by Lucia Ashta
But just as quickly, my heart dumped its hopes for Brave somewhere amid the sandy ocean floor.
“Come on, Father,” Salazar said. “This has grown boring. Let’s finish them off already so we can go home.”
Chapter 19
Washur spared Salazar an appreciative glance and I wondered if it might’ve been the only one he ever gave him. “Well said, Salazar.”
I took a regretful step back toward Marcelo. My sincere belief in Brave hadn’t changed anything, and already the Count was reinforcing the strength of his spell over his son by calling him Salazar. I expected that the Count used his name at every opportunity, binding his son to his will.
Washur was an incredibly powerful, dark sorcerer. And even though Salazar was his son, to him he was no more than a pawn in his twisted games, where the stakes were the highest they could be, where he delivered death at every turn and stole what should’ve been unstealable: a chance at an afterlife.
He didn’t just kill. He stole souls.
Brave, who was only around Gertrude’s age, would die without ever knowing who he really was, or who he might’ve become.
It was sad, impossibly sad. But it was what it was. Marcelo had tried and I’d tried.
The only choice the Count left us with was to fight Salazar.
I sensed it before it happened, before the Count attacked, and Marcelo seemed to detect his intentions even before I did.
Before I could accept the immediacy of what was about to happen, with its heavy consequences, it was happening.
Count Washur was forming two balls of magic in each palm of his hand. One had been enough to kill Carlton on contact. Now two swirled to life in his open hands, one for each of us.
The balls of magic intended to deal death would have otherwise been beautiful. They broke down into visible filaments of energy. Like gray, translucent cotton candy with its parts in constant motion.
If I hadn’t known what the Count intended to do the second they were fully formed, I would’ve wanted to stare into them. Like the fire and its licking and flickering flames, I had the feeling I could’ve lost myself to this swirling ball of magic for a long time.
But as usual, we were out of time. We had, at most, seconds. I lost a fraction of one in looking toward Marcelo. His lips were a flurry of rushed movement and his right arm, his good arm, traced complex patterns in the water in front of him.
With a pang of despair, I realized he wasn’t using his left arm at all. It continued to float limply next to his body.
Count Washur was right. It looked as if Marcelo really couldn’t perform spells well with his movements restricted. He was moving as fast as he could, but even so, it might not be enough.
Suddenly I was angry and terrified. Why did he come into the sea if he knew his magic was compromised? Why had he risked himself when the Count outmatched him in his current condition?
With a sinking feeling, I understood the reason. He’d done it for me, because he intended to do whatever he could to save me.
And now he might die for it.
But I wouldn’t allow that. I wouldn’t allow Marcelo to pay the ultimate price for his love for me. It was unacceptable.
It didn’t matter that no one was asking me what I was willing to accept.
I’d have to fight for it, for everything, to hold onto the one thing that meant more to me than I’d ever imagined possible. It’s difficult to imagine what it feels like to love, really love, a man—until you do.
I exploded in a flurry of movements I’d never done before.
I swept my open hands in front of my chest, where the five-petal knot sang its readiness. As if I were pulling threads through an open weave, I grasped at invisible energetic threads and pulled them through my chest.
I smiled despite the urgency because the threads were visible. The glow of the pulsing five-petal knot at my chest was extending outward, into my fingers. I collected them in my hands as if they were long strands of yarn.
But they weren’t. They were the threads of magic, of my magic, and they glowed a bright yellow.
Whatever they were, they were powerful, because not only did they contain my magic, they contained my love for the man next to me, and even for his nephew across from me, whom I’d grown to care for since we’d rescued him from Washur Castle.
Count Washur faltered as he formed his balls of death magic, but only for a beat. Once he snapped his eyes away from me, he resumed his work, and he did it faster.
Whatever I was doing was a new manifestation of magic. None of us there, not even me, understood what these strands might do.
I was beyond thinking and wondering. I was moving on instinct, on intuition, on those whisperings of guidance that were truer than any words.
I held a dozen strands in each palm, looping over my open hands. Each thread contained the full range of pure magic, all five elements pulsed within each.
Before I knew what I was doing, I began to approach Washur. Suddenly fearless, I held the strands firmly while I swam the strokes needed to reach him.
But before I could, even though I was only a few seconds away from reaching him, he released one of the balls of magic. He threw it at Marcelo one-handed, aimed straight at his chest.
There was no opportunity to dive between the ball of death and my fiancé; the ball traveled too fast.
There was nothing I could do to save Marcelo from the blast now. All I could do was hope Marcelo had enough time and ability with his one useful arm to prepare a sufficient defense.
As I swam across Salazar to get to his father, realizing this was a gamble, he took a step back behind him.
This confused me. Salazar had thrown his own ball of dark magic at me when he’d kidnapped me. He was capable of doing what the Count was doing too.
My intuition was telling me to deal with the Count first, even though a nagging part of my mind argued that this was a risk, that Salazar could hurt Marcelo or me while I was dealing with his father.
But I couldn’t follow one part of my guidance and ignore the other. It was an all or nothing deal.
I pushed my thoughts fully from my awareness, ignoring Salazar’s curious retreat behind his father, and reached the Count.
The second ball of dark magic was fully formed and he pulled his hand back to throw it at me.
I pressed one hand, with its hanging strands, against his upper arm, cutting off his movements, holding the ball of magic back. I aimed the other at the ball itself and pushed a burst of light out the palm of my hand, around the strands.
The Count’s eyes widened horrifically, but I was calm. Even though I hadn’t realized that’s what I was about to do, I understood it now that I saw it outside of myself. This was more of the pure energy of the five elements. It was the same as what the glowing strands contained, and the pulse of light from within me was enough to push the ball of dark magic back into the Count’s open palm, where it’d formed.
He watched, aghast, as the gray swirling mass dissolved back into nothingness.
While he was busy watching, I was busy tying. With a knowing I wouldn’t question, I directed one strand of light to wrap itself around his upper arms. I pictured the strand leaving my hand and encircling the Count’s body, and that was all it took. The strand did as I envisioned. It was magic, true magic. It was my own, unique way of doing magic, the one that I, and all those I loved, had been waiting for me to slip into.
This was the way I’d always been meant to do magic. It just took me a while to get here.
But I was here now, and that’s what mattered.
When the strand finished wrapping itself around the Count’s upper arms and cinched itself, tying into a knot in the exact symmetrical shape as the five-petal knot formed within my heart center, I released it from my chest. The end disconnected from my chest and drew fully into the five-petal knot across his torso. The other end retracted into my own center, back to where it belonged.
I repeated the procedure with the next strand
, binding his hands to his sides while he thrashed to break free. But the strand of magic was stronger than him. The rope glowed beautifully, mesmerizingly as it did its work, wrapping, tightening, pulsing out the magic that all life contained.
I moved on to the next strand and the next, never leaving that place of intuition, of my own type of magic, for a moment. I wove and wrapped the strands, my imagination seeing it all done precisely as my guidance intended.
And then, when the very last strand left my open palm, tying itself into a five-petal knot of harmony around the Count’s knees, and withdrew its loose end back into my heart center, there was a flash of light so bright that it momentarily blinded me.
I blinked to clear away the flashes of light that colored my vision. Was that me? Had I done that?
The Count crumbled to the ocean floor, incapable of stopping his fall.
Chapter 20
The Count stilled against the ocean bottom. I watched him, confused, until Salazar swam past his father, paused only to verify he wouldn’t be getting back up, and then continued on to Marcelo.
In sudden panic, I took off after Salazar, because I realized two things at once: the Count had thrown a ball of death magic toward Marcelo and I didn’t see whether it met its target, and Salazar might kill Marcelo if he reached him when he couldn’t call on his usual defenses.
And I was behind already. Salazar was a fast swimmer, also free of water-logged clothing, and Marcelo wasn’t that far away, sprawled across the ocean floor, but moving, I realized with a thump to my heart.
My hands now free of all strands, I streamed everything I had into my strokes. I was a fast enough swimmer. I’d been a mermaid for more than three years. I might not be able to catch up to Salazar, but I wouldn’t be far behind.
A lot could happen in the few seconds it’d take me to catch him though. Magic seemed to be all about waiting and considering impossible odds, and then the real battles took place in seconds that weren’t nearly long enough to accept the inconceivable losses and costs.
I pumped my legs and arms, but when I reached Marcelo, Salazar was already bent over him. Hands outstretched, I grabbed at Salazar’s bare shoulders and pulled with all my strength. I managed to twist him only halfway toward me. He was stronger than I realized.
He turned back to his uncle, but I tried again. I wouldn’t lose Marcelo, who’d apparently survived Washur’s attack—not when we were both so close to making it out of this alive. I settled my fingers around Salazar’s shoulders and dug them in, then I wrenched him backward with all the strength I could summon within the water, pumping my legs forward as I tried to swim backward with a man in tow.
“Clara, it’s all right,” Marcelo said, but I didn’t let Salazar go. “He’s not Salazar anymore. What you said got through to him.”
I hesitated but didn’t release him. It didn’t look like what I’d said did anything… “He told Washur to kill us after what I said.”
“I did,” Salazar said, “because that was the only way to distract him from what I was about to do.”
I was confused.
Marcelo said, “Brave just killed Washur.”
I spun around to look at Washur, still unmoving. “He did?” I sputtered. “He’s dead?” Could it be? As little as I enjoyed wishing a man dead, this man being dead would improve our lives—as in, we’d all have an increased chance of living them.
“I don’t think he’s dead yet,” the man I held said, “but he’s dying.”
I looked to Washur again, then to Marcelo, and finally to Brave. I released the death grip I had on him and turned him to face me. “Brave?”
He smiled shyly. “Yes.”
“Oh I’m so glad you’ve come back to us! I was so worried.” I pulled him into an embrace, but quickly disengaged when I remembered we were both as naked as the merpeople.
He blushed and I must’ve been blushing too. I forced myself past it. “You killed your father?” No matter that Washur was the darkest sorcerer we had the displeasure of knowing, killing one’s father had to be a big deal. I’d seen how it had affected Marcelo after he’d been forced to kill his own. Killing one’s father, no matter what the circumstances, was a big, potentially devastating, thing.
But Brave didn’t shirk away from my gaze or what he’d done. “Pretty much. I had to, Clara, so I’ll be all right. If I didn’t kill him, he would’ve killed you, all of you.” He looked down at his fidgeting hands. “He would’ve never stopped. He would’ve continued killing and taking and hurting until someone finally put a stop to it.”
“So you did?”
“I had to.”
“Yes, yes you did,” I said, and Brave finally looked back up at me. We shared a moment before I decided to embrace him anyway, and he leaned into my hug. “You came through for us, Brave,” I whispered.
“Now let’s see to the rest of it,” he said.
I let go and swam to Marcelo. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Did that ball of magic harm you? What—”
He sat up and brought his good arm to mine. “I’m all right, calm down,” he said in a strong voice.
“What happened? How did you stop it?”
“I thought that’s what the Count might do, so I had a spell ready. It’s true that with one arm spells take more time to weave properly, which was why I had the spell mostly completed before I faced him. I do still have a few tricks up my sleeve, you know,” he said a bit defensively, even though he wore no sleeves. He wore nothing and I was working hard to keep my eyes from roaming to inappropriate places or to the crisscross of scars across his chest, which reminded me of how close he’d come to dying far too many times.
Marcelo moved to stand, so I offered him a hand up. He didn’t take it. “I’m fine, really. It only managed to graze me before my spell took effect.”
“Graze you?” My eyebrows shot up my forehead.
“Clara, we still have plenty of other things to think about right now.” To prove his point, he turned toward the hostage standoff, then to the Count. “Why don’t you and Brave make sure Washur is dead while I go over to see if I can help Mordecai and Ariadne?”
Before I could tell Marcelo that I didn’t want to go check on the Count, that I’d much prefer to go where everyone else was, he was already swimming away, his stroke visibly hindered by his injured arm.
“Come on,” Brave said. “If he isn’t dead already, he soon will be.” His voice was devoid of the emotion one might expect from someone who’d just killed his father.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been practicing the spell I used for years. He just didn’t know it.”
“You were practicing it to kill him?”
I received a curt nod in response. So Brave had known what kind of a man Washur was. Even through the spell Washur had woven over him and despite all of Washur’s lies about Brave’s past and the uncle that allegedly killed his mother and abandoned him, the truth and the light of goodness had found a way through the web of deceit. Even if the opening had been no greater than the size of a pinhole, light had seeped through, and it was enough to forge a path that led to this outcome.
Brave took my hand and led me over to Washur. His body lay in a straight line, my bindings still holding tight, denying him comfort even now. But I wouldn’t remove them. I didn’t believe for a second we were yet safe from Washur, not so long as he continued to blink up at us, moving his head to look at us properly.
As long as breath coursed through this sorcerer’s body, I wouldn’t believe us free from him.
But when he spoke, something had changed. “My son,” he said, words chosen from the awareness that the end was near and that this was his last chance to atone for what he’d done. It wouldn’t be enough—it couldn’t possibly be, after all he’d done—but it was something.
“I’m sorry, for everything.”
Brave waited and so did I. I wanted to know what exactly he was sorry for, because his list of things he should be sorry for was a mile o
r two long.
Brave looked away from him, as if he didn’t care what his father said, but he was listening.
I said, “Why don’t you tell him what you’re sorry for, because I think he deserves at least that. Tell him that you’ve lied to him all these years. That you killed Clarissa, his mother, and that you lied to Marcelo about it, that you told everyone that she’d died before she could birth her child.”
I glared into those icy blue eyes with all the rage I could muster over the many injustices he’d instigated, but I found I couldn’t sustain it. Because his eyes were different than I’d ever seen them before. They were… kind, or if not kind, at least not evil anymore. It was as if the darkness was lifting in the moments immediately before death, and I suddenly realized that was exactly what was happening.
Hadn’t I seen it in Marcelo’s memories after the battle at Irele Castle? How the moments that preceded Count Bundry’s death had offered his father a reprieve from the darkness that long plagued him? And again this time, those last few seconds of life revealed the man that survived beneath all the darkness.
“I did all those things,” Washur said, which meant he didn’t have long to live and that he would definitely die. I thought I’d experience a rush of relief, but it was hard to when I could see through to the man who’d been a victim himself. He’d lost control of his soul, ages ago, and given it to a dark power beyond his true control.
I looked to Brave, but he didn’t appear as if he were going to take advantage of these last few moments. He looked empty of any caring or resentment toward the man that had robbed him of a normal childhood, who’d tried to condemn him to the same disease that plagued his soul.
But I wouldn’t let these moments pass. I wanted to know. “What made you this way? How did you become so dark that you fed on the lives of others to sustain your own? What happened to you?”
Washur averted his gaze and was quiet for so long that I thought I’d never learn the secrets to him, that he’d die with them, and I’d never understand what could cause such a terrible, seething darkness to take root in a man.
