“What do you think?” Gavriall fixes her with a pointed look. “I didn’t show up one morning. I was in bad with one of the Southlands’s casinos. I needed money to pay off my debt, so I robbed a shitty fruit stall for the coin. The next day, when I showed up at the beach, he wasn’t in the water. He was hanging at the dock. Strung up, oozing blood onto the wood, his scales glittering on the armor of the guards who captured him. I left the Southlands that day. Started a new life in Crestfall to escape the pain.”
Zephyra looks as if she’s going to be sick. I might be too. For as much as I want to throttle her… I don’t ever want to see her like that. Strung up. Dead.
He was hanging at the dock.
I study her. The soft planes of her cheeks to the angled cut of her jaw. Her pert nose and wide turquoise eyes. Even her tail. She’s always so alive. She’s always so beautiful.
Logic wars inside me. Merrow are evil. Zephyra is evil. Yet, I don’t know what I would do if I found her like that.
It’s the bond. It’s the cord. It’s the debt.
“I won’t betray you,” Gavriall says now, completely oblivious to my internal struggle. He wipes moisture from his cheek and nestles deeper into the bench. His eyes shut. “I’m here to help. If you can’t trust anything else, trust that I know how fucked-up my kingdom is. Trust that I’m not willing to lay my life on the line for it.”
I tear my eyes from Zephyra to scowl at him. “Says the man who used the threat of merrow to manipulate the king into pardoning him.”
Gavriall sighs. “I wasn’t willing to die, Arion. I did what it took to save myself. I have a perfect memory, I have intimate knowledge of Mortia’s gangs, and I’m smart. I help them more than they’ve ever helped me.”
“Arion thinks the heart is in Abysses,” Zephyra divulges. “We were trying to break into the Illuminated Library to find records of the utopia, but the warlock exploded it out of existence.”
Gavriall’s eyes widen. “You blew up the Illuminated Library?”
I glare at Zephyra, but she just shrugs. “What? Youdid.”
“We were going to die—”
“Exactly. So was Gavriall.” She turns to the historian and says, “Do you have any idea where Abysses might be? Our only lead is the Sol. ‘The heat of the sea.’ Some sort of Greenwood tale.”
“Zephyra is convinced Abysses is below the sea,” I explain. “And at this point, we really fucking need it to be.”
Gavriall considers this, rolling on his side to glance between us. “There are far too many historical texts to try and narrow it down completely. Every kingdom has its own tales of Abysses and how itsprung from their god’s creation. But… there was a historian a couple hundred years ago. A young one. He claimed to have found it.”
My brow furrows. I’ve never read anything aboutanyonefinding Abysses. Although, by the time I discovered the heart might be there, I hadn’t had time to read much else. “Who?”
“Vasiliev,” Gavriall says, and my pulse starts racing. “He was obsessed with the idea of merrow and humankind existing together. He spent the whole of his career searching for proof.”
The name sounds familiar, as if I’ve read it before. But I can’t quite place it.
Zephyra stares intently at Gavriall. “What did he find?Wheredid he find it?”
“That’s just it—nobody knows. There are no sources straight from Vasiliev himself, only recordings from those around him. He was rumored to have been an addict, and the entire human world thought he was stark raving mad, but eventually he led an expedition. He found proper funding, and he took a team into the ocean.” Gavriall shrugs as though this isn’t life-changing news. As though this isn’teverythingI’ve been searching for. “The last journal entry from his colleague read: ‘Vasiliev found it. I don’t know how he did it, but he swears it’s true. He brought us a rock. A silly little thing; however, the geologist swears he’s correct. It’s old. Far older than anything we’ve seen before. A material we’ve never seen before. Black as night, denser than any other stone. We leave for the expedition at first light. Gods help us, we have to traverse the seas. Vasiliev says there will be merrow and monsters with which to contend. He says we must be prepared. But he also says Abysses waits, and if we find it, the world will change. Some of the others don’t believe him, but they don’t know him as I do. Only a confident man would swim those dangerous depths without fear. I trust him with my life. And so, I will leave, and I will not look back.’” Gavriall sighs, leaning harder on his elbow. “Obviously, that was the last anyone heard of the expedition. They never came back, and no one knows where they died.”
Zephyra continues staring, though the look in her eyes grows distant. The cord pulses with a quick streak of fear, of terror, before sheshakes her head. “Monsters—that could mean the Sol. Krakens live there, and they were once notorious for wrecking sailor ships. And I believe there are a few megalodons swimming around, not to mention the giant crabs. Not many merrow inhabit the Sol because—well, it’s so shallow compared with the other seas. Easily accessed and seen by humans. Easily destroyed by the monsters.”
Something’s not adding up, however. “‘Dangerous depths’ doesn’t sound shallow to me.”
Zephyra rolls her eyes. “According to a human, everything in the ocean is deep and dangerous.”
I frown at that. Perception bias exists, but we cannot afford to operate on assumptions. We cannot afford to waste any more time. “Is there a deeper part of the ocean? With monsters?” I ask her.
She doesn’t speak. Her lips press into a stubborn line.
“The Syl,” Gavriall says, watching her with narrowed eyes. “Right, mermaid? The Syl is the deepest sea, and there’s a trench—”
“It’s not the Syl,” she snaps, and a hint of her anger slithers through the cord. I tilt my head, studying her, as it wraps around her chest. Because it isn’t just anger. There is something else there too, something she’s trying very hard to repress.To hide from me, I realize with a start. I can’t quite grasp what it is though, and I can’t understand why she’d be angry about returning to her home.
“How do you know?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. Patient.
Her eyes flash at the question. “Because I am Zephyraof the Syl. Because I lived there for sixteen years, and I never saw any evidence of ruins. Because I never ran into monsters. Because those depths weren’t… theyaren’tdangerous.”A lie.I stare at her. Zephyra is lying through her teeth, and I resist the urge to grasp the cord as it ripples between us. To wrench her closer and force her to tell me the truth. To tell me everything. But we don’t have time for another fight, andfightis exactly what Zephyra looks ready to do. Her eyes narrow under my attention, and her lip curls. She looks like a cornered animal only seconds away from lashing out.
