Shit.
He’s going to reach for his dagger—but he doesn’t need to kill me himself. He has men everywhere. Bigger men, scarier men.Shit, shit, shit.Quick as I can, I lash out, and my foot collides with the bottom of his pocket to unsheathe his dagger. It flies up. Out. Magnus reaches for it, but I’m faster. Shoving him out of the way with my shoulder, I manage to snag the dagger by its blade. Blood wells on my palm, but I spin it around and hoist the dagger in front of me.
Magnus swipes a loose lock of brown hair away from his face with a scowl. “You can’t think one tiny blade will protect you from the Leones.”
Slowly, his men seep from the shadows. I glance around wildly, but they surround me on all sides. I won’t just need to outrun them; I’ll need to gothroughthem. Fight them. One blade against fifteen men.
Yet again—I’m fucked.
I shake out my pink waves, allowing each of my new adversaries to glimpse the merrow color. A few stumble back instantly while others lower their spears, if only by an inch or two. I smile sweetly, though terror clenches my gut in a feral sort of grip. “Magnus, love, do you really think a blade is my sole weapon? Are you forgetting what happened mere nights ago?”
He cocks a calculated brow. “Are you insinuating that you are one of the sirens who slaughtered the king’s court?”
“I’m notinsinuatinganything. I’m telling you that I am not afraid to make you gouge out your cheek with your own nails.”
His gaze widens. Whatever he knows, whatever his spies have told him, it must line up with the bloody evidence I found in the tomb. That woman with the wolf mask who died horribly.
“There… there were only three,” Magnus says, sliding back a step. His other men mimic the slight retreat.
“Were there? Are you willing to stake your life on it?” I open my other hand to flash the jewels again, and he flinches. I shiver with delight. With control.Goddess-damned humans.“How else did I get these?” I ask, moving forward and forcing him backward. He trips over his own feet, almost falling on his ass, graceless as a fish flopping around on a dock. The great Magnus of the Leones, reduced to a trembling boy in the face of a single merrow.
I laugh at that, and before he can speak, before I can accidentally stumble over a lie and reveal the truth, I lower my voice and demand, “I want one of your carriages, and I want safe passage to Lucia over the shorewall. I want a driver, enough food for the journey, and I swear if there’s even ahintof funny business, I will sing everyone to death, just like I did to the king’s court. Consider the jewels paymentafterI make it safely.”
He stares at me. The other men stare at me. Shock, horror, and hunger play out like a melody across their faces, each note plucked from their most basic fears. They need to feed and shelter themselves. They needcoin. Even if it means working with a mermaid.
Magnus meets my gaze with a nod, and victory pricks my skin. Warm air blows waves away from my face.
I did it. I finally fucking—
The wind picks up in a constant rhythm, ominous and supernatural, and the men glance up. Their mouths fall open. They run before they can utter a single scream. Even Magnus, who throws himself inside the Leones’ headquarters, doesn’t look back once.
“Interesting story, mermaid,” a strange, rough voice says from above. My heart skids to a halt. I look up—and my heart falls through my chest. Somehow this is worse. So much worse than anything else that’s happened this evening.
Massive white wings tipped in gold splay out behind a large, muscular man, magic sparking on his fingertips in dangerous blue flames. I force myself to remain standing, to level my knife in his direction and glare. It’s all I can do to keep from screaming because I—
I’m as good as dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
ZEPHYRA
Warlock.”
“Mermaid.”
I flick Magnus’s dagger round and round my fingers while I glare at the king’s favorite breed of pet. Fucking warlocks. I have studied the city inside and out. I have lived among the commoners and eavesdropped on the wealthy, but even after six months, I know little beyond the rumors spilled from trembling lips behind closed doors and in mostly empty taverns. Warlocks are acurseon Mortia.
They are feared, not revered.
Just like their precious Mortem.
In the Merrow Wars, warlocks were responsible for more than70 percentof merrow slaughter. Their magic seems to be the only antidote against our own, and it is… unruly. A dark magic, unprecedented for both sea and land, unlike anything that has ever existed within the natural world. They are crooked. They arewrong.
And now this prick is in front of me, flexing his flaming knuckles as if ready to cut me down as easily as a lumberjack would chop a tree. As easily as his predecessors felled the rest of my people. A hiss rises in my throat, my blood boiling with visceral rage.
Over my dead body willheget the best of me.
And from his hostile expression, that’s exactly what he wants—mybody, dead and strung up above the city for the gulls. My eyes narrow slightly.Not happening.
