Chapter Twenty-Four Zephyra
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ZEPHYRA
This day can’t get any worse.
My organs contract painfully as a giant fucking squid crushes Vesper and me in its monstrous grasp.
I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. Nor can Vesper.
She claws at the tentacle, her nails shredding its slimy flesh to no avail.
We’re simply too small to hurt a creature so grotesquely large.
What we need is a weapon. Twirling a finger in the sea, I conjure a weak maelstrom.
Too weak. It won’t damage the squid; it won’t force it to release us, but—
“Aecorian,” Vesper spits through gritted teeth, realizing exactly what type of merrow I am. Our foreheads collide as the squid whips us up and down and all around, and stars erupt in my eyes. “Maybe try—actually—helping—”
“I am.” Through the center of the maelstrom, her trident rises. Desperately, I stretch my fingers toward the hilt, but they barely brush the bronze. “Can’t—reach—”
The squid hurls its tentacle—hurls us—toward the seafloor then, so fast the world blurs into a vicious haze of blue.
The violence of the movement, the sheer force behind it, loosens my grip on the waters, and the trident sinks out of view.
Fuck me. We’re seconds from impact. Seconds from our heads splattering against sharp beds of coral and rock.
Vesper claws and claws and claws, her tail battering the tentacle, but it’s useless.
“Do something!” she yells.
I try futilely to pull my hand through the sea, but there is nothing—nothing—to grab when I can’t focus or think or even see beyond the vague blue of deep waters and dark brown of Vesper’s skin.
So I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing that makes sense before being bludgeoned to death by a giant squid.
I twist. Rear back. And chomp down on a tentacle.
I bite it hard.
Bitter blood fills my mouth first, then chunks of its slimy flesh.
I don’t stop biting it, digging my fingers into the gashes and pulling.
Shredding. The squid shrieks, the excruciating sound like two swords clashing, metal on metal as its gargantuan mouth opens and roars.
The tentacle capturing us loosens. Flails.
Vesper and I tumble from its grasp, but our victory is short-lived.
It catches us in another tentacle, and I’ve had enough.
“ARION!” I scream his name, furious, as another tentacle rears into view.
This one has coiled around Gavriall’s leg, and he flails through the water, screaming even louder than I do.
Beside me, Vesper spits out a chunk of the squid’s flesh and snarls, “Shut the fuck up and bite!”
So I do.
The squid writhes and twists, but it doesn’t release us this time.
It doesn’t try to bludgeon us either. Instead, it furls our tentacle toward its great, gaping mouth, and all I see are teeth.
Rows and rows of teeth. And—“It’s going to eat us.
” The words tear from my throat on another scream.
Where is Arion? I don’t see him in the tentacles, don’t see him anywhere, and the cord has tangled around the squid too.
Squidshit. This is all squidshit, and if I die being masticated by a giant beast, at least I can take solace in the fact that the warlock will too.
Still, I thrash wildly as Gavriall passes by us again, shouting, “Hang in there!”
“Fuck you!” Vesper calls back.
And the teeth are drawing closer, closer—
A flash of bronze. Of white-and-gold wings as Arion hurtles past with the trident, spearing the tentacle around my waist. The squid shrieks again and releases us.
Arion snatches my wrist before it can recover, pulling me away from it.
Behind him. Leaving Vesper alone near the eye of the squid.
She hisses a curse as it reaches for her again and darts toward us, dodging tentacles, as Arion and I dodge them too.
We flounder in the current until I reach out and seize the sea.
Until I pull and twist the water, tangling the tentacles as best I can while Arion stabs everything in reach.
It isn’t enough. There are simply too many.
It is simply too big, too strong, and it’s about to eat Gavriall now.
“A little help, please!” He strains away from its teeth, desperately trying to swim away as the tentacle winds higher up his thigh. When it brings his head to its mouth, he leverages his other foot against its face, still straining. “I feel like a fucking turkey leg! Someone do something—”
And as if Vila herself is listening, a bolt of lightning cleaves the water.
No. It cleaves the squid. I recoil instinctively as Arion rips me back against his chest and whirls, shielding us from the burst of brilliant white light.
When I turn to look over his shoulder, the squid has stopped trying to eat Gavriall, who frantically pushes its tentacle from his leg.
Its entire body shudders. It pulses once, twice, before it explodes.
Viscera and ink burst in every direction, staining the waters blue and black. Engulfing Gavriall in a cloud of gore. Though he gags and kicks away, it follows him in tendrils as he swims toward us. “I am very much regretting my decision to follow you.”
Arion’s deep voice rumbles through my back. “Good. Feel free to leave.”
I spin in his arms, my eyes darting to the veins in his chest. My fingers tracing them, panicked, because—he just expended a huge amount of magic.
Again. “Are you trying to kill us?” My nails bite into his shoulders, and I resist the urge to shake him.
“I thought we discussed no more decimation. You don’t have enough left—”
“That wasn’t me.”
His voice is terse, and his eyes dart to the surface as my lungs constrict.
That wasn’t me. But that can’t be true. I shake my head, staring up at him.
It must’ve been Arion; his magic reacted instinctively in a life-or-death situation, and he just hasn’t realized it yet.
The veins on his chest, however… they haven’t spread.
They aren’t moving the way they normally do after he uses magic.
And that fist around my lungs clenches tighter.
Because if Arion didn’t send that supernatural bolt of lightning to the bottom of the ocean—
Someone else did.
Someone powerful.
My panic spikes to unbridled fear, and I glance at Vesper. “What did you do?”
For once, her expression mirrors my own. Her eyes wide. Her body tense. “It wasn’t me either, Zephyra.”
“Then someone else? Did he send someone else?”
“I don’t know.”
The words land between us like stones, and Arion’s fingers touch my chin, lifting it gently. My gaze follows his to the surface, where another shadow slips into view. Not a giant squid this time, but equally large. Equally ominous.
A ship.
Despite Gavriall’s sharp intake of breath, relief suffuses my chest. It loosens that fist around my lungs. Not the sorcerer.
“We need to move,” Arion says. “Now.”
Gripping my elbow, he spins me around, but this is the Sel.
We aren’t near a colony, or a mine, or even the palace.
We’re in open fucking ocean. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and before we can even consider another option, something sharp breaks the surface of the water.
It bolts toward us with impossible speed, expanding rapidly.
Though Arion thrusts me forward, it’s too late.
A colossal net drops over us, its weighted corners catching, snarling our limbs. It hooks Arion’s wings, my tail, Vesper’s too, even Gavriall’s fucking foot, before reeling us toward the surface.
Well. I was wrong.
This day definitely just got worse.