Chapter Nineteen Arion #2
It runs a blade across the boy’s throat.
Blood gushes. The boy chokes on it, scarlet bubbling from his mouth and splashing against the cold marble floor—but this time, he manages not to scream.
They cut him again. Again. He represses the agony, every ounce of it, thinking only of his father.
Of what he will become if he does not complete the Trials.
I blink away the memories. They don’t belong to me anymore.
They belong to someone else. Someone younger.
Someone more foolish. Someone weak. “I know it was illogical. I know you would’ve felt it regardless.
But I’ve experienced what they can do, and…
I didn’t want them to do it to you. Not when I can handle it. ”
Silence descends over us. Scorching hot, as if coals smoke beneath the earth. The mermaid’s gaze roves my body, my wings, lingering too long to be indifferent. And then she says, “I could have handled it too.”
I exhale a frustrated laugh. “I wasn’t criticizing you, Zephyra.”
“I know.” She leans forward, circling her arms around her knees.
Hugging them tighter. Through the bond, pain explodes.
The faintest echo of a feminine scream, youthful and raw, claws at my ears.
So much agony that my lungs squeeze, and my head swims. And then—fast as it appeared, it vanishes.
As if I never felt it at all. “I can handle it, warlock.” She doesn’t shy away from the cord. From her truth.
Fuck.
“You too?” I ask, unable to spit out the full question. Unable to ask her what she’s survived when I can hardly stand to remember my own past.
“Yeah.” A soft shrug as she rests her chin on her knees.
“This ordeal—it’s not even close to the worst I’ve experienced.
At least…” She almost doesn’t finish the sentence.
There’s a war in her eyes as her nose wrinkles, and a dozen colorful emotions dance across her face.
“At least I’m not alone now.” She looks at me.
Really fucking looks at me, as if she’s peeling me open and digging through my organs.
As if she knows every thought in my mind and isn’t frightened by the bloody crevices.
“You aren’t either. No matter how fucked-up we might be, for now we have each other.
If we work together, maybe we’ll survive this. I don’t—I don’t want to die, Arion.”
I don’t know why, but I say, “What do you want?”
She laughs at that. A lilting breath. “No one’s actually asked me that before.”
That only intrigues me more. I shift closer to her, my wings curling inward as if just as rapt. “I’m asking now.”
“Okay, warlock.” She smiles at me, and my skin crackles as if struck by lightning.
“Well, my father assumed I would take over the taming business with my brother.” At my apparent confusion, she explains, “My family domesticates animals to aid other merrow. Octopuses, fish, dolphins, squid—you name it, they’ve trained it to do all sorts of things: hunting, gathering, cleaning, delivering messages. Anything, really.
“I used to have a pet octopus named Bean, but he didn’t listen to me for shit.
Whenever I tried to teach him to sit, stay, or grab, he would slink away to pick coral.
And then he would eat the coral and look at me with this blank expression.
Not a single thought in his bulbous head.
” Her shoulders loosen as she speaks, and she leans against the wall, slowly releasing her knees. Unfolding herself. Relaxing.
I arch a brow. “You named an octopus Bean?”
“Yes. And if you knew him, you’d understand.
I used to sneak him into bed with me so we could snuggle, and most mornings I’d wake with two tentacles wrapped around my throat and another knotted in my hair.
When my dad would barge inside to tell me breakfast was ready, the damn thing would ink.
All over me, my bed, my floor. Such an asshole.
” Regardless of her harsh words, her eyes brighten.
The sight twists in my gut like a knife. She’s fucking beautiful.
“So taming is off the list.”
“Goddess, yes. Without question. And then I left home and had to learn to survive off my wits—”
“By stealing,” I interject.
She rolls her eyes not unhappily. “Call it whatever you want, warlock. I have a knack for scheming and slipping out of tight situations. But I never thought it would be forever. I always hoped it would be for now. Eventually, I’d snag some kind of loot that could buy my way out, and then I could hunker down in a cottage somewhere serene and just…
exist. No worries or enemies. Simply peace and quiet and maybe some morning birdsong. ”
I can’t help but frown. “That’s your big plan? To waste away in a cottage at the end of this?”
She glares at me. “Do you have a better one?”
I knit my hands behind my head and lean back against my wings. They cushion the hard rock, making it almost comfortable. “Unlimited power. World domination. Ultimate greatness.”
“Humble.”
“I always try to limit my expectations.”
“I can tell, what with ‘unlimited power’ being first on your list.” Her lips twitch at the sight of my grin, and she sighs dramatically. “I’m starting to think I was right.”
“When you’re so often wrong?”
She ignores the jab. “You think your worth is tied to your magic.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I know my worth is tied to my magic. You lived in Crestfall long enough. What else is there for a kid in the city? You’re either noble or—”
“Poor,” she says.
“Rotten,” I correct. “Warlocks cleanse the city, and they need magic to do it.”
“Could’ve fooled me. Last I was there, six separate gangs dominated the streets.”
It’s my turn to glare at her. “We are under a strict jurisdiction. We cannot fly around burning down headquarters and blowing up drug dealers at random.”
“Really, Arion? Remember the Greenwood Isles?”
“I’d rather not.”
A pause. The weight of what we’ve done crushes both our chests. Zephyra picks at the hem of her shirt with a solemn frown. “Do you think anyone survived?”
“No.”
She shudders, and her torment thickens the silver cord.
I wish I could ask how someone who seemingly endured so much, wrought so much chaos herself, could still be this soft at heart.
How can the merrow thief who threw me on my ass be the same woman in front of me whose heart splinters from the destruction of an island that wanted her dead?
“The only people responsible for death are the ones who deal the killing blow. We didn’t hurt them.
Yes, I decimated their isle, but I made certain my magic didn’t harm its people.
Cultus Mortis bears sole responsibility for the lives lost. You, however, do not.
” The thought turns my stomach enough that I stand, my wings stretching as I offer her a hand. “Come on. We should sleep.”
She hesitates, staring at my palm but not accepting it.
Not moving. “There was a moment. When we realized the library was gone and the earth was dead and the mob was forming… if they attacked us, I would have fought them. I would have killed them. That bears some responsibility, doesn’t it?
If it hadn’t been the cult, it would’ve been us.
Me.” She glances up then, shadows haunting her gaze, and searches my face for an answer.
No—for reassurance. I don’t withdraw my hand.
“I feel like I keep running and running, but it’s never toward anything.
It’s always away. Away from the world. Away from death.
Away from myself. But ‘away’ isn’t a direction.
It’s circles. I’m sprinting through the same mistakes and history keeps repeating and time doesn’t stop.
I’m getting older, and life isn’t any better than when I started running.
I don’t want to be the person I am. I don’t want people to die because of me.
But I’ve been running for so long… I don’t know how to quit. ”
I don’t know how to quit.
“I understand.” I’ve spent my life running. Though it feels less like circles and more as if the finish line keeps edging just out of view. I have to hope one day I’ll reach it.
If we work together, maybe we’ll survive this.
Maybe we will.
She takes my hand, and I help her to her feet. For now, we’ll work together. We’ll plot a course to the Sol, deal with monsters and cultists and Gavriall, and find Abysses. Find Mortem’s heart. Everything else doesn’t matter.
Just her. Just me. Just surviving.
Her fingers twitch against mine, and I stare at where our palms connect. Her golden skin seems so bright against my own, like sunlight kissing a distant shore, her hand smaller. So much smaller. In the days I’ve known her, she’s been a criminal. A lecherous merrow. A woman on the run. But now—
Now, she has never felt more like Zephyra.
“Arion,” she murmurs.
My gaze slides to hers. “Yes, Zephyra?”
“We should go to bed.” She worries her lower lip between her teeth, and, fuck, it almost undoes me.
Black swallows the turquoise of her eyes as molten heat ignites through the cord.
The tunnel seems to shrink, walls closing in around us, narrowing the entire universe to this—to her.
Pink hair. Soft skin. Beautiful. Breathtaking.
She exhales. A laugh? A sigh? “Separately,” she adds. “Go to bed separately.”
“I understood.”
“You’re not moving.”
“You’re not moving,” I counter.
Her gaze drops to our hands, to my thumb reflexively stroking the inside of her palm. She shivers. “That feels good.”
The words banish any other thought from my mind. I don’t remember what the fuck we were talking about before. My pulse roars. It sounds like, That feels good. That feels good. That feels good.
“Yeah?” I move my other fingers down, toward her wrist, raking them back up with a rougher touch.
Her eyes shut, and her mouth falls open on a sharp breath.
“Fuck.”
I don’t know which of us says it. I also don’t care.
Instinct thunders through me. To please her, to fill this gods-damned cavern with her moans.
I ache to pull her forward, kiss her, taste her, this time without any pretense other than desire.
Gods, I want her. I want her beneath me, arms pinned above her head as I draw wicked circles on her flesh with my tongue.
I want to hear her grovel, beg, as she takes my cock.
I want those pretty lips on mine. I want that pink hair fisted in my hand.
So does she.
The cord blackens with longing. Brutal, savage need. My muscles tighten with restraint, and my dick hardens, pushing painfully against my trousers.
“We shouldn’t,” I say.
“I know,” she agrees.
But neither of us moves, and that’s going to be a problem soon because my control is shattering by the second. I lift our hands, brushing my lips against her knuckles. The cord pulsates in turn with hot, wet lust.
“It’s the—the life debt,” she explains, her throat bobbing with effort as she glances down at my cock.
“Are you sure?”
“No.” She smiles—tries to smile, but it’s trembling and sensual and desperate. “But we probably shouldn’t if you don’t… if we don’t…”
I don’t understand what she’s trying to say, and neither must she because she prowls closer. Her thighs clench. Her chest heaves. She presses a single hand to my abdomen, scraping her nails over my skin. Her heartbeat thunders against my own as her gaze narrows on mine.
“Zephyra,” I grit out, the last tethers of my control loosening, “if we don’t stop now, I am going to fuck you. You are going to beg for it, and I am not going to be able to say no. If you don’t want this, say so.”
She slides her hand up my chest, up my throat, and into my hair. Toying with the ends. “It feels really fucking good when you touch me.”
“That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no.” She licks her lips, so close now I can practically taste the traces of bittersweet wine on her tongue. “What about you, warlock? What do you want?”
You, you, you.
She leans in, her breath hot, drawing me closer. Closer.
My control snaps—but instead of pushing her against the wall and plunging my tongue into her forbidden mouth, I step backward. Untangle myself from her grasp and remind her of the one thing I wish I hadn’t remembered. “You said no touching.”
She blinks wide, dazed eyes at me. “What?”
“Your only rule. No touching.” I stuff my hands into my trousers, trying to discreetly adjust my raging cock.
Fuck, it aches. And I have absolutely no privacy here to resolve that myself.
To exorcise these thoughts from my mind.
I am a warlock. I am supposed to be in control of shit like this.
I am not supposed to fuck mermaids. “We should go to bed.” And then, because I’m an idiot, I add, “Separately.”
“Yeah, I got it.” She glances away quickly, exiting the tunnel first with that sultry, sinuous grace before breaking off stalagmites in her hand. Creating a makeshift bed for herself with surprising ease. She hurls the rocks into the water and then lies down, staring at me while I hover over her.
Still. Fucking. Hard.
“Go to sleep, Arion,” she says. “We have a big journey ahead of us, and you probably need the blood back in your head if you’re going to survive. Rather than in your dick,” she clarifies with a condescending grin. “Because you’re so hard.”
I growl, and my magic instinctually implodes the nearest stalagmites, carving a bed of my own as far from hers as possible. I drop to the ground. “You are infuriating.”
“Says the warlock damning us with more magic.” A few seconds pass, and she’s still staring at me. I’m still staring at her.
At this point, I’m convinced it’s not physically possible for me to look away. Even as Gavriall snores and tosses and turns obnoxiously on his precious bench.
“Good night, warlock,” she murmurs.
“Good night, mermaid.”
She curls inward, shivering slightly, and I can’t help it.
I can’t bear to see her so uncomfortable.
With a split-second thought of a plush duvet from the tower, I manage to cover most of her limbs.
She startles beneath the conjured blanket, but she doesn’t yell at me or argue about the waste of magic.
Instead, she searches for me in the dim glow of the cavern and says, “Thanks, Arion.”
“You’re welcome, Zephyra.”
We both close our eyes, but neither of us falls asleep.