Jassyn tensed as a ripple shuddered through the water. Then another as the Maelstrom’s churn ground to a halt. The lightning laced through the whirlpool unraveled into darkness as everything stilled. His lungs cinched tight, breaths labored against a calm that felt wrong.
Fenn’s wing talons ignited, tiny globes of flame blooming between the claws, fragile lanterns flickering against the dark.
The ocean held. For a moment. For two.
Thunder gathered inside Jassyn’s chest, each wingbeat pounding like a second heart. He shot a look at Fenn. “Can you warp us to—”
The silence cracked and the ocean roared.
A sound rose from the abyss like the world groaning open. The storm’s walls folded inward, and the sea came crashing down.
Jassyn flung his arms wide, dragging tatters of air into his grasp as he shoved back against the flood. Beside him Serenna caught the collapsing current and hurled it aside, her power shearing the water apart.
But the sea surged, slamming in from above and below, from every angle at once. His chest locked until it felt as though even his lungs might be flattened under the weight.
But together they forced the water back enough for air to regather around them, a thin and trembling sphere shivering against the crush of the deep.
“Up,” Jassyn rasped, lungs seared raw from effort, the shell of air resisting every inch of the climb. His muscles burned with every stroke as he pushed himself higher. “Don’t stop.”
Tucking the Heart in his armor, Fenn kept pace between them, Cinderax clinging to his shoulder. Each wingbeat sent tremors skittering across the sphere as they ascended inside their wavering globe.
For an instant, reaching the surface felt possible.
Then Fenn yelped.
Jassyn twisted, breath locking in his chest as a leviathan slid past the veil—sinuous like a monstrous eel, translucent fins unfurling along its spine. Scales shimmered with a pearled sheen, lightning pulsing through its body in broken flashes.
It turned, and Serenna cursed. Nestled in its skull gleamed a Starshard, shining with illumination.
Jassyn tensed as the beast opened its maw. Rows of needle teeth framed a mouth too wide, hinged in layered arcs, mandibles peeling outward to bare a coiling tongue.
It struck, crashing into the thin skin of air they’d torn from the sea. The pocket ruptured. Water flooded in as the shape collapsed under the blow. Cold slammed into Jassyn, driving the breath from his chest.
Blindly, he lashed his awareness outward, hurling the tide back as he grappled for scraps of air, forcing the sphere to reform. Stitching the torn seams together, he tightened the shrinking shell, leaving scarcely enough room for their wings.
Serenna punched a burst of lightning into the sea, the charge blazing toward the creature. The leviathan shrieked as it writhed away, spine rippling as it flowed out of the lightning’s reach.
Wrathful now, it reeled and circled, its vast bulk cutting the water so fast the air tore loose from Jassyn’s grip.
Fenn’s claws locked tight on Jassyn and Serenna both. “Hold your breath,” he barked.
Jassyn barely inflated his lungs before Fenn yanked them skyward, tearing through the sea’s throat.
CHAPTER 47
SERENNA
The sea crushed Serenna the instant Fenn tried to warp them upward. The motion halted too soon—his grip torn from her wrist as the ocean seized her.
They didn’t reach the surface.
Salt scalded her eyes as she forced them open, vision splintering into broken bands of light and formless dark. No sign of Fenn or anyone else. Only absence so complete it felt as though the water had already claimed them.
Her thoughts snagged on the sea warden—an ancient guardian armed with a Starshard—still circling somewhere out of sight. Panic surged, her limbs and wings thrashing before she forced it down.
Hurling her awareness outward, Serenna reached through the crush of sea, trying to find where pressure eased and promised light. If she could reach it, she could rise. If she could rise, she could search for the others before the water closed like a tomb—or something worse reached her first.
Her lungs burned, shrieking for air that wasn’t there. She homed in on the first whisper of wind above the surface and drove her body toward it. Muscles drew to breaking as she fought the sea’s hold, every stroke stolen and returned heavier.
