The mouth snapped shut.
Mal screamed.
She lunged forward, but Thanatos’ grip tightened, dragging her back even as the ocean turned wild once more, thrashing with renewed fury. The creature reared one final time before disappearing beneath the waves, vanishing into the abyss.
A towering wave crashed upon the shore, slamming Mal and Thanatos back onto the blackened sand.
The sea had claimed its price.
‘Melinoe…’
His touch seared her skin like a curse, and she recoiled at once, pulling herself from beneath the hand that had dared to graze the bare flesh of her arm. Rising swiftly to her feet, she stood tall and trembling, her gaze snapping back to the sea.
‘You should have let me stop her!’ she screamed, fury coiling behind her eyes like a serpent ready to strike.
‘Perhaps,’ he said softly, rising in a careful, deliberate motion, as though her rage might scorch him if he moved too quickly. ‘But Makaria was right. Your time is running short.’
Mal’s hands curled into trembling fists. The urge to lash out burnt hot beneath her ribs, but she knew the truth of it. This wasn’t his fault. The blame, if it had a place to rest, would always rest with her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, barely above a whisper.
Thanatos inclined his head. His eyes, black and fathomless, widened suddenly, catching on something she had yet to see. She followed his gaze, squinting towards the sea. At first, there was nothing, only the slow churn of black water, then a tangle of hair, then a head. A body.
Allegra.
She emerged from the depths like some wraith resurrected, gasping for breath, her hands clawing at the surface as though fighting to remain in this world. Her hair, once wild and curling, clung now to her wet skin. Her complexion, a rich warm brown like her sisters’, shimmered under the weight of saltwater. Even in death, Allegra remained a creature of beauty, her curves, her strength, her sharp-boned grace undiminished by time or tide.
She collapsed onto the black shore, heaving for air.
When she opened her eyes, eyes the same violet shade that haunted Mal in every reflection, a wicked smile unfurled across Mal’s face like a blade unsheathed.
‘Welcome back,’ she said, her voice low and serpentine, her smile widening as she watched the panic settle behind Allegra’s stare. ‘Remember me?’
Allegra gave a small, quick nod, her chest rising and falling in shallow, frantic rhythm.
‘Good.’
‘Why…?’ Allegra’s eyes locked on Thanatos, widening further in disbelief. ‘Why am I here?’
Mal crouched low beside her, drawing close until their eyes met on the same level. She let her fingers trail through the soft, obsidian sand, scooping a handful only to let the grains fall again, slowly, like the last sands in a dying hourglass.
‘I need you to teach me magic,’ she said simply.
Allegra’s spine straightened, the name of the old craft clearly not one she had expected.
‘Why?’ she asked, the word brittle, hesitant.
Mal’s smile darkened like a gathering storm.
‘So I may become the God-killer.’ She turned her attention to Thanatos, seeing the glimmer in his eyes, the shine of danger, of prophecy, of fate unfolding. ‘So that I may kill the gods. Every last one of them.’
Love is a complicated thing.
We meet someone and become convinced that no other soul could ever stir our heart in quite the same way, that no one else could make the world feel so vivid, so alive. And when they leave, they take the air with them, leaving us hollow, breathless, certain that such a feeling will never return. But then, someone new appears, quietly, unexpectedly, and tilts the world all over again.
Tabitha Wysteria
‘Don’t you find it rather odd that the king hasn’t summoned any of us?’ Kai mused, reclining against a silk cushion in a room steeped in quiet opulence. They had gathered for supper at Mareena’s invitation, an occasion Kai suspected would involve more interrogation than indulgence. Yet curiously, no mention of the king had been made.
