Vesper’s tail flails violently as she stares at her open, empty arms. “What… no. NO!” The siren roars, and it quakes the temple. But the sorcerer merely conjures a gag for Vesper’s mouth. She freezes onthe floor, once more unable to move and now completely silenced. And Eos is—
Eos is still dead.
I glare at the sorcerer over my shackles. “You are a rotten fucking prick.”
“And you have become far more ignorant in the last few months. We do not do well when we are not together, my wife.”
“Stop fuckingcalling me that!”
“Why?” He blinks at me in earnest. “Was that not the deal? Did you not carve out that boy’s heart—”
I don’t let him finish that sentence. I launch myself at him. Move to choke him, to hurt him. But he keeps fuckinglaughing, and—
And someone picks me up and pulls me off him.
Carries me away as I struggle in their arms, but their grip is ironclad. Enchanted.Strong.Oh goddess. No—
No.
“I’m sorry,” Gavriall whispers at my ear, sounding genuinely sad. “I don’t have a choice. I owe him.”
Magic prickles on my skin, unbidden, like razors slicing off each and every scale until my legs return. A gown appears with them, pure white and delicate, sheer lace molding to my every curve. A veil falls low over my eyes. I am… his bride.
I am just his bride.
Gavriall sets me on my feet, retreating with an apologetic frown, and I breathe. All I can do is breathe.
He granted me a head start. He allowed me to escape. But I still ended up right fuckinghere. All along I’ve just been a mouse in his maze—willalwaysbe a mouse in his maze—surrounded by his cruel traps. I glance at Arion, who looks back at me with a fierceness that steals my breath. The cord between us doesn’t exist anymore. The bond has somehow ruptured. I should be bleeding with him, but I’m not.
And I have no choice but to assume that is the sorcerer’s doing too.
“How could Gavriall have met you?” I ask, the words vicious and rough. “You can’t leave the fuckingsea.”
“The sea has a way of reaching the shore,” the sorcerer answers vaguely, enjoying every second of this madness. It takes a minute, but eventually—I understand.
“The merman,” I say to Gavriall. “Your affair with a merrow.”
“He told me stories,” Gavriall admits. “He told me of a fabled sorcerer who could make problems vanish. When I found myself almost killed for my debts, I escaped to the water. I offered myself to him.”
Oh goddess.
I glance around me. At Vesper. At Amaya. At Gavriall. Every single person who found us worked for the sorcerer. Every singlefuckingone. I swallow bile.
“How long,” I manage through tears now, “have you been following me?”
“My dear, you haven’t been truly aloneever. That is what I keep telling you. I’m here with you, Zephyra. I will always be right here with you.” He smiles, and the sight should be devastating. Beautiful. But it twists in my abdomen like a knife. “You always make me out to be the villain, Zephyra.” The sorcerer crouches to sling an arm around Vesper’s shoulder, and the statue of Mortem rises behind them.Fuck, I wish it’d fall. I wish it’dcrush him. “I only do as people ask. I give them what they want. Don’t you see, dear? I am not the problem here. I am the solution. Gavriall is alive—and he is smarter for it. Because ofme.”
Gavriall flushes at the last, and I realize with a bolt of nauseating clarity that intelligence was his original gift. A way for him to rise within the ranks of historians and save himself.
“You forged his scores.” Arion coughs with disbelief, scrambling to sit up against the onslaught of pain. “Youwere why the king pardoned him.”
“Yes,” the sorcerer says, not sparing a glance for the warlock. “I afforded him life, and in return, I kept him on a leash until I needed him.”
“A spy,” I say, my veins roiling with anger.
“A puppet,” the sorcerer argues. Arm still around Vesper, fingers bruising her skin, he turns to Gavriall. “Kneel,” he demands. “Now.”
Gavriall’s eyes glaze over. He drops without preparing for the impact, and one of his kneecaps shatters, bone splitting loudly enough that the sound echoes through the temple. A cry builds in his throat, but the criminal’s face remains blank. Empty. He does not scream.
