Chapter Sixteen Arion #2
They can scent her terror.
They’re going to tear her limb from limb.
For some reason, my lungs seize at the thought. At the memories still churning in my gut. No one deserves that. Not even a mermaid. Not even Zephyra.
She glances at her empty hands, wringing them in front of her before searching the ground for a weapon or shield. There is nothing. She is going to die. No, I think sharply. Worse. They’re going to take their time. They’re going to torture her—us.
“Scream,” the Death Lord hisses.
I can handle it. I won’t break. But she’s—my gaze darts to her panicked face—she’s too soft.
I felt those emotions back in the shoppe.
I have been punished with them since we first boarded the gods-damned carriage.
Her agony could be a mace relentlessly swinging at her.
Sharp spikes carving her into pieces with every blow.
Her mind will break before her body. She’ll suffer for as long as they keep her alive.
She’ll feed them for days, weeks—months.
“Zephyra.” My voice remains firm, serrated with hard desperation as I force her gaze back to mine. “You need to run.”
I don’t know why I tell her to do it. The cord billowing between us won’t allow her to escape.
Not really. It burns now, aflame with her terror as her eyes rove my face for a second.
Just a split second. She hesitates. The woman who has always run.
The woman who tried to drown me. The woman who ordered me to explode an entire isle to save our asses. She hesitates.
That split second is enough to seal her fate.
In a blur of lethal speed, the Death Lord snatches her by the throat and hauls her off her feet.
Leather fingers rip off her gilded necklace and bruise her soft flesh.
It raises its sickle to bleed her. One slice.
One cut. A trickle of crimson down her neck.
Down my neck as well, though no one seems to notice.
She struggles, uselessly thrashing against its robe as it leans closer and drags its hooded face over the shallow wound. “Fucking—get—off!”
That fist around my lungs tightens as I watch her flail, near suffocating now.
My only hope. My fucking mermaid. Except it isn’t fear now.
It isn’t despair either. No. Fury rises at the sight of her blood, at its skeletal fingers on her skin, and power throttles my veins.
I don’t care if it kills me. I have to unleash whatever’s left.
“Enough!” I snarl. “You want me, don’t you?
Torture me, then. Kill me. Leave the mermaid alone. ”
The Death Lord’s hood snaps toward me, and the others peer up from where they have begun to feast upon the islanders.
“We already have you, littlest warlock. And we have already tasted you. This one…” It smears the blood on her neck with its thumb.
“She smells divine.” Its blade presses into the hollow of her chest, between her breasts, over her pretty new gown, and tears a jagged line down the bodice.
Zephyra doesn’t stop cursing. Kicking. Fighting.
Bile stings my throat. The silvered bond becomes a physical manifestation of her pain and horror, rippling with it. I fight against the hold they have on me, but I—I can’t move. I can’t save her.
I roar in frustration. In rage.
It does not shatter the earth this time, but it buys us a moment. One pivotal moment when the blade does not cut into Zephyra’s flesh. Her eyes clash with mine—then dart behind me. She gasps. I don’t need to wait long before I spot it too.
Him.
A man charges out from the isle’s small port, hoisting a bucket of sloshing water above his black hair.
Each step appears labored. The bucket is too heavy, or he is too weak.
It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t stop running.
The cultists glance at him, hissing, before he hurls the crystalline liquid up and out.
Not at the Death Lord, but at the others.
At all the others.
The cultists shriek as water douses their robes.
Earsplitting cries that make their Death Lord fling Zephyra to the ground and whirl to spot the source of the chaos.
The few remaining islanders also begin to shout—in agony, in fear, in anger—as the strange man pulls a sword from a scabbard loosely slung around his waist.
No.
The crowd does not just shout. They move.
Some drop to their knees to scoop lifeless loved ones into their arms. Others snatch up twigs and bramble and half-scorched branches to fight the robed figures. The cult’s hold has fallen. Their magic has weakened.
Zephyra scrambles forward, crawling across the ground to reach me, and I shudder at the sight.
My wings release from stasis with an immense weight carving between my shoulders.
Pain and exhaustion pummel my insides in equal measure, but pain—pain is power.
And I can move. This strange man has distracted the cultists enough for me to suck in a breath, conjure the few remaining tendrils of my magic, and unleash it with brutal force.
Fuck the consequences.
I freeze the water on the cultists, turning them into foul icicles. And the Death Lord—I turn on it with a bloodlust smirk and open my fist to reveal a burgeoning ball of flame. It stumbles back a step. Another.
“You might consider running, Arion.” Zephyra climbs onto unsteady feet and presses a hand to her abdomen. Right where she—where I—hurt the most. Then she tugs on my arm. Latches on to my wrist and pulls and pulls and pulls. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
But I’m not done here. I will make them suffer.
They deserve it.
The Death Lord glides toward me like a wraith. It does not fear me. It does not back down. “We know of the heart, Arion Stone.” Its voice is smoke and ash. “We know of what you seek, and we will not let you have it. That heart is ours.”
How how how—
My heartbeat pounds in my ears, confusion and rage mangling my insides, but I manage to scoff. To laugh in its hideous fucking face. Advancing with my wings unfurled wide, the ball of fire begins to blister my own skin, but the pain only strengthens my magic. It only grows the flame.
Before I release it, I say, “Scream.”
Flames erupt as it incinerates the Death Lord’s robes. The monster trips over itself, beating away the fire with its gloves, but the fire only grows hotter, brighter, bigger. It doesn’t scream, but it doesn’t need to.
I just need it to die.
“Okay. You win.” A soft hand pulls at my own. I glance to the side, and there’s Zephyra. Pink hair and mottled skin where the Death Lord had her in its gruesome clutches. “Let’s go,” she implores, pulling harder now. “While it’s dying.”
“It won’t die,” the strange man—our savior—says as what’s left of the crowd surges around him.
Whether to fight the cultists or flee, I cannot tell.
The man struggles to reach us, all elbows and shoulders and stumbling steps.
“Cultists do not die unless they’re drowned in the sea.
That is the balance of Mortem’s cruel sycophants. ”
I blink, the familiar voice tearing me from the nightmare in front of us. I know that fucking voice.
It’s the last voice I want to hear right now.
I glance at him, and my stomach falls to the ground. The man isn’t strange. And he sure as shit isn’t a savior. He’s a historian. And a criminal. And a huge pain in my ass.
“Warlock Stone.” Gavriall Praesepultus waves a sword at me, an oddly serene smile on his boyish face. “Imagine running into you here.”
I consider decking him. Right on his cleft chin. “Did you follow us?”
“Yes,” he admits shortly. “And lucky I did. You needed help.”
“Yeah, we did.” Zephyra’s fingers twine through mine. She’s stopped tugging me forward, instead staring behind us, at the sea, before looking ahead. “And we still do. Please pull your heads from your assholes; we’re about to be chopped up and thrown into people stew.”
We watch the fire flicker out on the Death Lord’s robes, and the cultists begin to cackle. Every single one of them. Including their lord. The sound echoes in the air around us, building to a rising shriek, and then—they stand as one. Zephyra’s grasp hardens, her nails cutting into my skin.
“Fuck,” I say.
“Fuck,” Zephyra agrees.
“Fuck,” Gavriall adds.
I glare at him. “You’re not part of this.”
“I’m the one with the sword, aren’t I?” He puffs out his chest bravely, while his eyes close against the sudden onslaught of freezing smoke.
The death cult herds us closer to the shore with sickles at the ready.
And I don’t know what to do about it when, according to Gavriall, there’s no way to harm them.
Cultists do not die unless they’re drowned in the sea.
Zephyra must be thinking the same, because she asks, “Are you sure we can’t just slice off their head or stake them through the heart?”
Gavriall cowers behind his sword, his steps quicker than even our own. He hits the port first. Tumultuous waves batter the timber dock, splashing up and soaking his pants. “There would be nothing to cut. They’re more smoke than man. Made up of a million souls without one of their own.”
My voice thunders with rage, more so at the situation than at Gavriall himself. “So you came here to die with us?”
“There’s another option,” Zephyra murmurs.
Too quiet for me to register at first, but the Death Lord herds us to the very edge of the port, and she stumbles into my side rather than allow a rogue wave to dampen her skin.
To transform her and leave her powerless on the wooden dock.
I wrap a protective arm around her, and she glances up, her gaze flaring with distress. “The ocean, Arion.”
I don’t understand. We’re inches from being slaughtered, tortured, and I can’t help us. I can’t fucking fix this. The Death Lord tilts its porcelain mask and licks her blood from its blade. The cult cackles again. Revolting monsters. They’re feeding off our terror. They’re already torturing us.
“The ocean,” she repeats. “We could—could jump.”
“If I get a vote in this, I would agree that I’d prefer to swim with sharks than be masticated.” Gavriall slashes out at a cultist. Snagging air. Pure air. We’re fucked. Unless we jump and hope they don’t follow. Jump and pray they really are afraid to drown. “Although flying would be great.”
Zephyra glances at me. She already knows—she can feel it herself. I can’t fly us. I’m too fucking weak. Shame rots alongside magic in my blackened veins.
I tighten my grip on Zephyra’s hand.
“Go ahead,” the Death Lord breathes. It pauses just before it reaches the dock. “Jump, littlest warlock. We will simply wait for you to surface. We know what you want, and we will not let you have it. We will hunt you. We will find you.”
“Then I guess we won’t surface,” Zephyra spits. “Mermaid, remember?”
“How could we forget?” Frost curls from the Death Lord’s leather gloves, tipping Zephyra’s chin up with magic. “You will taste delicious.”
Zephyra simply extends her middle finger and spins around with a dancer’s grace. Without thinking, without releasing my hand, she runs headfirst off the dock.
For the second time, I follow a pink-haired mermaid to my sea-salt demise.