“What now, mermaid?” Arion seizes my wrist as I try to slip farther away, eyeing the carriages in the port. “Any more big ideas?”
“Are you kidding?” I murmur the words as the mob forms around us. All they need are pitchforks, and—yes, they’re picking up fallen branches now. Wielding them as clubs. Through the crowd, Gerald points his purple umbrella menacingly in my direction.
“This one is your fault. Your magic screwed us,” I argue. “All I did was stab a tree.”
“Do you understand how much magic I had to use to cover up your gods-forsaken emotions? How much magic it cost toonlydestroy the foliage and not thepeople?”
I glare at him as the mob begins to descend. “You just needed to open a door. One fucking door, Arion. We can’t—we can’t kill everyone.”
“Iknow,” he snaps. “But—”
His voice stops abruptly as ice creeps over the surrounding wreckage.
The air stirs, condenses, and the hair on my neck lifts at the sound of several familiar, rattling breaths.
Arion tenses beside me, and any remaining hopes I had of surviving wither and decay like the isle.
“What is it?” I ask, even though I know. I remember.There is no face inside its hood. Only a hollow mask of ivory porcelain.Goddess, I hope I’m wrong. I’ll take the mob. I’ll face Lucius himself for the tragedy we’ve wrought.
Anything but this.
Arion pulls me closer, and his left wing curls around me like a shield. “Listen to me, Zephyra.” Low and even, sensing my panic as the temperature plummets and the fetid stench of death rises, Arion says, “No matter what happens, I need you to run. Don’t look back. Don’t wait for me. Just run.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ARION
There are hooded figures.
Midnight-blue robes drip inky silk over skeletal frames. The boy cannot see their features, not hands nor toes nor even a hint of their faces. They smell of disease and desiccation, and when they raise their hands, navy gloves loose jagged bolts of ice straight into the boy’s chest. He screams. Pain ruptures his heart, peeling back layers of the organ until it’s split open inside his chest. The boy collapses on the ground, writhing and still screaming. Elder Branche hovers over him. A frown twists his thin lips while tears roll down the boy’s fat cheeks.
“Do not scream, Arion,” the elder snaps. “It only encourages them.”
But the boy is dying. He’s certain he’s dying.
Elder Branche heaves out a disappointed sigh and turns to the robed figures. “Take him to the Silence Chamber.” Elder Branche glances once more at the boy. With a heavy boot, he kicks the boy away from him. “I will retrieve him in a month. Until then, he is yours. Do with him as you please.”
The boy is tortured. He does not forget the pain.
He cannot forget them.
Zephyra doesn’t answer my plea. She can’t—our voices are swallowed by the pained screams of the islanders. A few stumble. Collapse. Others bring trembling fingers to the rivulets of blood dripping from their noses, their ears. Their eyes. In the center of themob, Gerald’s umbrella hits the decimated ground. He clutches his heart and crashes into Harold. They tumble down together.
They die together too.
A soft cry of true, visceral fear escapes Zephyra. She doesn’t move. She doesn’trun, and I—I can’t either. Ice freezes over my boots. Freezes me to the ground. Magic quivers weakly, pathetically, in my chest. Useless. A bow strung too tight for too long, unable to release and impale its target. I destroyed the entire fucking isle. I don’t have the energy to do anything else.
I can’t unfreeze myself.
Which means the others can’t either. The cult will slaughter—devour—everyone here. Just as they always do.
“Cultus Mortis,” I murmur.
“What are they—” Zephyra begins to ask, her voice quivering.
“A death cult.Mortem’sdeath cult.”
These fetid monsters are supposed to be bedtime stories. Nightmares rumored to dwell in the caves of Mortia’s northern mountains—just rumors, always, as they have never been seen by the public. They have never existed on the streets.
