Page 76 of Leviathan's Song
“Yes. That. All the above.”
“Hm. I imagine there would be trouble between the sprites and the Alliance council, though that already seems to exist. It’s just that the balance of power could shift. I can’t say what the legal consequences of stealing a golem would be...”
I sputtered. “Imadethat golem! Well, kind of. But either way, it doesn’t actually belong to them anyway!”
He tucked my head into his neck to quiet my interruption.
“You could argue that in court if they took it that far.”
“I could just play dumb and say I slipped,” I replied.
“You could,” he answered, amused. The amusement faded as he continued. “As far as Côvon or the others retaliating in the moment, well, you still have your wasps. And a giant mer-crushing Leviathan.”
“I’m not looking to add murder to my rap sheet,” I muttered.
“Yeah, but they don’t know that,” he mused. “I can call in reinforcements...” he began, probably thinking of Grim, “but it would most likely make them suspicious.”
“I don’t even know if I’ll still be standing when I get that thing powered up,” I confessed.
“What do you mean?” he asked, pulling back to look at me with concern on his face.
“I’ve never experienced a stone of that size before,” I admitted, trying to wriggle my way back into his side. I’d sent a spectral to my father to ask for his input—secretly, because of Côvon’s demands that only sea-folk be involved—and his confidence in my abilities had buoyed me. His assertion that heartstones didn’t pull magic from us had not. I knew what I had felt. Maybe he’d never seen one this big either? I was scared to drag him into this, knowing there would be consequences when I was done.
“I was dizzy just probing it today. I just hope I’m actually strong enough to power it up.” This was going to be very anticlimactic if I couldn’t do it. “I’m going to need every amplifier and power well I can get my hands on.” I frowned, remembering the ones I’d lost at the bottom of the pond. “And the golem won’t do me any good if I pass out unless I tell it to defend me, and then I won’t be able to stop it from killing people.” What a mess. Flashbacks from college plagued me.
Levi was quiet for a long moment. “I want you to focus on building your golem. Get the sprites what they need. No one else but you can do that right now. Don’t worry about the mer,” he said, and I was startled to hear a thread of amusement again in his voice in that last line. But then his voice grew serious again. “I won’t let them touch you. You do what you need to do. I’ll help you with whatever comes after.”
Chapter 29
The weightof my amulets felt reminiscent of armor, cuffed about my arms, draped in large swaths around my neck, bejeweling every finger until I felt as though I were wearing gauntlets. My head bore enough gemstones to furnish a heavy crown—power wells, magical amplifiers, focuses, and energy bolsters. The latent effect of so much magical feedback combined with the sheer power of the leviathan’s newly embedded heartstone had me crackling with irritation and excess energy. The day had quickly come to power it up, and I felt simultaneously rooted in place by the sheer weight of it all, and ready to explode at any moment.
I caught Levi’s eye for the barest second as he slipped in a door from outside of the warehouse. He nodded to let me know he’d finished discussing our plan with Rith, the elder sprite. Tuning Côvon’s ranting out was becoming more difficult by the second, so I turned an irritated gaze back to him. He had to wear himself out eventually.
“It wouldn’t do,” I eventually interjected, “to have a weapon be so fragile.” He’d been hissing and shrieking all morning about how this washisproject, andhemade the decisions about how the golem was going to be built. But that simply wasn’t true. It wasn’t his project, and I wasn’t going to allow him to weaken the sprite’s new defense system. I wouldn’t explain again why the skull cavity was the proper place to lodge the heartstone; it was already done, and he wasn’t going to be able to talk the lorelei into changing it. My goal now shifted to distraction.
“In fact, I have another way to make this construct even stronger and more... impressive.” I’d been going to say effective, but had changed my mind and gone with what I knew Côvon was truly concerned with.
He swung his angry glower from Khonlos to me, so I knew I had his attention. Explaining the addition of Levi’s battle hymn to the construct’s defense abilities was necessary because it wasn’t something I could hide or do in secret. So, I took the time to convince Côvon that this would make our leviathan golem much more formidable, adding greater flexibility and range to its defensive capabilities. It would already have crushing, slicing teeth, and the ability to weaponize the water around it, but now the addition of a siren’s song would give itrange. I’d thought I might have to sell the idea a little harder, but he practically choked on his satisfaction over having such a specifically mer trait become a central facet of the golem’s arsenal.
I’d asked Levi before in private if it could be better to have a group of sirens instead of only him, thinking it would make the magic stronger, but he disagreed. “Female sirens have a much stronger lure than I have, but their ability to repel or instill fear with enchantment is nearly non-existent. Plus, there’s the issue of the chaos it would cause having them on the job site,” he’d answered with a look of subtle horror on his face. Mermaids were solitary or only spent time with other females when they weren’t having babies.
My diversion finally worked, and Côvon eyed Levi when he took his place beside me, the pride over having what he clearly considered a larger claim now over the leviathan warring with the contempt he felt for my partner in his expression. I pushed energy into my defensive jewelry, wanting to blast his scales off, but I schooled my expression and held my head high as he thought it through. I had work to do and he was preventing it with his tantrums, but I took secret pleasure in the thought of how irate he would be when I was done.
Côvon eventually let us go back to work—watching us all as a hawk watches mice now that we’d defied him once—but I focused on my tasks. He wouldn’t be able to see the important aspects of what I was doing anyway.
The laborers had finished assembling the skeleton, and I’d spent the last several days inspecting the build while Levi schemed with Rith. I’d walked the length of the beast over and over, carefully testing each connection and joint again, pushing my power into each bone’s individual amulets and watching the movements of the joints to make sure they functioned properly and had full range of motion one final time. Khonlos would call out instructions to adjust pieces that needed it, and we retested again and again. By the time we reached the end of each day, I was exhausted and dragging, but Côvon had looked very pleased with the project as he shot Khonlos a smug grin and strutted past us. At least, he had been until this morning’s heartstone disagreement.
The big lorelei paid him little notice, going about his work carefully and methodically. I could only hope he wouldn’t get caught in the crosshairs during any dispute between the Alliance and me when the dust finally settled. Levi assured me Khonlos was fully on board and could handle himself, but I couldn’t help but fret over how my choices might affect him as the foreman for our project. I hadn’t personally witnessed their interaction directly after Khonlos had removed Doldir, but the tension between Khonlos and Côvon had strangely lessened somewhat. Côvon even seemed to keep a fraction more distance.
I surveyed the skull of the leviathan as it rested heavily on the floor of the warehouse, its great toothy maw front and center, with dark, cavernous sockets gazing sightlessly toward the gathered crowd of workers. It was a smaller group of us today, with most of the laborers finished and now absent. Khonlos stood to one side of me, with Levi on the other. Côvon and some of the mer were milling about, andallthe sprites were there.
As far as I could tell, every sprite that had ever stopped by to assist with the project, and many that hadn’t, were gathered to watch today. Côvon had tried to run them out, had sent his lackies after them multiple times, but they just flew back in the open windows or doors as soon as his back was turned. They gathered in the rafters and peeked out from behind empty crates. I’d even seen some peeking out over the rims of those gaping, eyeless sockets.
I was sure it wasn’t just sprites in attendance either. Wisps, sparks, and other fae cluttered among the groups too. There was even a very suspicious flash of black and white feathers I’d glimpsed near one of the window ledges.
I wasn’t used to working in front of so many people, and the butterflies I felt in my stomach weren’t the good, sweet kind. My stomach churned with nerves, and I fairly rattled with pent up magic. It took all I could muster to pull my attention from the leviathan before me and the sprites surrounding us and focus my attention on Khonlos. He sighed deeply, scanning the crowd then the construct just as I had. A nod: everything was in order.Time to begin.
With every other stone I’d ever worked with, it was a matter of focusing on my intent andpushingmy magic into the stone. This one pulled. At first it was a relief to simply release—if that was even the right word—some of my overflowing magic and allow the stone to pull it away, locking it inside, flickers of light beginning to glow through its orbital canals as it came online. But as its power stores grew, it became more difficult to keep a grip on my intent, my purposes for it, and feed it the correct amount of power without letting it take too much from me. A niggling fear told me this much power was reckless, but I felt that, if I controlled the flow and protected myself, it would be fine. I could spare no energy to focus on anything around me, only the stone. My trust was fully in Levi and Khonlos to deal with the mer and anything else around us.
