Spiderwebs trickle across the surface of the heated section, and then, with a resounding crash, the glass gives way. Water bursts into the cell. I slam against the metal door. Kairyn lands next to me, pinned by the force of the water.
I turn to look at him with what must be a delirious smile on my face. My bare feet find purchase, and I push myself to standing, leaning against the wall for balance. The water is frigid cold, but I don’t care. Something else is happening.
I suck in a deep breath. The air pressure has changed, the force of the seawater displacing whatever was floating around in here.
All at once it hits me: a white wolf howling up at a blue moon. The lick of fire against my skin as I run and run and run. The crunch of bone and taste of blood in my mouth. My mates are out there, somewhere. Looking for me.
I intend to find them.
Kairyn flounders in his heavy metal, pinned against the corner of the wall as more and more seawater plunges into the cell.He makes a garbled sound, calling for help likely. With my own beastly roar, I feel the force of my magic flood my body, a dam breaking inside of me just as it has in my cell. Water lifts at my command, and I plunge it over the top of the new High Prince of Spring, cutting off his cries for help.
Fighting against the flood, I make my way over to my bed. With a deep breath, I duck down, grasping for the slit in the mattress. My fingers clutch around the chain with a single seashell token. I put it around my neck and tuck it into my shirt.
Outside, I see three silhouettes darting through the water. The girl swims at an impossible speed, just out of reach of the two sharks. I need to get to her now.
But how? I can’t make it six hundred feet up to the surface, let alone help her. She has made a bubble around her head; some form of water magic I’ve never tried before.
“Come on, Rosie,” I say. “Now or never.”
The water’s up to my waist now, and if I don’t do something soon, I’ll drown here with Kairyn. “Bubble, bubble, bubble.” Little baby bubbles emerge on my fingers, but nothing controllable, nothing I could trap air in.
“Come on!” I can do it. I’ve done harder things before, things everyone else thought impossible. I turned an arrow to water, summoned golden roses, transformed my friends into birds—
And if I transformed them, I could transform myself.
I place my hands on my neck and close my eyes, picturing the fish that surrounded my prison for these three long months. The gills that sucked the oxygen straight from the water.
A surge of magic courses through me, eager to be let loose. Delicate slits rise up beneath my fingers along both sides of my neck.
“Holy shit. I did it.”
I look around as if there’s someone to congratulate me, but there’s only Kairyn, floundering against the waves, completely pinned by his armor and cloak. His helm pops out of the crashing, white water. “Stop!”
The water is past my collarbone now, so I take a deep breath and plunge under. Water drifts past my gills, relieving the ache in my lungs as if I’ve just taken a huge gulp of air. Ahead, the gap where I smashed the melted glass still shimmers with heat.I take one last look at Kairyn, unable to get to the surface of the cell, then swim out of the hole.
The open sea surrounds me. Blue everywhere: above, below, around. Fear creeps in at the openness of it all, the endless abyss.
But I’ve just spent three months in a box. I could use a little openness.
I kick my legs out, trying to fight my blurry vision to catch sight of the girl and the sharks. When I turn, the immensity of the prison barge swarms over me. It appears almost as an underwater mountain, a hulking structure with a steel hull encrusted with barnacles and seaweed. How long has this thing been here and what was it used for before?
Something rushes past me, and my vision becomes nothing but white bubbles. I shake my head to see the young girl beside me, eyes wide with panic.
“Move!” she mouths. She grabs my arm and urges me forward.
I feel the sharks before I see them, the force of their movements sending water spiraling around me. Their eyes are hauntingly large and vacant, driven solely by hunger.
Water rushes into my mouth as I attempt to scream. I fling out my hand, feeling for the one thing that has always protected me.
My golden thorns find root in a patch of seaweed on the hull of the barge. It’s like coming back to myself. The girl tugs me again, but I stop swimming and face the sharks. Just as their jaws open to wrap around us, Ipullon my thorns. They erupt from the barge and entangle the sharks’ tails, yanking them back against the steel.
The girl blinks at me, and her lip quivers. She tangles her fingers in mine and points up.
Our legs kick in synchronization. Her free hand swirls before her and the water pushes us faster toward the surface.She’s very talented in water magic.
Within minutes, we breach the water’s edge. For the first time in months, I see the sun. I cry out as it burns my eyes, but hardly have time to think before someone’s grabbing me around both shoulders.
I’m pulled up by two women, before I’m tossed down onto the wooden ground. Eyes still burning, I try to take in my surroundings: a wooden ship with huge white sails drawn. I stagger to my feet and look around for the girl who rescued me.
