Chapter Twenty-Two Zephyra #2
That doesn’t—that doesn’t make sense. I sacrificed everything.
My entire life and soul. And all the sorcerer did was slap on a pair of shackles and lock me inside his castle.
He taunted me. He tormented me. He sliced me, bruised me, dug his wicked claws into my brain and made me hurt and hurt and hurt.
And never once did he give me anything else.
He certainly never gave me magic. Not even after he said, I love you.
Not even after he cradled my cheek, peered into my soul, and called me his.
“He wants you home,” Vesper says simply, oblivious to the fact that home is a fucking cage. And her gaze—there’s a flicker in her dark blue irises. A shadow. It wasn’t there on the streets.
She said we should be kind to you because there were ghosts in your eyes.
Ghosts. Vesper has ghosts now.
My pulse thunders. And then, she began to say, as if there was more to her plan. As if the sorcerer agreed to more. He has only ever dealt in bargains, I realize with a start. No. Fuck. No. “Vesper, tell me you didn’t… didn’t make a deal with him.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit.”
“Vesper—”
“Stop saying my name like you know me!” She thrusts the trident in my direction, and a bolt of bronze flame erupts from the three prongs.
I duck just in time to avoid being set on fire.
The stone behind my head isn’t so lucky—it smokes.
Chars. The cavern smells like burnt death.
“We aren’t friends. We have never been friends.
You abandoned us, Zephyra. You fucking maimed me to run out on us, and do you—do you even care what happened when you left?
Your little friend is bleeding from the throat right now, and you couldn’t care less about saving him.
Instead, you look around this cavern because you can’t help it, can you?
You want to flee so badly. You are a fucking coward.
” Her chest rises and falls with rapidly growing rage.
The trident glows in her grasp. I anticipate its next explosion seconds before it can incinerate me.
“Ask me, then. Ask me why I’m here. Ask me why I made a deal with a merrow nightmare. ”
I blink at her. Blink through my tears.
She’s right. About it all. About me. I am a coward, and I want to run, and… goddess, I just don’t want to die. I don’t want to go back to him. And I am terrified to hear her answers. “Stavros—” I begin.
“This isn’t about Stavros,” she hisses, and though her voice breaks when she says his name, I know she’s telling the truth.
Because those ghosts in her eyes—they aren’t simply caused by grief. They’re caused by a soul rupturing. A heart cleaving in two. Loss so great it’s as if you’ve lost yourself instead.
And then, I understand.
All at once. Brutally. Painfully. I can’t breathe through the truth. I can’t even hear my own voice as I say, “Eos.”
Vesper releases Gavriall. She shoves him aside as if he’s nothing. He crawls away quickly, gasping for breath and clutching his throat. Scrambling for the tunnel. Vesper doesn’t care. I don’t care either.
“Where is Eos?” The question wrenches from my chest on a new wave of bile.
She isn’t here. Vesper made a deal with the sorcerer to drag me back to my cage, and her sister isn’t here.
I recall her words from only days ago as if they’ve been carved into my bones: If anything happens to my sister, I will kill you, Zephyra. Do you understand?
Vesper glares at me. Tears spill in violent rivulets down her cheeks, onto the stone, while the trident trembles in her grasp. “She’s dead, Zephyra. My sister… Eos is dead.”
She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.
“Ask me how,” she hisses. “Ask me how my sister died. Ask me whose fault it is.”
But I know the answer, and it fucking kills me. It shreds me into ribbons. It blisters from the inside out. Still, none of the pain can absolve me.
I am death.
Vesper’s voice quakes with fury, with grief and devastation.
“You shoved me onto my knife, Zephyra. I couldn’t fight the guards.
I was useless. Eos tried to bandage my wrist with a shorn sleeve while Stavros attacked the guards who charged below, but it took too long.
He was on his own, and I was weak, and Eos—she hurt her shoulder getting through that vent.
She didn’t want to tell us, but Stavros and I could see it.
He swept Eos into his arms. He ran up the stairs with her to flee, and I was behind them, but I was slow because of my foot, and—and there were other guards up there.
Waiting. Too many. Stavros knew it. He set Eos down, moved in front of her to fight again, but they swarmed.
And Eos—she glanced back at me. I was still in the dark stairwell.
She was in the open. She knew she didn’t stand a chance, so she… she…”
Vesper sobs so hard, she can’t finish the sentence. I almost can’t bring myself to do so either, but this is my fault. All my fucking fault.
“She closed the tomb. She hid you in the dark while the guards took her and Stavros,” I say.
“No.” Vesper fists the trident in both hands, and a ray of pure, effervescent bronze shoots at me.
Again, again, again. I dodge each blow, ducking, tripping, whirling.
“She closed the tomb. She hid me in the dark. And then they slaughtered her. The guards didn’t ask questions.
The guards didn’t imprison her. The guards grabbed her by her silver hair, and they slit her throat.
She screamed for me, Zephyra. Her last words—screaming my name.
All while I was in the fucking dark because you ran. ”
I press a hand to my stomach.
I’m going to vomit.
Of course they didn’t ask questions—we robbed Mortem’s Temple days after merrow murdered their way through the palace.
They didn’t even care to check that her hair was silver instead of mortal gray or white.
They slaughtered Eos. Youthful Eos with her melodic laugh, and her pretty blue eyes, and her gentle grin.
Eos, who believed in me. Eos, who fed the mice in her tent and named butterflies and picked flowers.
She died.
Vesper snarls. “The only reason I survived is because Stavros told them another mermaid was with us. He kept his wits even though he was up there with… with her. He gave them your name. He lured them away so I could escape.” She looks at me—through me. “They should have fucking gutted you.”
“You made a deal for your sister,” I breathe. “You made a deal to bring her back to life. Didn’t you?”
She doesn’t so much as blink. “Your soul for hers. More than a fair trade.”
Goddess, no. “He’s not going to do it, Vesper. His deals are traps. He’s a liar. He’s—he’s a monster.”
“I don’t care,” she spits. “Eos is dead, and you… you deserve so much worse.” The trident explodes once more, only this time, I don’t move fast enough.
Brilliant light hits me in the chest. Right over my heart.
It ruptures my skin, flaying through multiple layers with indescribable heat as blood spills down my belly.
I clutch the wound. Try to staunch it with my fist.
There’s nothing I can say to help. To repair the missing pieces of her soul.
And she’s made a deal with a monster.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur as blood seeps through my fingers and trickles over my skin. “I’m really fucking sorry.”
Then, faster than she can expect it, I dart around her and dive through the entrance. Into the ocean.
Vesper roars. Water splashes behind me, but I don’t pay attention to it. My legs transform into a tail, my scales glittering as magic pools warmth in my veins. I don’t bury my power any longer. I unleash it with full force.
The sorcerer has already found me.
Liquid moonlight flows through me, connecting me to the very waters cascading over my head. I am not just a mermaid. I am every drop of water in every sea. I am the riptide. I am the salt and the silt. I am the ocean.
Breathing harshly through my gills, I reach out a hand and pull.
The sea obeys instantly. It rushes toward me in an underwater tidal wave, propelling me forward on its back.
Faster and faster. Farther and farther. The only way out is through Arion—through the skies.
He’ll be bleeding now. He’ll have to find me.
Won’t he? I grip the bond tight, following it desperately as I swim for my life.