Harley Merlin 15: Finch Merlin and the Everlasting Vow

by Forrest, Bella

  Speaking of Finch, his silence was beginning to concern me, as was the presence of his friends. They had not moved from their spot in the corner of the terrace, but they kept glancing in Finch’s direction. What could Melody have possibly said to steal away Finch’s customary humor and wit? An occasion such as this should have been a veritable feast for his sarcasm, but he had not made a squeak, simply nursing the drink in his hand.

  “How do you find the peach fizz? You remember I told you of the opal peaches? I had it served especially for this occasion.” As icebreakers went, it was rather clumsy, but I could not have him sitting there beside me not uttering a word. It did not make me look good, nor did it make him appear to be a suitable marriage prospect.

  “It’s… uh… a bit sweet,” he replied.

  “What about the bread and butter? I know you enjoyed such things at breakfast.”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t had any yet, so I can’t tell you. Looks all right.”

  “And how are you feeling about… you know?” I needed something from him. Goodness. What had caused such a dramatic change? Maybe he was simply shy in company. I had not often seen him around anyone other than his friends. Moreover, he was sitting at a table where at least two individuals wished him dead, as Melody had reminded me. That had to be it.

  He swirled his glass, making the bubbles twist into vortexes. “I feel the same as before.”

  “Has something happened, Finch? Did someone say something to you?” I could not hold back any longer, though I was highly aware of Erebus watching us closely.

  “No. Just a lot to think about.” Why, his answers were almost monosyllabic, and they lacked his usual entertaining animation.

  By the time the luncheon ended, without anyone being murdered or attacked and the conversation remaining civil, I had cemented my decision. Finch might not have said a great deal, but that also made him stand out among the chattering suitors. Yes, despite the sullen silence and short replies, he was the only choice I could make. He was the one who had been sent to me by Chaos.

  Father will simply have to accept my decision, as I will have to accept it. Against all sense and logic and reason, my heart still ached at the sight of Erebus. He had provided me my first taste of love, after all, even if it had not been real. However… my people mattered more. They would always matter more. This heart of mine could not have its desire, and I hoped the salvation of my people would make the loss of love easier to bear in the years to come.

  I took up a knife and clinked it against my crystal flute. “As we come to the end of our luncheon, I have an announcement to make.”

  A worried gasp rippled through the congregation. No doubt they thought I was about to declare my choice, here and now. Well, they would have to wait a short while longer.

  “You are all to present yourselves outside the palace at seven o’clock this evening. I do not know if you have heard, or what gossip has reached your ears, but I will be making a far more important announcement this night, and I must have you all in attendance.” I set down my glass and glanced across the group, where a mixture of emotions adorned the visages of those present: concern, resignation, hope, and the expected smugness from Davin. My father was the only one who looked displeased, but I already knew the reason for that.

  “Finch, come.” I reached for his arm and coaxed him from his seat. He followed like the walking dead, his chin returning to that same spot on his chest as I led him from the terrace back into the palace. Truly, it seemed as though I were walking a petulant creature back to its cage… which was not far from the truth. But it was all for his own good, and I hoped he would find peace one day, too, since his heart would not be allowed its true desire, either. That bonded us, in a way. Chaos’s ultimate challenge.

  I could not ignore the heat of the glares and stares that followed us from the terrace. The flesh upon the nape of my neck was in danger of combustion from the searing warmth of it. If Finch noticed, he said nothing. Yes, it was likely better to ignore any animosity, in case it resulted in more clear and present danger.

  I should not have brought you here, Finch. It had not been worth it. I had not felt the satisfaction I desired from seeing Erebus’s reaction. Instead, my heart felt heavy, weighed down with grief, and longing, and hope, and remembrance… and the tiniest glimmer of excitement.

  Eleven

  Finch

  I should’ve been walking on sunshine after that kiss, but Lux had gone and ruined it. She was like a spoiled kid blowing out my party candles, spiteful and jealous. But, if I closed my eyes, I could still feel the electrifying touch of Ryann’s lips on mine.

  Though, I guessed there was a teeny-tiny silver lining to storming out on Lux. It’d gotten my head back in the game, aka following the lead Nash had delegated to me. He’d told me about the place that had sold the murder weapon—the dagger Apollo’s father once owned. And I needed to find out who it had been sold to, so I could pin down the assassin. If Lux hadn’t popped up like a glowy-eyed whack-a-mole, this brain of mine would still be in mushy heaven.

  I could’ve done that all afternoon… I sighed wistfully at the idea, causing the edges of my new Mimicry disguise to phase in and out. I’d shelved Nash and gone for a random Atlantean servant from the palace, one who went by the somewhat concerning name of “Icarus.” What could I say? I was a sucker for unlucky overachievers. Over six feet tall and broad to boot, with the usual pale-skin-silver-hair combo and four blue markings on his cheek—four being Elemental abilities. He sort of blended in, which was why I’d picked him, so that it wouldn’t freak out the shady residents of the Trench.

  The Trench was the darkest, coldest part of the city I had seen so far, where the warmth of the fake sunlight barely reached. Frost glistened on the ramshackle rooftops, and huddled figures shivered on the moss-slicked, cobbled streets. There wasn’t much in the way of beauty here. The cramped houses, shoved together like a mouth with too many teeth, weren’t forged of the same shining tiles and sea glass as the rest of the city. No, they were made of pretty much anything the builders could get their hands on. At least, that was what it looked like: chunks of driftwood here, repurposed stone and rotting planks there, and moldy, threadbare fabric stretched over the windows in place of actual glass.

  Down a long, narrow main street, I spotted the edge of the world. This world. My heart lurched in my chest. Outside the faint sheen of the interdimensional bubble, I saw something lurking in the dark ocean beyond—carcasses of drowned houses and what looked like the rest of the street I was standing on.

  I’d heard of this. Melody had told me about seeing ruins outside the bubble, which Kaya claimed were failed construction sites. I had my own suspicions about that, given all the glitching that’d been going on. I mean, if the Bestiary didn’t have enough energy to encompass everything in this underwater realm, what would be the first thing to be given up as a sacrifice to the watery gods? The poorer districts. The perceived ugly stains on society. The people and places nobody would miss. And it shocked me to the core.

  Utopian worlds… never trust ‘em. I made a mental note to slide this particular horror into conversation with Kaya later, so I could demand answers the moment I saw her. A nice little engagement accusation to get our union off to a frosty start.

  Following Nash’s intel, I headed away from that narrow street and ducked into a network of alleyways that snaked through the Trench. Before long, the alley opened into a weird courtyard. Shops took the place of residential houses. Signs were painted right onto the walls, describing the businesses within: a grocer and a baker. On the other side of the dingy square, where beggars crouched with hats set out before them, stood shops of a different kind: a tattooist, a secondhand clothing store, what appeared to be an arms dealer, a backstreet dentist, and the pawnshop I was looking for.

  I sidled up to the rickety storefront and entered under a low beam, which looked as if it had been stolen from an ancient ship. My jaw dropped at the cave of wonders inside. Everything w
as piled high, with no obvious kind of organization. Weapons of all kinds hung from the walls, and rare artifacts were tucked away in cracked glass cases. It reeked of forbidden magic in here, or maybe that was just the mustiness.

  Many of the knick-knacks were things a magical would spend a lifetime in Purgatory for possessing. And surprisingly, it didn’t all look native to Atlantis. I noticed magical automatic weapons—the kind worn by security magicals in high-security facilities, like Purgatory. Someone had been doing some surface-sneaking, by the looks of it, pilfering these goods and bringing them back here on the sly. Teleporters, maybe? The Atlantean equivalent of smugglers and grifters.

  I thought back to those skeletal shapes outside the interdimensional bubble. No wonder the crown is trying to get rid of these places… Evidently, Atlantis had its own black market, and not everyone was oblivious to the world above. And if someone, somewhere was escaping this place to go on field trips, then perhaps they could get me and my friends out, too.

  They had Ephemeras, and hex balls, and a twin set of sabers that had clearly been thieved from Russian magicals—I knew the style, since we had something similar in the SDC armory. I perused the haphazard aisles, noting scrolls of rare spells and even a couple Grimoires that definitely weren’t from Atlantis. The temptation was downright dangerous. I could’ve swiped a thousand things from this place and still not been satisfied. But I had to resist the impulse and find the owner.

  A banshee shriek made my head snap toward the end of the store, where a cluttered counter stood amid the chaos. A bulldozer of a woman stood, red-cheeked, with her fists on her hips, laying into the guy behind the counter—a thin, wispy dude with flimsy white hair that sprang out willy-nilly, as though he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket.

  “I don’t care if he threatened you! What are you, a sea slug? You’ve got weapons coming out your ass in here, and you didn’t think to pick one up and threaten him right back?” the woman raged. “Do you know how much those hex balls go for? I could’ve bought another window from selling just one. Now, thanks to you, we’ll have to shiver our backsides off for another month. That’s if we don’t get drowned before then! I curse the day I squeezed you out, you pathetic excuse for a son! Three days of labor, Euclid! THREE DAYS! And what do I get for my pains?” She waggled her hand at him. “A stringy, no-good sardine of a man!”

  I stifled a snort. The poor guy looked like he wouldn’t have minded drowning, if it got him away from his mother. Talk about a chip on her shoulder. If other Atlanteans were anything to go by, this dude was probably a hundred years old or more, yet she still hadn’t forgiven him for being born.

  Ah, mothers…

  “Mother, if you would just—” The guy, apparently called Euclid, didn’t get to say his piece. Not with his mother holding court.

  “If I would just what, Euclid? If I would just turn back the clock, then perhaps I wouldn’t have to contend with the daily disappointment of knowing I brought you into this world? I would’ve been better off birthing a blobfish!” The tank of a woman got right in her son’s face. “I’m going to Poseidon’s Trident. Maybe I’ll drink enough to forget you exist!”

  The mother from hell stomped away, her thunderous footsteps shaking the weapons on the walls. If there’d been a door, she’d have taken it off its hinges on her way out. I took that as my cue to sidle up to the counter.

  “Mothers… am I right?” I struck up the conversation, giving Euclid a moment to regain his composure. Up close, he looked exactly like the kind of basement-dwelling troglodyte whose game controller was glued to their hand. Those strands of wispy white hair had a greasy quality, which I guessed wasn’t from product. And his eyes were furtive and a little too close together. Genetics really hadn’t been kind.

  Euclid sighed. “She’ll be worse when she gets back from the Trident.”

  “Big drinker?”

  “Well, she’s big and she’s a drinker, so yes.” Euclid smoothed a hand through his stringy locks. “What can I do for you? Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

  “That caught my eye.” I gestured to one of the glass cases. A ring sat inside, front and center, with an opal as big as a bird’s egg. Filaments of ethereal light whirled inside the stone, giving me major Hobbit vibes.

  “It catches most people’s eye,” Euclid replied. “It’s the Ring of Aurora. Powerful beyond comprehension. One of the world’s most mysterious rarities, forged in the very center of the earth. It’s said that those who know how to unlock its power become unstoppable. It can turn day to night, speed up and slow down time, and destroy or create, depending on who’s wearing it.”

  Bullcrap… The ring clearly had intense energy, and could probably do crazy things, but no ring could do all that. I was being fed the sales pitch, since my chosen disguise likely looked as though I could afford it.

  “Are you interested? I could cut you a good deal.” Euclid tried to close the net.

  “Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like the kind of thing any guy could use, but that’s not why I’m here,” I said. “I’m looking for a set of daggers that a friend of mine lost in a bet. He wants them back, but he’s so busy, I said I’d try and track them down for him. Apparently, he lost them to Bacchus—I warned him not to gamble with that man, but he never listens.” I pulled out a scrap of paper with the dagger sketched on the page.

  Euclid pursed his thin lips. “I might have seen them, but I’m not in the habit of returning goods that have been foolishly lost. If a man is unprepared to lose what he gambles, then he should not gamble at all. I myself do not have such a problem.” He smiled, his eyes glinting. “Besides, there are so many daggers in this shop. I can’t be expected to remember every item that comes in, or where they go after they leave my shop.”

  Except that’s your job. I held my tongue, since he’d given a fair bit away with that last part—clearly, he knew they weren’t here anymore, but loosening his lips wouldn’t be easy. I noticed a deck of cards on the counter, and a plot began to form.

  “Do you play?” I nodded to the deck. His moralizing about gambling had sounded personal. I’d be willing to bet that the guy had an itch for it, an itch I would be only too happy to scratch. Another thing Mother Dearest had taught me was how to gamble and win, without fail. Sure, it often required underhanded tactics, but that was par for the course for the old Finch. And this was his natural habitat.

  Euclid shrugged. “I dabble.”

  “Then how about we strike a deal.” In a skillful bit of sleight of hand, I pushed the Eye of Erebus through the Mimicry disguise, as if my man Icarus had been wearing it all along. “Have you seen this before?”

  “No… what is it?” Euclid leaned forward, practically frothing at the mouth.

  “The Eye of Hephaestus. A truth-telling item—rare as they come.” Risking this trinket would’ve made Erebus’s blood boil, but I knew what I was doing. No matter what, this thing wasn’t going anywhere. I just had to get Euclid to believe I’d cough it up if I lost… which I had no intention of doing.

  Euclid’s eyes bulged. “And what do you propose with this intriguing piece of jewelry?”

  “If I lose, you get it. If I win, you tell me about the daggers—when they came in, who brought them to you, and who you sold them to.” Apollo had claimed his father had lost them to Bacchus, but it couldn’t hurt to get a stamp of absolute certainty on that. If Euclid confirmed it was Bacchus, then I’d know Apollo was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

  Euclid grinned. “You have a deal.”

  “Then shake on it,” I insisted, putting out my hand. I might have had some deceit in the works myself, but I wouldn’t let him pull a fast one on me. And a handshake here was as good as a signed contract.

  He grimaced but reluctantly put his hand in mine, shaking on the exchange. With the deal sealed, I felt a sudden need for hand sanitizer. I had no idea where those grimy troll hands had been.

  “Do you know how to play?” Euclid
took the deck of cards and shuffled before dealing them like a seasoned croupier. He put half the deck to one side, leaving us with the remainder.

  “Depends what we’re playing,” I answered.

  “Warfare.” Euclid smirked.

  I raised a brow. “Not sure I’ve heard of that one.”

  Euclid stared at the pendant around my neck as if he’d already won. “Simple, really. You have to match your opponent’s card or have a card that’s one higher. If you don’t, then you take the deck that’s been put down. The winner is the one with no cards left… or the one who doesn’t surrender.”

  Surrender? Why would I surrender? I didn’t ask, in case it made me look weak. Instead, I nodded.

  “Let’s play.”

  “Guest begins.” Euclid gestured to me as he surveyed his own cards. The deck was fairly similar to the kind you’d get on the surface, though the suits were different—teardrops, flames, squiggly lines, and flowers. The four elements, in card form.

  I put down a two of Water, figuring I’d start low. Euclid put down a three of the same suit, and a sharp cut raked across my cheek. The surprising sting almost made me drop my Mimicry mirage, but I rallied quick enough to save it. I had to fight not to show my shock, too, since that would’ve given away just how clueless I was about this game. Now, at least, I understood what he’d meant about surrendering.

  Steeling myself, I put down a three of Fire and waited for Euclid to get a taste of the game. But nothing happened.

  So, the same number means nothing happens. Anything bigger, and one of us takes a hit. Simple enough, but this was going to hurt.