The magic sizzles in his veins. He feels the pain like claws tearing through his flesh. And—he breathes through it. He lets it shatter the glass of his bones, lets it escape outward.Mortem’s will.The magic slices through the salmon. Flaying half a dozen before the boy can even open his eyes. Blood fills the rest of the bowl. Scales and guts.
“Very good, Arion.” Elder Branche pats the boy’s head with a cold, emotionless touch. “Very, very good.”
The boy grins. He can’t help it. He only ever wanted to be good.
The prison has become a mausoleum of books.
Torn parchment and broken spines litter the floor. Ink stains the stone desk. The more the mermaid chatters away—the more my search proves futile—the more magic churns inside me. Pain sparks like flint against rock in my chest. I swallow it. Irefuseto acknowledge it. But exhaustion smokes between my ribs all the same, curling around my spine. It won’t be long until it claims me.
WARLOCK CASEAN TITUES
Risen:AF 106
Fallen:AF 199
WARLOCK ADRIEN SEVERI
Risen:AF 243
Fallen:AF 367
WARLOCK MARKUS CICERO
Risen:AF 389
Fallen:AF 498
Not one other warlock has fallen—died—fewer than ten years after their Rise. In all history, the youngest ever to fall was forty-three post-Rise. There is no antidote, no cure, no proof ofanyonehealing the degeneration of their bodies. Which leaves me to hunt down gods-damned fables. Bedtime stories and legends anddrivel; nothing that could ever possibly be real. But I can’t just let myself die. Not this soon. Not after everything I’ve sacrificed.
“What will your superiors think about the mess you’ve made?” The mermaid hangs upside down over the end of her cot. Her pink hair brushes the filthy floor, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Or perhaps she doesn’t care. Her gaze stays fixed on the exits, shifting between them every three seconds like clockwork. “I thought you warlocks were supposed to at leastpretendto be higher beings.”
“We are higher beings.”
“You’ve ruined at least thirty books in the last hour. To a librarian, you’re a monster.” She runs her tongue along her teeth in another clear threat, fully ignoring her reddening cheeks and the blood rushing straight to her head. Maybe she’ll fall. Bludgeon herself and save me from the torment of her loathsome company. “What are you looking for anyway? Pretty pictures of pretty ponies?”
“You’re awfully chatty for a dead girl.” I slam my way throughOfficial Warlock Records and Histories, Volume XVII.
“I’ve been a dead girl for a long time,” she murmurs, her voice cold as ice. “I’m comfortable with the position.”
I can imagine. She’s been nothing short of a nightmare since I first found her on the street, threatening the leader of the nastiest gang in Crestfall. If I hadn’t knocked her unconscious and locked her up, Magnus would have done so himself eventually. He would have hit her when she least expected it, and his crew wouldn’t have been gentle. I whirl to tell her as much, if only as a distraction from my own problems, when the door to the prison opens with an ominous creak.
Fuckingfinally.
With a quick exhalation, I straighten the books around the room, sweeping the floor clean as the loose parchments vanish. The merrow watches me now—not the door—disdain gleaming in herocean-blue gaze. I stand up, anticipating the king or his guards or perhaps an elder to herald the demon’s execution. Instead, however, a lanky historian marches into the room.
Gavriall Praesepultus, the newest historian of Tower Historia and a debatably reformed criminal, balances a porcelain plate of fresh fruit atop a stack of particularly ancient texts. Leather covers flake off on his exposed arms and hands, his uniform-black robes sheared short at the sleeves to expose the wiry muscles and smooth tawny skin beneath. He tries to blow the flakes away with weak, shallow breaths to no avail.
“You aren’t meant to be down here,” I say in lieu of a proper greeting.
Gavriall rolls his eyes, shaking straight locks of jet-black hair away from his face. “You sent a gull to Tower Historia requesting more books. I am here with said books. Seems aboveboard to me, Arion.”
“Everything seems aboveboard to a gambler.”
He rolls his eyes again. Then a third time for good measure. “I’m a historian now.” When I glare at him, he drops the books onto the desk, scooping the plate up and away before I can so much as snatch a grape. “Perhaps I might use my new position to remind you what to say in situations like this: ‘thank you’—a polite expression used when acknowledging a gift, service, or compliment. ‘Much appreciation’—an expression used to signify one’s recognition of the worth of a person or situation. ‘I cherish you’—”
“You can proclaim your position as much as you’d like; I will always remember you broken and bleeding in that alley, rubbing your last two silvers together as if they might save your miserable life.”
A frown carves deep into Gavriall’s bony face. For a moment, it looks as if he might argue, but instead he turns sharply on his heel and stalks over to the mermaid’s cell. “Breakfast delivery.”
