Chapter Eighteen Arion
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ARION
Jagged rocks of the Sel’s vicious depths give way to a dozen underwater caverns, all different gnarled shapes and sizes.
Zephyra explains that they were used by illegal traders to store stolen wares so kingdoms couldn’t find and claim the treasures as their own.
Before the Merrow Wars exploded across every sea and made piracy treacherous for even the most savage villains.
Before merrow slaughtered humans on sight.
She doesn’t add the last bit, but I remind myself of it anyway. I need to keep reminding myself of it.
Otherwise, I’ll acknowledge my hunger. For her.
Acknowledge the need that clenches an agonizing fist around my cock every time she breathes, laughs, sighs.
It’s the bond. It’s her lips. It’s her soft curves and pretty hair and wicked tongue and—and I’m losing my fucking mind.
She has ruined it. She has ruined me. All with a single kiss.
The taste of her strawberry-sweet lips, and the sinful sound of her mewling lust. Impossible.
Bullshit. She is a merrow. She is a demon, and I am a warlock.
A disgraced, traitorous warlock.
Fuck.
I can’t even repress my own emotions anymore. They plague me. Rage. Frustration. Regret. And that intense, thunderous craving for her. For more.
If I can just steal the heart, I can fix this. Divine powers. Immortality. I can use them to garner favor with the kingdom, to reinstate my position, to damn the merrow to the Fathoms and cleanse myself of her touch.
Does he have a name, or should I just moan my own?
Gods, I despise her.
“Are you quite certain it’s empty?” Gavriall asks, apprehension bubbling from his lips as Zephyra gestures to the largest of the caverns.
The water feels colder here. Tastes sweeter.
Appears darker. Her tail undulates almost lazily as she hovers just before the entrance.
A few threads of pearls have come undone since the fight, spilling, brushing, against her breasts, her soft belly, the turquoise scales on her waist. I don’t stare at any of it.
“Yes,” she answers simply. “Who else would use it?”
“Merrow, pirates, heathens, serial killers,” Gavriall says. “The list practically writes itself.”
“Minnow,” Zephyra snaps.
Gavriall’s eyes narrow. “Lead the way, then. Mermaids first.”
“No. Now, hurry up—merrow could swim across us at any time, and they’re likely to gut you on sight.”
He huffs at that, bubbles spilling from his lips. “Why can’t you go?”
“Well, if there is a murderer in there, I don’t want to be the first victim.”
“You said it’s empty!”
“I’m not psychic, Gavriall. You go first. You’re the most expendable.”
“That’s offensive. I am the smartest historian in a century—”
“Enough.” I snarl and shove between them.
“Fucking cowards.” The only good thing Zephyra has wrought are my gills.
Aside from assuring I don’t drown, they make my body feel lighter, more buoyant, and allow my wings to move with renewed purpose.
They carry me through the mouth of the cavern, then up.
Up. I rise into a large craggy chamber and throw myself onto a dry surface of hard rock.
Seconds pass before they join me. I can barely make out their hazy forms in the sea, a blur of pink and black.
Zephyra is the next to surface, though she hesitates rather than immediately climbs onto the stalagmite-infested ground. It glows fluorescent violet beneath my feet as my wings shake themselves dry.
“There’s no one here,” I tell her.
She finds my gaze, then looks away quickly, blinking as if to orient herself.
As if to pretend our cord doesn’t shudder with the echo of our combined desire.
She wraps a delicate hand around the edge of the dry ground, hoisting herself up to peer behind me—around a corner where the grotto narrows into an empty tunnel.
The bioluminescent walls illuminate the pitch black, reflecting neon lights off old barrels, frayed wicker baskets, and antique oil lamps. “As I said, no threats.”
“It smells damp.” She drags herself out of the water and rolls onto the ground, chest heaving as she stares at the stalactite ceiling. Her pink hair splays beneath her. The same shade as her torn bodice.
“It is an underwater pocket of air. It’s going to smell damp.”
She sticks her tongue out at me, but the action is tired. I’m tired too. These past few days have exhausted me in ways I never imagined. It’s a miracle I’m still standing. Still alive.
“Is the coast clear?” Gavriall whispers as he pokes his head through the surface.
I refuse to answer, so Zephyra deadpans, “No. We’ve been captured and taken hostage. Save yourself.”
A snort breaks loose from my chest. Almost a chuckle.
It startles me enough that my wings stiffen, then curl inward as if to gape at me.
When is the last time I laughed? Have I ever laughed?
Not in the tower. Not on the streets. Not when I found my father’s body or when the elders split open my stomach that very first time.
Not during the torture or torment or Trials.
I stare at Zephyra. She stares back at me.
All the while, Gavriall grumbles as he clumsily hauls himself out of the sea.
Water cascades down his elaborate four-piece suit, sopping wet as he peels it off.
First the ebony blazer, then the gray waistcoat, then finally a white button-down shirt.
His tawny body ripples with the slender muscles of someone who carries a lot of books.
Smaller than mine. Weaker. But Zephyra still glances at him, her eyes still rove his torso, and I can’t help tensing.
Something potent swirls dark and deadly in my chest.
“My lady.” He offers her a handsome smile and a flamboyant bow. “I should introduce myself in earnest now that you are no longer a tower prisoner. I am Gavriall Praesepultus, and it is a pleasure to make your proper acquaintance.”
She tilts her head, studying him for several more seconds before responding. Although, the response she gives is, as always, the one I least expect. “I’m not your first mermaid.”
Gavriall arches a brow. “Pardon?”
“You tried to feed me in the prison. You aren’t frightened of me. You didn’t flinch away from my tail.” She flourishes a hand over her iridescent scales. “I’m not your first mermaid.”
“I believe it’s more customary to exchange names—”
“Zephyra,” she says. “Of the Syl.”
He smiles wide and flips onto the ridge of a rock as if it’s a bench in the middle of a beautiful forest—rather than a moldy grotto in the middle of a festering sea. He flicks a fish skeleton away from his leg. “No, Zephyra of the Syl, you are not my first merrow.”
“Who was?” She pulls her tail into her chest and sits up straight, suddenly enraptured. Her pink hair falls in humid waves to her lower back. I imagine brushing them away to kiss, lick, nip at her throat. Shit.
“This is blasphemous,” I say. “Merrow and humans do not fraternize. You would be hanged if we were in Mortia.”
“Lucky we aren’t in Mortia, then. For all our sakes.” Gavriall doesn’t bother glancing in my direction, though the insult lands regardless.
I just kissed a merrow.
Worse, I can’t stop thinking about her lips. Her moans. Her body against mine. So fucking soft.
Zephyra’s eyes flick toward me, her cheeks flushed the same pink as her hair. Because she knows. Just as I know she picks at her nails to avoid thinking about the same rush of heat in her veins.
“If you would like to earn my trust, tell me,” she says to Gavriall. “No better way for me to believe you won’t murder us in our sleep if you’ve already fucked a merrow.”
My hands clench into fists. I focus on my pain, my exhaustion, the cult—anything else.
“No fucking, sadly,” Gavriall says. “But I loved him. He was… magnificent.” A soft smile crosses his boyish face.
“I was walking the shoreline when he appeared. I was frightened, naturally, so I started to scream for guards. He asked me to stop in this gentle voice. Precious and fragile. Like chipped glass. So I stopped. I sat in the sand. We talked for hours.”
“On Mortia’s shore?” I can’t keep the tremor of disgust from my voice.
“Yes, Warlock Stone. On Mortia’s shore.” Gavriall rolls his eyes. “The Southlands, where there is no wall. Our separation isn’t like within the walls of Crestfall. There is a certain freedom to the sea. A certain mystery.
“He told me about his life in the waters. I told him about my life on land. The hours stretched into days. He was normal, Arion. He was just—a person. It didn’t matter that he had a tail.
He collected coins from every kingdom. He hated the taste of oranges, and he wept when I told him about my rabbit dying. He held my hand. I held his.”
“What happened?” Zephyra whispers, and there it is again—another jolt of pain. The same torment hanging over her head on the isle. It seizes my heart. And I loathe myself for it, but I—I feel bad for her. Not quite pity, but not apathy either. I want to take that pain away.
It reminds me too much of my own.
“What do you think?” Gavriall fixes her with a pointed look.
“I didn’t show up one morning. I was in bad with one of the Southlands’s casinos.
I needed money to pay off my debt, so I robbed a shitty fruit stall for the coin.
The next day, when I showed up at the beach, he wasn’t in the water.
He was hanging at the dock. Strung up, oozing blood onto the wood, his scales glittering on the armor of the guards who captured him.
I left the Southlands that day. Started a new life in Crestfall to escape the pain. ”
Zephyra looks as if she’s going to be sick. I might be too. For as much as I want to throttle her… I don’t ever want to see her like that. Strung up. Dead.
He was hanging at the dock.