Arion’s wings carry him with lethal precision as he shoots bolts of magic this way and that—toward me, toward the warlocks, toward anyone who looks at him wrong. My mouth dries at the hard set of his jaw, the sheer wrath twisting his expression. He ispissed.
Unfortunately for him, I’ve survived worse. Unfortunately for him, I’m used to being chased. I skirt the craters of Arion’s making, the mud and the sailors and their suddenly sentient nets.Fuck.I dart abruptly around the nearest one—around commoners too, past angular buildings and teeming stalls. The guards from the gallows haven’t caught up yet, andthesepeople are too distracted to care that an enemy runs in their midst. Too distracted by the flying warlock and his bolts of lightning. His wings beat an insidious rhythm of wind and thunder.
“Stop now, merrow!” Arion’s deep voice rumbles throughout Crestfall, quaking columns and throttling lemon trees. “Zephyra, Zephyra, Zephyra.”His voice slithers down my spine, twisting through thevertebrae until I fear I’ll hear him in my sleep, just like the other one. “We had a deal, Zephyra.”
I don’t listen. I never listen. This is all his fault for thinking I could be trusted in the first place. And fuck him for putting me in this position. I haven’t murdered. I haven’t pillaged. I’ve beenhiding. Stealing to survive. I have never hurt anyone who hasn’t deserved it. Except once. Only once.
I blow a kiss in his general direction, and—with a wink behind me—hurl myself around the Port of Entry. A tall, columned building with jade-green palm trees swaying against textured white walls. Beside it, thousands of feet below, the sea rages.
I swallow hard.
Jumping… it reminds me of ropes and nooses and choking to death. My stomach churns. Bile floods my mouth. I stare down at the deep blue waters, hesitating for a split second. I haven’t felt the sea’s touch in six months. Not since I left the sorcerer.
What if he finds me?
But there is nothing hypothetical about the enormously pissed-off warlock behind me. Arion will reach me any second now. Rubbing my throat, I inhale deeply. My knees bend.You can do it, I think.You can run again. You did it the first time.
“You owe me!” Arion’s fierce shout cuts through the storm winds. It lashes out at me before his magic can reach me. “There is nowhere you can go where I won’t find you!”
I raise my middle finger high in the air, not bothering to glance back or contemplate for another moment as I leap.
As I fall.
The instant I plunge back into the sea, I feel true, fleeting freedom. The burst of cold, the sting of salt, even the water flooding my lungs, my limbs—it tastes like home. Likepower.
Finally.
Moonlight bursts in small fissures beneath my flesh, glowing bright against the surrounding fathomless blue. My legs melt together, and scales grow one by one—glittering turquoise iridescence—from my torso downward. Just like that, my tail appears. Three slender slices carve into my neck.Gills.I can breathe again. Salt floods my mouth.I laugh wildly and spin around in the water, my hair twirling weightlessly with the movement. It feelsright. It feels as if I’ve won.
But the nightmare isn’t over yet.
I thought the warlock wouldn’t follow. I thought he would understand that his wings would tangle haphazardly with the sea and that a fall from such a great height could break his bones. I’ve thought many things in my past—and most of them have turned out to be wrong.
Warlock Arion Stone hurls after me, straight over the edge, and crashes into the water like a boulder, nearly knocking himself unconscious. As fast as I transformed, the winged man sinks.
He begins to drown.
I flick my tail, hands hastily parting the crystal-cool waters in front of me as I follow after him. Though his wings still fight, struggling for purchase in the deep blue, they find none. Arion sinks and sinks and—shaking my head, I dart after him. I grab on to his collar and yank him against me.
Panic flares in his gaze, terror at his sudden positioning. He is beneath the waves, enveloped by crushing waters on all sides, inmyterritory. If I choose it, he will die. His life is in my hands, and he knows it. His wide eyes meet mine on a silent plea, but I have had enough with men—winged or otherwise—and I amno one’sto own. A second passes. Two.
My hands tighten around his throat.
Today is the day Warlock Arion Stone dies.
PART
2
THESEA
CHAPTER NINE
ZEPHYRA
Arion doesn’t die easily.
Annoyingly, he fights. Hard. The warlock’s hands clamp around my wrists, heated fingers digging into my skin as his wings try desperately—futilely—to beat and free him from my grasp. However, this isn’t the sky. This is the sea.
