Chapter Twenty-Seven Arion
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ARION
I am entirely uncertain as to why I have to carry this thing.” Gavriall huffs, descending to the ship’s lowest level as the stench of mildew and petrichor clings to our recently borrowed clothing. He raises a silver platter in his hands, the enchanted skull perched atop it happily chittering away.
“You will die, she will die, he will die—die, die.”
“Yes, we know,” Gavriall snaps. “You’ve said it a hundred times in the last hour. You may be the least inspired cursed skull I have ever had the displeasure of speaking to—”
The ship sways then. A little too far to the left.
I manage to steady myself, my wings anchoring me as my boots root to the floor, but Gavriall isn’t so lucky.
He trips over the corner of a hastily strewn violet rug, and the skull begins to careen off the platter.
She catches herself by snapping her jaws on the long sleeve of his new shirt.
Gavriall stares at the dangling skull. Then he looks to the princess in front of us.
“There’s no chance she hasn’t torn through the linen, is there? ”
Amaya glances at him over her shoulder, her lips twisting into a rather indulgent feline smile. “Oh, you’ll be lucky if she hasn’t drawn blood.”
The skull peers up at Gavriall and, through clenched teeth, says, “I would say I’m sorry, but you rather taste of saury.”
Gavriall gasps. “Did she just—did she just compare the taste of me to that of a fish?”
The princess simply says, “Yes.”
He tries to buck the skull from his shirt, only managing to tear the linen more in the process. Sighing, I peel the cursed queen off him before passing her to Amaya. Gavriall seethes. But I can’t bring myself to care.
The silvered cord ripples in front of me, tautening as it leads deeper and deeper into the ship. Zephyra is near. And I’m not stopping to listen to another round of fucking bickering. It’s been hours. Hours since I woke up on that bed. Hours since Amaya began talking and talking and talking.
Half the time, I wasn’t even listening.
The cord glows like moonlight, even though I still can’t feel Zephyra. I can’t feel her, sense her, smell her—anything. The absence knots tension up my spine until my muscles begin to ache. Bruise. Nothing else matters. I need to find her.
Princess Amaya Frost leads us past the cargo hold.
She ignores Gavriall’s complaints when the ship pitches right and a barrel of half-molded oranges tips over in our path.
We maneuver around a hall of baskets and tanks of floating crustaceans, until finally—finally—the princess swings open a creaking door and beckons us inside the brig.
My wings brush against crooked walls, feathers bristling with instant disgust. Blood stains the floorboards. An empty row of cages lines the leftmost wall. It is wet. It is scant. It is just about the same as any other prison I’ve ever seen.
Glass-blown lanterns flicker orange flames, casting long shadows on the dark floor, and I recall a dozen nightmares from my youth. Locked up. Maimed. Tortured by the Death Lord. My jaw clenches. I shoulder past the others.
I just need to find my fucking mermaid.
The cord, however, does not lead to her. It does not lead to anything. Silver passes through a thick wall of fog across from the cages, as if traveling through the very sides of the ship.
As if Zephyra is gone.
Suddenly, I’m too tense. My composure frays like a rope stretched to its limit, and I whirl on the princess. “Where the fuck is my mermaid?”
Amaya blinks in confusion. She stares at a completely empty row of cells.
I crack my knuckles, and the princess raises two weapons in defense—a knife and that cursed skull.
But I don’t care. I’ll use the last of my magic to find Zephyra.
I can’t think of anything else. Just pink and turquoise and her.
The cord lures me deeper into the room. Deeper.
“We had a deal,” I say darkly, the air charged as magic sears through my veins. “You would take us to the mermaids. We would tell you about our treasure.”
“I assure you; they are here.” Amaya glances around as if she’s simply misplaced a kitchen towel.
“They can’t have escaped. My soldiers outnumber you ten to one on this ship.
I—I…” The princess turns with a soft curse.
“Ericson? Maia?” Her voice cracks, and all her fury leaks through with the force of a sudden cyclone. “Where in Tempestas are they?”
At that, a groan sounds through the fog, and a man’s body tumbles from the wall of murky wet.
He hits the floor with a thud, his mouth agape and his head oozing blood.
Amaya stiffens, but I push closer, my wings stretching wide to prepare for an imminent attack.
I kneel down to examine the man, and it doesn’t take long to realize—it’s not blood.
It’s fruit. Watermelon juices trickle down his scalp, the pulp stuck to his short brown hair. Rinds litter the floor.
Someone incapacitated him with a gods-damned melon.
“What the—” Gavriall begins.
Before he can finish the curse, two other bodies leap out from behind the supernatural fog.
Pink hair flashes, then silver—but I don’t care.
I don’t care about the other mermaid. I only have eyes for Zephyra.
Pink and turquoise and her. The cord glows brighter, relaxes as my muscles ease, and just like that—
The bond between us returns in a wave of her emotions. It should nauseate me. Disorient me. But somehow… those messy, disastrous parts of her have begun to feel like home. And for the first time in hours, I can finally breathe again.
Zephyra charges forward, seizes the princess by her collar, and throws Amaya into the nearest barrel with a dagger pressed to her throat.
Before a single second can pass, Vesper begins to sing.
Another siren song. I don’t know to prepare for it.
I can’t cover my ears. But this one—it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect Gavriall either.
It only affects the princess.
Amaya doesn’t scream or struggle away from Zephyra’s blade. Her gray eyes simply widen, and her body sways softly to the haunting melody. “I… I love her,” Amaya murmurs instantly. “Please”—she bats thick lashes at Zephyra—“please let me go to her.”
“Have at it.” Zephyra releases Amaya, and the princess scurries toward Vesper like an eager hound.
Then Zephyra pivots. She sags against the barrel. And she looks at me.
Her gaze crashes into mine, her hand instinctively tangling with the cord. She exhales low, as if she’s been holding her breath since they stole us from the ocean. “I couldn’t feel you,” she says simply. Softly. “It was like you were—”
“Gone,” I finish for her. “It’s fine now. It’s okay.” My bones ache to close the distance between us, to feel her in my arms again. And that’s ridiculous. I know it is. I didn’t miss her. I was simply worried about dying. But I still can’t stop staring at her.
The last time I saw her—really, truly saw her—was in that cavern. The last time I heard her was breathy whimpers and whispered pleas. And then I left. I left her, and Vesper came, and then Amaya, and now…
I don’t know where that leaves us. I don’t know how to act.
I wonder if she can read my mind, or maybe she can just see the uncertainty written plainly on my face, because she grins.
A cocky, snarky little grin. Even though her gaze remains soft and concerned.
Even though her breaths remain shallow and unsure.
As if she’s doing us both a favor and allowing us a reprieve from the misery of our bond.
“Your mermaid, was it? Glad to know I was missed.”
Vesper groans. Gavriall does too.
“You two are insufferable,” Gavriall says. “All I do around you is—”
The skull happily chitters—“Die, die, die”—from where she rolled on the floor, and Gavriall glowers.
“Exactly.” He smooths back his hair into a knot at the base of his neck, a roguish lock falling much too expertly over his left eye.
He licks his fingers and strategically smooths the lock to a fine point, his gaze fixed on Vesper.
“So what now? We trust the siren to help us?”
Vesper’s dark gaze narrows on his face. “Would you prefer I fillet you?” She glances down at his shredded sleeve. “I’ll be quick about it.”
He forces his sleeves up past his elbows. “Will you? Because so far all you’ve managed is to enthrall the captain and a single guard. Meanwhile, there is an entire ship of others—”
“A single guard?” Vesper’s song pervades, an eerie echo even as she speaks, but it doesn’t burrow into my ears as it did before.
It sounds weaker. Softer. Perhaps because we are no longer in the sea.
Or perhaps because she isn’t aiming it at me.
Either way, she continues singing as she stalks over to the thick wall of fog where she rips out two, three, four more guards.
They tumble one after the next, each bludgeoned by a variety of melons.
I arch a brow at the sight. “Even with five guards knocked out, we need a plan. We are on Amaya’s ship.
We are surrounded by Tempest soldiers, and we’re soaring in the gods-damned clouds.
Unless Vesper can mind-control the entire legion into dropping us back off at sea, we can’t possibly escape unscathed. ”
Vesper glares daggers at me now. “I can’t mind-control an entire ship, warlock. So why don’t you try helping? Doesn’t King Constane suckle at your all-powerful breast?”
“I witnessed three sirens mutilate their way through an entire palace.”
“And thank goddess for them,” Vesper snaps without any arrogance at all, “but I’m not a trained warrior, and my powers aren’t quite so capable.”
Zephyra slides between Vesper and me. “Okay, okay. Arguing isn’t going to help us escape.” To me, she says, “Vesper and I were plotting to break out of the brig, but she wasn’t sure how much of her song she would be able to use and my powers—aecorian powers—are void unless I’ve touched the sea.