I’m the monster. I’m the one you should have drowned, Aenor.
“When you sank her beneath the waves,” I continued, anger rising, “did you know she had four children, or that she drank brandy with me in the evenings so we could watch the twilight fall over the sea?”
Aenor stared at me, the wind whipping her hair into her face. She looked positively resolute. “I’m sorry about your sister. But I’ve seen the visions. And before I killed that Fomorian, he literally said, Salem, the evening star, the fallen king of Mag Mell. He will set us free. It was very specific.”
Interesting. “You killed one?”
“Yes. I know, nobody believes they exist.”
“I believe what you say. You killed a Fomorian. But do you really think I’d leave my sister trapped in the sea because of some wretched fire fae? Do you think I’d abandon her for a kingdom? I thought she was dead.” Guilt coiled through me. “I think your mother drowned her so she could use Shahar’s power for herself. The rest was a lie.”
She shook her head. “We didn’t use her magic.”
“Do you know that?” My voice was a cold blade.
“No,” she admitted. “The soul cage drained her power from her body, and her magic now lights up the water outside the cage. Maybe her magic stopped the world from burning. Maybe it helped to keep the Fomorians trapped.”
“When I arrived at Ys to destroy it, I thought she was dead. What I didn’t know was that you’d trapped her in the darkness, under a thousand tons of water, alone and in pain.”
Aenor shifted in her seat, her eyes laser-focused on me. “So what changed? How did you learn the truth?”
“That hardly seems like the most pressing question.”
“But it is. Someone passed this information on to you. Someone has an agenda.”
I shrugged. “I received the information in the form of an anonymous message. Whatever the agenda is, it doesn’t matter to me.”
She hugged herself. “When you arrived in Ys to destroy it, and you killed my mother, why didn’t you kill me? You knew I was part of it.”
That compulsion again, to tell her the truth. “I didn’t want to kill you, that’s why. Your mother lied to you, Aenor. Shahar wasn’t going to burn the world down. If anything, you put the world in more danger when you took her away from me. I am the real threat, and she once tempered my rages.” The night wind whipped over my skin. “When we get to Mag Mell, Aenor, I want you to stay close to me. You’ll be with me until the very end. Until we find Shahar in the depths. Only then will I release you.”
I couldn’t allow her to conspire with the Merrow’s agents, to find whatever weapon she needed to kill me. She sighed with frustration. How sad she must be that I was making it harder for her to rip my heart from my chest. A true tragedy for my beloved.
“Give me a chance to show you what will happen,” she said, desperate now. “I’ll show you what will happen if you get this soul cage out of the ocean.”
She still thought she could stop me, even after what I’d told her.
I leaned forward, my hands on my knees, and felt myself falling again, plunging through dark space. “Here is what you need to understand about me, Aenor. The world can burn, for all I care. I’ll release the Fomorians if that’s what it takes. I’m going to get Shahar, and I don’t care at all if everything else turns to ash. Even you.”
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue.
27
Aenor
We drifted under the moonlight, bobbing on the waves. With the stars beaming above us, I’d fallen asleep in the rocking boat.
I woke to a feeling of warmth, of safety. Bliss hummed along my skin. I sighed, with the slowly dawning realization that masculine arms encircled me, and my head lay against a powerful male chest. For one pure moment, a sense of total protection wrapped around me like a cloud. A sense of completion pounded in my blood in time to his heartbeat…
Then I realized whom I was leaning against, and my chest flushed.
“Not today, Satan,” I muttered. I sat bolt upright, glowering at him. “Were your arms around me?”
He leaned back on his elbows against the side of the boat, the wind ruffling his hair. “Your teeth were chattering. It was ruining the peace. And do you have any idea how loud you snore? Aenor Dahut, Scourge of the Silence, Ruiner of Peace.”
I blinked, shocked at how much time had passed.
The first rays of dawn light began to spread over the sea, a dazzling liquid amber on the ripples. Winding wisps of fog curled around us.
“I slept all night?” When I dipped my fingertips in the water, I felt disturbed by its warmth.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
I turned, catching a glimpse of Mag Mell. It wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined. Instead of an untouched paradise, it was a city built on a rocky hill, surrounded by seawalls. At the hill’s peak, a castle towered above the sea. Morning light bathed its stony spires in gold. And between the castle and the seawalls grew a wild-looking forest of oaks and rowan trees.
Shimmering magic streamed up to the skies from above the city walls—transparent gold.
“What’s that?” I asked. “The magic around the city?”
“Well, that’s to keep me out, given that I can fly. The city gates are guarded. But before I left the kingdom, I hid a key to the city in case I ever needed to return. There are wards there to stop anyone like me from flying over the kingdom, but with the key, I can destroy them.”
“And how do we get past the guards?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “We kill them and throw their bodies in the water.”
“Of course.” Or I got to them first and begged them to take me to the Merrow in his prison.
“It hasn’t changed much,” said Salem quietly. “At least, I think it hasn’t. I’ll inspect it more closely.”
I needed to get away from him, to hunt for the Merrow on my own. Did the old sorcerer have more assassins working for him in Mag Mell, where he was imprisoned?
I cleared my throat. “Are you sure you still need me? We both know the Merrow is on this island somewhere. You just need to find him and beat the truth out of him.”
He seemed to hesitate then, uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “As I said, you’re staying with me until it’s all over.”
“I’ll do my best to get you to her.” Lie, lie, lie.
It was my job to kill the bad guys. I cut out their hearts, nailed them to my wall. Salem was the worst of them all.
So why did the thought of killing him make me want to vomit?
Maybe it was that most of them hadn’t sat me down to tell me their life story, or about how they’d loved their sisters, or the cats with lace collars. Nor had I met their pets, for crying out loud.
I’d gone into this thinking he wanted to burn the world down for fun, but now it seemed that wasn’t a part of his plan. It was a side effect, maybe of freeing the sister he loved.
The mist thickened around us.
“We can’t go any further in the boat,” he said. “They’ll sound the alarm if they see an unfamiliar vessel pulling up.”