The harpoon impales the Death Lord, just as my feet hit the floor. It startles as if surprised, and a rush of triumph flares as the DeathLord drops Zephyra to stare down at the spear protruding from its chest. My lungs contract around nothing. I’ve stopped inhaling. I’ve stopped being able to breathe at all. Zephyra gasps.
The battle isn’t won yet, however.
Behind Zephyra, Vesper pushes to her feet and rushes for the chest. For the heart. The remaining cultists don’t stop her, their attention fixed solely upon the Death Lord, who still stares down at the harpoon. Time seems to stop. It doesn’t stop though—not really—and Vesper could have the heart within seconds. Shewillhave the heart within seconds. “Follow her,” I tell Zephyra fiercely. “Take it,useit—”
Wide-eyed, she scrambles to her feet, moving quickly. Not toward the chamber. Towardme. In the second that follows, I know only that something is wrong, and I almost miss the Death Lord’s blur of speed as he wrenches the harpoon from his chest.
As he hurls it directly at me.
“Scream for me, littlest warlock.”
My brow knots for just a breath, for Zephyra to whisperno, for the cultists to re-form and rise in unison. I stumble back a step on impact. My legs give out before the pain hits, and I crash to my knees as my skin ruptures and my ribs split. Agony sears through my chest, but instead of clutching at the spear, I turn towardher. “Zephyra,” I choke, and bright blood spurts from my mouth with her name. With an anguished cry, she dives toward me, catching my shoulders as I topple forward. Pulling me into her lap.
“Arion… Arion, you—you need to use your magic.” She presses hands around the harpoon, trying to stop the slow weeping of blood. “Heal yourself like you always heal me.” Tears mangle her voice, but she doesn’t let them fall.
The edges of my vision fade as the cultists drag Vesper away from the chest, as they corner Gavriall and Amaya against Mortem’s statue. My eyes close slowly. I force them open again as the cultists’ hissing jeers and laughter echo through the temple. Three against six immortal beings with no salt water in sight. No end in sight. None except death.
My eyes close again. Open.
I look up at Zephyra. Try to memorize her. Pink hair. Blue eyes.Soft lips. And her heart—a heart bigger than any I’ve ever known. I grab her hand, and she glares daggers at me.
“Arion,now—”
But how can I tell her I spent it? I spent it all, all ofmyself. I’m in too much pain, exhausted, choking on my own blood—there is no magic left to save me. And I refuse for my final words to be spilled in panic or desperation. I’ve lived decades with both. I’ve made every wrong choice, but in the end, I can’t bring myself to regret them. To regret her. “I would have loved you,” I say instead, “but I would never have deserved you. Not in any lifetime.”
“Fucking bullshit,” she spits. “No,no. It’s right there. The chest isright there. And our cord… we’re supposed to bebonded!” A guttural scream as she clutches my wound. “I am not going to let you die. I’ll… I’ll get the heart. You’ll take it. We can… we can fix this. Stop this. We’re supposed to betogether—”
“You have to save yourself,” I say roughly. “You still have a chance to make it out alive. Take the heart, Zephyra. Take it for yourself.Freeyourself, kill these assholes, and be… just behappy, Zephyra.”
“Arion—”
“You can do this. You’re stronger than the rest of us. You’ve survived so much.”
A crystalline sea-salt tear slips down her cheek.
Between one breath and the next, moonlight ripples from her flesh, and her tail appears, scales glittering. I touch her cheek. “You’re beautiful, Zephyra.”
“This isn’t how it should have happened. We—we should have had achance.”
“Do not weep, littlest mermaid,” the Death Lord says, stroking her hair. “Our dearest warlock has caused so much suffering. It is simply his turn to reap the torment he has sown.”
She whirls at that, her gaze flickering with unadulterated vengeance. Her chest heaves with vicious breaths. She flexes her hands, and for a beat—one small beat—I think she’ll do it. Grab the bronze chest. Steal the heart. But Zephyra has never been as bad as she believes. The world tried to make her that way, it tried to harden her into a villain, but even it couldn’t mold her to its will; she has never been predictable.
She will never do the expected.
Tail whipping beneath her, she lunges.
Her nails snag in the Death Lord’s robes, and its surprise sends them both sprawling backward as she tackles it to the floor. Her snarl is inhuman; even the cultists hesitate at the sound of it, and Vesper—weaponless—seizes a strand of pearls from the altar table before looping it around the nearest cultist’s throat and pulling,pulling, until it tears at her hands. Slicing her flesh to ribbons. She does not let go. Amaya seizes the opportunity too, snatching up a handful of smoking incense and stabbing it into the eye of another cultist’s mask. Her scream rends the temple. “Kill it, Zephyra!”
I watch in awe, in reverence, as my mermaid tears at the Death Lord’s robes, prying off its mask, clawing and clawing and clawing. “You are no different from any of them,” she seethes. “You think magic makes you better? These phony fucking masks? Robes and darkness and ice? You are just aman. A lowly, pathetic, shell of a man.” She cries harder now, as though she plans to drown the world.
“You cannot kill us,” the Death Lord hisses. “We will devour you.”
She stares into its fathomless face, that hideous abyss, and doesn’t so much as flinch. Her voice hardens. “No, I don’t think you will.”
A preternatural gust—sweet as strawberries—blows through the temple. The ocean outside,beyond, grows louder. Roiling waves and tumultuous currents. Zephyra’s lip curls.
“Scream,” she breathes. “Scream for me, coward.”
