Chapter Twenty-Three Arion
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ARION
Terror scorches through the cord. Blood curdles on my tongue.
She’s dying. Zephyra is dying.
Crimson seeps into the now-bubbling sea, until the whole of it tastes bitter, wrong, and I search the vicious current for the cord—for her. Silver flashes between underwater whitecap waves, and I follow it. My wings slice through the Sel. I do not think and I do not feel; I swim. I hunt.
Years of instinct and experience hone into a deadly weapon.
Every muscle in my body tenses. Strong. Powerful.
Magic crackles inside me—begging to be freed, begging to demolish the sea just as it did the isle until I find her, save her—even as my heart hammers weakly.
Each sluggish pulse sounds like her name: Zephyra. Zephyra.
Zephyra.
I whirl in the treacherous depths, searching for any sign of pink. Turquoise. A flash of iridescent scales or the pearl white of her shark-tooth smile. But there is nothing. Just bubbles. Waves. And our cord.
Where the fuck is she?
She’s bleeding. I’m bleeding. The Sel tastes like death, and she’s—she’s—
There.
An explosion of bubbles almost hides the long strands of pink from my view. It’s moving. She’s moving. I tug on the cord, trying to guide her to safety, trying to guide her back to me, but her tail propels her forward.
She’s swimming away from me. Even though I’m here, and her chest is bleeding, and she’s terrified.
I wrap the silvered cord around my hand, leveraging both of us closer with each new tangle. I don’t understand what’s happening. All I know is Zephyra is here, and I need to save her. I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I reel her in faster.
The bubbles burst as she nears, finally exposing her as I force her closer still. Her gaze clashes with mine, wild and distressed. “Let go of me! Arion, you don’t understand—” The last ends on a guttural scream, her voice shattering from a sudden explosion of pain.
Not her pain.
My pain.
Something heavy smashes into my left wing, nearly wrenching it out of my shoulder blade from the awkward angle of impact.
My scapula tears, and it’s as if a gnarled claw has latched on to the bone.
Ripping, tearing, shredding it. My wings shudder in palpable anguish.
I swallow a roar. But Zephyra—she screams, buckles, and careens toward the bottom of the sea. Her back bows in torment.
“Warlock,” a strange, melodic voice hisses.
Ignoring the agony, forcing myself to grit my teeth and bear it, I twist to find the assailant.
A silver-haired mermaid with ebony skin and murderous midnight eyes brandishes a bronze trident behind me.
Her gaze locks on to my wings and narrows, then shifts to my legs.
With a scowl, she reaffixes her grip on the weapon.
“Human,” she announces—as if this is a revelation. As if this somehow changes things.
But I am more warlock than man.
I roll my shoulders back, testing the pain and movement of my wings.
They respond with a sharp tug. Still attached, but furious now.
The mermaid raises her trident as if to strike again, to impale me through the chest this time, but my left wing shoots out first. A collision that reverberates through the waters as the bone smacks into her weapon.
She clings to it, even though the rough impact sends her tumbling tail over head.
Not allowing her a single moment to steady herself, I force another burst of lethal magic from the palm of my hand.
Concentrated lightning erupts through the water.
It crackles electricity up the handle of her trident.
The silver-haired mermaid releases her weapon with a hiss.
It’s worth it. Worth the blackened veins whorling down my thigh now.
“Zephyra.” I wrap a hand around the cord and pull her back to me, not daring to tear my gaze from the silver-haired demon. “Are you okay?”
She manages to rise beside me with the trident in hand, her tail flicking desperately, her pink hair rippling behind us, around us, as if made of coils upon coils of vengeful snakes.
“Can you expend any more magic? My chest…” She doesn’t need to finish the thought.
My gaze slides to her matching wound. It continues to spill blood as her face pales.
I stitch her wound shut with my magic, and mine closes as well.
The cost instantly seizes my lungs. Rips nails through my gills. Breathing is almost impossible now, but at least we won’t bleed out while I figure out what the fuck is going on.
“Friend of yours?” I ask, recalling the words Zephyra spoke when we faced the cult. The cult—far scarier than one merrow. If this mermaid is Zephyra’s big, bad enemy of the sea, we should be fine.
“No,” Zephyra murmurs. “No, she’s not.”
But something in her voice is unusual. There’s a jagged edge to it, reminiscent of a lie.
Before I can ask anything else, Gavriall swims toward us, his sword lost and his chest stained with blood. Useless. I place a protective hand on Zephyra’s back and take the trident. I can’t risk using more magic. Not right now. It could kill me. Kill us.
The silver-haired mermaid glowers at the three of us. Upright again, her hands curl into fists, and her tail whips furiously in the sea. “Good to see you’ve taken a lover while the rest of us have been dying for your crimes.”
Zephyra stiffens, and undiluted sorrow passes through our bond. “It’s not like that—”
“Shut up,” the mermaid hisses. “Go on. Sic your hound on me.” Her navy gaze flicks to me, and she beckons me forward with two fingers. “Do your worst, warlock. I dare you.”
“Vesper.” Zephyra wraps a hand around my bicep. It’s not affectionate, however; it’s to buy this mermaid—Vesper—time to escape. For some reason, Zephyra is holding me back. “Don’t—don’t make us fight you.”
“She tried to kill you,” I growl. There is no one else around. No other explanation for Zephyra’s injury and the shallow cut along Gavriall’s throat. “What the fuck is going on?”
Zephyra ignores me entirely. “Listen to me, Vesper. Go far away. He can’t reach you on land. Hide. In a few years, he’ll forget about you, and—”
“And what?” Vesper snaps. “No, Zephyra. This is it. This is all I have left.”
They’re stalling. Neither moves, each watching the other, bracing for the first sign of action. But they’re wasting time, and I could have skewered this mermaid by now.
“You don’t even have a weapon,” Zephyra pleads with her.
The silver mermaid rolls her eyes at that. “I don’t need one.”
Zephyra’s eyes widen. Cursing, she darts in front of me, just as Vesper opens her mouth to sing. “Cover your ears! Don’t listen to her! Don’t let the sound in—”
It’s too late.
Her words fall away as Vesper’s crooning melody silences the very sea around us.
The waters still as if listening. For a split second, I realize what’s about to happen—Vesper must be a siren, just like the merrow I slaughtered in the king’s garden.
I silenced them easily enough then, with my magic, but now—
Vesper’s form blurs. She quakes, an aura like radiating moonlight fracturing her silhouette into three, four, five, as she continues to sing.
It’s beautiful. The sweetest sound on earth.
I’ve… never heard anything like it. My bones snap to attention, even as my wings try to tug and pull me away from the brilliant noise.
It’s piercing. Eerie. Stunningly haunting—a canvas of brutal memories painted in shades of gold.
I think of my father—of broken skulls and blood.
And I’m lost.
“Arion,” Zephyra whispers, tugging on my arm, but I can’t hear her.
I can’t feel her. There is only the silver-haired mermaid and her celestial song.
Zephyra pulls at the water, and the waves respond in kind; they lash at my cheeks, my arms, trying to drag my body toward hers.
“Look at me, warlock. Listen to my voice, not hers. Vesper’s enchanting you. It’s not real. None of this is real.”
Vesper. Her name sends a shiver up my spine, and her song melts the blood in my veins. Vesper.
She swims closer, a smile beaming wide on her trembling frame. She sings and sings, and she’s gorgeous. The sight of her fills my chest with warmth, with deep and unending satisfaction, until she is all that exists. I would do anything for her. I want to please her.
I want to make her happy forever.
Snarling, Zephyra thrusts her hands outward, and the ocean harpoons toward Vesper, colliding with her chin and snapping her face backward.
“Stop, Vesper.” When she continues to sing, her face luminous—incandescent—Zephyra whips the water around her wrists, shackling her outstretched arms. Debilitating her.
“This isn’t a fight you want. It’s not even a fight I want, but you’re giving me no choice. I will never go back.”
Vesper’s voice rises in answer, and every thought in my head vanishes except—anger.
Fury. The pink-haired merrow just threatened the reason for my existence, and she must pay.
I thrust the trident toward her throat. She rears backward, just out of reach, and a rip current slams into my hand.
It tears the trident from my fingers. “Goddess-damn it, Arion—”
I surge forward, but again, she dances just out of reach.
Until I seize her tail. Vesper’s song continues as I drag her toward me, one hand already reaching for her throat.
Though she thrashes—makes the water thrash as well—pummeling every inch of me, I do not release her. I cannot release her. She must pay.
She must pay. She must pay. She must pay.
“Arion,” Zephyra gasps, her nails raking against my wrist. My wings battle to help her. “Let me—go—”
Her tail strikes my side. Hard. My grip on her throat slips, and that tail leverages itself between us, propelling me away again.
Toward Vesper. “You know, I heard about the terrors of warlocks in Crestfall. I feared them on the streets. But he doesn’t seem so frightening now.
” She reaches out to stroke a feather, and somehow…
somehow her song still pierces my ears. It’s all I hear, taste, feel.
I want to live in this moment until the day I die.
I am hers. I am—“All men fall the same,” she whispers.
And Zephyra screams.
Another man swims up behind Zephyra, unnoticed, and wraps a hand around her hair, pulling her against his chest. Distantly, I recognize his dark hair, his tawny skin.
Gavriall. “We are ready now,” he tells Vesper, even as the water churns around them.
Even as it smashes against him, again and again, like a battering ram.
Ignoring it all, he carries the pink mermaid forward.
Vesper smiles, and that smile—hard and sharp and beautiful.
It cuts through the water like a ray of moonlight.
“Vesper, please.” Zephyra strains in earnest now. “The three of us—we’re searching for something. Something much realer than anything the sorcerer can give you. He won’t bring Eos back, but maybe we can. Come—come with us. Stop this. Please.”
Vesper winces at the sound of Eos’s name. Then—“No.” She wrenches Zephyra away from Gavriall, her fingernails biting deep. Her silver hair rippling as she shakes her head fiercely. “You’ve already dug your grave. Now it’s time to lie in it—”
Her voice breaks off as thunder crackles through the deep. Her sweet song fades. In unison, we all look down, and a shadow emerges from the seafloor.
A shadow larger than a warship, with eight massive tentacles and a blackened eyeball roaring with red flames.
My thoughts return the moment it slams down one of those tentacles.
Time seems to stop. The current too, and we float, suspended, for the span of a single heartbeat.
In that heartbeat, I realize a few things at once.
One, I have been lured by a fucking siren song. Two, Zephyra has been captured, and three, a giant fucking squid is unfurling below us, its orange tentacles already reaching, reaching, curling around Vesper’s tail. Zephyra’s tail. In that heartbeat, her eyes dart to mine, and I know I’m too late.
Before I can even blink, it rips them away.