“Hmm.” She leaned a little more deeply into his embrace. After a few moments, her hips shifted against him, and she titled her head back to arch a brow. “That doesn’t feel like amusement to me.”
He smiled slow and wide. “I told you before. Strong women arearrasleaf to me.”
“Strongwomen? Plural?”
“Woman,” he corrected. “Singular. You. Only you. As you know, I’m a one-force-of-nature kind of male.”
She turned to face him, looping one arm around his neck and leaning back a little as she slowly traced a finger down his chest, trailing the heat of her magic in its wake. “Mmm. And just how much of an aphrodisiac is my particular force of nature to you?” Her finger dipped below his navel and continued tracking down the thin, silky line of dark hair that disappeared into his jeweled belt.
He shuddered and snatched her up in his arms. “Oh,moa haleah.It’s like eatingarrasstraight from the tree.”
TheKrackensailed through the Sargassi Sea, the swath of warm, tropical waters separating the continents of Ardul and Frasia, and headed into the mouth of the Olemas Ocean. Gabriella stood at Dilys’s side on theKracken’s bow, her eyes gleaming pure gold as she tapped the vast well of her power. Ahead of their small fleet, a tropical storm whipped the seas and skies into a frenzy, a pocket of volatile weather created and guided by Summer.
With Dilys’s aid, she’d spent their voyage to the Olemas learning to unleash and use her gifts. One of the things she’d discovered was that now that her magic was unrestrained, finesse had become a thing of the past. Delicate, targeted work was difficult, if not impossible. She could set a boat on fire, but lighting a single candle? That ability escaped her. She’d had hopes, for instance, of being able to target a Shout to a particular individual and snipe them from a distance, but her Shouts didn’t work that way. The farther she was from a target, the wider the spread of her devastating magic. As for her weathergift, here in the summer, sailing already warm tropical seas, she could whip up a storm as quickly as Khamsin, but with all the energy of the sea and open sky at her fingertips, Summer’s storms had an almost unlimited potential for growth... and devastation.
She hadn’t come close to utilizing the full force of her gift yet. With nine ships and hundreds of Calbernan lives in such close proximity, she hadn’t dared—not even with Dilys’s help. And he had been a help. Every moment she’d practiced, he’d been by her side, offering advice and encouragement, bleeding off her magic when it threatened to surge out of her control. She’d fed him a lot of excess as she’d worked to learn what she could and couldn’t do with her magic, and he’d used that power to extend his eyes and ears in the sea. His direct network now stretched throughout the Sargassi and a full hundred miles into the Olemas.
“He’s got a hundred ships forming a blockade about fifty miles west of us. He’s trying to mask their presence with fog.”
Gabriella stretched out her senses. She couldn’t detect the ships themselves, but she could sense the cooler air filled with moisture hanging over the water. The fog he was using to hide his ships. There was a definite tang of magic in that fog.
“I see it. Where are the rest of his ships?”
“He’s got at least another two dozen ships sailing with him. I haven’t found the others yet, but my eyes and ears in the sea are looking for all possibilities. If they sail anywhere within reach of my network, I’ll spot them. Even if they’re using the same invisibility spells he employed to mask himself from the last time.”
They rounded the northernmost edge of the Kuinana. The Olemas lay before them. Nemuan’s unnatural fog hovered across the water like thick smoke. She could see it stretching out on either side of her rain-dark storm.
“All right,moa kiri,are you ready?”
She pulled her attention from her storm to offer him a smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Then do it.”
She closed her eyes, reached for the heat of the sun, and poured energy and heat into the volatile core of the storm she’d been steering ahead of them. She thought building the storm would be hard, but it wasn’t. Clouds boiled out across the sky and blackened with shocking speed. Wind gusted. The storm-tossed surface of the sea became a riot of devastating waves, forty feet from crest to trough. What had been a tropical storm intensified rapidly into a hurricane.
When she and Dilys had discussed her plan to summon a hurricane to defeat the armada, her biggest fear was that she might lose control of the storm she had created. But now, as her magic and her consciousness rode the currents of hot, moisture-laden air, she knew that fear was groundless. Khamsin had always been the one afraid of losing control of her storms, but Summer’s whole life had been dedicated to controlling the storm within. Compared to that, keeping this hurricane leashed to her will was child’s play. She thrust it into the fog bank, using her storm as a battering ram. Her gale-force wind and waves tossed the pirate ships aside like toy boats, clearing the fleet’s path of would-be attackers. Aboard theKracken, Dilys and his men used their seagifts to calm the waves before they could batter the Calbernan fleet.
A few of the pirate ships managed to ride out the storm and get close enough to begin firing shot filled with the same unnatural, unquenchable fire that had destroyed the ships in the Kuinana. One of the shots hit theMermaid,which was sailing forty feet to the port side of theKracken.
Having fought the fire before in the Kuinana, Popolo’s men were prepared. They dumped buckets of sand on the blaze. As the pirates readied a second barrage of fire, a pod of blueback whales breeched directly off the pirate ship’s starboard side. Waves swamped the ship. One of the blueback’s heavy tails smacked the bowsprit. The blow brought the bow of the ship careening downward into the trough of a massive wave, just as another wave rose up near the stern. The ship capsized. Sailors screamed as the fire they’d been intending for the Calbernans now ignited the sinking hulk of their ship and the crew trying to swim away.
Aboard theMermaid,Popolo’s crew gave a loud cheer. Those bluebacks had been his. The waves had been generated by his men.
Another two pirate ships approached from the starboard side of Ryll’sNarwhal.Ryll and his men capsized them before they got within firing range and sent them to the bottom of the sea.
Directly ahead of theKracken,four ships had survived Summer’s storm and were now heading straight for them. Gabriella let out two controlled Shouts. The oncoming ships exploded into clouds of splinters. From the crew of theKrackenand the other ships of their fleet, a great, raucous cheer went up. Amid the cheers and chanting chorus of “Sirena! Sirena!” she caught snatches of awed voices. “Did you see that?” “She blasted thosefarking krillosright out of the water!”
“Well done,moa kiri.” Beside her, Dilys beamed with pride. “You’re getting good at that.”
She blushed a little, then grinned back at him. “I am, aren’t I?” To her surprise, she didn’t feel one ounce of horror or guilt for destroying the pirate ships or the lives aboard. Instead she felt exhilarated. She’d defended theKrackenand the Calbernan fleet with her magic. She hadn’t lost control even once, killing only the enemy and no one else. As for those enemies, they’d been bad, evil men bent on doing bad, evil deeds, and the world was a better place without them.
She wasn’t conflicted over killing them. Instead, she felt... right. As if, after all these years, she finally understood her purpose, understood why she’d been born with such great and terrible gifts.
“Gabriella?” Dilys was watching her closely. “What is it?”
“I think I understand now. Why I am... what I am.”
“What do you mean?”
