A dark, gigantic shape heaved its mass out of the water in the great hall, then shoved against one of the room’s three remaining walls. The glass cracked in the pattern of a giant spiderweb. The cracks expanded, spreading through the ceiling and whatever was left of the floor.
Showered with glass shards, the giant mass crashed back into water, raising high waves that reached all the way to the ceiling.
“What...is that?” I choked out in horror.
“A giant squid.” Kye frowned. “Not a creature of the Abyss.”
“What do we do now?”I was about to ask when the tower tipped sideways.
An entire army of monsters spread through the main floor of the palace, taking over Kye’s home. The walls tilted. The roof cracked. The base of our tower collapsed, and the entire structure broke into pieces.
I screamed, falling as the floor slipped sideways. Kye slid toward me, about to fall on top of me.
“Jump, Maren!” he yelled over the noise of the screeching, breaking glass. “Jump!”
He let go of one end of the pearl cord, letting me slip out of the only connection we had.
I pushed away from the wall that I’d tried to hold on to and jumped as the tower was about to crash over the outside terrace. My breath hitched at the height. My legs kicked in the air. I flailed my arms, trying to grip onto something to slow my fall.
Then I plunged into the dark water of the ocean outside the reef. Waves closed over my head. Panic chilled me more than the water did. I was in the water again. In the darkness. In the vile god’s domain.
Pieces of glass kept dropping into the waves above me. Smaller shards rippled the surface, making it look like it wasraining. Glass chunks sank all around me. It was unsafe up there with sharp glass everywhere, but an even bigger danger lurked in the dark water below.
Should I swim to shore or out to sea? Down to avoid being cut by glass or up to keep away from the monsters?
“Maren?” Kye’s powerful voice called for me.
I saw his long, strong legs treading the water to my right, the cord of pearls and glass beads dangling next to him. He had released me from it but didn’t drop it. I swam underwater toward him.
“I’m here.” I surfaced, blinking the water out of my eyes, then ran a hand up my face to push my wet hair away.
“Thank gods, there you are.” His features momentarily relaxed with relief, before pinching into a worried expression once again. “Are you alright? Have you been hurt? Cut?”
Frankly, I couldn’t feel my body well enough to assess it for damage.
“I...I’m not sure,” I said. “Nothing hurts right now. But we need to get out of the water.”
He nodded.
“To the ship.” He pointed at the vessel that was ready to take us on our trip to Sarnala today. “Can you swim to it?”
“Yes.”
“Take this anyway. Just in case.” He lifted the cord out of the water, letting me take one end as he held on to the other. “Wrap it around your wrist securely. Make sure it doesn’t get loose."
He knew I might not be able to hold on to the beads in case of another tug-of-war between him and the god. I just hoped there was enough magic left in the few remaining pink pearls for the cord to withstand it too.
I drew in a shaky breath, looping my end of the cord around my wrist tightly, then twisting the glass beads around each other to tie it in place.
With Jearda’s choker around my neck, I couldn’t drown. But the weight of the cursed black pearls around my body made me sluggish. My feet were slow to kick. My arms felt heavy as I tried to move them in wide strokes.
I could almost feel Jahanam’s evil magic reaching for me from below, prickling my skin through the pearls. For now, its pull wasn’t strong enough to stop me or drag me under. Maybe because the god didn’t want to stop or drown me. He used me as a puppet, keeping me where he wanted me to be, next to Kye. Because the god knew that Kye would come for me, even if that meant putting himself in danger.
I was the lure.
Kye was the ultimate prize.
And we both played right into the god’s hands...or to be more precise, right into histentacles.
