His touch turns frantic, hard and unrelenting and frenzied, and my mouth opens on a silent plea, my body arching, tightening, breaking as the world shatters behind my eyelids. My chest heaves. My legs shake. My head falls back against the hard cavern floor as I struggle to catch my breath. As residual warmth spreads from my belly to my limbs, and my mind floats, languid.
“Holy shit,” I whisper after another moment. He growls in response, and his hold falls away. From my thighs. From my wrists.
Just like that—it’s gone.
I shiver in the sudden cold, the cord between us dimming to asoft gray. But Arion doesn’t move. He doesn’t stop watching me with that burning intensity. With a snap of his fingers, he cleans up any mess we’ve made.
I slide my legs closed before leaning up on my elbows and nodding toward his own desire. My heart still thunders. Not enough.More, more, more.“Your turn?”
His jaw tenses. His eyes shutter. “No. No touching, remember?”
“Right.No touching.” I tilt my head, throwing my hair over my shoulder, and raise a brow. “Are you sure? That was fucking incredible.” And it was. Better than anything I’ve ever done before. Lower, I add, “Arion, I want to—”
“No,” he repeats harshly. He sits up straight. His wings stretch—away from me now. “Go to sleep. We can discuss how we’re traveling to the Sol in the morning.”
“But—”
“Please,” he rasps, desperation seeping back into his words. “I can’t.We… can’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We just did,” I say with a small grin.
“It doesn’t matter. None of this mattered. I meant what I said, Zephyra. There isn’t a world that exists where we are anything but enemies.” Except—he reaches out and brushes a rogue pink wave from my face, as if not in control of his own hands, and his fingers graze my cheek. A simple touch. A small touch. But it hitches my breath and darkens his gaze again. He curses, lingering for another second as desire rushes back through me. It’s as if the last few minutes never happened. I’m aching. He’s aching. The cord is burning. But he pivots on the ground. Lies down and rolls to face the wall. “Go to sleep, Zephyra,” he murmurs.
I want nothing more than to argue. Demand an explanation and then demand more of his hands. This was…tonightwas… almost inconceivable. Not just the sex, but before. Talking to him. Knowing him.
No matter what he claims, something happened in this chamber with Arion and me. Like flint striking between our souls, but—my stomach sinks as my mind finally catches up with my body—he’s right.
This is wrong.
I ignore the rustle of Arion’s wings. I ignore his shallow, ragged breaths. I meant what I told him too—I don’t participate in shame. The bitter cold turning my chest to ice has nothing to do with regret, instead sharpening into something more like despair. But—no. I refuse to call it that. What I feel toward Arion is resignation, and nothing more.
Eight years ago, I fell in love with a human, and it wrecked my life. Jacin is gone. Forever. I roll over to stare at the cavern wall. I won’t be part of anything like that again. Arion is a warlock and a human. I am a mermaid. We are enemies. Wehaveto be enemies. One day, when our bond vanishes and my life debt is repaid, hopefully we can become strangers. But that’s the only happily ever after waiting for us. Not lovers. Not even friends. Just strangers who once had no choice but to hate each other.
I force myself to shut my eyes. This time, when I fall asleep, it’s for good.
I don’t wake until I hear screaming and smell blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ARION
I sneak away before Gavriall and the mermaid wake up.
Though I loathe the sight and smell, the pervasive dampness, I dive out of the cavern and into the deep blue sea, cutting through the current with my wings before flying up and out. The sun rises, and so do I. Water sluices from my gold-tipped feathers. A fish stench permeates pastel skies and open air, while gulls cry loudly, hungrily, for breakfast. Hovering above it all, wings flapping gently against an easy breeze, I stare at the horizon.
We need to make it to the Sol and Abysses, but I’m unsure of how to do that when the mermaid claims she has enemies lurking in the deep and Cultus Mortis is… somewhere. Unease blisters my chest. I remember the Death Lord and its damnable words like a death knell.
You’ve failed them, Arion Stone, and at last, we can claim you.
My knuckles crack. My wings beat harder. I’m going to kill them. I’m going to find the heart and use it to eviscerate the whole of the cult. I’m going to make them pay.
But how?
I squint against the gilded dawn. Lucia’s mainland coast of fir and pine paints an emerald portrait to the east, whereas the continent of Tempest splashes the western horizon with geode purples and midnight blues.
Tempestas, the storm god who created the small continent, shoots bolts of lightning through murky gray clouds. Tornados whirl menacingly from the continent’s wall, a divine barrier added to the gray bricks, and wind whips the seas into a churning riot of foamy waves. We need to cross it to reach the Sol. By land or sea or air. However, the cult is likely waiting on land. The mermaid’s enemies are in the sea. And I can only fly for so long before needing to stop and rest. Frustration squeezes my lungs, but I exhale it—try to exhale every emotion plaguing me since last night.
“Emotions are inherently biased, which is why you must loose them. Abandon them, bury them, forget them—it does not matter how you cast them aside, only that you do so. Emotions do not serve you. Right now, you serve them.” Elder Branche moves a lock of hair behind the boy’s ear and smiles. “Stop, Arion. Stop feeling.” He snaps his fingers—fire strikes the damp floor. Liquor ignites in an explosion. The boy hangs from wooden rafters, his arms tied to the wood and his ankles bound by rope, unable to stop the fire from climbing his toes, his feet. He cries, but Elder Branche merely watches from the safety of the rafters. When the fire reaches the boy’s ankles, he shrieks for his father.
