“I don’t have to tell you shit.”
“Vesper—”
“Stop saying my name like you know me!” She thrusts the trident in my direction, and a bolt of bronze flame erupts from the three prongs. I duck just in time to avoid being set on fire. The stone behind my head isn’t so lucky—it smokes. Chars. The cavern smells like burnt death. “We aren’t friends. We haveneverbeen friends. You abandoned us, Zephyra. You fuckingmaimed meto run out on us, and do you—do you even care what happened when you left? Your little friend is bleeding from the throat right now, and you couldn’t care less about saving him. Instead, you look around this cavern because you can’t help it, can you? You want to flee so badly. You are a fuckingcoward.” Her chest rises and falls with rapidly growing rage. The trident glows in her grasp. I anticipate its next explosion seconds before it can incinerate me. “Ask me, then. Ask me why I’m here. Ask me why I made a deal with a merrow nightmare.”
I blink at her. Blink through my tears.
She’s right. About it all. Aboutme. I am a coward, and I wantto run, and… goddess, I just don’t want to die. I don’t want to go back to him. And I am terrified to hear her answers. “Stavros—” I begin.
“This isn’t about Stavros,” she hisses, and though her voice breaks when she says his name, I know she’s telling the truth.
Because those ghosts in her eyes—they aren’t simply caused by grief. They’re caused by a soul rupturing. A heart cleaving in two. Loss so great it’s as if you’ve lost yourself instead.
And then, I understand.
All at once. Brutally. Painfully. I can’t breathe through the truth. I can’t even hear my own voice as I say, “Eos.”
Vesper releases Gavriall. She shoves him aside as if he’s nothing. He crawls away quickly, gasping for breath and clutching his throat. Scrambling for the tunnel. Vesper doesn’t care. I don’t care either.
“Where is Eos?” The question wrenches from my chest on a new wave of bile.
She isn’t here. Vesper made a deal with the sorcerer to drag me back to my cage, and her sisterisn’t here.
I recall her words from only days ago as if they’ve been carved into my bones:If anything happens to my sister, I will kill you, Zephyra. Do you understand?
Vesper glares at me. Tears spill in violent rivulets down her cheeks, onto the stone, while the trident trembles in her grasp. “She’s dead, Zephyra. Mysister… Eos is dead.”
She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.
“Ask me how,” she hisses. “Ask me how my sister died. Ask mewhose fault it is.”
But I know the answer, and it fucking kills me. It shreds me into ribbons. It blisters from the inside out. Still, none of the pain can absolve me.
I am death.
Vesper’s voice quakes with fury, with grief and devastation. “You shoved me onto myknife, Zephyra. I couldn’t fight the guards. I was useless. Eos tried to bandage my wrist with a shorn sleeve while Stavros attacked the guards who charged below, but it took too long. He was on his own, and I was weak, and Eos—she hurt hershoulder getting through that vent. She didn’t want to tell us, but Stavros and I could see it. He swept Eos into his arms. He ran up the stairs with her to flee, and I was behind them, but I was slow because of my foot, and—and there were other guards up there. Waiting. Too many. Stavros knew it. He set Eos down, moved in front of her to fight again, but they swarmed. And Eos—she glanced back at me. I was still in the dark stairwell. She was in the open. She knew she didn’t stand a chance, so she…she…”
Vesper sobs so hard, she can’t finish the sentence. I almost can’t bring myself to do so either, but this is my fault. All my fucking fault.
“She closed the tomb. She hid you in the dark while the guards took her and Stavros,” I say.
“No.” Vesper fists the trident in both hands, and a ray of pure, effervescent bronze shoots at me. Again, again, again. I dodge each blow, ducking, tripping, whirling. “She closed the tomb. She hid me in the dark. And then theyslaughtered her. The guards didn’t ask questions. The guards didn’t imprison her. The guards grabbed her by her silver hair, and they slit her throat. She screamed for me, Zephyra. Her last words—screaming my name. All while I was in the fucking dark because you ran.”
I press a hand to my stomach.
I’m going to vomit.
Of course they didn’t ask questions—we robbed Mortem’s Templedaysafter merrow murdered their way through the palace. They didn’t even care to check that her hair was silver instead of mortal gray or white. They slaughtered Eos. Youthful Eos with her melodic laugh, and her pretty blue eyes, and her gentle grin. Eos, who believed in me. Eos, who fed the mice in her tent and named butterflies and picked flowers.
She died.
Vesper snarls. “Theonlyreason I survived is because Stavros told them another mermaid was with us. He kept his wits even though he was up there with… with her.Hegave them your name.Helured them away so I could escape.” She looks at me—through me. “They should have fuckingguttedyou.”
“You made a deal for your sister,” I breathe. “You made a deal to bring her back to life. Didn’t you?”
She doesn’t so much as blink. “Your soul for hers. More than a fair trade.”
Goddess, no.“He’s not going to do it, Vesper. His deals are traps. He’s a liar. He’s—he’s a monster.”
