Vesper’s voice rises in answer, and every thought in my head vanishes except—anger. Fury. The pink-haired merrow just threatened the reason for my existence, and she must pay. I thrust the trident toward her throat. She rears backward, just out of reach, and a rip current slams into my hand. It tears the trident from my fingers. “Goddess-damnit, Arion—”
I surge forward, but again, she dances just out of reach. Until I seize her tail. Vesper’s song continues as I drag her toward me, one hand already reaching for her throat. Though she thrashes—makes the water thrash as well—pummeling every inch of me, I do not release her. I cannot release her.She must pay.
She must pay. She must pay. She must pay.
“Arion,” Zephyra gasps, her nails raking against my wrist. My wings battle to help her. “Let me—go—”
Her tail strikes my side. Hard. My grip on her throat slips, and that tail leverages itself between us, propelling me away again. Toward Vesper. “You know, I heard about the terrors of warlocks in Crestfall. I feared them on the streets. But he doesn’t seem so frightening now.” She reaches out to stroke a feather, and somehow… somehow her song still pierces my ears. It’s all I hear, taste,feel. I want to live in this moment until the day I die. I am hers. I am—“All men fall the same,” she whispers.
And Zephyra screams.
Another man swims up behind Zephyra, unnoticed, and wraps a hand around her hair, pulling her against his chest. Distantly, I recognize his dark hair, his tawny skin.Gavriall.“We are ready now,” he tells Vesper, even as the water churns around them. Even as it smashes against him, again and again, like a battering ram. Ignoring it all, he carries the pink mermaid forward. Vesper smiles, and that smile—hard and sharp and beautiful. It cuts through the water like a ray of moonlight.
“Vesper, please.” Zephyra strains in earnest now. “The three of us—we’re searching for something. Something much realer than anything the sorcerer can give you. He won’t bring Eos back, but maybe we can. Come—come with us. Stop this.Please.”
Vesper winces at the sound of Eos’s name. Then—“No.” She wrenches Zephyra away from Gavriall, her fingernails biting deep. Her silver hair rippling as she shakes her head fiercely. “You’ve already dug your grave. Now it’s time to lie in it—”
Her voice breaks off as thunder crackles through the deep. Her sweet song fades. In unison, we all look down, and a shadow emerges from the seafloor.
A shadow larger than a warship, with eight massive tentacles and a blackened eyeball roaring with red flames. My thoughts return the moment it slams down one of those tentacles. Time seems to stop. The current too, and we float, suspended, for the span of a single heartbeat. In that heartbeat, I realize a few things at once.
One, I have been lured by a fuckingsiren song. Two, Zephyra has been captured, and three, a giant fucking squid is unfurling below us, its orange tentacles already reaching, reaching, curling around Vesper’s tail. Zephyra’s tail. In that heartbeat, her eyes dart to mine, and I know I’m too late.
Before I can even blink, it rips them away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ZEPHYRA
This day can’t get any worse.
My organs contract painfully as a giant fucking squid crushes Vesper and me in its monstrous grasp. I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. Nor can Vesper. She claws at the tentacle, her nails shredding its slimy flesh to no avail. We’re simply too small to hurt a creature so grotesquely large. What we need is a weapon. Twirling a finger in the sea, I conjure a weak maelstrom. Too weak. It won’t damage the squid; it won’t force it to release us, but—
“Aecorian,” Vesper spits through gritted teeth, realizing exactly what type of merrow I am. Our foreheads collide as the squid whips us up and down and all around, and stars erupt in my eyes. “Maybe try—actually—helping—”
“I am.” Through the center of the maelstrom, her trident rises. Desperately, I stretch my fingers toward the hilt, but they barely brush the bronze. “Can’t—reach—”
The squid hurls its tentacle—hurls us—toward the seafloor then, so fast the world blurs into a vicious haze of blue. The violence of the movement, the sheer force behind it, loosens my grip on the waters, and the trident sinks out of view.Fuck me.We’re seconds from impact. Seconds from our heads splattering against sharp bedsof coral and rock. Vesper claws and claws and claws, her tail battering the tentacle, but it’s useless.
“Do something!” she yells.
I try futilely to pull my hand through the sea, but there is nothing—nothing—to grab when I can’t focus or think or even see beyond the vague blue of deep waters and dark brown of Vesper’s skin. So I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing that makes sense before being bludgeoned to death by a giant squid.
I twist. Rear back. And chomp down on a tentacle.
I bite it hard.
Bitter blood fills my mouth first, then chunks of its slimy flesh. I don’t stop biting it, digging my fingers into the gashes and pulling. Shredding. The squid shrieks, the excruciating sound like two swords clashing, metal on metal as its gargantuan mouth opens and roars. The tentacle capturing us loosens. Flails. Vesper and I tumble from its grasp, but our victory is short-lived. It catches us in another tentacle, and I’ve hadenough. “ARION!” I scream his name, furious, as another tentacle rears into view. This one has coiled around Gavriall’s leg, and he flails through the water, screaming even louder than I do.
Beside me, Vesper spits out a chunk of the squid’s flesh and snarls, “Shut the fuck up andbite!”
So I do.
The squid writhes and twists, but it doesn’t release us this time. It doesn’t try to bludgeon us either. Instead, it furls our tentacle toward its great, gaping mouth, and all I see are teeth. Rows and rows of teeth. And—“It’s going to eat us.” The words tear from my throat on another scream. Where is Arion? I don’t see him in the tentacles, don’t see him anywhere, and the cord has tangled around the squid too. Squidshit. This is allsquidshit, and if I die being masticated by a giant beast, at least I can take solace in the fact that the warlock will too.
Still, I thrash wildly as Gavriall passes by us again, shouting, “Hang in there!”
“Fuck you!” Vesper calls back.
