ZEPHYRA
Princess Amaya Frost is not exactly happy about the whole mind-control thing.
Within seconds, she tackles me to the floor, and my dagger falls from my hand upon impact, dropping between us. She scrambles to reach it first, but I rope a hand in her messy bun and wrench her backward. Her gaze crackles with vivid yellow streaks of lightning. She turns to me with a snarl and forgoes the dagger now. Chokes me instead. Her thumbs press hard into my windpipe, and I gasp, clawing at her hands. Her arms. “A little—help—”
I can’t see the others. Only Amaya’s wicked gaze. Her tan skin and gray eyes and auburn hair as a bolt of lightning shoots from the ceiling and almost electrocutes me. I roll at the last second, and now Amaya scrabbles beneath me. Arion rips me backward, however, before I can slam her head into the floor, and the skull cackles somewhere to my left.“Bite her, Amaya! Bite! Bite!”
“Zephyra, stop.” Arion wraps strong arms around my chest, lifting me up and away as Amaya sends another bolt. Still, I lunge for her face. “Enough,bothof you!” To Amaya, he snarls, “We had an agreement—”
“Fuck your agreement.” Thunder cracks, and the wind picks up around us. It tears at my hair, at Arion’s wings, at Vesper andGavriall as they watch with fearful gazes. The skull rolls toward Gavriall while his attention is diverted, desperate to gnaw at his ankles while the princess continues speaking. “That merrow just held a knife to my throat, and that one”—another bolt of lightning, this time at Vesper, who leaps away seconds before losing a foot—“dug her claws into my brain. I am the princess of Tempest, and I offered you a bargain. I will not be made a fool!”
Gavriall yelps, and I glance over just in time to see the skull sink vicious teeth into his boot. Kicking out wildly, he trips over the body of a soldier, slips on a puddle of crushed melon, and slings panicked arms around Vesper’s neck. She shoves him to the floor herself. The skull cackles again, still nose deep in his leather. “I want to go home,” Gavriall declares.
“We want that too,” Vesper says.
I release a harsh breath. Even though I’d love nothing more than to gouge out Amaya’s eyes, I can’t. If what Arion said is true, she’s the only way we’ll survive on this goddess-forsaken ship—unless we’d like to be smote by Tempestas, or skewered by her men, or struck down by her fucking lightning.
I try to break free from Arion to fix this, but his arms tighten around my chest. “I’m fine, warlock.”
Thunder rumbles again, low and ominous. “No”—Amaya’s eyes flash—“you are not. I will cook you from the inside out and serve you to my soldiers—”
“With a side of fruit?” Vesper nudges a soldier’s face with her foot, arching a sardonic brow.
Arion cuts a sharp look at her. “You aren’t helping.”
“Noneof you are helping.” I push at his arms again, and this time, he releases me, watching cautiously as I step closer to the princess and her lightning. As I ignore the soldiers, the fruit. Ignore Gavriall and that obnoxious fucking skull. “I’m not going to fight you, Princess.”
“Oh, please do.” She steals a small sickle from her belt and smiles wide. “I’ll enjoy watching you struggle.”
I snarl. It’s too much. The last day. The day before that. The day before that too. I’m fucking exhausted. And really, I’d love nothingmore than to charge her. Throw her to the floor. Bludgeon her against the electric bars of her gruesome cell. I’d love nothing more than to kill her and run.
But—I glance at Arion, who watches me helplessly, pleading silently for me to make the right choice—that won’t help us escape our current predicament. A predicament that is entirely my fault. Gritting my teeth, I lift my hands. Spread them wide in a show of submission. “I won’t fight you,” I repeat. “I just want to talk. Arion said he made a deal with you. I, of course, had no idea because you locked me in the brig”—my voice strains with frustration—“but if I’d known, I would have honored it. You want to know what we’re looking for?”
She blinks at me, still poised to attack.
“Mortem’s heart,” I say. “We think we’ve found the location to Mortem’s heart.”
Amaya hesitates. Her eyes narrow on Arion, and the clouds overhead gather in anticipation. I hold my breath as she asks, “What do you mean, ‘Mortem’s heart’?”
The lightning ceases. For now. So I take another step. Cautious. Slow. We just need her to listen. Admittedly, a difficult task in these circumstances. The cord tightens, and Arion’s pulse thunders through mine. Everything is on the line. This is one thing I can’t screw up. “What do you know of Mortem and the mermaid?” I exclude any talk of Vila. No human would believe in our goddess, and I can’t risk pissing Amaya off further. “Do you know how the Fathoms were created?”
“Do I know of theFathoms?” Amaya’s jaw clenches. The clouds darken. “I am a daughter of Tempestas. I hail from a sacred lineage of the greatest women on this earth. My great-great-great-grandmother led expeditions you wouldn’t believe. She discovered half the world’s minerals in a single lifetime. My great-great-grandmother invented a way for ships to fly without magic or beasts. My great-grandmother brokered a treaty with Mortia and Lucia to extend our small kingdom’s reach. My grandmother built orphanages. Homeless shelters. She established health care for an entire continent. Do you really think I do not know a simple story from Mortia’s shores? Are you, demon of the deep, really insinuating that I am stupid?”
Fucking great.Somehow I managed to not just insult her, but her entire ancestry as well. Tension knots Arion’s brow as my eyes dart to him. Quickly as I can, I blurt, “No. No, of course not. You seem—wildly intelligent. Far smarter than any of us.”
“And more beautiful too,” Gavriall says in earnest, forcing himself up from the floor on shaking legs. The skull rolls away from him with a deep chuckle.
The princess of Tempest does not seem humored in quite the same way. She glowers at me. “I do not like false niceties.” Then, after a brief pause, she adds, “You held a dagger to my throat. You must understand it is hard to recover from that.”
“In my defense, you locked me up. I thought we were all about to die.”
“You still might.”
Goddess help me.I slide back a step. “Right. Understood.”
She glances to Arion, to Vesper, to Gavriall, and then back to me. Her gaze narrows on mine. “Mortem fell for a mermaid who carved out his heart. When his power left him, his existence exploded into ash and dust, and his spirit forged the Fathoms. A way for him to remain eternal even if he was no longer a part of this world. That is the story you speak of, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “Kind of, but not quite.”
