Alongside them, I led our battle cry. The power of their hearts and minds saturated me. And Nymphaea, the great Mother of all, cried with us too. Cried for her children discarded, damaged, and forgotten in the sea. For the women whispering prayers promising brighter tomorrows.The women who sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears for the future. Silently suffering, as my mother did, to ensure their children were safe.
You are not alone, Elowyn,Mother said.For you carry us all within your heart.
Another cannonball blazed through the sky, sizzling toward me in flaming red, but a shield of blinding white and water surrounded me. That song. I knew it. It was pestering and playful. Protecting me.
Thank you.I sent the song like a prayer to my moon-white friend.
Here to please, Princess.Down below was Morvyn, conjuring the structure protecting me as it clamored in a tricky falsetto.
Now stop this, he said.
I would.
Higher, higher, higher I rose on a jet of water as around me, song and vision took over, hand over hand, replacing Morvyn’s protection. The careful palms of the women who made me stood, encircling me hand in hand, in protection.
Together they raised their voices to the sky, and it burst into a swell of red around me, filled with their power, my power. Our power.
Louder. Louder. Louder. Our chorus sang, audible to all who touched our lives. But it also sang back at all who tried to erase us, discredit us. All who dared forget us. They could no longer ignore our voices, our existence. For together, it was so strong.
The dome of song and love that shielded me exploded, throwing Hylos and his soldiers behind me. Hylos’s power, like a fist, beat against it, but my song held true.Oursong held true.
He needs to be farther away, child.My mother’s voice, clear as a crisp spring day, spoke. It was the most beautiful sound in all the world. I pushed back on that angry fist of Hylos’s strength, forcing him and hisarmy farther and farther away until he was a whisper on the ocean’s salty breath.
Safe. I saved my brother. Just as my mother wanted.
Hylos, she wants me to tell you… and her song and mine intertwined like jasmine spiraling up an arbor as we both said,You may be happy.
Although Hylos was far away, a speck on the infinite sea, I felt his thrashing stop.
His pain stop.
Because he could hear our mother’s song. He could feel her there, with me.
So he sang back,I will try.
A piercing sound overwhelmed my senses with a scorching, wild tone. Panic set in. My mother’s song shattered, choked by that deathly toll.
The queen’s ship was directly below me. I hadn’t even noticed, too preoccupied with trying to get Hylos to safety.
I tried to fight against it, thrashing in the air, but I couldn’t; it was too powerful, too loud. The surrounding swell that was protecting me dissipated, dropping me from the sky. The sea was racing into view.
That horrible noise shrieked again, bursting my eardrums.
Then my world turned black.
Chapter 44
Arlo
Witnessing Elowyn dive into the ocean was painful, but seeing my brother cradle her, gaze at her in a way he had never looked at anyone, wasexcruciating.
She looked far paler than her usual blushing tone. Even her freckles had faded. She was limp and unresponsive. Sunlight streamed through the rocky, narrow slits of windows, casting shifting patterns of light and shadow on the rough stone walls as I hastened to Cedric. For one moment, his eyes met mine, then he darted around a corner and disappeared behind it, taking Elowyn with him.
I followed him into the sunlit chamber. I would have been relieved that he’d found her, praising his name to all four Guardians, if it wasn’t for the worried look my brother was trying to conceal.
“What’s wrong with her?” I demanded. But he was silent. The ocean waves lapped at the shoreline in the distance, the smell of seawater on the breeze that blew in through the open window, making the sun-leached shutters knock.
He tried tomarryher.
