Kairos swore fluently, tugging me closer.
Soren’s magic strained against the flood, trying to contain it, but more runes were shattering. The water rotated into a massive vortex. Then it crashed forward.
It devoured the chamber, sweeping me under my feet.Water climbed up to my chest. I gasped, and the world swam with blue. Everything spun. Fae, furniture, pieces of coral.
Through the murky chaos, I saw Vaeris, untouched by the rushing flood.
Smiling.
I couldn’t breathe. I thrashed, but the current pulled me deeper. It all broke apart—walls, floors, the roof. The fae were dim shapes, struggling against the spiral.
Kairos yanked me against him, his arm locking around my waist. My lungs spasmed. I needed to hold my breath.
Kairos kicked hard, fighting the pull, but we didn’t rise. The current jerked us sideways. I clung to him, digging into his shoulders as the sea twirled around us. Columns tumbled end over end.
Kairos angled us toward a sliver of light, but we barely moved. Every inch gained was stolen by currents, and my lungs screamed for air.
A voice rumbled through the deep.
Aelie.
Gold flashed through the dark as the palace crumbled around a rune. Massive. Carved into the seabed.
A fine crack had run through its center, and something inside roared. The fracture spread, branching like lightning across the rune’s pattern.
Aelie…break it.
The glow intensified, and the rune shattered. A fissure ripped open, gaping, bleeding heat into the freezing water. It tore through the ocean floor like a wound, spreading wide.
I slammed against Kairos as the current reversed, rushing away from the fissure. An earsplitting shriek cut through the water, the unholy wail of an ancient beast.
I needed to breathe. I tried to clamp my mouth shut, but my lips parted and saltwater rushed in, burning my throat. Black dots crowded my vision. My body convulsed, and this time I couldn’t stop it. I sucked in a desperate breath.
Water seared down my throat. I choked, thrashing in Kairos’s grip. The roaring in my ears drowned out the sea, and darkness pressed against my skull.
37
YOU WILL SERVE
I drifted in a lightless void.
A force pulled at my navel, dragging my weightless body out of the suffocating black and into a strange world. Mountains in the distance crumbled to dust, then rebuilt themselves in stuttering loops.
I hovered over a field. Slowly, I floated down, and gravity settled into my bones.
Where am I?
The sky writhed with patches of day, while other sections hung frozen in eternal dusk. So odd. I stepped forward, my feet crunching dead grass.
A sapling sprouted from the earth, its branches growing into the sky. It budded with leaves and aged to rotting wood, all in a manner of seconds. Many plants seemed stuck in the same pattern. One grew big white flowers that shriveled and died. Over and over again.
This is a very bizarre dream.
The trees cycled—sapling to oak to rot—and then I noticed the purple runes on their trunks. Carved into the bark.
I moved toward them, curious.
“Aelithra.”
