It hurt. Good, sweet gods, it hurt!
Starved of air, her body instinctively tried to take a breath, only to suck in a massive gulp of water instead. She choked and coughed. Blood streamed from the wound in her chest and bubbles rushed from her mouth in a red-tinged flood. Her body began to jerk and spasm. Another involuntary breath brought a painful, burning, tearing feeling as her throat closed up.
She stared into Biross’s now sightless eyes as the strength left her limbs, and a strange calm overtook her. She knew she was lost. She blinked once, slowly, as her consciousness slipped away. Her last thought, her one regret, for the strong, beautiful, loving man she’d claimed.
Dilys.
Dilys’s shaken concentration was all the opening Calivan needed. He launched himself at his nephew, going for his throat. Dilys threw up an arm to block, then swore as his flesh tore beneath his uncle’s claws and teeth. Dilys slammed a fist upwards, knuckles crunching against Calivan’s jaw. His uncle staggered back, snarled, then lowered his head and plowed into Dilys, taking him down hard. The air whooshed out of Dilys’s lungs, leaving him momentarily stunned. Calivan seized the opportunity to hammer steely fists against Dilys’s ribs in a punishing barrage, each blow backed by powerful muscle. Calivan might have been forbidden from earningulumiin battle, but he was every bit as skilled and strong as any other warrior of the Isles.
Dilys grunted in pain as his ribs broke with an audible crack.
“Cal!” Alysaldria cried. “Stop this insanity!” She lunged for her twin and grabbed one arm, wrapping her own arms tight around it and pulling back with all her weight. To the rest of Dilys’s men, she cried, “Calbernari! Aid me!”
“Ono!” Dilys snarled when his men would have run forward to join the fray. He pulled back his lips, baring the sharp white menace of his battle fangs. “Aid Gabriella! Find a way to break down that damn door!” He maneuvered his arms between his uncle’s body and his own, blocking the rib strikes, then brought the crown of his head ramming up into Calivan’s chin. Calivan grunted and reared back. “Nima,help them. Shout thefarkingthing apart, if you can. Just get in there and save her!” Dilys sank his fangs into his uncle’s shoulder and shook his head like a shark with captured prey. Blood spattered as flesh rent. Calivan roared and stabbed a clawed hand at Dilys’s chest, aiming for his heart.
Dilys rolled to one side to avoid the killing blow, then rolled rapidly back to deliver a sharp elbow to the side of his uncle’s head.
Calivan cried out as his head wrenched sharply to one side. A fist to the temple sent him toppling over. Dilys rolled over, rammed a knee hard into Calivan’s groin. As his uncle howled and instinctively drew his body up to protect his throbbing stones, Dilys straddled his chest, pinning his arms to his sides, and began hammering his fists into Calivan’s face. Calivan’s lips split. His nose shattered. His teeth cracked and broke, and his eyes swelled shut. All the fight went out of him, but Dilys kept hammering. Again, and again, and again he struck, his mind a red haze of rage and bloodlust.
“Dilys, stop.” Ryll’s voice was cool and firm, backed with power that only fell slightly short of a Command. “He’s down. He can’t hurt anyone else. Gabriella needs you now.”
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Panting, still boiling with unreleased rage, Dilys curtailed his punches. His uncle was unconscious, his face resembled a bloody lump of raw meat. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough to assuage Dilys’s fury. But Gabriella needed him. She needed him to free her, not to keep pounding the man he’d already incapacitated.
He pushed off Calivan’s body and staggered to his feet. As he did, his foot bumped against the pouch Calivan had strapped across his body. With a resonant, clinking sound, several brightly glowing crystals the size of goose eggs rolled free. Dilys put up a hand to shield his eyes and reached for one of the crystals. The instant he touched it, the powerful magic—Gabriella’smagic—throbbed against his senses. Instinctively he opened for it, and the magic flooded into him in an unchecked rush that made him stagger back in surprise.
“Blessed Numahao.” The stunned whisper slipped from his lips. Everyulumion his body had lit up, a bright blue white. Dilys didn’t know how, but his uncle had somehow drained Gabriella’s magic and stored it in these crystals.
He sliced the strap of the leather pouch with his claws and yanked the bag free, kneeling to collect the crystals that had rolled free and shove them back into the pouch. When he had them all, he spun back towards the locked door of the testing chamber.
His mother and his men had hacked, clawed, and Shouted at the stone surrounding the door, but for all their efforts, they’d barely scratched the surface.
“Nima,try using this.” He handed his mother one of the sun-bright stones. “Be careful. It’s potent.”
She grasped the crystal in her slender hands. A moment later, her body shuddered as if struck by lightning. Her eyes flared with a light almost as bright and blinding as the crystals. “My goddess!” she exclaimed in a whisper as stunned as his had been. “Is this what she holds inside her?”
“A small fraction of it. Try that Shout again now.”
His mother turned to the door and Shouted “Open!” in a voice that shook with power.
The dense volcanic rock surrounding the door cracked, a spreading web of deep fissures.
“It’s working! Shout again,Nima!”
“Open!” Alys Shouted again. “Open!” More cracks formed. Chunks of dark stone tumbled out onto the floor. Ryll’s men leapt forward, ripping at the rock with bare claws.
Dilys put his hand on the stone. He could feel the pulse of the ocean behind the wall. Calivan had sealed Gabriella inside the room and flooded it. He grabbed one of the crystals, drained it with a thought, and took command of the near-limitless power of the ocean just behind those few inches of rock. Using the added power granted him by that crystal filled with Gabriella’s magic, he slammed a ferocious wave of water into the wall around the door, concentrating all of the water’s energy on a single spot weakened by the cracks his mother’s Shouts had opened. He pounded that spot again and again, wearing away at the stone, eroding it until the crack was a leak, and the leak became a hole, and the hole became a fatal weakness in the structure of the wall.
The wall crumbled. Metal screamed and bent as the door was ripped from its moorings. Seawater poured out of the testing chamber in a wild rush that threatened to sweep them all away.
“Dilys!” his mother cried.
He clamped a firm magical hand upon the water and molded it to his will. Gabriella and the bodies of her two guards were still floating in the chamber. He summoned a current to carry them out to him and snatched Gabriella into his arms, clasping her to his chest.
“Take Biross and Tarrant,” he commanded. “I’ll hold this back until we’re all out.”
Everyone moved with alacrity, snatching up the bodies of the dead Calbernans and Calivan, and rushing for the door at the end of the tunnel. Dilys brought up the rear, holding back the tide of water until he was out of the tunnel as well. Only when the door was closed and sealed behind them did he release his hold.
The second the door was sealed, he turned the full force of his attention to Gabriella. Her eyes were open and glassy, her lips parted. She wasn’t breathing. There was a telltale rip in the front of her gown, tinged with dark blood. He laid her on one of Calivan’s laboratory tables and tried breathing into her mouth and compressing her chest to make her heart start beating again, but that only made what blood remained in her body gush from her wound. Her skin took on an alarming, chalky hue. Swearing, he plunged his magic into her, taking command of her blood as he had once before in an attempt to stop the hemorrhage. Oddly, the knife wound itself, though deep, wasn’t the primary cause of her blood loss. The blade had pierced her lung but missed her heart and all major blood vessels. As he worked to force the water from her lungs, using her blood to form temporary seals across the tears of the delicate tissues, what he found left him stunned.
