“Something is attacking the ship!” she yells.
Chapter 45
“Stay inside, Zaira.” Thane dashes after Rynthea before I can respond.
In a flash, he’s out of the cabin and on the deck, while Algar shifts past him, stumbling his way inside with Zephra flying close behind him. Something hits the boat again, and I stumble sideways until my shoulder slams into the wall.
“What’s out there?” I shriek as Algar grips a ledge.
“A fuckingwater dragon, that’s what! Where is their storage? The cupboards!Something!” Algar hustles across the room to reach the kitchen and immediately starts searching the cupboards.
Panicked, I ask, “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer me, just keeps rifling through the cupboards.
I rush to the door and take a few steps out on the deck…and what I see sends a chilling spiral of fear through my body.
Ahead of us, towering above the ship, is indeed a dragon. Its teeth are sharp and pointed, its eyes glowing a vicious blue. Gills bracket either side of its head, and its ridged belly is a pale gray. The rest of it is the color of ice, as if its skin is designed to camouflage with the water. That seems the most terrifying of all.
Not the fangs.
Not its intense eyes.
Thecamouflage.
The thought of such a massive beast swimming close to the shores without a single person knowing…
I shudder.
“Bring out the cannons!” Solyen shouts from a distance. He stands on the other side of the deck with a machete in hand. Like a spider, Thane climbs the ladder to the crow’s nest while Rynthea stands guard next to Solyen, gripping the handle of her scythesword and preparing for attack.
When Thane makes it to the crow’s nest, he sheathes one of his swords. In the palm of that free hand, he creates a ball of gold light. The dragon notices him and snarls, opening its mouth wider and blowing a blue stream in his direction.
Thane jumps and lands on the deck with a tuck and a roll before the water can reach him. He’s damn lucky, too, because the crow’s nest now sizzles, as if the liquid is made of acid.
“Zaira, get back inside!” Thane hollers when he catches sight of me.
I run back to the door, but I hear a wild roar and turn to see the dragon launching its head forward, ready to spout another stream of venomous water. When it does, Thane throws up his hands and deflects it with a broad gold shield that sparks from the impact.
The dragon, clearly angry, sinks below the waterline and slams its body into the ship again. Rynthea falls, Thane lurches to the side, and I spot Conred and two other members of Solyen’s crew trying to secure the rolling cannons. This is my cue to really get my ass back into the cabin, so I dash inside.
Slamming the door behind me, I spot Algar standing in a storage closet near the galley. Various junk spills out around his feet as his hunched figure digs through it in a frenzy.
I notice a glimpse of pink, presumably the tip of Zephra’s wing, poking out from under a pillow on one of the beds. She must be even more terrified than me, considering her size.
“Algar, what the shadows are you doing?” I ask, spying the basket of fish on the counter.
“I learned about those,” he says in a hurry, dropping to his knees and searching through the lower half of the cabinets. “Water dragons. My father studied the larger sea creatures—the rare kind—and his favorite were the water dragons. Don’t ask me why. He was mental. That’s clearly where I get it from.”
“Okay?” I say, puzzled, as he digs deeper into the cabinet. He curses under his breath, stands up, and rushes to the next cabinet.
“Water dragons only attack when they feel their nest is being threatened,” he goes on. “This dragon is a mother. I can tell by the horns. Male dragons have four, females have two. Trust me, we don’t want to go up against an angry daddy dragon. Anyway, in order for this mother to back offandto prove to her that we aren’t here to tamper with her sea dragon babies, eggs, or whatever, we have to send her a signal of peace.”
“Okay.” I run my tongue over my lips nervously. “And how do we do that?”
“Yes!” It’s like he’s struck alvanite. Algar backs out of the cabinet with a bucket of paint in one of his hands. “Fuck yes! I knew they’d have paint around here somewhere.”
“Algar, how do we give it the signal?” I ask again, trying to remain calm.
