Page 77 of Leviathan's Song
I focused on feeding the stone power, attaching it to its construct, link by link, the images of The Deep—both provided by Rith the sprite and the maps of the city so far below—nestled in the black abyss where no sunlight ever reached. There were boundaries it would patrol, territories to guard, provisions for species allowed entry and species lists to repel. Unable to pull my attention from the task at hand, I reached toward Levi and brushed his fingers with mine.
“The battle hymn.” My voice sounded far away, dissonant, deeper. It took Levi a long moment to respond, and when he did, he sounded a little shaken. Seconds passed and his voice grew stronger, steadier, and with it... his magic. The ward around my wrist protected me from the brunt of his repellent effects, but the urge to run, to flee, still pressed on me. The stone echoed his enchantment as he sang, and I heard Khonlos grunt from beside me with the effort of remaining in place. Some scrambling at the edges of the warehouse told me others in attendance weren’t so steadfast.
His song grew and changed, still simple in its construction but more forceful and rhythmic. I continued to feed power into the leviathan’s heartstone, changing it in my own way. The golem was now pulsing blasts of magic, eye sockets glowing with blue light from the stone hidden behind them. Long shadows crawled across the floor of the warehouse behind stacks of crates and clusters of frightened mer.
“Rith,” I called, my voice still sounding odd in my own ears. “Access your magic, please. Press some of it toward the stone, if you can.” I couldn’t turn to see if he’d heard me, but I felt it when his magic rose and began pouring into the heartstone. Not just him but nearly every fae in the room swelled with magic until the heartstone was thrumming with power.
If I’d feared before that I wouldn’t know how to meld the fae magic with mine and Levi’s, it proved unfounded. The heartstone greedily accepted the sprite’s magic, locking it around our own like iron bars I could only see in my mind’s eye, could only feel. It fit perfectly into place, confirming my suspicion that it was the needed ingredient for combining and amplifying Levi’s magic in the heartstone. Our magics weren’t melded so much as woven together to create one whole, and for now, I was merely the conduit.
Slowly, terribly, that changed, as Levi’s hymn drew to its natural conclusion. His enchanted words ended, and one by one the fae allowed their own magic to wink out, until eventually, suddenly, I was the only one left, and the leviathan’s heartstone was far from finished. I drew more, fighting a flare of panic, pulling the remaining reserves from my power wells, reaching out into the aether to pull what I could from the raw magic of the Bound’s environment, reaching deep inside myself to surrender any last power I could find within to my burgeoning creation.
Specks of white swam in my vision, and I faltered. It was nearly done. Ringing in my ears made me hesitate a beat, because passing out before this was finished could cause unimaginable chaos. I had to remain in control. But the pounding continued until I followed the sound—not in my own head as I suspected—higher into the rafters, where distinct black and white feathers flickered back and forth, Sidney pecking and tugging at something metal up above.
I felt Levi’s hands supporting my weight under my arms as I began to list lightly to one side, and I dismissed her distraction. The heartstone pulsed and pounded with our magics, a potent combination of mine, mer, and fae that I’d never felt before. It nearly matched Grim in its intensity. My whole body trembled with the effort of separating myself from the pull of the stone. Instinct warned me that any more magic leaving my body would have dire consequences, and the stone felt strong enough now to operate as its own entity.
One last final push, and I assigned it to The Deep—not a man, not an alliance, but the city itself and the people who lived there. The leviathan would patrol the boundaries I laid out in perpetuity, defending the people who truly owned its heartstone, the sprites.
Levi was fully supporting my weight now as I forcefully severed my connection to the heartstone. The room erupted in chaos as the leviathan began to move, intent on obeying its first directive—get to The Deep. Its heavy head lifted from the floor in a screech of clattering bones. Everyone scattered in terror, not expecting the sudden movement, except for the sprites who swarmed the construct. They clung to the skeleton with lips pulled back in tiny snarls, daring anyone to stop them as the leviathan reared up and out of the warehouse and suddenly plunged into the sea below.
Against my will, my gaze snapped to Côvon, reading his shock as it shifted to confusion, to suspicion, to anger, to rage. “That was mine!” he shrieked, before he lunged toward me across the open space. The last things I registered were the unabated hammering of beak on metal, the hot glow of sparks surging in through the warehouse windows, and the cold rush of water on my skin as Levi’s arms lifted me and darkness swallowed me whole.
* * *
Consciousness came slowly.The bed was uncomfortably firm, and the brown stucco wall in front of my face wasn’t familiar to me.
“Are you finally awake?” my father asked. I startled and rolled over, straight into Levi’s hip.
“Whoa, easy. Take it slow,” Levi soothed. His hand brushed the hair from my face, and he helped to prop me up a bit, offering me a cup of water. I shook my head. Thirst burned my throat, but I was more concerned about what my dad was doing here, wherever here was.
My father sat lounging in a high-backed chair in the corner of the stark, small room, with his boots crossed over one another and his jaw propped on his fist. I took in his familiar white hair—nearly as long as mine and hung loosely with tiny gold chains—and warm graphite colored skin. His finely featured face was decidedly disapproving. My mouth drew down into a frown to match his.
Levi stood carefully from the side of the narrow bed and bent to press a kiss to the top of my head. “I’m going to ask for some food,” he murmured, before leaving the room.
My father’s voice was dry. “You have...somuch explaining to do.”
I tried to shake the grogginess and rubbed at my eyes. “I don’t even know where I am.”
“Governor Nandine’s personal ward. For three days! They wasted two healing draughts on you before I could explain that there was nothing physically wrong with you.”
I guess that would explain why I didn’t feel like a complete wreck after lying in one spot for three days.Three days?I gave my father a slow blink as I tried to process that.
“You powered up and programmed a heartstone that...” he trailed off for a moment, his expression bewildered, “... I wouldn’t even be able toaccessfrom the size Sidney describes.Started a small riot among the mer. Are apparentlymarried to one?” He shot an incredulous look out the door Levi had left through, and I winced. Yeah, we were going to have to talk about that. “And then poured so much energy into the leviathan that you knocked yourself clean out for three days!”
“Hi, Daddy,” I greeted him, completely ignoring his grousing and thrilled to have him with me even though I felt guilty he’d probably interrupted his project and rushed here. He’d had three days to stew in nerves, frustration, and whatever else, I was sure, but I was just waking up and tickled to see him. The look he shot me was all at once indulgent, chastising, and affectionate, before softening into something like exasperation.
A raucous caw from behind me drew our attention to Sidney’s avian form, perched on the headboard, but she was only excited about the tray of food Levi carried.
My father narrowed his eyes and pointed at her. “And you know they don’t allow animals in the ward. They’ll chase you back out again if they see you. I don’t understand why you don’t just shift back?”
She gave a raspy chattering sound and dropped onto the bed as Levi set the mouthwatering tray of food on my lap. I was suddenly ravenous. Her voice was tinny sounding as she answered my father’s question, “No clothes.” I tore off part of a roll and passed it to her. Sidney didn’t care about clothes. Sometimes she was just stubborn about wanting to be in her bird form, and I had a feeling this was one of those times. All the better to exasperate my father and spy on hospital staff probably.
“What were you doing there?” I asked her, remembering catching glimpses of her as I’d powered up the leviathan.
“I was gonna ride it.” She fluffed out her feathers and snatched up another proffered piece of the roll, looking particularly hard done by.
“She was triggering the sprinklers,” Levi answered for her, tendrils of sea foam magic brushing over me. “Or trying to. I think the sparks stepped in at the end.” Sidney gave a trill of assent as Levi moved behind me and began gently gathering my hair out of my face as I ate, tying it back out of the way as he’d seen me do numerous times. My father watched the entire exchange with a gimlet eye.
“Why... sprinklers?” I asked around a mouthful of food, not even knowing exactly what I was trying to ask.
