“You saved my life. I will save yours.” The king turns then, just in time to catch Zephyra glowering at the shortest, youngest guard of the surrounding bunch. With a snarl, Constane forces her forward, and she trips indelicately the rest of the way up the risers. I have stopped listening, however. Stopped caring.
How does Commander Stone sound?
It sounds fucking powerful. Like greatness and legend and everything I aspired to achieve in my youth. Still, it makes that tendril in my stomach twist. Makes it tangle and threaten to suffocate reality.You saved my life. I will save yours.
If only it could be that simple. I glance down at the collar of my tunic. I’ve buttoned it higher than most to hide the whorls of doom from onlookers’ gazes. Veins of black death spiral out from my heart. They’ve begun to crest the ridge of my left pectoral, creeping closer and closer to my neck. Another symptom—another piece of evidence I can’t escape.
Deep in a chamber / A heart doth lay.I swallow hard at the unsolicited thought, but I can’t shake the poem from my head.Torn from a god / A cold, wintry day.I can’t ignore the ache in my chest. Elder Branche called it a children’s fable, but what if it isn’t? Commander Stone will matter little chiseled onto a headstone in the Tower Arcana graveyard.
Forcing my gaze back up to the macabre spectacle, I try to focus on the proceedings. I try to forget about my own needs and think of the kingdom as King Constane coils a noose around Zephyra’s throat, tightening it without restraint. The harder she thrashes, the more he smiles. Finally, once she’s strung to the gallows and placed center stage, he slides back a step with a rather grandiose, monarchical flourish. He claps his hands, and the restless, starving city quiets. They shuffle forward in unison then, gathering closer around the platform, while Zephyra glares out at them. A merrow. A murderer.
A liar.
“For too long we have suffered the wrath of these ghastlycreatures!” The king’s shout is met with immediate, resounding applause. “For too long we have allowed them to murder our loved ones and drench our cities in blood! No more! Their plights end now. I am King Constane Ador, protector of Mortia, and I will slaughter every foul wretch who sullies our lands. I will find their families, their loved ones, and I will rend them all apart.”
The crowd roars their approval, their bloodlust, and I crack my knuckles in anticipation, in hatred, indoubt, my wings answering with a flex of their own. Merrow are demons. They arewrong. I can’t use one for my own gain. It would never work.
It wouldn’t.
For a second, my eyes flick to the other merrow corpses as Zephyra continues to struggle, fighting her bonds with muffled shrieks and clumsy movements. The king whirls toward her, but when he reaches out to stroke her cheek, she flinches. The sight fills me with vindictive satisfaction.
“I’m sorry, demon. Do you wish to speak?” He tucks a finger beneath her chin, forcing up her head. Then he draws back and slaps her. Hard. Another scream rings out in her throat but can’t escape her mouth. Smiling wider, Constane nods to Warlock Pembroke, who takes a long moment to magically undo her gag. Once it’s finally loose, the king rips it the rest of the way down. “Go on. We’re listening.” He rears back to smack her again, but—even while tied to the gallows—she manages to dodge his touch.
“You don’t even know that Iama mermaid!” Her cry splinters above the crowd as she skids around him and falls to her knees, sounding half delirious, half crazed. “This is supposed to be ajustkingdom! I am due a fair trial!”
The same inane attempt to free herself. I glare up at the cloudless sapphire sky. She is an idiot.She could never help me.
The king arches a skeptical brow. “You would argue against your own hair color?”
“Dyed,” she hurries to say. “From berries.”
The king looms over her, and with the surrounding silence, the people’s attention rapt, his every movement seems to echo. A tremor. A threat. His fingers curl around a tendril of her hair. Hepulls roughly, tearing it cleanly from her head, but she represses a cry. Her lip, however, still trembles.
He rubs the strand between his fingers before casting it to the wind. “Seems real enough to me, don’t you think?” The onlookers cackle. One catches the lock of pink like a bouquet, showing it off to his friends.
Though Zephyra’s eyes water, she doesn’t let the tears spill over as she struggles to her feet. “You’rebarbaric.”
King Constane grabs her hair again, pulling her closer by the nape. “I am theking. Nasty, loathsome creature. For what you and your kin have done to this kingdom, to thesepeople, you deserve pain. You deservedeath!” The louder he curses her, the louder the crowd grows, chanting their agreement. Throwing shoes and coppers at her. The warlocks flick the detritus away before it can pelt the king, but it isn’t enough to protect her from the assault.
She still doesn’t cry. Not for anything.
“If you would like a trial, however,” the king murmurs suddenly, “let us have one.”
He releases her, and she nearly sinks to the floor all over again, though the noose catches her before she can crumble. Her chest heaves with agony. Something like pain—like true, visceral sadness—flashes across her face. My own chest tightens at the sight. Not because the demon is sad, but because my only path forward is about to die.
A fable, I remind myself fiercely,and a merrow.
King Constane plucks a roll of parchment from the inside pocket of his black brocade suit and unravels it at the edge of the platform. “This pink-hairedbeastis heretofore accused of the following crimes: desecrating Mortem’s sacred temple, assaultingfourCrestfall guards, breaking and entering into several fine city establishments, throwing a brick through a jeweler’s window, invading the city sewers, setting a bush on fire, dancing on the remains of said bush—”
“That one was an accident,” she argues sharply, “and I didn’t dance on the remains. I was trying to put it out!”
The crowd boos her, which elicits another grin from the king.He continues with more enthusiasm. “Parading around with a guard’s wooden eye, stealing a wig from Lord Duchovny, and”—he pauses for dramatic effect, reveling in the crowd’s excitement—“tax evasion.”
She blinks rapidly. “Tax evasion?Are you fuckingjoking?”
The king ignores her, choosing instead to address his rabid audience. “Worst of all, she stands here, pretending to be human, pretending to be one ofus, all while living and breathing as a wretchedmerrow.” Pivoting on his heel, he tosses the parchment aside and stalks back toward her. “That alone is enough to condemn you.” The king claps twice, and Warlock Pembroke moves to retrieve someone from the front of the crowd. “Bring up our special guest.”
Even I am not sure what to expect at this point, but it isn’t the three hundred pounds of man that clomps up the risers beside me. Slicked-back hair, a thick beard growing from his massive chin, and muscles rippling on every inch of his meaty body, he appears more like a walking earthquake than a man. Zephyra stumbles upon spotting him. Something like a sob wrings from her throat.
