Instead of the slash of their long, sharp fingers, there is only chilled wind—it blasts my cheeks as they rush past. As they ignore me and head straight toward—
Straight toward Arion.
Of course. His magic failed. His negative thoughts are probably the ones they detected first.
He realizes it the same second I do. Panic flares through the bond as he hastens to conjure another flame, but it dissipates to smoke in his fingers. “What the fuck is going on with you?” My scream can hardly be heard through the howl of the trees. “Now is not the time for performance anxiety—”
He falls to his knees in answer, and his exhaustion—it washesthrough my chest, over my limbs, and the darkness creeping over my vision isn’t mine at all. It’s his. And now he’s going to die and take me with him.
No. Not like this.
Sprinting toward him—racing the damned dryads—I pick up an apple and hurl it at the nearest tree. “Hey, you termite-infested piece of kindling!” At least two of them whip their branches toward me, and I seize the closest, propelling myself up the thorny limb and into its canopy. Searching wildly for any way to distract it—to distractthem—and buy Arion time to recover. “Touch him, and I’ll find a volcano in which tothrow you!”
It groans in response. Probably because I’ve snapped off a limb and shoved it into the gaping hole of its mouth. Now the others converge on me too, and—and perhaps I should’ve thought this through. Clambering backward, deeper into the canopy, I shout, “Now would be the time to decimate something, warlock!Anything!”
He snarls a curse, pitching forward,collapsing, and I swear to Vila, if he passes out while I’m elbows-deep in this tree, I will find him in the Fathoms. I will make him rue the day he saved me—even more than he already does—and wreak havoc on his eternity.
Except he doesn’t pass out.
His fists slam upon the ground. Into the ground. Tiny cuts lacerate my hands as roots crawl over his own, but more than that—
All the exhaustion erupts from my body in a single, agonizing breath.Hisbreath. I cling to the dryad’s branches as Arion roars, and the earth detonates at his fingertips.
There is no time to react, no time to respond to the agony snarling my organs because of him. Before I can drag in another breath, the force of his magic obliterates the dryads. Obliterateseverythinguntil I’m flying, soaring, spinning through the air as the world beneath me turns to ash. What was once jade and gold has withered to a blur of black. And there is nothing—nothingto grab on to; I’m going to crash, to splatter into viscera at Arion’s feet.
When he catches me a second later, holding me above the earth, I’m still screaming. I’m clawing up his chest and shredding hisbrand-new shirt, wrapping my legs around his waist and clinging for dear life. I close my eyes. I bury my face in his chest. “You can… put me down…now.” When he doesn’t answer, I scream, “Down!” as if he’s a dog instead of the powerful warlock who just saved my ass.
“Are you satisfied?” he growls.
“Satisfied?You just catapulted meacrosstheisle—”
“You said I have performance anxiety.” He dives toward the ground, and I scream again, trying not to throw up as we land abruptly in the marketplace once more.
He dumps me unceremoniously on the ground, and I glare up at him through my hair. “And you retaliated by—what? Going ‘scorched earth’?” My gaze darts around us, taking in the skeletal remains of half-broken trees and gnarled branches. The blackened grass and whorls of smoke. He didn’t simply decimate the orchard—he decimatedallthe isle.
He decimated the marketplace too.
My eyes widen incredulously, and I can’t help it—a nervous laugh spills from my lips at the sheer magnitude of devastation. It shouldn’t be possible from one man. And especially not fromthisman.
He shakes his head, too spent to argue, and my own limbs feel sluggish in response. I struggle to my feet, eyeing the cord as it dims and pulses in time with our heartbeats. Just beyond it, the evening sun glints off the water. There is nothing. Nothing left except—
Islanders.
They begin creeping out from behind razed willows, their mouths falling open at the sight of Arion’s wings. Of my pink hair. Silence pervades, near stifling after the wails of the alarm. “This is bad,” I mutter, stepping into Arion’s shadow. As if destroying their isle, their home, wasn’t enough, they now know exactly who is responsible—a warlock and a mermaid.Mostly a warlock though.“Very bad.”
Arion sighs heavily, ignoring the islanders completely. “It just got worse.”
He jerks his chin over his shoulder, past the ruins of the market,past the ruins of the orchard, to where the library should be—Lucius’s sacred, immortal library. The one that has stood in precisely that spot for over a thousand years.
It isn’t standing anymore.
I inch away from Arion at the sound of the first anguished shout. The second. Soon more voices join the first—angrier, louder than the alarms were, murderous as the isle realizes we’ve turned its crowning jewel, its precious Illuminated Library, into gold dust.
“Fuck,” Arion breathes.“Fuck.”
I couldn’t agree more.
My gaze snags on a half-incinerated piece of parchment at our feet, and I cringe, dragging it behind us and out of sight. A woman near us still notices. Her eyes widen in disbelief, in horror, before falling to the holy detritus. Unsure what else to do, I lift a shoulder and mouth,Sorry.
