“Please,” Zephyra whispers, staring at the bloody mess with wild eyes. I’m not sure if she knows she’s speaking the word aloud. “Please, please,please.”
I can’t catch them all, however. It requires too much magic, and already—from the decimation and the first rescues—my lungs ache. My heart slows. My vision blackens. I’m too weak. But Vesper is falling, and Gavriall, andAmaya, and—
A burst of smoke blows through the room, charcoal gray and thick. It tangles with their limbs, their hair, their clothes—and it slows them. Just enough. It slows themallso they’re no longercrashing butdrifting. Easing their way down as if each of those remaining have wings of their own.
Thank thegods.
I exhale in relief when Vesper touches down first, still brandishing her sword and her hair knotted as if she’d been in a fight only seconds ago. Gavriall drops with a clam crunching on his finger and Emilia’s skull chewing through his sleeve. Blood drips down Amaya’s cheek. Each of them appears visibly shaken. Everyone does, even Zephyra. Although, she has torn her gaze from the gore, and now it rests uponme.
She reaches forward with a trembling palm.“No.”Her hand tentatively brushes my cheek.
And I know. I know what she’s seeing, whateveryonecan see. The blackened veins of death spiraled out from my heart have finally crested the column of my throat. Crested the hard line of my jaw too. I can feel the ash in my toes. Zephyra’s brow pinches, and her eyes water. “No,” she repeats. “You can’t be—”
I capture her wrist and press it to my lips.
Minutes.In my heart, I know that’s the truth of how long I have left.
I’ve spent my life fearing it. I’ve spent the last year cowering from it. But I am dying. Now. Right in this moment with Zephyra and her sad turquoise eyes gazing into my own. I am dying, and that means she’s dying too. Which is fuckingunacceptable.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She blinks rapidly, trying to dry her tears. “I don’t feel it.Whydon’t I feel it?”
I can’t answer that. I don’tknow. “This castle—”
“If you don’tfuckingmind,” Vesper interrupts, “would someone like to explain what thefuckjust happened?” The siren drags her sword along the floor, the earsplitting shriek of metal against stone forcing Zephyra and me apart. “One minute I was tying three guards to the table they sprang from—because they were disguised aschairs—and the next minute, we were just…falling. The floor vanished. The walls vanished. And we fucking fell.”
Gavriall peels the skull from his clothes, glaring at Zephyra. “Thehalls didn’t rotate every ten to fifteen minutes. You said they rotate every ten to fifteen minutes.”
Amaya is the only one who doesn’t ask questions or demand answers. She stands over the three corpses of her crew, removes her hat, and sets it between their broken bodies. Then she straightens, turns, and thunder reverberates around the chamber. “My people willnothave died in vain.”
“No, they won’t have.” I gesture to the floor, where Zephyra’s blood has finally sunk into the stone, solidifying into a door with a handle carved in the shape of a mermaid’s tail. Every bone in my bodyburnsto open it. The weight of my remaining magic forces me toward it. There is no question. No doubt left in my mind. “I think Zephyra just found us the entrance to Abysses.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ZEPHYRA
Is it the entrance to Abysses?
Honestly, I don’t knowwhatthis door belongs to. Nothing in this castle is ever as it seems. And the sorcerer—he’s been fucking with us. For hours now. It’s as if a clock has rewound and catapulted me into six months ago. Into being lost in the labyrinth and finally—finally—finding a way out, only for the sorcerer to appear at the end.
Only for him to offer me another deal.
I inhale deeply. Sharply. Desperate to repress the memories of my escape. But there’s not enough air in this room—this tomb. My heart pounds in my chest, hard and fast andhealthy, even though Arion is dying. Even though blackened veins web his light brown skin, the metallic silver-gold of his gaze has dimmed to an earthly gray. He’s dying. I’m—I’m losing him. I don’t understand it. Am so full ofragethinking about it. I can’t lose him. Here. Now. Not when we are so close.Soclose. And—
And my blood somehow, seemingly, carved us a doorway below.
None of this makes sense. I’ve felt off-kilter since I stepped foot in this room—or perhaps the trench itself—stumbling through as if my wrists have been shackled once more. The bond has dimmed between Arion and me. The castle is breaking. Something is wrong.
Arion isdying.
We need that fucking heart. Now.
Arion rips the door open in the next second, revealing a chamber of unending black. Somewhere inside, there is the hushed breath of water. A lazy stream. The trickle of a river. It’s joined by more of those whispers. The voices I heard in this castle every day foryears. None of the others seems affected by them as they peer into the abyss. None of the others seems tohearthem.
“Are you sure it’s down there?” Gavriall leans over the threshold, staring down into the inky dark apprehensively. “I don’t see anything.”
His voice echoes as if whatever lies below stretches vast and hollow. But his is not the only voice. The whispers are faint as shadow, light as a baby’s breath. I can’t discern them, but the closer I am to the door the louder they become, until I can hear one phrase above all the others:
