said I have performance anxiety.” He dives toward the ground, and I scream again, trying not to throw up as we land abruptly in the marketplace once more.
He dumps me unceremoniously on the ground, and I glare up at him through my hair.
“And you retaliated by—what? Going ‘scorched earth’?” My gaze darts around us, taking in the skeletal remains of half-broken trees and gnarled branches.
The blackened grass and whorls of smoke.
He didn’t simply decimate the orchard—he decimated all the isle.
He decimated the marketplace too.
My eyes widen incredulously, and I can’t help it—a nervous laugh spills from my lips at the sheer magnitude of devastation. It shouldn’t be possible from one man. And especially not from this man.
He shakes his head, too spent to argue, and my own limbs feel sluggish in response. I struggle to my feet, eyeing the cord as it dims and pulses in time with our heartbeats. Just beyond it, the evening sun glints off the water. There is nothing. Nothing left except—
Islanders.
They begin creeping out from behind razed willows, their mouths falling open at the sight of Arion’s wings.
Of my pink hair. Silence pervades, near stifling after the wails of the alarm.
“This is bad,” I mutter, stepping into Arion’s shadow.
As if destroying their isle, their home, wasn’t enough, they now know exactly who is responsible—a warlock and a mermaid. Mostly a warlock though. “Very bad.”
Arion sighs heavily, ignoring the islanders completely. “It just got worse.”
He jerks his chin over his shoulder, past the ruins of the market, past the ruins of the orchard, to where the library should be—Lucius’s sacred, immortal library. The one that has stood in precisely that spot for over a thousand years.
It isn’t standing anymore.
I inch away from Arion at the sound of the first anguished shout. The second. Soon more voices join the first—angrier, louder than the alarms were, murderous as the isle realizes we’ve turned its crowning jewel, its precious Illuminated Library, into gold dust.
“Fuck,” Arion breathes. “Fuck.”
I couldn’t agree more.
My gaze snags on a half-incinerated piece of parchment at our feet, and I cringe, dragging it behind us and out of sight. A woman near us still notices. Her eyes widen in disbelief, in horror, before falling to the holy detritus. Unsure what else to do, I lift a shoulder and mouth, Sorry.
“What now, mermaid?” Arion seizes my wrist as I try to slip farther away, eyeing the carriages in the port. “Any more big ideas?”
“Are you kidding?” I murmur the words as the mob forms around us. All they need are pitchforks, and—yes, they’re picking up fallen branches now. Wielding them as clubs. Through the crowd, Gerald points his purple umbrella menacingly in my direction.
“This one is your fault. Your magic screwed us,” I argue. “All I did was stab a tree.”
“Do you understand how much magic I had to use to cover up your gods-forsaken emotions? How much magic it cost to only destroy the foliage and not the people?”
I glare at him as the mob begins to descend. “You just needed to open a door. One fucking door, Arion. We can’t—we can’t kill everyone.”
“I know,” he snaps. “But—”
His voice stops abruptly as ice creeps over the surrounding wreckage.
The air stirs, condenses, and the hair on my neck lifts at the sound of several familiar, rattling breaths.
Arion tenses beside me, and any remaining hopes I had of surviving wither and decay like the isle.
“What is it?” I ask, even though I know. I remember. There is no face inside its hood. Only a hollow mask of ivory porcelain. Goddess, I hope I’m wrong. I’ll take the mob. I’ll face Lucius himself for the tragedy we’ve wrought.
Anything but this.
Arion pulls me closer, and his left wing curls around me like a shield. “Listen to me, Zephyra.” Low and even, sensing my panic as the temperature plummets and the fetid stench of death rises, Arion says, “No matter what happens, I need you to run. Don’t look back. Don’t wait for me. Just run.”