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A breeze tickles my ear, pouring a song into it. “Sweet storm moving over the sea, I call forth your winds to send my true love to me.”

A sudden gust blows over the shore.

Even from this distance, I can see Zephyr’s muscles coiling with tension. Their eyes spark silver beneath the shadows of their hood, and they vanish, but the song continues.

It’s not Zephyr’s voice chiming through the air. And I’m not the only one who hears it.

Dried petals tumble down the aisle as Darcy goes still beside me. People begin craning their necks to search for the source of the haunted melody, but they aren’t going to find it here.

That’s my Ocean Voice stirring in the wind, singing, “Send my true love to me.”

25

ZEPHYR

Ifight the song luring me across the island, pinching myself back into reality in the middle of a cobblestone street. Dried petals rain down on me, and children run away laughing, throwing flowers from their baskets.

“Send my true love to me.” I know it’s not Cordelia calling to me, but the compulsion is too strong. Her Ocean Voice commands me to vanish again.

When I gain control of my aether, I land in front of Cosette’s cottage. The seashell chimes clack together on her porch.

“Sweet storm moving over the sea…” I block my ears, but my feet keep moving towards her door.

It swings open, and I walk right in.

Cosette is dressed in a decadent white gown, as if she’s about to get married herself. She takes a crown of polished shells from the windowsill and places it atop her head.

“Bring my true love to me.”

I throw myself over the back of her sofa, stopping myself from moving any closer.

“Oh, there you are.” She giggles, waving her fingers at her sides as she turns to me, a radiant pink flush spreading over her cheeks. “I was afraid you’d be late for the ceremony.”

“Ceremony?” The door slams shut, trapping me in. I straighten and step back, keeping my hands away from my sword so I won’t reach for it on instinct. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to marry you.”

She grimaces. “I would never marry you.”

“Then what is this?” Candles are spread all over her floor, wax dribbling onto the rugs and wood boards. Knots of red strings burn in glass pans, and small animal bones form shapes between them. “I brought you the Mer-King’s rune keys. I don’t know what else you could possibly want from me, but you can have it. My heart, my soul, my anything. Just please leave Cordelia out of this.”

“This has never had anything to do with you,” she says, twisting a lid off of a jar. A shriek escapes the glass container, and she sips on the grey-blue mist rolling out of it. Her blue eyes appear clearer when they cut to me. “How could it? You are nothing but the tool that has brought me closer to what I’ve always wanted.”

“Cordelia?” I whisper, disgusted that she might’ve been preying on her for years, waiting for an opportunity to trap her in a deal.

“A worthy companion.” She tosses the empty jar in a basket. “I had my sights on that little mermaid for a very long time, but I had no real way of reaching her until you came to me. After that, I started planning her trials.”

“What trials?”

“I wanted to push her to her limits to test how she’d react,” she answers. “I fully expected her to find her way out of every trap I set and eventually kill the sailor, but I never counted on you showing up for her.” The northwest wind rattles her shutters, but the bay remains calm outside her back window. “Congratulations, it isn’t easy to surprise me.”

“This was all some scheme to test her?” A hot blade of anger wedges itself between my ribs.

“Yes, and she did very well.” She taps her nails on the shell pendant. “Now we’re going to help her unlock her true potential.”

There isn’t a flame’s chance in the eternal abyss that I’d help her with anything. I gather my aura around myself.

I’ll pull Cordelia into my aether for as long as necessary to get her away from this.

“Stay,” she sings, and it’s Cordelia’s Ocean Voice—the only sound that kept me from fading away for so many years—wrapping its spell around me and forcing me to my knees. She hums the same tune as she lifts a pair of shears from a bowl and presses them into my hands. “Now cut off your wings.”