I stare at her, and she stares back at me, unflinching. Unyielding. Though I reach out with my magic to detect a lie, her pulse beats study in her veins.Interesting.“How do you know about Abysses?” I ask slowly. “Whatdo you know about it?”
“Well,ifI were a mermaid, I would be taught about it in school. I would hear stories passed down from generation to generation, parent to child. I would know thetruthbehind the Fall.”
I curse, and my power surges like a wave in my chest. If she’s right and Abysses does lie beneath the sea, then I’m fucked. With the magic remaining inside me, I could shatter a mountain, rip a chasm in the earth, but I can’t permanently grow gills. I can’t traverse the sea’s treacherous depths, alone, for days or weeks at a time. It would kill me.
It would killanyonebut a merrow.
Mortia and the four seas have been at war since Mortem’s Fall. Even if I could sprout gills indefinitely, the merrow would kill me—a warlock of Mortia—before I reached Abysses. Not to mention, I have no clue the truth of what lies beneath the ocean: the merrow, perhaps, but not the monsters, not the magic at play. And where, exactly, isbeneath the sea?Whichsea? I wouldn’t even begin to know where to look or how to get there.
Fuck.
I rub a hand down my face, shaking my head in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness. If I allowed myself emotions, that sinking feeling in my stomach might be despair. Merrow have been scarce since the masquerade slaughter. Scarcer still with the soldiers beating down every door to search for inhuman hair colors or a flash of scales. I’ll never find a merrow to help me—and even if Icould, they’re a vile, rotten species. In the Merrow Wars, they flooded our shores. Desecrated our continent. They drowned the children of soldiers before eating them in cold blood.
They’re wicked, and they’re wrong. I wouldn’t be able to trust them.
I can only trust myself.Unless…
My gaze flicks to the pink-haired merrow, her face still pressed between the bars of her cage, and I consider her coldly. Objectively. She’s here. She’s at my disposal. I could have her on a leash withinsecondsif I wanted.
Her turquoise eyes narrow as they meet mine. “What are you looking at?” she hisses.
“You,” I say simply.
It’s a foolish plan. A terrible one. The king would never relinquish her—especially not from the jaws of his noose—yet I cannot stop the wheels in my head from turning. This mermaid might be theonlypath forward. I can’t keep waiting. Waiting for another merrow to fall into my lap. Waiting to stumble upon a rumored utopia.
Waiting to die.
Before I can reconsider, I stand abruptly, my wings rippling in protest, and seize the book of poetry. “Zephyra,” I say softly, tasting the name.
Her nose wrinkles.
Gavriall blinks.
And the door bursts open once more, interrupting the most reckless—the mostmoronic—idea of my life.
This time, Elder Branche steps into the prison. Long gray robes cascade down his body, embroidered with white threads that match the sheen of his hair. His vivid silver gaze fixes on mine, and he nods once. “Warlock Stone.” He turns to Gavriall then, his expression hardening. “Historian Praesepultus, who sent you here?”
Gavriall stands hastily. “The superiors. Warlock Stone requested some study materials.” Though he turns to gesture to the books, I’ve banished all but the warlock records, my heart thudding loudly beneath my ribs. Elder Branche does not need to know about Abysses, about Mortem’s Fall and his hidden heart, and this—more than anything else—should tell me everything I need to know about this plan. Guilt wraps a fist around my throat, threatening to choke me. I have never kept secrets from an elder before.
“He wanted records,” Gavriall corrects quickly, dropping into a low bow. “It was my pleasure to retrieve them.”
“I see.” Elder Branche’s silver eyes narrow as they flick between Gavriall and me. “Be on your way, then.”
Swallowing hard, Gavriall glances at me, then at the mermaid, then at Elder Branche, and I am beginning to see why he lost every bet.
Still, he has no choice but to comply. He cannot refute a direct order from an elder. Though they have long since drained themselves of magic—an excruciating process that precedes a fall—most warlock elders have been alive for centuries, chosen by Mortem himself to lead. Elder Branche has survived three hundred years in Mortia. If Gavriall disobeyed him, it would be my duty to rend Gavriall’s head from his shoulders.
Gavriall seems to know this, and without a word, he ducks his head and leaves the dungeon. Zephyra too remains unusually quiet. Careful to keep my face impassive, I flick a glance at where she stands, quiet and watchful, against the bars of her cell.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think she looks nervous.
Satisfaction unfurls in my chest.Good.
Elder Branche senses her wariness too. He glides up to her cell with a lethal grace, his withered lips curling into a smile and revealing small, sharp teeth. I resist the urge to stare, to grimace, because I’ve never seen his teeth before. The sight of them is… unnerving. Even my wings tense and ripple as he wraps long fingers around the cell bars, leaning close and inhaling deeply. Scenting the merrow’s pink hair. “So pretty,” he breathes. “Such a waste.”
Though her frown deepens, she doesn’t yield a single step. Not even as he slips a hand through the gap and grips her chin with ownership, turning it this way and that. I wait for her to spit in his face. I wait for her to bite offhisfinger. If she does either, her life will be forfeit sooner rather than later, and—perhaps that’s for the best.
I bow my head when Elder Branche turns to look at me, indecision cleaving my thoughts in two. I need a merrow. I need a merrow, yet I cannot control a merrow or obtain one legally. A muscle feathers in my jaw as I rise, as Elder Branche brushes past me to the door. To theexecution. How do I know this mermaid even told the truth? How do Iknowshe isn’t simply manipulating me in order to escape? “The king is ready for her, Warlock Stone,” Elder Branche says. “Bring her to the Executioner’s Square.”
