She nods once. “Right, then.”
I don’t know what to expect. If the cultists will dismember me or her first. If they’ll drain the other isles too or stop here with us. The cult does not usually venture out into daylight. They do not typically leave their mountains. And if the warlocks sent them here—if the king and my elders unchained them for this—who knows where they will go next? That sickened feeling returns, and my stomach twists with my own betrayal.They sent the cult after me.
Because I absconded with a mermaid.
The Death Lord retrieves a razor-sharp sickle from its robes.
Zephyra sucks in a harsh breath at the sight, and then—in a flurry of impossible, reckless pink motion—she rushes toward the cult with a warrior’s cry. And I still cannot move. I’m frozen. The others are either dead or dying, yet her legs move as she—as sheruns.
Her scream pierces the sea behind us, a new rush of waves battering the isle in response. It shatters the bubble of cold tension like a boulder thrown atop a frozen lake. The cultists stumble. A few trip over their robes. The Death Lord’s blade wavers, and he withdraws it an inch in… in fear. My heart leaps. The cult—
“They’re afraid of you,” I realize.
She whirls around with a sudden grin. “Really?” Unfortunately, her scream dies with the hopeful word, and the cultists quickly regain their supernatural footing. Her smile falters when she turns back to face them, her turquoise eyes flying wide as they advance. Hisses rattle through their chests in response.
They can scent her terror.
They’re going to tear her limb from limb.
For some reason, my lungs seize at the thought. At the memoriesstill churning in my gut. No one deserves that. Not even a mermaid. Not even Zephyra.
She glances at her empty hands, wringing them in front of her before searching the ground for a weapon or shield. There is nothing. She is going to die.No, I think sharply.Worse.They’re going to take their time. They’re going to torture her—us.
“Scream,” the Death Lord hisses.
I can handle it. I won’t break. But she’s—my gaze darts to her panicked face—she’s too soft. I felt those emotions back in the shoppe. I have been punished with them since we first boarded the gods-damned carriage. Her agony could be a mace relentlessly swinging at her. Sharp spikes carving her into pieces with every blow. Her mind will break before her body. She’ll suffer for as long as they keep her alive. She’ll feed them for days, weeks—months.
“Zephyra.” My voice remains firm, serrated with hard desperation as I force her gaze back to mine. “You need to run.”
I don’t know why I tell her to do it. The cord billowing between us won’t allow her to escape. Not really. It burns now, aflame with her terror as her eyes rove my face for a second. Just a split second. She hesitates. The woman who has always run. The woman who tried to drown me. The woman who ordered me to explode an entire isle to save our asses. Shehesitates.
That split second is enough to seal her fate.
In a blur of lethal speed, the Death Lord snatches her by the throat and hauls her off her feet. Leather fingers rip off her gilded necklace and bruise her soft flesh. It raises its sickle to bleed her. One slice. One cut. A trickle of crimson down her neck. Down my neck as well, though no one seems to notice.
She struggles, uselessly thrashing against its robe as it leans closer and drags its hooded face over the shallow wound. “Fucking—get—off!”
That fist around my lungs tightens as I watch her flail, near suffocating now. My only hope.Myfucking mermaid. Except it isn’t fear now. It isn’t despair either. No. Fury rises at the sight of her blood, at its skeletal fingers on her skin, and power throttles my veins. I don’t care if it kills me. I have to unleash whatever’s left. “Enough!”I snarl. “You want me, don’t you? Torture me, then. Kill me. Leave the mermaid alone.”
The Death Lord’s hood snaps toward me, and the others peer up from where they have begun to feast upon the islanders. “We already have you, littlest warlock. And we have already tasted you. This one…” It smears the blood on her neck with its thumb. “She smells divine.” Its blade presses into the hollow of her chest, between her breasts, over her pretty new gown, and tears a jagged line down the bodice. Zephyra doesn’t stop cursing. Kicking. Fighting.
Bile stings my throat. The silvered bond becomes a physical manifestation of her pain and horror, rippling with it. I fight against the hold they have on me, but I—I can’t move. I can’t save her.
I roar in frustration. Inrage.
It does not shatter the earth this time, but it buys us a moment. One pivotal moment when the blade does not cut into Zephyra’s flesh. Her eyes clash with mine—then dart behind me. She gasps. I don’t need to wait long before I spot it too.
Him.
A man charges out from the isle’s small port, hoisting a bucket of sloshing water above his black hair. Each step appears labored. The bucket is too heavy, or he is too weak. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t stop running. The cultists glance at him, hissing, before he hurls the crystalline liquid up and out.
Not at the Death Lord, but at the others.
Atallthe others.
The cultists shriek as water douses their robes. Earsplitting cries that make their Death Lord fling Zephyra to the ground and whirl to spot the source of the chaos. The few remaining islanders also begin to shout—in agony, in fear, in anger—as the strange man pulls a sword from a scabbard loosely slung around his waist.
No.
