Page 110 of Claimed By the Depths

“Little siren.”

“My treasure,” I breathed, trailing down his bicep and muscled forearm before finding his hand. Squeezing it once, I peered up at him. “I need you to trust me. Okay?”

There was no pause. “Always.”

As another quake rocked the earth, I tugged him toward me before ordering, “With the next pulse of power, we channel into each other. Let your father guide you; they know what to do.” Gesturing toward Pelagos and Erebus, I added, “It’s why they sent them.”

The dip of his chin was the only answer I needed, and as we grounded one another, I felt a presence manifest behind me. Hands slowly settled on my shoulder, lips dropping to press a kiss to the crown of my head.

“I am proud of you,” Ellira whispered, her cadence far closer than it had ever been. “I am always proud of you, my beautiful star, just as I will always keep my eye on you until we are freed. Until you and I mingle as one, and you join Caspian where Elaros and I reside. But for now, settle all your attention on me, and I shall do the rest.”

Falling into all she was, I leaned into her caress. As I dove headfirst into extending her that level of trust, even after learning all I had, a chill rippled through my blood. And before I knew it, a sharp snap tore through Serevalen.

Instinctively, my eyes opened, but there was no Sorva, no further decimation, and no intruding army. Blinking once to test if I was hallucinating, the sight remained, and with it came an irrefutable beacon of hope.

For above, in the sky cloaked in smoke and debris, was a small sliver. A sliver that unveiled moonlight beyond—another realm. No, another continent.

Narvendor.

CHAPTER 55

Where Even the Damned Cannot Reach

SORVA

Istruck the shoreline hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, skidding through the sand until I caught myself. Heat scraped across my palms, grains wedging beneath my nails as I lifted my glare toward the port and fought the urge to scream.

Of course, she had channeled through her daughter to call upon that godsdamned pest of a general.

Sea churning, dark water surged violently against the pilings as though the ocean itself had risen in just as much defense. I should have expected as much. A mother’s desperation was painfully predictable, but knowing that did little to ease the humiliation of being thrown from the docks like some common nuisance.

Pushing myself onto one knee, I was already considering how to best deal with the arrival of both Ellira’s and Elaros’s right-hand soldiers. Before I could fully stand, power erupted across the shore. It struck with enough force that the air trembled, and the millennia of prior weakness assaulted my recollection.

Not again.

Attention snapping to where Rohen and Caspian stood, centuries' worth of snuffed-out abilities surged to the forefront. Their parents’ magic was irrefutable, but beneath it there was something darker, something beyond control that carried both threat and promise—their potential. They were destined to serve as my demise, the ebb and flow of their existences primed to deconstruct the realm and everything I’d built. That fact wasn’t something I was unfamiliar with, which is why I’d done everything possible to ensure it never happened. To ensure this didn’t happen.

As if delighted to mock me, another plume of ancient mysticism meshed with the fated Mizani, belonging to none other than the God of Luck and War. It meshed with the other two streams of divinity, each separate current weaving together until I could no longer distinguish where one ended and another began. Rolling outward in a violent wave, their fusion rattled the boardwalk and sent sand whispering across the beach, but it was the sudden tearing sensation beneath my ribs that made my anger falter.

For centuries, the veil stood between them, constructed to remain indecipherable. It had muted their essences, burying their connection beneath layer upon layer of sacrificed Divari and locked sigils designed to keep the scattered Children of the Damned exactly as I intended them to be.

Alone.

Now, three of the five Divari stood together, and the mirror dividing the two continents had cracked.

Its fracture rippled through my magic with sickening clarity, spreading farther than it should have before I managed to brace against it. Through those splintered places, their power reached beyond the boundaries I had created, searching instinctively for what had been hidden from them all this time.

Their counterparts, the Divari of their parents’ other halves.

A slow breath passed through my teeth as I rose, brushing the dark granules from my palms while I studied the two responsible for splitting a wall I’d designed impenetrable, the third far beyond my line of sight.

I had spent decades upon decades keeping them separated. Decades of ensuring they remained ignorant of one another, scattered far enough apart that none of them could discover what they were capable of together. Undoing the damage they had just caused would take time I did not have and energy I had intended to spend elsewhere, and even then, I could not be certain the veil would ever settle over them quite as cleanly again.

That irritated me far more than being hurled from the docks.

Glower shifting from the Divari to the two generals who’d devoted themselves to the very gods I loathed, I clenched my jaw tight enough that it popped. Heat soared through my veins, threatening to devour the sanity I’d worked to maintain. The logic that had guided everything to this very moment. And yet, each lap of the restless sea taunted me further, my humiliation hardening into something far colder.

Ellira had interfered. Her Daughter had interfered. Elaros had aided, and so had his pitiful Son, and now the Damned had clawed their way through something they did not even understand.