“Say hello to your friend,” the king coos.
The audience devours the drama, pressed so close to the platform now that some reach up to try to climb it. Warlock Mathis beats them away with the hilt of a sword while Warlock Pembroke burns their fingers on contact. If possible, the king smiles even wider. Incandescent now. “He told us everything we need to know about you, Zephyra of the Syl.”
She flinches at the sound of her name—Zephyra of theSyl, meaning from the middlemost sea—and at the furious look on the strange man’s face. “Stavros?” she breathes.
The man stiffens. He crosses his arms, and both warlocks glance apprehensively at the sight of his aggressively large biceps. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” Stavros says to Zephyra, his accent muddled and thick. Northern, if not by birth, then through ancestry. “You abandoned us. Wetrustedyou.”
The mermaid doesn’t respond. How could she? Her death is assured. She has only seconds to live. My breath lodges in my throat, and this time—I can’t breathe through it. I can’t force myselfto relish this moment, or even to look away. The mermaid is going to die. Now.
Abysses wasbeneaththe sea.
She’s lying. She has to be lying. No matter what she claims, there is no way she knows about Abysses, and there is no way that poem was factual, and there is no way…
My chest gives a particularly painful throb.
There is no way to stop myself from dying.
Warlocks sacrifice everything for magic. We embrace pain in exchange for power. We rid ourselves of the rest, of all other emotion—anger and joy and sadness and love—for strength. But right now, I can’t help the flicker of knife-sharp desperation slicing through my stomach. I can’thelpthe rabid fear crawling from the wound. I am a warlock. I am strong and powerful. But I am mortal.
I’m going to die. Soon.
Deep in a chamber / A heart doth lay.
“You deserve everything coming to you,” Stavros says.
Zephyra holds his gaze, her teeth biting hard into her lower lip. A sudden breeze blows her pink hair away from her face—and it’s only then that I realize my wings are moving, pulling,tugging. The breeze is my fault. Her eyes narrow as she realizes it too, and she looks over her shoulder to find me. I stare back at her, trying to keep my expression calm and unreadable.
“Yes, Zephyra, you do.” The king’s smooth, patronizing voice draws our attention as he reaches up to lay a palm on Stavros’s shoulder. “And so do you, unfortunately.” At the enormous man’s confused expression, Constane shakes his head and tuts sympathetically. “A crime is a crime, I’m afraid, and for the one you’ve committed, there is no recourse. For aiding and abetting a merrow, Stavros Patridis, I must sentence you to death.”
It happens quickly after that.
Zephyra screams a warning as the king steps away, and a sword slams abruptly through the man’s chest. No one else heard the guard step up behind him. No one else saw the weapon unsheathed—not until Stavros glances down at the silver blade and crimson dropletsmarring his dirty white tunic, and his mouth falls open on a groan. Then he collapses onto his knees, rolling sideways.
Lifeless.
The crowd cheers so loud, the ground shakes.
Fighting anew, raging like a bull, Zephyra bucks and kicks and screeches. The king only continues to smile. It twists my gut. Not because he’s wrong—becauseIam.
Commander Stone.It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, and everything I’ll never have. Because I am dying. Dying.Dying.The word builds to a roar in my head, louder than even the merrow. But what if Icanstop it? What if there’s another choice? An unbreakable tether ties me to this city, to my divine responsibilities, but as I stare at the mermaid, I stop seeing her, and I start seeingme. And that unbreakable tether—it snaps. All at once, painfully and terribly, it’s just… gone.
Maybe it makes me a fucking idiot, but I want tolive.
“Hang her,” the king demands.
With cold precision, the warlocks begin to cut through the marble beneath her, to create an opening with which to snap the mermaid’s neck. My jaw hardens. My desperation brews potent magic in my veins, and without much effort—as if my subconscious has been waiting to do so all along—I manage to penetrate her mind. “Zephyra of the Syl,” I speak into it.
She shudders at the intrusion. Her head twitches.
“Zephyra,” I repeat.“We don’t have time. You know of Abysses?”
She turns then, seconds from the floor being carved open. Her gaze fixes on mine, full of raw terror and anger and sharp despair. She nods once.
“Do you swear you know where it is?”
Another frantic nod.
I inhale slowly. Look at the surrounding merrow corpses once more. Feel the pain and exhaustion and death rotting in my blood. There is no other way. She is my best option. She is my only option. So I ask, “If I free you, will you lead me to it?”
