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“That rope won’t hold three. Don’t worry. I’m a priest. My Goddess has me in Her hands.” I didn’t feel Her presence now, but I wouldn’t tell him that.

It was the new moon, and as time stretched on, the sky overhead turned dark. My arms went numb, my eyes streaming with tears until they went dry, but I still held on.

If these were my last hours in this world, I would spend them doing what I’d longed for my whole life. Holding the one I loved. Protecting her.

I pressed a kiss to her hair. The hot air currents had blown it into tangles around her unconscious face, but the melted floor was only a few feet away now. It was time to hand her to Tally. I took a breath to tell him, but he was staring up into the patch of night sky.

“Look!” he croaked, pointing up.

I’d never seen anything as wonderful as what appeared, peeking over the jagged rim.

“Goran!”

GORAN

Iwas almost all the way to the highest point of the island when the ice god flew above and called out, his words slightly garbled by distance and his monstrous form. “Human. Would you like my assistance?” His voice was long, rolling thunder, and my ears rang as I stopped in place and gaped up at the dragon.

He sparkled with every shade of blue, and so much silver-white, it hurt my eyes to stare. I could see through his sinuous form, the clouds of ash beyond tinting him gray in places, though the earliest stars on the eastern horizon twinkled through his outstretched wings as he glided closer.

“Please!” I shouted back.

I wasn’t sure how he would be able to hold onto me as he flew, but when he scooped me up in his claws, I felt the power that surged through every part of him and realized I needed to alter my expectations.

He wasn’t mortal. He wasn’t made of flesh and bone, but power itself. I didn’t even have to hold on, though I tried. It felt like I was tucked under his scales somehow, frozen to his form.

“Where are the others?” I shouted over the wind.

“The kraken is calling a horde to guard my little spy’s treasures on their voyage to the island, then the mainland.”

“A horde?”

“The black-and-white whales. Fierce predators of his domain.”

“An army with teeth for swords.” I laughed into the cold wind.

“Just so. He is bringing the ones he calls your… brother-mates? Yes, that was the offensive term. He is carrying them through the waters himself, and will approach from the tainted sea on the western coast of the island.”

“The selkies.” I thought for a moment. “Where is Alexios?”

“Her Beta?”

“He ran from the fighting on the beach.”

He dipped lower, arrowing toward the smoking volcano on the horizon that grew closer by the second. It looked like it was trembling. An earthquake? “Hmph. From the stories Lusca told of him, it does not seem likely that he abandoned her. He will be with her.”

It was true. Alexios loved Rada above all else, even his vows. She wasn’t alone with Edan.

It took a handful of minutes to cross the island and reach the other side, and from my vantage, I could see a churning in the water to the south. Lusca. “The kraken will get there before we do.”

Skadi growled, “He will not,” and put on another burst of speed. He circled around the volcano, swooping low to where Lusca swam in a form that was terrifying to any man who sailed on the ocean. His carapace was covered with gemstones, his enormous tentacles writhing in the water and churning up the waves. His large, deep blue eye whirled as he turned his massive head our way. The selkies riding on the top of the shell waved.

“He cannot come ashore for the battle ahead,” Skadi murmured. “He’s sharing his strength with me. He can funnel power from the sea, as long as he remains in it.”

Sharing his strength? I frowned at the terse explanation. “If we can avoid a battle⁠—”

“I cannot. You and your warrior-kin must take advantage of my brother’s distraction and carry my little enemy…” He snarled. “Our mate, to safety.”

Skadi let out a plume of cold breath, folded his wings into a dive that seemed to assure a collision with Lusca, but pulled up at the last second and plucked the selkies off the kraken’s back. Lachlan was clothed only in his sealskin, but Kellin had somehow found a set of Starlakian warrior’s clothing. They each had a sword, though, and I still had my stolen one.