And the teeth are drawing closer, closer—
A flash of bronze. Of white-and-gold wings as Arion hurtles past with the trident, spearing the tentacle around my waist. The squid shrieks again and releases us. Arion snatches my wrist before it can recover, pulling me away from it. Behind him. Leaving Vesper alone near the eye of the squid. She hisses a curse as it reaches for her again and darts toward us, dodging tentacles, as Arion and I dodge them too. We flounder in the current until I reach out and seize the sea. Until I pull and twist the water, tangling the tentacles as best I can while Arion stabs everything in reach. It isn’t enough. There are simply too many. It is simply too big, too strong, and it’s about to eat Gavriall now.
“A little help, please!” He strains away from its teeth, desperately trying to swim away as the tentacle winds higher up his thigh. When it brings his head to its mouth, he leverages his other foot against its face, still straining. “I feel like a fucking turkey leg! Someone dosomething—”
And as if Vila herself is listening, a bolt of lightning cleaves the water.
No. It cleaves thesquid. I recoil instinctively as Arion rips me back against his chest and whirls, shielding us from the burst of brilliant white light. When I turn to look over his shoulder, the squid has stopped trying to eat Gavriall, who frantically pushes its tentacle from his leg. Its entire body shudders. It pulses once, twice, before it explodes.
Viscera and ink burst in every direction, staining the waters blue and black. Engulfing Gavriall in a cloud of gore. Though he gags and kicks away, it follows him in tendrils as he swims toward us. “I am very much regretting my decision to follow you.”
Arion’s deep voice rumbles through my back. “Good. Feel free to leave.”
I spin in his arms, my eyes darting to the veins in his chest. My fingers tracing them, panicked, because—he just expended a huge amount of magic.Again.“Are you trying to kill us?” My nails bite into his shoulders, and I resist the urge to shake him. “I thought we discussed no more decimation. You don’t have enough left—”
“That wasn’t me.”
His voice is terse, and his eyes dart to the surface as my lungs constrict.That wasn’t me.But that can’t be true. I shake my head, staring up at him. It must’ve been Arion; his magic reacted instinctively in a life-or-death situation, and he just hasn’t realized it yet. The veins on his chest, however… they haven’t spread. They aren’t moving the way they normally do after he uses magic. And that fist around my lungs clenches tighter. Because if Arion didn’t send that supernatural bolt of lightning to the bottom of the ocean—
Someone else did.
Someone powerful.
My panic spikes to unbridled fear, and I glance at Vesper. “What did you do?”
For once, her expression mirrors my own. Her eyes wide. Her body tense. “It wasn’t me either, Zephyra.”
“Then someone else? Did he send someone else?”
“I don’t know.”
The words land between us like stones, and Arion’s fingers touch my chin, lifting it gently. My gaze follows his to the surface, where another shadow slips into view. Not a giant squid this time, but equally large. Equally ominous.
A ship.
Despite Gavriall’s sharp intake of breath, relief suffuses my chest. It loosens that fist around my lungs.Not the sorcerer.
“We need to move,” Arion says. “Now.”
Gripping my elbow, he spins me around, but this is the Sel. We aren’t near a colony, or a mine, or even the palace. We’re in open fucking ocean. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and before we can even consider another option, something sharp breaks the surface of the water. It bolts toward us with impossible speed, expanding rapidly. Though Arion thrusts me forward, it’s too late.
A colossal net drops over us, its weighted corners catching, snarling our limbs. It hooks Arion’s wings, my tail, Vesper’s too, even Gavriall’s fucking foot, before reeling us toward the surface.
Well. I was wrong.
This day definitely just got worse.
PART
3
TEMPEST
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ARION
The world unfurls slowly before my eyes. Hazy. Dense and wet.Strange.
