“As long as I can imagine the place I’m borrowing it from, taking food is actually pretty easy. They keep a special store in the tower so warlocks can conjure anything they need in an emergency.”
“‘They,’” she says.
“What?”
“You said ‘they,’ not ‘we.’”
I don’t respond. She doesn’t ask me to. For several minutes, we eat in silence. It’s comfortable enough. She wraps her lips around the bottle of wine and drinks her fill. I eat the core of her pear when she’s finished with it. We fight over the cheese, and she claims the last of the bread. But when it’s done, she sits on the ground across from me and draws her legs into her chest.
“Why do you do it?”
As always, I don’t know what on earth she’s talking about. It’s as if she exists on a separate plane of existence, seeing bits and pieces of a puzzle invisible to the rest of us. “Humans require sustenance to live. Sometimes we eat as much as three meals a day.”
She scowls and throws the wine cork at my face. I catch it with the low rumble of a laugh. “Imean, why do you keep casting magic when it’s hurting you?” The blunt question drops between us like gunpowder, detonating inside my chest on impact. “I can feel it,” she says, echoing my earlier statement while wrapping the silver cord around her finger. “And—your chest. When you use magic, the black ink spreads.”
“It’s not ink; it’s my blood rotting in my veins.” The truth wavers on my tongue. Can I admit it?ShouldI admit it? Zephyra is a merrow.But, I reason,she is also tied to me.We’re in this together now, for better or worse.
She bites her lower lip. “So… why not just stop?”
I sit down, leaning my head against the wall as my legs span the length of the tunnel and just barely graze her knees. The touch is still enough that I feel it everywhere. “The Warlock Trials basically condense us into magic. Everything I was before is gone, and now all that’s left is this.” I enchant the bioluminescence around us to grow brighter. It pulses with vicious light. “Iammagic. If I stop using it, I die.”
Zephyra holds a hand to her eyes and squints against the brightness. “And if you keep using it—”
“I also die.” I take a breath. One short breath before I wreck everything that she thinks she understands. “I’m dying, Zephyra.We’redying.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ARION
Zephyra’s face falls. She tangles her hands in her hair, pulling roughly until my own scalp aches from it. Anger, shock, and despair poison the cord. “But—I’m tethered to you, warlock.”
“I know, mermaid.” I dim the surrounding lighting so the brightest thing in the room is once again her hair. “Which is why we need that heart. I can absorb its magic. Undiluted, raw godly power. With it, I can sever our bond. You’ll be free.”And so will I, I think desperately. Although I have no idea what freedom looks like anymore. Back to the tower? To the elders who sent the cult after us? To the city I never fixed?
“We’re dying,” she repeats, the words a low gust of breath. Of damning realization. She stares at the space between us, tasting the words again and again before she says, “That’s why I feel this…exhaustionsometimes, isn’t it?” Her gaze snaps to mine. “It’s because of you. Because you’re… we’re…”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s why.”
Another breath. Sadder, this time. She slumps, a wavy tendril of pink falling over her left eye. “I should have known.”
No. “I should have told you.”
“Well, yeah.” She glances at me,glaresat me, but there isn’t much fight left in her gaze. “That’s obvious.” Her lips purse, and she picksrelentlessly at her nail beds. “So the more magic you use, the faster we die.”
I try not to flinch. “Yes.”
“Right.” She shakes her hair back behind her shoulders and sits up straight, and when her eyes flick to me now, they’rescorching. “Then you need to stop decimating isles. What were youthinking, Arion?” Her hands fly into the air, and she kicks me in the shin. Pain blooms between us both. “Have you lost all your wits? You can’t be… exploding things like that with ourliveson the line!” She aims to kick me again, but I catch her ankle. Yank it forward so she falls away from the wall and slides toward me. The touch steals her breath. It steals mine too.
My thumb instinctually sweeps over her pulse. “Thisis what you’re upset over? Me using the magic to protect us? Not usdying?”
She glares harder at me, her voice sharp as barbs of venomous coral. “I’ve been at death’s doorstep for the last eight years. Fuck sake, we just had a bunch of masked cultists trying toeatus. But nowyouare personally shortening our lifespans. So—stop!Goddess.You’re not protecting us if you’rekilling yourself.” She combs harsh fingers through her hair. “Besides, I wouldn’t have told you either. I’m a merrow. You’re a warlock. Remember?”
It’s hard to forget, but even still, the vocal reminder makes me clench my fists. Makes my knuckles whiten. “We were about to be murdered bytrees. I had no other choice.”
“You spent the entire time there disguising us. You—you used so much magic that itfailed.”
“It wasn’t easy to continuously mask our emotions,” I grit out. I don’t want to share anything else with her, with amerrow. Don’t want to tell her that every second on the isle felt like agony, that I tasted death on my tongue, that every breath smelled like scorched earth even before the isle exploded. We had a mission. We had no choice but to succeed.
She pulls her foot free from my grasp, though she doesn’t move backward. Instead, she climbs onto her knees, snatches a piece of wax, and hurls it at me. “Don’t conjure food, you idiot. I won’t die over a brick of cheese. No more magic unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
