I don’t want to tell her about the heart. I won’t tell her.
She grins as if she already knows. “Tempest sent infantry—spies—into Mortia years ago to excavate your mountains. Your northern cities are bare, void of almost any life at all. My infantry couldn’t understand why—until they dug too deep and stumbled upon a vicious cult. Only one survived to tell me about it. He was missing a leg,” she says. “The cult gnawed it off at the knee. The devastation on Lucia’s isles wasn’t entirely your fault, was it?
“I did not take you to seek vengeance, Warlock Stone. I want to help you. Whatever you seek must be worth a pretty copper if that cult—if your entirekingdom—is after you. I’m merely offering to help you obtain it and… perhaps split the rewards.” She raises her chin, and her eyes gleam with mischief. She extends a hand. “What do you say, Stone? Shall we reach an agreement of our own?”
Low and eerie, the skull sings to herself, “Daughter of Tempestas, son of Mortem, whatever you reap, you will not sow. In the end, a patch of dirt, your bodies lying low, low, low.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ZEPHYRA
I’m thinking suffocation,” Vesper says. “Choking on an apple core. I force it down your throat and hold your jaw shut.”
“I would like to pluck the hairs from your head—one by one. I’d start with your brows, your nose, your ears, and then I’d move on to your pretty scalp.”
“I do not havenose hairs,” Vesper hisses. “Now I’m thinking of slathering you in fish blood and hanging you over the Sol so krakens rip you from the lure.”
“Yes, well, I’d simply lock you inside a tavern. No fish blood required. You could just bore everyone to death, and then yourself.”
“I am not boring!”
“No, no. I’m sure they wouldadorehearing that one story about how you saw a gull pecking out the tendons of a severed thumb. Especially if you told it over and over and over again—”
“That story is interesting.”
“It’s disgusting, Vesper.” I throw a handful of wood splinters at Vesper through the bars of our separate enclosures.
After that ridiculous net snagged us, men in purple uniforms injected us with something that probably should’ve knocked us out—itdidknock out Arion and Gavriall—but only gave Vesper and me wicked headaches, heavy limbs. And then they separatedus. They dragged Vesper and me to this damnable brig. I sit with my legs crossed, my ass and the scraps of Arion’s shirt soaked with moisture from a thick, unnatural fog. Every so often, the ship rocks on an uneasy breeze, and Vesper and I pitch backward. Or forward. Or side to side. My stomach churns with nausea, my head light and dizzy from vertigo. Ihateflying. Ihatethis place.
More than anything, I amsickof being sidetracked. And Arion is—
I swallow a frustrated shriek because I don’t know where Arion is. Our cord slithers into the strange fog, and I can’t feel anything through the bond. Not a thought or emotion or even a hint of the pain Arion always carries with him. It’s as if he’s just… gone.
I hurl a fish carcass at the bars of my cell, and the old bone crackles, sizzles, and then smokes immediately upon contact. The bars have an electric current running through them. We might die if we touch them for longer than a second.
We are fucking trapped.
My stomach churns. My head throbs.
Nothing has gone right since that grave robbery beneath Mortem’s Temple.
Exhaling heavily, I glance up at Vesper through the bars of our cells, and I force myself to look this time. To reallyseethose shadows in her midnight-blue eyes. Those shadows look like Eos. They look like grief.
I never wanted it to be this way.
“Vesper.” I interrupt her rather colorful description of chopping me into little bits and feeding me to eels. She glances up from her dirtied nails, her gaze narrowed on my face. “About Eos…”
Her entire body convulses at the sound of her sister’s name, and she shakes her head fiercely. “No.”
My throat tightens, and I wipe sweaty palms on my dirty legs. Because we need to do this. We need to discuss this before it’s too late. “But—”
She climbs onto her knees. “I don’t want to hear you say her name.”
“We might die, Vesper. Everyone in the world is after me now—including the High Sorcerer. There’s a chance I…” I swallow hard.Again and again. Until I realize I’m not swallowing at all. I’m hyperventilating, and pressure burns behind my eyes.There’s a chance I’ll die, I want to say. There’s a chance I can’t outrun this, can’t survive this. But those words won’t move up my throat. They won’t slip off my tongue. As if speaking them will directly manifest them into reality. I turn toward her, curling my legs into my chest. Wrapping my arms around them as if I might protect myself from her wrath. “I’m a cat, Vesper. I’m on my tenth life, and this—this might be it. It might be the only moment we actually share together. I never meant for Eos to be hurt. I’m so… so sorry.”
“Oh?” Her gaze flashes, darkens with true rage. From navy to murderous black. “Then why didn’t you steal the key, Zephyra? Why did you make Eos climb through that vent when youknowher shoulder is—was”—Vesper’s voice cracks—“injured. You knew there was a chance she wouldn’t fit, yet you expected her to go down there anyway. And when the guards came, what did you do?”
I don’t respond. How can I?
