Chapter 20
Morgana
“Grab onto something!” Leon shouts, pushing me toward the starboard side, but we’re not fast enough. All I can see over my shoulder is a vast stretch of gray bearing down on us, and then the wave hits the boat.
I’m tossed up into the air, the force of the wave rolling the whole boat onto its side for a moment.
Cargo flies around me, and I narrowly avoid being hit on the head by a barrel spinning past, orbiting it away from me just in time.
After a few terrible seconds, gravity takes over, and I hit the deck in a spray of water, my back smashing into the hard wood.
As the boat rights itself, the water flooding the deck pours back over the sides, and I lift my throbbing neck to see crew thundering past.
“Those bastards!” I hear Ravesley scream. “They promised not to hit my boat!”
I don’t have time to process this, as strong hands grab me and drag me to the side again, wrapping my fingers around a metal pin embedded in the gunwale. I look up into Leon’s gray eyes.
“Hold your breath,” he orders, and then the world is swallowed up by water again.
The second wave tugs me off my feet, but this time I hold firm. Even as the water tries to pull me over the side entirely, even as I’m vaguely aware of figures flying past me in the dim, liquid light, I don’t let go.
It feels like hours I’m caught in the deluge, but it must only be seconds. By the time the water disperses, Leon’s gone, and I look frantically around for him. To my relief, I see him, sodden but alive, wrapped around the mast.
Beyond him, over the port side, I see a sight that chills me to my bones: a row of more than twenty figures on the riverbank, their red robes fluttering in the breeze.
The Temple is here.
There’s another shout from the crew, and the whole boat shudders, a huge crunch quickly followed by an ominous gurgle.
“Hull breach!” a member of the crew bellows.
“Leon,” I call to him, meeting his eyes across the deck. “The others are still below.”
The boat is sinking. I don’t need the smugglers’ shouts to tell me that. We’re already listing to the port side, which means we must be taking on water fast.
“They’re on their way up,” he responds. “Hyllus told me. But we need to get off this—”
This time I see the wave form, rising vertically out of the water in a way that could only be aquari magic. We have barely any warning before it crashes down on the deck again.
I grab hold of the pin once more, still focusing on my connection with Leon even as I’m being battered by the water.
“They’re trying to drown us all!” I scream across the mooring. The water isn’t draining away now. The boat’s too low in the river, and the latest wave has worked to drag it under. The deck floods, and soon I’m treading water.
“Ana, the seal!” Leon shouts into my mind.
I wipe the river water out of my eyes just in time to see it—an eddy whipping the metal disc away from Leon’s grasp, so fast even he can’t snatch it back.
Of course the seal hasn’t protected us, I realize.
We’re on water, the one place it doesn’t work.
And now it’s speeding toward the riverbank, carried by the pull of some cleric’s aquari magic.
“No!” I shout.
We can’t lose it now. Not when we worked so hard to find it. Not when it was the first real win we’ve had against Caledon.
I throw my magic out across the water, summoning my desire to have that seal back in my grasp. My orbital power fizzes in the air, but it’s not the only power at play. The water is rising, and I lose my focus, forced to tilt my head up and kick my legs frantically so I don’t slip under the surface.
“I’ve got you,” Leon gasps as his arms wrap around me, pulling me to him. He’s a much stronger swimmer than me, and he helps keep me afloat as I desperately search the river for sign of the seal. But it’s too late. I’ve lost sight of it.
“Ana! Leon!”
“Hold on, captain!”
I look over to see Tira clinging to a raft with three fae soldiers using whatever they can to row it toward us. I blink, wondering where the hell they found it, until I recognize the large stretch of wood fastened with barrels. Tira must’ve used her magic to rip it up straight from the deck.
The smugglers that survived the onslaught have abandoned ship now, swimming for the riverbank opposite from the Temple clerics. But as our friends pull us dripping and spluttering onto the raft, I know we can’t run from our enemy. Not when we need that artifact back.
“The Temple has the seal,” Leon tells the others.
“And we’re going after it,” I say. No one argues, which is good, because I’m already spinning the raft around with my orbital power, sending it racing across the water toward the riverbank.
“Don’t let me get washed away,” I say to Leon as another unnatural wave rises up to block us.
I keep my mind locked in, concentrating only on keeping the raft moving, pushing it the direction I need it to go.
I manage to pull us out of the worst of the wave’s path, but we’re still battered by the water, and Leon’s grip is the only thing that stops me being washed overboard.
Before the next wave can form, a cleric moves down to the shore, a short woman with brown hair hurrying to grab something out of the water. I know it has to be the seal, just as I know I won’t let them take it from me.
By now, I’m close enough to make out the clerics’ faces, to tell which ones are focused on the water, their hands moving for better accuracy as they conjure. There’s four of them all standing together, nearer to the river than the other clerics.
I’m close enough to feel their inner flames too.
The black space inside me stretches out, meeting the edge of my rising magic to make me feel limitless.
I inhale, drinking in the sensation, then snuff out the flames of the aquari one by one.
The waves die down as their bodies fall, one even toppling face-first into the water. The comrades nearest them panic, rushing to the bodies.
I snuff out their flames too.
Let them see what happens when they try to kill me—wash me away like I’m nothing more than a drowning rat. Let them realize they’ve summoned their nightmare Mithana, the death bringer.
When the next round of clerics falls, the fear sets in. Several of them turn and start to run, breaking rank to flee toward their horses. Our raft finally hits the riverbank, and Leon’s soldiers and Tira leap straight from it, drawing their weapons to chase after them.
Meanwhile, I search frantically for the cleric who took the seal from the water.
“Where is she, Leon?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. What did she look like?”
But before I can answer him, Leon darts out to my left, tackling a cleric charging at us with a blade.
I step off the raft onto the sandy bank, pushing through the long grass to search for the woman who grabbed the seal.
As the clerics scatter, I spot her running up to a carriage with an open door, her hand outstretched with the seal and her face fixed in an expression of reverence.
A white-sleeved arm reaches out to take the artifact, and my heart gallops in my chest. Because I know instantly who’s sitting inside.
Caledon.
A burning rage sets my magic alight inside me. The last time I saw the Grand Bearer, I was helpless and bloody, holding Kit as he died in my arms. But I’m not helpless now.
I take a step forward as the arm retreats back into the carriage, the door slamming shut. Before I can take a second step, the driver is whipping at the horses, and the carriage is pulling away. The fire of my fury burns brighter.
I summon my magic, throwing my orbital power after the carriage only to growl with frustration.
I can’t get a hold on the seal inside the carriage, not when I can’t actually see it and it’s moving so fast. I call upon the heat burning in my veins instead.
I can’t hurt Caledon with my sun beam power, but I can blast the top off the carriage.
I shove my hands out, releasing a blast of sunlight and—
Something bursts from the ground, blocking my way—a sheet of shining mineral that looks like diamond. My sun beam slams into it with a spray of sparks and smoke, the light refracting out into a hundred smaller rays shooting in different directions.
A thin, red-headed woman steps out from behind the strange protrusion. She’s wearing the purple sash of a bearer and is staring me down with a smug smile on her face.
I let another sun beam loose from my fingertips, blazing toward the woman. In an instant, there’s another shield of diamond between her and me. The putrid smoke that rises up as my magic collides with it suggests I could burn through it given enough time, but that’s exactly what I don’t have.
“Enough!” I shout at the bearer, grabbing hold of her celestial flame.
It doesn’t snuff out instantly like the other clerics.
She’s too powerful, and her celestial spark fights against me, finding the gaps in my hold on it and flaring brightly through them.
I wrestle against it, enough to bring the woman to her knees, gasping, but with every moment, the carriage is getting farther and farther away.
My eyes shift from it to the bearer to a loose horse wandering nearby whose rider must be dead.
With one final, suffocating squeeze, I release the woman, sprinting toward the animal.
Magic flies around me as the clerics who haven’t made a run for it try to hold their ground against the fae.
I dodge a flare of incendi magic, then swing myself up onto the horse.
It’s already skittish, frightened by the explosions and smells, so it doesn’t take much persuasion to get it to bolt after the carriage.