A shrill whistle pierces the air and Brielle’s heart thumps with the roar of her drake. Then her drake beats its wings, lifting them out of the air current and into a smooth, practised dive, straight for the swarm of wyvern. Brielle leans into the drake’s scales, gripping the reins in one fist, freeing a blade with the other. The other drakes dive all around her, the air whistling against their scales and she eyes a wyvern with claws stretched for Tanith’s side, readying to rake her beautiful bronze scales. Whispering a witch word to guide her hand, with a practised motion she flips the blade and throws it, striking the eye of the wyvern. It shrieks, claws retracted,batting back and forth into other wyvern, sowing chaos and panic in its swarm, before falling for the hungry sea.
Brielle smirks in satisfaction as her drake veers round the swarm and she flicks blade after blade, drawing them from her sash, piercing the tightknit horde. Tanith herself roars, the fierce bellow of a female finding her voice. She extends her claws, gripping a wyvern and tossing it into another, blood painting the clouds. She wickers as another dives for her, but with one flick of her long, scaled tail, the wyvern is beaten from the sky, falling in a daze into the sea beneath. Soon they are scattered, allowing Tanith to soar upwards. Brielle’s drake rises to greet her. Tanith inclines her head, gaze sweeping to meet the drake—
But with a shriek a wyvern swoops in, claws digging into her side. Tanith’s cry of pain shakes the skies as more wyvern latch on to her, moving in for the kill.
‘No!’ Brielle cries, but it’s too late. The swarm tear into Tanith, shredding her wings before swooping free. She beats the ruined remains of her wings once, twice, trying to gain height before the horde fly in for the kill. But she can no longer fly. Brielle watches, heart in her throat as her drake unleashes a mournful call. Tanith calls back, a bleat of desperation and of fear. She tries once more to beat her wings against the air, to gain purchase on the air currents, but to no avail. She spirals down in a freefall.
Right over the Isle of Ennor.
my heart lurches in mychest as Gallena screams. The leviathan shakes her, yellow eyes swivelling, frenzied and wild, and she just manages to stab his jaw with her jagged blade. He roars, releasing her, and her siren sisters dart forward to drag her back.
I hear Gallena’s cries in my mind,End the witches’ thrall over this monster! You alone may make it, if they believe you are among their allies.
I nod fiercely, gaze fixed on the surface, on the ship gliding nearby as the sirens scatter. If the sirens swim up, the witches may sense them, particularly if there is a hunter on board. But they may not sense me with my human heart. It’s a risk, going alone, but one I have to take.
Keep him distracted, I say before swimming upwards, aiming for the hull of the enemy ship. I linger underwater, inching my way for the surface, then find a length of rigging draped down the starboard side. Quickly scaling it, I drop on to the deck and roll, hiding behind a huge coil of rope. The wind smells of storm and, when I lookup, I smile. The storm I called has answered, hanging low over the armada, awaiting its moment to unleash. But that time is not just yet. Not with the drakes overhead fighting the wyvern. Not with our own small fleet engaging the first wave of the enemy’s ships. Let it hang there for a while as a threat to our enemies.
Two men steal my attention, sailors speaking with a Leicenan lilt, and I realise I’ve clambered aboard a merchant ship. For a moment, I wonder if Eli is on a ship such as this, sabotaging their vessels before dissolving into shadow. I shift round the coil of rope, finding a jacket drying over a barrel, and take it. I stuff my hair beneath the collar, hiding the dripping wet tendrils, and on silent feet, blade in hand, I move behind the barrel where the jacket lay discarded, eyeing this section of the deck. The sailors finish their conversation, moving off, and that’s when I see them. Three witches, standing at the bow of the ship, hands linked, staring down into the inky depths of the ocean.
The witches controlling the leviathan.
There are thuds behind me, and I move back into the shadow of the coiled rope, grimacing at the imprints of my wet feet on the wooden boards of the deck. I bite my lip. I don’t have much time. A sailor walks past, shouting an order behind him to the crew, and I take my chance. Slinking between shadows, before more sailors come up on deck, I move closer to the witches and I can hear their murmuring. It’s a familiar sound, and it takes me back to the day I gave up something precious in Coven Septern –the irreplaceable memories of my father – in exchange for the siren map, for the knowledge of my siren ancestors to be stitched into my blood and bones and mind. Witches, it seems, are more powerful when they work a spell as a trio. And to keep a monster such as the leviathan under their thrall is a powerful spell indeed.
Perhaps the time is now for a distraction. I look to the skies and imagine the storm clouds darkening, growing heavy and full above us. I force my will upwards, into the heart of those clouds, to create the rattle and shake of thunder. Then I tighten my fist round my blade and wait. Thunder cracks overhead, lightning cutting a swift path to a ship just to the starboard side. The three witches falter, their concentration broken as they whip back and forth, before one of them calls the other two to attention, to focus on the leviathan. I smile grimly as thunder booms again, then the rain begins to descend. Within seconds, it slicks the deck, sailors calling to one another, securing the mainsail. They’re distracted too, focused on the impending storm, and now I know which of the witches is leading this spellwork, keeping the leviathan in their thrall. The witch on the left. And when she turns again, casting her critical gaze over the ship as the sailors quickly work the ropes, my breath stills in my throat. Blue eyes. Piercing blue, a blue I have seen before.
She’s the witch who burned my mind aboardPhantom.
The witch who captured me and took me to the ruling council. It all began with those eyes of ice, that spell she burned into my mind with a witch word …inferna.If it hadn’t been for her and her coven, Agnes and I would not have been captured. I would not have had to take part in the deadly Trials.
Now, it’s personal.
This witch will not survive me.
Not today.
A flame of rage burns bright in my chest, but I wait for her to turn back to the bow before I move. Then, just before she’s once more clasped the hand of the witch next to her, I hurl myself across the deck. Careening straight into her middle, I slash at her hand with a feral cry, so she does not have time to grab hold of something and to steady herself.
‘Remember me, witch?’ I hiss with guttural fury in her ear.
Then I pull us both over the railings, into the jaws of the waiting sea. The witch only has time to gasp in shock before we plunge into the waves. I dig my blade into her side and she thrashes against me, mouth opening in horror, bubbles streaming out. But I’m not done. I drag her down, deeper and deeper, to where the leviathan waits. My siren sisters are playing a dangerous game, and my blood burns hot when I find their numbers are decimated. But the leviathan seems to have paused, blinking slowly, as though unsure where it is, unsure of its purpose here. The spell of the three witches combined has been severed.
Is this the witch?Gallena asks, her voice in my mind a thread of notes. She’s in pain, and it angers me furtherthat this witch, this coven, saw fit to hurt us. To side with the ruling council whose only wish is to destroy and conquer. They may have sought favour by siding with them, but it was at the expense of every other magical being in our world. I cannot condone it. Nor can I suffer her to live.
It is, I reply, pulling my blade from her side.About time she meets the monster she turned on us.
Then I kick the blue-eyed witch towards the leviathanand look on as she attempts to flee. The leviathan blinks slowly, fangs exposed in its giant maw as the witch forms witch words, holding her bleeding side. But its already too late for her. She traverses five lengths above us, trying to reach the surface, but the leviathan growls, the rumble rising up through its body sending a shiver of current over me. It narrows its yellow gaze and lunges. Its jaws grasp the witch and before she’s even had the chance to scream she’s swallowed whole.
The sirens raise a cry of victory as the leviathan ambles away, snapping for the bodies plunging into the water, flinching as burning debris plunges from above. It changes course, whipping its vast tail, and retreats deeper into the ocean. I hold my breath, sensing where it moves and realise it’s no longer interested in the hunt here. Hunger sated, it drifts on a current and I feel the collective relief of my siren sisters.
Turning to survey the rest of the armada, to sense the other sirens and their battles with the kraken and morgawr, we learn the morgawr has been defeated, andone kraken is latched to an enemy ship, slowly crumbling it in its tight grip as the bodies of sailors plunge into the cold waters. The other kraken is already gone, lured away by the sirens to its death. Gallena falters in her sister’s arms and I swim to her, taking her hand.
Your fight is over, I say.Take our sisters and feast on enemy hearts. Then return home and heal.
She nods, exposing her sharp little teeth. Then, in my mind, I hear her call. She beckons her sisters. She looks at me and, with her other hand, scrapes her palm gently down my cheek, leaving the sting of rasping scales.After we have hunted the leviathan. We cannot risk such a monster prowling this close to our home–it would come back and feast at its leisure.Your mother would have been proud of you, fierce heart. Go now and end them on the land. Bring the storm the world needs to right itself.
Storm bringer.
There was never any other way for this to end but in a tumbling tempest.
