Chapter Thirty-Four Arion #2
“What the fuck?” Vesper breathes hard, gripping the bloodstain on her thigh and staring into the pitch darkness of the castle’s vast entrance.
“Is he here?” Gavriall asks in a rush. “Do you think this means the sorcerer is inside?”
“I’m sure he would lock them if he weren’t home,” Carmen agrees.
The man beside her—Valentino—shakes his head. “But this place is cursed, isn’t it? This doesn’t have to mean anything. Maybe the doors opened on their own. Maybe he doesn’t need to lock them.”
“He doesn’t,” Zephyra murmurs. “No one enters this castle unless he allows it, and no one comes out. Ever.”
Our gazes snap up at that, eight dozen eyes staring into the gaping maw of the sorcerer’s playground. No one comes out. Ever. There is a high chance it will be the same for us. A high chance once we set foot inside, we won’t be able to leave.
“If anyone is feeling nervous or hesitant, you have my permission to return to the ship and wait for us.” Amaya seeks out her infantry, one by one by one.
“There won’t be any room for fear ahead of us.
We need to maintain our composures and sanity if we’re to navigate this wretched place.
By the grace of Tempestas, eternal glory awaits all who stand at the helm of chaos.
Who do not buckle before it but bow to it. ”
Her soldiers stand straighter at the last, spines as rigid as their glistening breastplates and metal bases. The branded emblem of storm clouds and lightning across their chests sparks and glows with Amaya’s powers. Not a single one of them leaves. They don’t seem to even consider it.
“Good.” Amaya smiles, a genuinely proud grin, and turns back to the darkness. “Then, let us proceed.”
She walks through first, flanked by her second and third mates and then by all the others.
Zephyra sucks in a sharp breath and follows after them.
So I follow too. No longer listening to the magical war drums thrumming through me but keeping a watchful gaze on our cord.
As dim as it is here, it could almost be invisible.
We cross the threshold easily. Too easily. And every single person except for Zephyra relaxes as light suddenly emits a comforting yellow glow around us.
The antechamber appears deceptively normal—for a merrow castle, at least. Halls shoot off from the large room like the hands of a clock, its walls a pale stone and the rugs beneath our feet woven of seaweed and kelp and embellished with smooth shells.
A chandelier hangs low overhead, glowing amber crystals dazzling, refracting light off the walls.
It’s almost… warm. Far warmer than Tower Arcana had ever been.
It doesn’t feel frightening at all. I glance at Zephyra, but still, she stares solely at the floor.
“Now what?” Gavriall asks. “Which direction should we go?”
“Give us a moment to orient ourselves.” Amaya’s gaze narrows as she moves closer to examine the walls. She sticks her knife between chinks in the stone.
“Are these…” She pauses. Frowns. My stomach clenches.
“Teeth,” the princess finally declares, plucking one from the wall and holding it between her fingers, against the amber light. “These are human teeth.”
Fuck.
Instinct flares hot inside, and I hurl myself toward Zephyra, shoving her behind me right as the front doors slam shut. A bolt clicks. Locks slide into place. Gavriall throws himself at the double doors, pounding his fists on the adamant, but it doesn’t move. It doesn’t open.
Just as Zephyra said, we’re trapped.
“Told you so,” she offers weakly, pressing herself farther into my side. My wing curls around her protectively.
Amaya curses. The Tempest infantry raises their weapons. But it’s no use. We’re trapped, and the only way out is through.
The halls begin to turn then. Like a clock’s hands, they spin and tick around the antechamber. They shift, and the castle trembles with a rush of dark power beneath our feet. My hold on Zephyra hardens.
The hallways shift every ten to fifteen minutes, rearranging themselves on an endless loop, she said.
We prepared for it. We knew it was coming.
But experiencing it is wildly different to hearing about it.
I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth.
I count to ten, to a hundred, in my mind.
The Warlock Trials prepared me for this. I can handle a labyrinth.
I can handle this.
“We should split up now,” I say while the other humans continue to gape at the moving halls. “We want to spend as little time as possible searching. The sorcerer might have felt Zephyra’s magic. We won’t have long before he returns.”
“Arion’s right,” Zephyra agrees. “Let’s just get through this.”
“Um,” Gavriall says.
We ignore him. “Teams of four,” I say, repeating Amaya’s previous orders. “Partner up now. Ready your weapons.”
“You guys,” Gavriall says.
“Be prepared for anything—”
“ARION! SHUT UP! FUCKING LOOK!” Gavriall shoves at my back, forcing me to peer at the wall before us.
I blink rapidly.
Unless I’m mistaken, the teeth are… moving. “What—”
“I’m going to be sick,” Vesper says.
The teeth aren’t simply moving. They’re snapping free of the wall, popping loose as if rupturing from a ligament, and turning. Turning—
They aren’t teeth at all. They’re a guard.
He’d been hiding. Calcified into the wall like a statue.
Teeth litter the whole of his back, slicing into his petrified flesh as if he’d been impaled there centuries ago.
I repress my own nausea, my own fear, as they begin to spark in my gut.
The guard whirls around, bones creaking beneath his translucent, withered flesh, and spots Zephyra.
He seems to recognize her. His wasted face lights in a tender smile despite everyone drawing their weapons.
“Zephyra,” he croaks. “You’re here. You’ve come home.
” He smacks his blue lips together. “The sorcerer will be so pleased.”
Zephyra stumbles away from me. Toward him. She clutches her stomach, inserting herself between this strange, calcified man and the swords and spears pointed at him.
Her voice spills from her in a soft gust. “Caspian. What… what happened to you?”
Caspian does not answer this. His empty blue eyes don’t even seem to register the question.
He tilts his head, bones creaking again.
“I—I must alert the sorcerer. He will be so pleased.” He starts to move down one of the corridors, but Zephyra moves with a speed I’ve never witnessed. She grabs his wrist.
“No, Caspian.” Her fingers curl around teeth and sagging flesh. “Don’t tell him. Please don’t tell him.”
“But, Zephyra. You’ve come home.”
She swallows hard, and it takes everything in me to stand here and let this happen. To not decapitate this man on the spot. No matter that he has no control, that he has been cursed, that she is looking at him with a haunted sort of fondness. He is a threat. He is a threat to her.
“He doesn’t need to know,” she says. “We’re just… playing a game. I’m playing a game with the sorcerer. Go back to the wall now. Go back to sleep.”
“Sleep.” Caspian runs a hand down his face, peeling a layer of skin off his nose. “There is no sleep. I hear it all. I see it all.” He glances back at Zephyra, blue eyes hardening now. “You left us, Zephyra. Why did you leave us?”
“Caspian—” Zephyra’s gaze darts behind the man, to where Amaya has stalked forward with lightning crackling between her fingers.
“Don’t, Amaya. We don’t hurt them. He… he doesn’t know any better.
” And that is exactly why I haven’t moved.
Exactly why I am watching, silent, waiting for the moment Caspian becomes a greater threat, regardless of his own mental capacities.
“He will be so pleased,” Caspian continues. He takes Zephyra’s arm and pulls her closer. “He talks about you, Zephyra. He loves you. He could not wait for you to come home to us.” His fingers wrap around her wrist, and he starts dragging her down the corridor with him.
I snarl.
Within seconds, I am behind them. Separating them.
Lifting my sword to cut off his head. Zephyra flings me around, however, stilling the swing of my arm.
Sliding between us to protect the damned guard.
“No killing, Arion,” she hisses, even as Caspian fights to continue dragging her. “Please. Please.”
I look between them. At his hard grip, and her bruised arm. At the silver scars on her body, and the fear in her eyes. Damn it all to the Fathoms. I lower my sword—right as Vesper creeps up beside me, raises the hilt of her own weapon, and bashes Caspian on the back of his teeth-encrusted skull.
Caspian collapses.
Zephyra crouches after him, lifting his wasted head in her lap.
“Rope,” Amaya says calmly. “We should tie him up. We have no way of knowing if he’ll be out for long—”
As though he heard her, Caspian’s mouth falls open. An earsplitting wail wrenches from somewhere deep inside him, unearthly and horrible. Though, his eyes remain shut. He remains unconscious.
Zephyra curses. “This didn’t… this hasn’t happened before,” she yells over his screams.
“What is it?” Vesper asks, helping Carmen unravel a bundle of rope from her tool belt.
“I think it’s an alarm.” Zephyra glances at me, and I wish more than ever I could feel her through the bond. I wish I could reassure her in some way. But I don’t know that I can.
I should have known. I should have suspected something like this. It was too easy. Draining the sea, walking through the trench, the doors opening for us—it’s all been so fucking easy. I’m a warlock. I’ve been a war general.
The rest of the castle groans and creaks in response to Caspian’s wail. I can only assume other guards have begun to tear free from the walls too. Caspian won’t be the last. We will have to act quickly to incapacitate them all.