18
EURYDICE
Ireturn to my pillar against my will, tears blurring my vision as I am pulled through the twisting passage. The Herald’s magic is a cold, inescapable leash on my soul, forcing my hooves toward the spot I fought so hard to escape. Theron’s memory is gone, but my terror is absolute.
I crash into the water around my pillar to find the water around it changed, charged with an energy that makes my skin tingle. The priest-shade waits in the phosphorescent gloom, his burning blue eyes brighter than before, his skeletal form more solid, more threatening. He senses my despair, a savory flavor in the drowned halls.
He knows I am back not because I was captured, but because I was compelled. My brief taste of freedom has been reversed by a greater, crueler power.
"Little surface-child," he hisses, his voice carrying a new edge of fury. "You slip away like mist, like hope itself. But hope is poison in these halls, and I am its cure."
Before I can react, new kelp chains erupt from the seafloor around the pillar
, thicker and darker than the ones I worked so hard to loosen. These fronds move with predatory purpose, wrapping around my wrists and ankles with a grip that feels like iron bands beneath the sea. The slimy touch burns against my skin, and I feel my strength being drained away with each passing second.
"You cannot bind what sings freely," I gasp, but even as I speak, I feel the new chains tightening with vindictive force. These are not the merely restraining bonds from before—these are punishment, designed to break my spirit as well as hold my body.
The priest-shade circles me slowly, his tattered robes billowing in the current like the wings of some carrion bird. "You infected my children with your warm words," he says, gesturing toward the spaces where the drowned young once gathered. "You taught them to remember bread and sunshine, mother's songs and morning prayers. Such memories are agony to the properly dead."
I crane my neck, looking for the children who brought me such comfort, but they're nowhere to be seen. The coral gardens where they played now seem empty and cold, their phosphorescent blooms dimmed to sullen shadows. My heart clenches with the fear that my songs have somehow harmed them, driven them away from what little joy they found in this place of eternal sorrow.
"Where are they?" I demand, struggling against the kelp chains despite the way they burn my skin. "What have you done to them?"
"Returned them to their proper silence," the priest-shade replies with satisfaction. "No more laughter echoes in the deep halls. No more do they speak of warm beds and honey cakes. They remember their place now—as mourners for all that was lost, singers in the endless choir of regret."
Anger flares in my chest, hot and righteous. "They were children! They deserved to remember joy, to hold onto whatever light they could find in this darkness!"
"Light is cruelty to the dead," he says, reaching toward my throat where Lyralei's silver hairpin still rests in my hair. "And you, little flame, burn far too bright for these shadowed halls."
But even as his fingers near the blessed metal, I hear it—faint but unmistakable, drifting through the water like hope made audible. Theron's voice, carrying the lullaby from our chapel, the song that bound us together in love and defiance. The melody grows stronger as it approaches, and with it comes a warmth that makes the kelp chains shudder and loosen their grip.
The priest-shade recoils as if struck, his burning eyes widening with something that looks like fear. "Impossible," he breathes. "The Tide-Herald should have claimed him, should have demanded a price too dear to pay."
I begin to sing, adding my voice to Theron's distant melody, letting our harmony ring through the drowned halls like a bell calling the faithful to worship. The lullaby fills the water around me, and wherever its notes touch, the oppressive weight of the necropolis seems to lift.
"Sleep now, child of storm and sea,
Safe within these arms you'll be,
When the wild winds cease their cry,
Dawn will paint the morning sky."
The kelp chains writhe and hiss as the music touches them, their dark magic faltering in the face of something pure and living. The priest-shade presses his hands to his ears, his skeletal form becoming translucent as our combined song grows in power.
"Hush!" he commands, his voice cracking like ice under pressure. "The dead do not sing such songs! The lost do not speak of dawn!"
But I sing louder, pouring all my love and longing into the melody. Somewhere in the distance, I hear an answering chorus—not the harsh laments of the damned, but something softer, younger. The children, perhaps, remembering despite his commands how to hope.
The priest-shade staggers backward, his form beginning to fray at the edges. "You will not pass," he gasps. "You will join us in our sorrow, sing our songs of loss until the seas run dry."
"I will sing my own songs," I tell him, my voice growing stronger with each note. "Songs of love and life and the promise that dawn always comes, no matter how long the night."
The kelp chains loosen enough for me to work my hands partially free, and I cradle the shell that the drowned child gave me, feeling its blessed light pulse in rhythm with my heartbeat. Theron's voice draws ever closer, and I know that soon—very soon—nothing in the drowned halls will be strong enough to keep us apart.
19
THERON
