Page 75 of Leviathan's Song
“You!” It was all I could get out before he shoved me hard, trying to barrel past me with his prizes.
My back cracked painfully against a stack of shipping containers, and the scalding coffee in my hands spilled out over my stomach and lap when my elbow slammed into the corner of the crate. I released the magical charge in my own amulets before he’d pulled his hand away, and Doldir gave a piercing, high-pitched scream and dropped to the floor. I’d decided after my conversation with Grim that I didn’teverwant to use my wasps again if I could help it, so I’d reinforced my defensive amulets and made them stronger instead.
Levi came flying through the entrance on the other side of the room, leapt over me, and landed on Doldir’s prone form, his fist connecting viciously over and over again.
“Levi, stop! Stop!” He was going to kill him! I realized Doldir’s scream had been so high-pitched that Levi had probably thought it came from a woman,fromme. “I’mfine, stop!He’s already down!” Big arms reached past me as one of the lorelei workers pulled Levi off of Doldir. I looked past him to see Khonlos pushing through the entrance to take in the chaos around me.
His slitted orange irises snapped to me first, quickly cataloging my wild expression and the fact that I was half on the floor with coffee spilled all over me and surrounded by scattered amulets. He stomped through the maze of haphazardly stacked shipping crates to reach past the man who held back my husband, heaving for breath and with bloodied knuckles, and snatched up Doldir by the neck.
“Elara, what’d he do?” Khonlos asked in a low growl, not taking his eyes off of Doldir’s bloodied face.
“He was taking iolite,” I answered shakily. “And at least one connection stone is missing, and the enchantment booster I gave you.”
“Where are the stones?” Khonlos demanded.
“I don’t know!” Doldir screeched. “That bi—” Khonlos shook him by the neck like a ragdoll, thrashing him in the air like one of my father’s dogs might savage a toy. “In my pocket!” he yelled.
One of the other lorelei reached into his hidden pouch and pulled out the missing stones, then patted him down to reveal three more. My stomach turned at the look of fury on Khonlos’s face, but his voice was very quiet when he spoke.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully, little shark. If I ever see your face on this or any worksite of mine ever again, I will serve boiled mer soup to my crew that night for dinner.” The look of sheer terror on Doldir’s face as Khonlos hauled him off down the dry-dock by the neck made me wonder if maybe the rumors of the loreleis’ past dietary predilection weren’t just rumors.
Khonlos stopped at the edge of the dock andhurledDoldir into the harbor.
* * *
The next day,when they brought in the heartstone, was the first time I ever had real doubts about my abilities as a golemancer. Even during school—when I wreaked havoc and accidentally summoned chaos—I had known it was just a matter of perfecting my skills, of finesse. My power level was never something I’d questioned or needed to think about.
It arrived in the middle of a large caravan of well-armed guards, packaged in a wooden crate over three meters high and wider still. I didn’t need to have the crate opened to confirm it was as large as I feared. I could feel it. It beckoned to my magic, a blank slate ready to be used. But even touching it with my magic just briefly, opening myself up to feel the stone’s own magic, caused a wave of dizziness I’d never experienced before.
Instead of pushing my magic into it, it felt like it was pulling my magicfrom me. I’d never evenheardof a heartstone big enough to do that. Our bodies naturally buffered us from using too much magic, but I’d read stories of people who used more than they were capable of and were either permanently injured from it or died. Just the thought of this stone pulling me past my body’s limits sent a primal kind of terror through me.
The sound of the side of the crate hitting the floor was loud in the warehouse, made more prominent by the collective hush of the crowd waiting to see the stone nestled within. It was the most beautiful heartstone I’d ever seen, a dark Prussian blue that reminded me of midnight storms. Deep, deep inside it, a small green light flickered, occasionally illuminating the stone from within, revealing tendrils of color even darker still as they wound through the structure. It almost felt as if one were looking down through the ocean into a kelp forest below at a flickering lantern buried in the sands.
Côvon let out a pealing, celebratory whoop, and I startled backward into Levi, not realizing he’d come up behind me. He steadied me, wrapping his hands around my upper arms, and a glance up at his face showed he was bristling at how close the mer were to us. They jostled each other in their excitement, puffing out their chests and talking loudly amongst themselves. I watched them for a moment, my gaze lingering on the glittering greed in Côvon’s eyes before Levi gently squeezed my arm and directed my attention to the sprites with a tiny nod.
The contrast in reaction was staggering. They looked devastated. Mournful. One of the older sprites, the elder named Rith, looked like he would have been crying if that were something his species was physically capable of. They gazed at the stone with unconcealed heartbreak and despair.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered to Levi. They’d been a part of this whole process. They clearly wanted this defense for their city. Why were they suddenly...devastatedabout it? They weren’t making a scene or even any noise, but the heartache was clearly written on every feature of their small faces.
I glanced back again to see Levi grimacing at the mers’ boisterous celebrating. He answered quietly, “It’s probably their largest heartstone and the greatest wealth left to their people, and it’s been confiscated by these buffoons. Sure, it will be used to defend them of course, for however long the council permits it, but it will still belong to the Alliance, because that’s who you have to assign it to.”
I slid my gaze back to Côvon, careful to keep my building hatred off my face. I didn’t technicallyhaveto do anything. I didn’t really want to get in trouble, but the circumstances of the operation didn’t sit well with me either. It was hard to think with the heartstone’s excessive magic filling the space around me, almost pulsing in time with my own heart. I needed some distance.
* * *
I lay comfortably nestledinto the crook of Levi’s arm, my head tucked into the dip in his shoulder with his hand beneath my hair, rubbing the muscles at the base of my skull. “You’re a ball of nerves,” he muttered quietly. “Why are you tense?”
I allowed myself a few moments to enjoy the blissed out feeling his fingers were creating in my scalp before I answered. We were curled up on the blankets of the bed in the apartment where I’d found him sprawled out with a book after dinner. “I’m horrified,” I admitted, when I found the words.
I’d been sick to my stomach for most of the day, a queasiness and unease that refused to go away even when the sprites returned to work and I’d found familiar footing arguing with Côvon that, under no condition, was the heartstone to be mounted on the Leviathan’s forehead, like some gaudy fashion statement. I’d made it clear to Khonlos that I would not stand for such a travesty of engineering, that the stone had to goin the brain caseor there would be hell to pay.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d back that threat up, but the relief I’d felt at his nodded acceptance and hidden sneer he directed at Côvon had settled my stomach just the tiniest amount. What was the point of having a weapon if you were going to place its most vulnerable component front and center? Côvon would enter the warehouse one morning to find the heartstone already mounted in the brain case, and it would be too late to do anything about it. He would rage and howl, but what could he do? Fire me?
But that brought me to my other concerns. Would he try to hurt me physically if he were very angry? Because I’d been shuffling through plans in my mind for a long while on this, and I had a feeling he would beveryangry before the end of this. Today’s defiance was only the beginning. Levi and I had discussed itad nauseamover the past few weeks, and I was loath to bring it up again. It did nothing to calm my stomach.
Instead, with a sigh, I turned to the possible fallout. “How badly could it go if Ididn’tgive the Leviathan to the Alliance?”
Levi’s fingers stilled on my scalp. After a moment of silence, he resumed rubbing. “Between the Alliance and the sprites? The mer and the sprites? Possible legal repercussions for you? Retaliation toward you?” The gentle pull of his magic felt at odds with the seriousness of his words. I nestled deeper into his shoulder.
