Chapter Thirty-Eight Arion
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ARION
There are hooded figures. Dark robes drip inky silk over skeletal frames.
Cultus Mortis surrounds the entryway of the temple while the bodies of Amaya’s crew decorate the floor. Every single one of them. Dead. Blood spills beneath their withered bodies in a river that flows straight to the bottom of the temple’s steps.
Amaya shrieks and stumbles backward, knocking into Vila’s statue as her lightning crackles, wild and uncontrolled, above her—but it doesn’t land, as if she still can’t focus her power. “No,” she breathes, tears instantly dripping down her cheeks as her knees buckle. “No, what have you done?”
The entire crew is dead, and we have no time to think. To react. Because the cult is here.
Mustering what little strength I have left, I step between the bronze chest and them.
The Death Lord pushes its hood back, its white mask too close in shade to the pristine granite of the walls.
It shouldn’t be here. It looks wrong here.
Frozen air blows in jagged, fogged rings from its porcelain lips.
“You smell so tempting now. Already decaying for us, littlest warlock?” It brandishes a sickle dripping with blood.
If it could smile, it would. “Do not worry. It won’t be long before you join the others.
We will feast upon you. Upon all of you. ”
“Is that so?” Zephyra stalks to my side. She lifts a dagger with a shrug, as if she doesn’t have a care in the world, though I notice her gaze dart to the corpses. “Well, fuck you too.”
With a low whistle, the sharp rattling of a funeral knell, the Death Lord turns on her, the other cultists whispering obscenities behind it.
I move to slide in front of her next, to block their path, but she stops me with a hand on my arm.
Her expression hardens. Resolute and pissed.
“Why don’t you take your precious sickle and choke on it? ”
“Littlest mermaid,” the Death Lord says, “today is the day you are devoured whole.” Its magic catches her around the ankle, nearly yanking her to the floor with an icy, phantom grasp.
She knocks into me, and I rope an arm beneath her.
As before, I don’t feel cold pressure around my own ankle—not as I should through the bond—so I do my best to keep her standing, to ignore a sickening sense of dread at the bond’s absence.
It doesn’t make sense. It should still be here, tethering us.
The Death Lord’s head tilts in response, and intrigue freezes sharp icicles in its hollow gaze.
“Poetic justice. You may die together. The mermaid in your arms, and her blood on your tongue. You will taste true pain this night, Arion Stone. You will scream your final scream.” A pause.
A breath. “When it is done, you will finally see your father again.”
My hands curl into fists. Magic roils under my skin, a wicked heat sliding over my bones. I’m going to hurt them. Each member of the cult. I only need to retrieve the heart first, and then I can kill them. Dismantle them, limb by limb, until they’re fucking begging for me to stop.
“No magic,” Zephyra murmurs, so low I almost can’t hear her. “You’re too weak.”
My muscles tense, and rage burns holes through my nerves, but she’s right. I am too weak. For now. I nod once, and she passes me her dagger. Doesn’t bother to lower her voice as she looks up at me with those beautiful turquoise eyes. “Make them hurt, Arion.”
I turn to the cult, to the Death Lord who has haunted me for years and years. “I will.”
The cult sneers. They glide forward, over corpses and blood, while Zephyra spins around with Vesper to dive toward the chest and seize the heart.
“Grab a dagger,” I tell Gavriall, gesturing to Amaya’s belt.
She’s frozen. Staring at the bodies of her closest crew, her knees trembling. “We need to keep them busy.”
Gavriall follows my gaze to the merrow as they kneel before the chest. “Seems a good time to remind you I am not the most commendable fighter.”
I laugh at that, albeit shortly. “Gavriall, do you really think I’ve forgotten?”
“No. I guess not.” Gavriall moves to snatch a blade, but—
Amaya is gone.
I blink. Gavriall blinks. The cultists continue their slow ascent up the steps. And Amaya—
Amaya stands with a dagger held to Vesper’s throat.
My stomach plummets. The princess’s lightning impales the floor in front of Zephyra, a weak strike but sizzling regardless.
The threat isn’t necessary, however. I know Zephyra.
Threatening Vesper’s life is more than enough to stop her.
Immediately, Zephyra raises her hands. “Amaya, what are you doing?”
Amaya isn’t listening. Her gaze continues to dart to the corpses of Tempest men and women—her men and women—and her storm-gray eyes pulse with wild yellow veins.
Tears drip down her cheeks like rain. “They weren’t supposed to die,” she says, voice shaking as she turns her gaze to the Death Lord.
“You weren’t supposed to kill them! That was…
they were my crew. My family.” Fury rumbles underfoot, but it’s as if she won’t—or can’t—access more power than that.
No hurricane winds. No tornados. Just a small lightning strike and the deep, simmering rumble of thunder.
Blood seeps from beneath her dagger, trickling down Vesper’s neck. “This wasn’t the fucking deal!”
The deal.
The words crash through me like a boulder, snapping ribs as understanding travels straight to my heart.
This wasn’t the fucking deal!
“What are you talking about?” Zephyra asks, her eyes narrowed and her hands trembling. “Let… let Vesper go.”
Vesper struggles, but Amaya’s grip is rigid as stone. She is a demigoddess, and we cannot fight her.
She is a demigoddess, and she has betrayed us.
I know it even before the Death Lord says, “Daughter of Tempestas, the deal is what we make it. Your kingdom will prosper, and you will live. So long as you obey.”
Obey. Obey. Obey.
I can’t help the magic that explodes from my chest at those words, at their condemnation. Blue smoke catches Amaya by the wrists and hauls her against the wall, even as my legs threaten to collapse. As my vision edges with gray. “What the fuck do you mean, you made a deal with them?”
Vesper falls to her knees, clutching her throat, while Zephyra rushes to her side. Even Gavriall checks on the bleeding mermaid. But Vesper will survive. The cut is shallow.
Amaya, on the other hand, won’t be so gods-damned lucky. A sliver of magic, two tendrils of smoke, hold her in place, the rest of the world falling away as my magic solidifies into lethal shadows. To hurt her. To maim her. I’m not in control anymore. I don’t even feel as if I’m in my own body.
“You betrayed us,” I spit. “After everything—”
“After everything, I’m saving my people.
” She lifts her chin, her gaze burning with righteous fury before it flicks, unbidden, to her fallen crew.
Hateful tears glint in her eyes at the sight.
“I will not let Tempest fall to ash and ruin. The cult found me not long after you fled for the sea, and we—we made a deal. They are going to save us. They are going to save Tempest.”
Something sickening clenches my organs in a tight fist.
And all her previous words, all those stories she told us on her ship, roll through me on an ice-cold wave.
Tempest sent infantry—spies—into Mortia years ago to excavate your mountains. Your northern cities are bare, void of almost any life at all. My infantry couldn’t understand why—until they dug too deep and stumbled upon a vicious cult. Only one survived to tell me about it. He was missing a leg.
The cult gnawed it off at the knee.
The realization pummels me, enough that my knees threaten to buckle. Enough that my vision spots with my exertion, and my heart palpitates painfully. “This isn’t your first dealing with them.”
Amaya smiles softly, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I told you—we found them. Members of my crew found their cave.”
“Did you think we would really free intruders?” the Death Lord asks behind me.
Directly behind me. I whirl around, but I’m not fast enough to stop him from grabbing me by the wings and throwing me to the floor.
The surprise slams through me as much as the actual impact, and at the distraction, Amaya drops to the floor too, palming at the granite with clammy hands as she tries desperately to catch her breath.
The cult ignores her. They all move in around me.
The Death Lord crouches, its sickle slicing through a lock of my hair.
Then my brow. Blood drips over my left eye.
“Did you think we would ever let anyone go? Tempest owed us a favor, and we have come to collect. She brought you here. She performed her job beautifully. You never suspected her for a second.” The mask groans, the Death Lord’s porcelain lips twisting into an eerie grin.
“Did you really believe she found you by coincidence? Did you really believe you stumbled upon all this by yourself?” It braces its blade over my back.
It moves to stab—but I move faster, rolling out of the way and leaping to my feet.
Across from me, Zephyra, Vesper, and Gavriall brace themselves for a fight, but Amaya stumbles down the steps. She collapses in front of her crew, digging hands through their gore with a scream of anguish. I couldn’t care less. Not about her or her grief.
Her betrayal stokes the embers of magic—of life—inside me, and I have no choice but to let them flame.
I shouldn’t have fucking trusted her. I should have known it was too convenient she retrieved us after merely hearing about our visit to Lucia. She wrenched us from the waters. She fed us the information that brought us here.
And then she fed us to the fucking sharks.
“You—you fucking dick,” Zephyra snarls. “How could you? We could have helped you! We were helping you!”