Siren magic, some distant part of her mind recognized. She’s drowning me on dry land.
Fire roared through the room.
The water surrounding Cassia evaporated in an instant, steam billowing as two opposing elements collided. She collapsed to her knees, gasping, coughing up water that shouldn’t have been in her lungs.
Where Delos had been standing, a dragon now crouched.
He was smaller than Aero—younger, less massive—but no less impressive. Golden-red scales blazed in the cottage’s diminterior, reflecting flames that danced along his spine and wing ridges. His amber eyes had gone molten, pupils slitted, fixed on Nerissa with predatory focus.
The siren laughed.
“A fire dragon? Againstme?” She swept her arm in an arc, and a wall of water rose between them—ten feet high, churning with currents that shouldn’t exist inside a building. “You’re a child, playing with matches.”
Delos answered with flame.
Fire and water met in a screaming collision of steam and fury. The cottage windows shattered. The walls groaned. Cassia scrambled to her feet, her magic surging in response to the chaos around her.
Lightning,she thought.Fire’s not enough.
She raised her hands and called the storm.
It came eagerly—too eagerly, surge-amplified power flooding through her veins with terrifying intensity. But for once, she didn’t try to contain it. She let it all the way out.
Lightning cracked through the cottage ceiling.
The bolt struck Nerissa’s water wall, electricity arcing through the liquid with devastating effect. The siren screamed—a sound that rattled windows for blocks—and the wall collapsed, water crashing across the floor in an ordinary wave.
Delos pressed the advantage. Fire poured from his jaws in a continuous stream, forcing Nerissa back toward the shattered windows. Cassia added wind to the assault, feeding oxygen to the flames, creating an inferno that should have been impossible inside an enclosed space.
They were winning. Against a three-hundred-year-old siren, they were actually winning.
Then Nerissa stopped retreating.
She planted her feet in the ankle-deep water flooding the cottage floor. Her hair writhed around her like living things. Her eyes blazed with cold fury.
“Enough.”
The word resonated with power—not quite the Voice, but something adjacent. Something that made Cassia’s bones vibrate with ancient, terrible magic.
Nerissa thrust both hands toward the shattered windows. Toward the harbor beyond.
And the ocean answered.
Cassia felt it before she saw it—a massive displacement of water, a wall of liquid fury rising from the harbor and hurtling toward the cottage. Not a wave. Something worse. Something shaped and directed and filled with malevolent intent.
A water construct. Humanoid. Towering. Twenty feet of animated ocean given form and purpose.
It crashed through what remained of the cottage wall.
Cassia dove to the side, but she wasn’t the target. The construct’s massive fist swung toward Delos—toward the fire that was Nerissa’s greatest threat.
The young dragon tried to dodge. Almost made it.
The construct’s blow caught his wing at the joint, and Cassia heard the sound of scales shattering, of bone breaking, of a dragon screaming in a voice that was half roar and half human agony.
Delos went down.
He hit the flooded floor in a tangle of golden-red scales and broken wing, blood streaming from wounds that turned the water pink. His fire guttered and died. His massive form shuddered, tried to rise, and collapsed again.
