He has no power here.
I curl my tail around his broad waist to force him still. He can’t move, no matter how hard he struggles. “Thisis for knocking me out.” I slash my nails across his flesh, and the water reddens with the small spill of his blood. “Thisis for locking me up.” I cut through his open black tunic, marring his right pectoral. “Andthisis for delivering me to the noose.” Adrenaline pounds through my veins. It tastes like vengeance.
I hardly feel the water around us anymore, hardly feel the salt burning my skin and the cold caress of waves against my face. There is just me. Just Arion.
Just his death.
Years of suffering crash over me at once, and I take it all out on the stupid, arrogant warlock before me.
I own you now, Zephyra of the Syl.
No.
No one owns me. Not this man. Not the sorcerer. My life is mine. He cannot take it away from me. No one will ever take it away from me again. I throttle the warlock now, mindless with rage. “I belong to no one. I owe younothing.”
He scrapes his own nails along my arms, still scrambling to kick me, to hurt me, to do anything that might buy him another minute on this earth. His mouth opens on a furious growl—the sort that might set my hair on edge if I weren’t in complete control—but instead of exhaling his anger, he inhales sharply. The sea begins to fill his lungs. And it burns. Itmustburn. Hemustknow he’s dying. I smile wide.
I want him to suffer.
“See you in the next life,” I whisper, before releasing him and letting those brutish wings drag him down, down, “but probably not even then.”
If I were able to do so without attracting unwanted attention, I’d use my magic and send him soaring through a whirlpool to the bottom of the Sel. That delicious thrill of adrenaline reverberating through my veins begs me to twitch my finger, to pull on the connection merrow share with the goddess, and force him to sink faster. But he is already drowning. Already gagging. His wings are crooked now, bent and sagging. The warlock is as good as dead, which means I need to run. Or, rather,swim. A noose and a warlock are nothing compared with the High Sorcerer of the Four Seas.
My stomach roils at the thought of him, and an all-too-familiar panic sears up my spine as I glance behind me, checking for any flicker of his bronzed magic in the deep. But the water is dark blue, the fish are small—sardines, not spies—and the light from the surface is so dim, it almost feels as though the Sel is entirely empty. The sorcererisn’t here. There’s a chance for me to swim away, to never be found—
A crimson streak catches my attention.
I look down. Blood drips from my chest and neck in familiar slender rivulets. I touch a finger to it and wince, confused. Because it’s—it’smyblood. It’s my blood staining the fuckingwaters.
My stomach plummets.
Panic tightens my throat, and I surge backward, away from it, but the crimson streak follows. The strange cuts on my chest continue to bleed. I stare down at them in desperation, my panic spiraling to pure, unadulterated terror. How—why—goddess, how do I get away before he sends his armies after me? He’s going to taste me. He’s going to know I’m here.
“I own you now, Zephyra of the Syl.” He looms before me, bronze eyes flashing hotter as he presses a hard finger to my lips. His magic flares between us like a secret flame. Bronze shackles click over my wrists. Fear roars in my ears as he presses closer still, his other hand roaming over my scales, up my waist. My palms continue to bleed from our bargain. I’m not certain they’ll ever stop. “Your heart, your magic, and your soul belong tome. Now”—he licks his teeth before grinning a wicked smile and lifting my chin so his gaze snags mine—“kneel.”
Oh goddess, oh goddess, oh goddess.
I have to move. I have to swim.I have to—the thought dies as a wave of seawater explodes up and out of my throat.
Fuck.
My gut burns as I vomit ocean, unable to breathe. Unable to think or even move as it forcefully expels from me.Fuck fuck fuck.I scratch at my neck, my gills, spinning round and round in the rough current. Searching for any obstructions or reasons as to why I, a mermaid, amdrowning. But—my tail whips back and forth in a near-delirious frenzy—there are none.
And I am. Bleeding. Drowning.
He’s going to find me.
I thrust my arms upward, desperate to burst through the surface, but my body is no longer functioning. I’m no longer in control. I blink hard, my lungs aching from the continuous stream of salt searing through my esophagus.No no no no—I begin to sink, unable to pull myself up as my body, my lungs, fill with water.
I open my mouth on a scream. Only bubbles pour out.
Just like—
Just like the warlock.
Lightning strikes in my mind then. A sickening crack as realization scorches through the fear, the pain.The warlock.I glance down,and sure enough—he still bleeds beneath me. Far beneath me, almost sinking out of sight now. He still drowns.
“Wake up!” Rough sand cuts into my feet, my ankles, as I hold Jacin to my chest. His lips are bloody. His body is bloody. His green eyes are open, but unseeing. “Wake up wake up wake up! Please. Please.” A sob wracks my frame, but I kiss those blue lips with every bit of magic remaining in me. Again. Again. Jacin doesn’t wake up, however. And I can only weep harder.
