Chapter Thirty-Four Arion
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ARION
Before us, the castle rises. Exactly as Zephyra described it.
The drained seafloor groans under my boots as I stare up in unadulterated loathing.
Spires blackened and twisted, its windows glow with an eerie amber light that pulses like a heartbeat.
Even without the sea to cradle it, the structure feels alive.
It feels like magic. And I want to fucking incinerate it.
The pain in my shoulder blades sharpens at the sight, a serrated throb building along the joints where my wings twist and jerk forward.
The pain has never truly ceased in all my years of carrying them, but here—as magic coils through the air like a heady toxin—it seems to gnaw deeper. My wings pull harder.
Abysses.
The fabled ruins must be close. It must be… responding to the magic in my veins in some way. This is exactly the proof I was hoping for. But I can’t celebrate or bring myself to tell the others.
It looks exactly as Zephyra described it.
Her story racks through me, harder than when she first shared it.
I had no idea what she’d gone through. I had no idea a demon—a true demon—like the sorcerer existed at all.
I was meant to dedicate my life to scourging rot, but I failed.
Because here it really is. Thousands of feet below the sea.
Worse than anything on land. I want to raze it to the fucking ground.
I hope he comes. Once I’ve procured the heart and saved Zephyra, I hope the sorcerer returns and I can make him feel every ounce of torment he put her through.
I will make him bleed. Not for eight years—for a hundred.
I touch the silvered cord and find Zephyra is doing the same.
Across from me, her face flushes pink, her gaze traveling up, up, up to take in the impossible height of the tallest tower.
She gulps, her throat bobbing uneasily as she shuffles a minuscule step forward.
Anguish rings her eyes in the shade of plum bruises.
For her, I want to destroy it. All of it.
But I can’t. Not yet, at least.
“It’s massive,” one of Amaya’s soldiers says.
“Never seen anything like it,” another agrees.
“Wretched.” Amaya shakes her head as if she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing, a rough brown tricorn hat dipping low on her hairline. “There is power here. I can feel it singing to my blood.”
An ominous moan rises from the ground at the last, and Zephyra’s gaze snaps to the garden ahead. She points a sapphire dagger toward it. “Careful what you touch. The coral venom will paralyze your muscles. You’ll decay here. Forever.”
A labyrinth of coral reefs twists through the sand around the castle, its colors so vivid, so neon, they almost distract from their lethality.
Almost. Bones tangle in the maze, stripped of flesh and gnarled in knots.
They howl like wolves, ghastly voices haunting empty, open air. Cursed. Definitely cursed.
Zephyra tears her eyes from the mangled skeleton of a child-sized body.
I wonder what she’s thinking, remembering.
I wish I could take her hand and make this better.
But I know I can’t. What she’s going through right now…
it’s unimaginable. It makes what I went through with Cultus Mortis seem so minuscule, and—no.
That’s not fair. To either of us. Still, anger pulses through me: pure, effervescent rage blooming in my chest. Because I want to fix this. I want to help her. And I can’t.
What is the point of being a warlock if I’m so gods-damned helpless?
“It’s not as loud inside,” Zephyra says finally. She sets her chin and rolls her shoulders back as if she refuses to let her fear win. “Hurry up. We need to be quick about… all of this.”
“Fantastic.” Gavriall carries a sword close to his chest as he studies the coral moat with a deep-set scowl on his tawny face. “You forgot to mention this shit.”
Zephyra rolls her eyes. “Step over it, historian. Don’t fall. You’ll be fine.” She carries on without looking back, though her grasp doesn’t leave the cord. I focus on it, on the dim silver bond, trying to feel her through it. To carry some of her emotions. But there is… nothing.
Almost as if the magic of the castle is smothering it somehow.
Being here, in this moment, is everything I have ever wanted, and absolutely nothing I could have planned for.
Vesper huffs, grabbing my sleeve and dragging me away from a fat pink caterpillar. It rears back and hisses through razor-sharp teeth. “Mind the salt-leeches. They drink blood.”
“Of course they do.” Gavriall glares at me rather than the siren.
As if this is my fault. As if he didn’t follow me here of his own accord.
“Anything else you merrow want to tell us? Or you, skull?” Gavriall turns around to face one of Amaya’s infantry—Carmen—who carries Queen Emilia on a velvet pillow.
The skull chatters merrily. “Blood and gore and gore and blood. Soon your bones into mud. You will die, and he will die, and she will die, and so will all. Go forth, dearie, and do go fast. Your life simply cannot last.”
Gavriall grumbles to himself. “I don’t know why I bothered.”
We move forward, through the coral, over the cursed skeletons and moaning bones, lifting our legs with slow precision to avoid the deadly reef.
Amaya’s soldiers have clearly trained for all sorts of combat, their movements exact and strong, even compared with that of the mermaids.
Zephyra holds her breath the whole way. Vesper holds her arms out for balance.
My wings splay out behind me, straight as an arrow, careful to avoid the mess of the ground.
And Gavriall—he’s doing the best he can with his long, lean limbs.
Down here, he looks more like a beanstalk than a man.
Flailing and wavering with every movement.
But even he makes it across without hurting himself.
It takes several minutes of maneuvering and tiptoeing, but eventually we all make it. A disjointed unit, but a unit nonetheless.
My magic pings around my chest, as if searching—no, fighting—for a way out. Desperate to connect with the dark powers of the trench. I follow that feeling forward. Straight to the doors of Zephyra’s worst nightmare. And instantly, I know it will lead me wherever we need to go.
It will lead me to Abysses. Perhaps even to the heart.
Gods, I need that fucking heart.
Strangely—my lungs constrict, airflow tight in my chest—I’m not even sure why I want it anymore. To survive, yes. To save our lives. But afterward… after this…
I glance at Zephyra, at her pink lips and pinker hair and sparkling turquoise eyes.
I glance at her trembling hands and her tight jaw.
I recall the last few nights of whispering secrets and dreams to each other, of falling asleep with her in my arms, and it felt so…
so fucking right. Righter than anything I’ve done in my life.
In Tower Arcana, there were glimpses of what I assumed to be happiness.
Moments where I would single-handedly win battles for the king, apprehend the most criminals, slaughter murderers.
Moments where I felt I was serving a higher purpose.
Moments where I was told I might become the greatest warlock in the history of the world. But that wasn’t happiness.
I wrap the silvered cord around my finger, and Zephyra turns to meet my eyes. Her brows pinch.
Happiness isn’t blood on my hands. It’s Zephyra. It’s her laughter, and her moans, and her whispers, and her breath in my ear as she snores softly with her arms wrapped around my middle. It’s her hopes and dreams and even her fits of rage and her infuriating attitude.
Around her, I feel human again. I feel… alive.
After this, I’m hers.
Maybe I’ve always been hers. From that moment she grabbed my wrist and threw my ass on the ground.
I was just too stubborn—too stupid, too apathetic, too fucking ignorant—to notice.
Not anymore. I’ll unbury Mortem’s heart, I’ll use it to save us, and then I’ll use it to take us wherever she wants.
Anywhere in the world. So long as we’re together, we can figure out the rest later.
Listening to the pounding in my veins, the magic roaring in my bones, I tear my gaze from hers and force myself to look up at the mountain-sized double doors.
Adamant and solid, not an embellishment in sight, save for the bioluminescent crustaceans embedded in the jagged stone.
Two knockers hang in the center of the doors—megalodon heads with broken, swinging jaws—though there isn’t a handle in sight.
Amaya tilts her head, examining them, seeking a way in when a soldier steps forward to touch the door.
“Don’t,” I command. “We don’t know the exact sort of alarm or security he’ll have in place.”
“We don’t even know if he’s gone,” Zephyra snarls, her frustration and anxiety boiling over. I don’t even need the bond to feel it. To see it.
“So what do you expect us to do, Warlock Stone?” Amaya asks. “Stand around here and stare at the damn things?”
I wish I had an answer for the princess, but as I stare at the megalodon skulls, my mind empties.
Zephyra can’t stand to look at them. She focuses instead on her feet.
Vesper sidles closer to the very mermaid she tried to kill days ago, and Gavriall shivers in his boots.
This situation is bad. We need to be smart about this.
We need a way in that doesn’t disrupt or trigger anything.
“Oh, just pull on the knockers,” Amaya says. “This is why we’re here.”
“I’m not so sure,” Gavriall begins uneasily.
But the doors burst open before he can finish.
Entirely silent—eerily so—they swing wide, nearly bludgeoning half Amaya’s crew in the process. Luckily, everyone manages to leap out of the way at the last second. Even luckier, no one emerges from the threshold.