Chapter Thirty-Nine Zephyra #2
Vesper’s tail flails violently as she stares at her open, empty arms. “What… no. NO!” The siren roars, and it quakes the temple. But the sorcerer merely conjures a gag for Vesper’s mouth. She freezes on the floor, once more unable to move and now completely silenced. And Eos is—
Eos is still dead.
I glare at the sorcerer over my shackles. “You are a rotten fucking prick.”
“And you have become far more ignorant in the last few months. We do not do well when we are not together, my wife.”
“Stop fucking calling me that!”
“Why?” He blinks at me in earnest. “Was that not the deal? Did you not carve out that boy’s heart—”
I don’t let him finish that sentence. I launch myself at him. Move to choke him, to hurt him. But he keeps fucking laughing, and—
And someone picks me up and pulls me off him.
Carries me away as I struggle in their arms, but their grip is ironclad. Enchanted. Strong. Oh goddess. No—
No.
“I’m sorry,” Gavriall whispers at my ear, sounding genuinely sad. “I don’t have a choice. I owe him.”
Magic prickles on my skin, unbidden, like razors slicing off each and every scale until my legs return. A gown appears with them, pure white and delicate, sheer lace molding to my every curve. A veil falls low over my eyes. I am… his bride.
I am just his bride.
Gavriall sets me on my feet, retreating with an apologetic frown, and I breathe. All I can do is breathe.
He granted me a head start. He allowed me to escape.
But I still ended up right fucking here.
All along I’ve just been a mouse in his maze—will always be a mouse in his maze—surrounded by his cruel traps.
I glance at Arion, who looks back at me with a fierceness that steals my breath.
The cord between us doesn’t exist anymore.
The bond has somehow ruptured. I should be bleeding with him, but I’m not.
And I have no choice but to assume that is the sorcerer’s doing too.
“How could Gavriall have met you?” I ask, the words vicious and rough. “You can’t leave the fucking sea.”
“The sea has a way of reaching the shore,” the sorcerer answers vaguely, enjoying every second of this madness. It takes a minute, but eventually—I understand.
“The merman,” I say to Gavriall. “Your affair with a merrow.”
“He told me stories,” Gavriall admits. “He told me of a fabled sorcerer who could make problems vanish. When I found myself almost killed for my debts, I escaped to the water. I offered myself to him.”
Oh goddess.
I glance around me. At Vesper. At Amaya. At Gavriall. Every single person who found us worked for the sorcerer. Every single fucking one. I swallow bile.
“How long,” I manage through tears now, “have you been following me?”
“My dear, you haven’t been truly alone ever.
That is what I keep telling you. I’m here with you, Zephyra.
I will always be right here with you.” He smiles, and the sight should be devastating.
Beautiful. But it twists in my abdomen like a knife.
“You always make me out to be the villain, Zephyra.” The sorcerer crouches to sling an arm around Vesper’s shoulder, and the statue of Mortem rises behind them.
Fuck, I wish it’d fall. I wish it’d crush him.
“I only do as people ask. I give them what they want. Don’t you see, dear?
I am not the problem here. I am the solution.
Gavriall is alive—and he is smarter for it. Because of me.”
Gavriall flushes at the last, and I realize with a bolt of nauseating clarity that intelligence was his original gift. A way for him to rise within the ranks of historians and save himself.
“You forged his scores.” Arion coughs with disbelief, scrambling to sit up against the onslaught of pain. “You were why the king pardoned him.”
“Yes,” the sorcerer says, not sparing a glance for the warlock. “I afforded him life, and in return, I kept him on a leash until I needed him.”
“A spy,” I say, my veins roiling with anger.
“A puppet,” the sorcerer argues. Arm still around Vesper, fingers bruising her skin, he turns to Gavriall. “Kneel,” he demands. “Now.”
Gavriall’s eyes glaze over. He drops without preparing for the impact, and one of his kneecaps shatters, bone splitting loudly enough that the sound echoes through the temple. A cry builds in his throat, but the criminal’s face remains blank. Empty. He does not scream.
“And this one,” the sorcerer purrs, “well she’s been my favorite. The best liar I’ve ever worked with.” He drags his nose up the column of Vesper’s neck, and she glances at me with wide, pleading eyes. “Tell her, Vesper. Tell her what you did.”
I thought I knew the whole of it—however, Vesper shakes her head wildly, and my chest contracts with the agonizing beats of a breaking heart. She won’t meet my gaze, and she doesn’t pull away from his touch.
“Vesper, it doesn’t matter. You did it for Eos, and I don’t blame you.
I did the exact same thing,” I say, because I can’t…
I can’t suffer another betrayal. I can’t face my own consequences haunting me like a bloodthirsty poltergeist. She is my fault.
Her pain. Her suffering. By saving myself—choosing myself—I ruined her life.
“I knew,” she whispers before I can finish. “I’m so sorry, Zephyra. I never—”
The sorcerer claps a hand over her mouth, and I lurch forward, desperate to protect her. “Do what he wants,” I say, voice cracking on a stifled sob. “It’s fine. I can handle it.”
A muscle feathers in the sorcerer’s jaw. He hates my compliance. He wants me scared. Doesn’t he see that I am?
“More,” the sorcerer demands, grip hardening so that her skin darkens to plum purple from his touch. “Tell her the truth.” He shoves her forward, and she just barely manages to catch herself from falling.
Vesper collapses on the granite, her tail flicking sadly, slowly, behind her.
“I knew… about Gavriall. I knew about Amaya, and the death cult. I knew everything. The sorcerer told me everything about you, Zephyra. I—I wasn’t sent to kill you or even retrieve you.
I was sent to distract you.” Her tears collect in salty puddles beneath her.
“I was pulling all the strings because he knew… I would be your weakness. He knew even if you didn’t bring the others, you would always bring me.
” She meets my eyes with a wince. “He knew you’d feel too guilty over Eos to do anything else. ”
What’s left of me—of my composure—shatters. I threaten to crumble like weathered stone. However, I tear the veil away from my eyes instead. I rip the sleeves from my gown. I cannot let him see me break. “Congratulations,” I manage weakly. “You did it.”
Her betrayal—all their betrayals—should sting more. And they do, just not in the way the sorcerer intended. Because I know myself. I’ve lived with myself for over two decades. I was a horrible friend to Vesper. I’m the reason multiple people have died. I forgive them.
But I do not forgive him.
He played us—all of us—like a fucking fiddle.
Vesper shakes her head. “After being in that castle… I believe you, Zephyra. About all of it. I wasn’t going to let him win, even if he vowed to bring Eos back—”
“Enough,” the sorcerer snaps. He claps his hand, and thunder booms. A bronze cage tethers itself to Vesper’s mouth. She can’t speak through it. She can’t cry or scream.
And I want to rend the sorcerer limb from limb. My chest heaves with righteous rage. My gaze blazes with heat. “You promised her Eos in exchange for me. So give Vesper her sister back. She did it, didn’t she? I’m right fucking here. Bring Eos back.”
“In exchange for you?” He clicks his tongue. “Dearest Zephyra, I could have plucked you from the sea anytime I wanted. No… this has nothing to do with you. Although, I suppose you are a player. Does that help? If I tell you that you’re important to this tale?”
“I couldn’t give a fuck what you tell me, you lecherous prick.”
“Ever colorful with the insults, wife.” The sorcerer laughs, and the razor-sharp sound beads over my skin like ice.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
Boiling over with wrath, I hiss, “One day, someone is going to slash your organs straight from your stomach. They are going to suffocate you with your lower intestine. And even if I’m dead, I’ll be there. Right there to witness you screaming and begging for your life like the pathetic man you are.”
His gaze flares a bronze more molten than lava.
He steps toward me, maneuvering around the bodies of his minions without a care.
“That day will never come,” he says, dark and low and ominous.
The hair on my arms rises, needling at my flesh.
Warning me of imminent danger. “Retrieve the chest, Zephyra. Give me the heart.”
The world falls out from under me.
This has nothing to do with you.
The High Sorcerer of the Four Sea doesn’t want me.
Not truly. He wants the heart of a death god.
He wants immortality, infinite power… fuck.
No. If he takes it, the entire world is damned.
I glance to Arion, who stares helplessly back.
Our cord is gone. My tether to him has disappeared.
He’s as good as fucking dead, no reason as to why he’s still alive beyond the sorcerer in front of me, but I…
I can’t do this on my own. I can’t defeat a man who always wins.
“You are dumber than a sturgeon if you think I would ever do your bidding.” I glare at the sorcerer, chin high. Fists clenched. Defiant until the moment he kills me. “Get it your fucking self.”
I expect an outburst of violence. I expect the whole temple to implode.
I do not expect the sorcerer to smile serenely and utter the one name that started everything. “Do you think Jacin was an accident, Zephyra?”