Chapter Twenty-Nine Zephyra #2
His gaze sears through mine. “I don’t know, Zephyra. Maybe it was almost dying, maybe it was committing treason against my kingdom, or maybe—maybe it’s you. But the world doesn’t seem so stark anymore, and I’m no longer certain if I’m the hero or the villain.”
Maybe it’s you.
I swallow hard as he glances down at my tail.
My scales. He continues grimly, “They tell us merrow eat children. I have seen merrow enchant and slaughter their way through a palace. I have fought merrow armies on the coast. But I’ve also—” He growls.
A low rumble of frustration. “I’ve seen the same depravity in humankind.
I’ve fought men, their armies, their murderers.
Just as I’ve felt your emotions. Every hour of every day, you feel so much.
It’s seeping into me. Plaguing me.” He looks at me, and it’s as if he’s seeing me for the first time.
As if he’s no longer afraid to keep looking.
“You’ve cracked me open, Zephyra. Whatever the Trials did to me, you’ve undone it. You have undone me.”
Heat blooms across my cheeks, and I don’t know what to say. How to say it. Not when so much of me is irreparably broken.
“Don’t respond,” he hastens to say. “That’s not why I said it.
I just wanted you to know, even though I’ve seen the darkest parts of your soul, I’ve also seen the light.
I’ve admired your light.” He cups my cheek, and his thumb traces my lips almost reverently.
“Something in the Syl terrifies you, and if you want to talk about it—I’m here.
We’re in this together. My darkness can be your darkness. Your light can be my light.”
For some reason, we’re in this together shatters me. It cradles my secrets in tender hands before hurling them against the wall. Obliterating them into a million wretched pieces. Arion moves to pull away, but I clutch his wrist, and he stills. He listens.
So I tell him. About all of it.
I tell him about the boy named Jacin. I tell him about the deal I made with a wicked sorcerer.
I tell him how it ended: with shackles on my wrists, the sorcerer dragging me through the deepest part of the ocean before locking me up behind his castle walls.
I tell him about the pitch darkness that lasted for days, months, and about starving, crying, banging on that amber window and pleading for help.
I tell him everything—except how I escaped. Because I’m not ready. Not yet.
I don’t want him to look at me differently. I don’t want the softness of his gaze to harden again.
Throughout it all, Arion doesn’t respond.
However, he does pull me into his arms. He holds me, brushing gentle fingers through my hair when I mention how the sorcerer used to braid it too tight.
Used to sit me on his lap and tear at my scalp in front of an audience of his own servants.
Used to laugh and lick up my tears whenever they fell.
Arion keeps holding me, even after I’m done.
And then he apologizes, over and over again, as the silvered cord tangles around our chests and knots us together.
Together.
It’s a strange concept. I’m so used to being alone.
But Arion is here, and he doesn’t flinch away from any of it.
From any of me. “I was weak,” I admit finally, leaning against his chest and counting the rhythmic beats of his heart.
“He made me weak. He made me hate myself. That’s the worst part—escaping and feeling like…
like a coward. If I could have handled it, just taken it silently, I could have survived it.
” My voice cracks with repressed pain. “Sometimes I think my misery was my own fault.”
He turns my cheek so I look at him. Unbridled fury lights up his gaze. “No. Zephyra—no.”
“It was my deal. My bargain. The consequences were my own to bear.”
“Fuck that. It’s bullshit, and you know it. Do you know how long the Warlock Trials lasted? Two years. Two.” He shakes his head as if he can’t quite comprehend it. “Eight fucking years. Zephyra, your survival was a gods-damned miracle.”
That same warmth—just warmth—suffuses my bones.
My tail dries of all remaining salt water then.
In an instant, my scales transform back into flesh.
My tail splits into two golden legs. Arion glances at it, at me, with wide eyes, seemingly mesmerized.
Which feels impossible. Maybe even more impossible than the dryads, than blowing up an isle, than giant squids and sky ships.
“I see your light too,” I manage breathlessly.
“You’re not all bad.” His gaze slips back to mine, and heat flares through the cord.
Too much. Too heady. “For a warlock,” I add quickly, before we can do anything we regret.
We’ve not even had a chance to speak about our intimacy.
And I can’t bring myself to question it now.
Not when he’s holding me, when I can count his heartbeats, when I finally—after nearly a decade—feel safe.
“You’re not all bad either, mermaid.” He brushes a soft kiss along my temple, and my heart thunders erratically. He withdraws an inch. Allows me the space to slide away in hopes of clearing my head. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. My mind whirls, and not just because of the sorcerer.
“What do you want to do?” Arion asks.
I stare at him, dazed. “About which part? Traveling to my doom, or us—a mermaid and a warlock—becoming friends?”
A smirk curves his lips. Sunshine bright and devastating. My throat constricts at the sight. Goddess, he’s going to be the death of me.
“Traveling to your doom,” he says.
“Because being my friend comes so naturally to you?”
He rolls his eyes. “We aren’t friends, Zephyra, and you know that.”
Fuck. Lust ripples through the cord. Mine.
His. It thickens the tension in the centimeters between us.
I want nothing more than to crawl toward him, to kiss him, to burn with him—but I ignore it.
I have to ignore it. Everything I hold dear is at stake now.
My freedom. My secrets. Our lives. “Well, it seems like we have no choice, right? You need the heart, or we die. And the heart is… it’s somewhere around the Sceleratus Trench.
The magic evil skull all but confirmed it. ”
“And you’re fine with that?”
I could lie to him. But I don’t. “No, I’m not. I just don’t see a way around it.”
He thinks for a moment, his expression darkening.
A muscle works in his jaw as he grinds his teeth, and his hand curls into a fist at the small of my back.
“What if you wait on the ship and we go without you? Amaya’s crew—her soldiers—are going to help us.
She wants treasure and proof of the ruins. ”
“And you trust her not to want the heart?”
“Of course not. But I won’t let her have it.”
He sounds so certain, so confident, that I have to laugh. “I don’t want to wait on the ship. I don’t trust anyone else either. It’s… strange that so many people have managed to find us.”
He nods in agreement. “You think that’s the sorcerer’s doing?”
“Partially. And maybe the cult’s too. We wouldn’t have such a large audience if we weren’t on the verge of a major discovery.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he says.
“But it’s the only way.”
“It’s the only way,” he echoes.
A sickening flash of that adamant castle streaks through my mind’s eye, and I think I might puke again. But Arion takes my hand. He twines his fingers with mine. “Are you sure, Zephyra?”
Perhaps it does make me weak. Perhaps I am as irrevocably broken as I believe. Because I can’t stop myself from asking, “You’ll be with me? The whole time?”
“Yes.” He lifts our hands and sweeps his lips over my knuckles. A warlock. My warlock. “I’ll be there. Right beside you. Whatever you need, Zephyra,” he vows roughly, “I’ll do it. Be it.”
“Okay, warlock,” I say, and then I take a deep breath. “Okay.”
For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel quite so afraid.
For the first time in a long time, I am not alone.