The thought is enough to decide me.
I plunge the spear down as hard as I can. I hit my mark, lean my weight into the spear, and feel it pierce through the resistance of vulnerable flesh, glancing off bones, through viscera into the clogging thickness of the feather mattress below. And I hold the haft firm and unmoving just as I have been taught to do with a great fish on the end of a harpoon, leaning all my weight into the intention.
Okeanos spasms against the spear. His blood spurts hot down his side, spilling across skin made pale by moonlight and soaking into the sheets. And just as my breath crystallizes in my throat, his eyes spring open like twin traps and he drags in a choking inhale before coughing—hard—body curling possessively around the spear shaft, hands fumbling for it until his fingers catch and stick. Blood droplets decorate his pretty lips and spatter my pillow.
“Cora,” he gasps. “Coralys.”
I cannot breathe.
His expression is panicked and his head jerks in a rough circle, his arms flailing out and knocking over a waist-high vase positioned beside the bed. It smashes on the floor, making me flinch at the clatter, and then his eyes find me and he sags.
I realize, a little sickly, that he thought me harmed, that he was panicked for my sake, not the sake of the spear I’ve thrust through him. A wave of nausea washes over me, my stomach heaves, and my eyes smart sharply, but I came here for this. It’s been my only hope since I lost Lieve. I’d be both craven and gutless to come to the task and refuse it now. Wouldn’t I?
“Oh god,” I say in a gasp. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”
What irony—to pray to your god as you murder him.
I lean my weight hard on the spear, not giving an inch as our eyes lock, and to my horror he grips the spear in both hands and uses it to slide his body up the wooden haft so he can face me nearly nose to nose. The iron scent of bloodhangs thick between us and the droplets on his lips are black as inkblots in the moonlight.
He feels his side, lifts a hand, and looks at how it’s dark with blood. Pain fills his face before he turns again to me. I know what he sees: me with lips parted in horror, eyes wide, and yet unmerciful.
“I hoped for better from you.” His words are punctuated with rough breaths as if they are vital to say before the end and he must force them out.
My own voice trembles like grass in a gale. “This is the best I have to give.”
He nods sharply, as if he accepts that, and then with one hand he wrenches the pearl cuirass from his throat and thrusts it at me.
“Yours,” he gasps, pain etching lines on his face that were not there before. “You must take them.”
A few pearls spill free of the string, but I reach out and take the rest from him. Slick as they are with his blood, they are hard to hold. I string them through my belt.
To my horror, he has climbed the spear farther. He is unthinkably strong. And now he grips my jaw in one bloody hand. His breath is ragged just like mine. My bones feel terribly delicate in his powerful grip and my breath flutters like a bird. I think he could break me even now with a snap of his wrist. But he only looks at me for a long moment before shuddering.
“The clock,” he says, as if whatever he saw in my eyes compels him. He’s struggling to speak. “It’s in the clock andthe book. Look in the library. Finish the work. Save our people. Whatever you think you’ve gained here is only loss, but perhaps it is not too late. Four tasks are already complete. Remember that.”
He lets go of my face as suddenly as he forced the embrace.
I am shuddering with the horror of what I’ve done.
“Now flee,” he gasps, the strength of his face stark in the moonlight. “As fast as you can.” He bites back a moan. “Your safety lies in the sea.”
It’s only when he slumps that I realize how much effort it took for him to stay upright. He lets go his grip on the spear and falls into the bed, his arms sprawled limply akimbo, and there’s no more tension on the spear anymore. There’s no more light in his glassy open eyes.
The sound that escapes my lips is more of a faint cry than a sigh.
But someone is scrambling up the rocks that lead to our island. They must have heard the breaking vase.
“Okeanos?” a male voice calls.
I’m choking on my own breath, it’s coming so quickly. I let go of the spear and feel for Okeanos’s pulse and there’s nothing there. Nothing.
Panic claws up my throat and the waters are rising.
I can’t be discovered like this.
They’ll be certain I killed El’Dorian, too—that I’m this god-killer they so fear—and I don’t know what that will mean beyond certain execution.
I scramble from the bed, tripping on the sheets, andstagger across the stone floor, running and skidding to the edge of the island as fast as my feet can carry me.
