Of darkness and the brittle crunch of bones and Zephyra’s shuddering breath, and then—
Music.
Finally, a sound other than our own nervous trepidation weaves around us. Notes pluck distantly, the vague memory of a melody echoing through stone. I stop Zephyra, snapping her closer to me as I glance around and study the walls for more guards. Study the floor and ceiling too. “Wait,” I tell her. “It could be an ambush.” My magic rises, pulsating in my chest like a second heartbeat. I take one step. It rises higher. Another step. It rises higher still.
“It’s not an ambush,” she says. “It’s a music box, and you really,reallyneed to ignore it—”
“Come on,” I say, following the magic inside me. It lures us deeper, and soon, the music thickens.“There.”A fork in the road. The hall splits off into two corridors. Magic spills through an eastern alcove, delicate and gentle and more than an echo now. I’ve heard this song before. Iknowthis song.
“Arion, stop!”
But I don’t hear Zephyra; I hear the music. Ifollowthe music. It’s haunting, and familiar, and—
“Adrastus Stone.”A deep voice. A commanding voice. It winds through the melody, until the music is suddenly a memory once more.Mymemory.
My pulse spikes and my knees threaten to buckle as the corridor disappears, and I’m—I’m in a hovel. My childhoodhomewith the broken roof and the shattered windows and the musty rugs. A hard boot kicks down what’s left of the front door, and a small boy cowers behind the milk crate dining table.Me.That small boy… he’s me.
“Adrastus!” the man—Phiaraus Scar—stomps into our home with three men behind him and a hammer hanging from his hand. “I’m really fucking sick of you bailing on me, and I really need that fucking coin now. Either settle your debts or pay the gods-forsaken price.”
My father stands from a stool. Piss leaks down his legs, staining his pants and our rugs. I cry, and every single man turns to look at me.
Phiaraus Scar smacks the hammer against his palm in threat. “It’s you or your boy, Adrastus. We’re done waiting.”
I shut my eyes, but I can’t stop it. I can’t stop my father from crumbling, can’t stop Phiaraus from swinging his hammer. Can’t stop the scent of blood and brains and viscera from burning my nostrils. I’m going to be sick. I’m going to be sick, and… and where are the warlocks? Why aren’t theyhere? Why aren’t they fuckinghelping? My father is dead. He’s dead, and I can see inside his skull, and someone mustpay—
“Arion.”A soft voice. A sweet voice.
Zephyra, I realize. I’m hearing Zephyra.
But that’s wrong. She doesn’t belong here in this bloodstained hovel. She doesn’t belong anywhere near this—this darkness. Zephyra is light and beauty andmine. She is my mermaid, and I am her warlock.
A cool hand clasps my own, and the delicate notes of a music box lace the room around me. I shudder in response.
“Arion,” that sweet voice sings. “Arion, it’s just a memory. It’s yourworstmemory. Pull yourself out of it. Listen to my voice, not the music, and climbout.”
A memory.
It’s my worst memory.
I blink rapidly, and the world around me shifts until I see Zephyra through the haze of my past. She’s not there, in my old home with my father’s corpse at her feet. She’shere. In the dim hall of an undersea castle. With me.
I swallow hard and stare deeper into her eyes, until the weight of the melody removes its hooks from my brain. Until the corpse of my father finally disappears. “What the fuck—”
“Cursed music box,” she explains quickly. “The sorcerer buried it in the walls of my room once. Took me months to claw it out. You would’ve gotten used to it though. After a few days.”
A growl rips through me. She doesn’t tell me her worst memory, and I don’t need to hear it. The conclusion I draw is the same regardless: “I am going to slaughter him.”
The slightest twitch of her pretty lips. “I know.” Her hand hardensin mine, no longer trembling, and she pulls me from the eastern alcove, toward the western one. “This way.”
My magic responds in kind, roaring through me like a wave. We must be nearing it. Abysses. The heart. Our salvation. We duck into the alcove, and a bright white light flashes overhead. Too bright. Too white. Our vision darkens in response, attempting to adjust, and we stumble into opposite walls.
Zephyra gasps suddenly.
When my vision clears, I see what she’s knocked into.
A beating heart rests atop a plinth as if in some sort of shrine. A real, beating heart, blood oozing from haphazardly severed arteries. Shorn too short, too jagged, as if done in haste.Mortem’s heart?I step closer, listening to my magic, but it doesn’t crest in response to this. It lies completely dormant.
Zephyra presses against the farthest wall of the alcove, her gaze wide and her face pale. She stares, unblinking, at the organ. “I want to leave.” Her voice ekes out of her, barely above a whisper. “Arion, I want toleave.”
