Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
Rosalina
A girl … swimming through the water.
I blink my eyes again. She can’t be more than sixteen, if that. The dappled light casts ripples over her dark brown skin, and her eyes meet mine. I know her. I’ve seen her before.
She wears a tight-fitting suit of turquoise blue, her black, curly hair splayed out in the water. Around her face is a translucent bubble. I watch carefully as her chest heaves in and out. An air bubble for breathing … Ingenious.
“Ignoring me again, Rosalina?” Kairyn breathes, and I quickly tear my gaze back to him. If he turns around, he’ll see her.
“No,” I say. “I mean, I’ve told you everything I know.”
“We both know that’s not true. You are my brother’s mate. Surely, you know of his intentions. Where he could be hiding out. Unless he abandoned you? I wouldn’t doubt it. He abandoned me, after all.”
“Why don’t you get rid of this anti-magic air, and I’ll ask him through our mate bond for you?” I force a smirk and chance a look past his helm again.
The girl has reached the glass and holds up a pointed silver tool. A flash of red explodes where the tool meets the glass. My heart hammers against my chest. She’s melting the glass. What kind of fire burns underwater, let alone hot enough to melt glass this thick?
Kairyn stills, then begins to turn.
“Wait!” I cry and grab his arm. We both look at my hand on his armor. Quickly, I retract it. “I do know where he is. I’ll tell you. Just don’t send me to Sira, and I’ll tell you everything. What Ezryn’s doing, where Dayton’s token is. All of it.”
In this one way, Kairyn is similar to his older brother. His body becomes perfectly still, a near statue as he contemplates my words.
Then he looks behind him.
The girl has burned a half-circle into the glass, about two feet long. Her eyes widen as Kairyn looks at her, the expression of surprise strangely familiar.
Kairyn lets loose a bellow. “Guards! Deploy the outer defenses!” He rounds on me. “Treachery! I knew you were lying. You would not so easily give up your mates.”
Of course I wouldn’t. I would die before I let this monster touch one of my men again. Though, his choice of wording is wrong. Dayton isn’t my mate, as much as my heart wishes him to be.
The whirr of the tool becomes audible as the girl quickens her pace. She waves frantically at me, and her meaning is clear.
I’m getting out of here.
I spring past Kairyn, placing my hand close to the glass. It shimmers with heat. Within her little bubble, the girl smiles as I approach, then refocuses on her work. I see now she’s making a circle in the glass. Once it connects all the way around …
“A rescue attempt? How valiant,” Kairyn says. His heavy footsteps reverberate behind me. “Good timing. My defenses are starving.”
A chill runs up my spine as two dark shapes appear in the water behind the girl. She doesn’t notice, too intent on the melting circle. The shapes grow larger and larger until I make them out—
I slam a fist on the glass near her face. “You need to get away now! Go!”
Her light brown eyes widen, and she turns. Two massive sharks torpedo toward her, jaws opening. These are no ordinary sharks, appearing as if they swam straight from the abyssal depths. Sleek and sinewy, their skin is a sickly shade of indigo, almost opaque, as if absorbing every iota of light that attempts to cut through the water. Long, needle-like teeth jut out from their gaping maws.
She kicks off from the glass and darts upward. The sharks surge after her.
Kairyn places his gloved hand in the middle of the melted circle. The smell of burning leather hits my nose. “How irritating,” he murmurs. “Regardless, her blood shall soon paint the glass.”
No, no, no, this was my chance to escape. That girl is risking her life for me. She was so close—the burning circle is almost completed. If only she had a chance to finish.
Adrenaline surges through my veins. I have to get out of here. I don’t know what’s happening to Castletree or my friends or the rest of the realms. My father is sick. My mates are lost, two of them still cursed.
I will not stay caged.
The heat from the burning glass wavers across my cheeks. Just outside of that is freedom—even if it’s freedom in death. I need to break the glass. But I don’t have a tool like she did. I would need something strong to crack it open.
Something like Spring steel.
“Hey, Kairyn,” I whisper. “That armor looks heavy. Ever tried swimming in it?”
He tilts his helm at me, and I strike. I grab him around the shoulders and push . He’s huge, but I use the force of his body against him, sticking out my leg so he trips over me. With a roar, I shove his stupid owl helm straight against the heated glass. The sound is a sickening crunch as the helm smashes into the weakened barrier. Shockwaves ripple through my hands. I stumble back and so does Kairyn.
We both take a breath.
Spiderwebs trickle across the surface of the heated section, and then, with a resounding crash, the glass gives way. Water bursts into the cell. I slam against the metal door. Kairyn lands next to me, pinned by the force of the water.
I turn to look at him with what must be a delirious smile on my face. My bare feet find purchase, and I push myself to standing, leaning against the wall for balance. The water is frigid cold, but I don’t care. Something else is happening.
I suck in a deep breath. The air pressure has changed, the force of the seawater displacing whatever was floating around in here.
All at once it hits me: a white wolf howling up at a blue moon. The lick of fire against my skin as I run and run and run. The crunch of bone and taste of blood in my mouth. My mates are out there, somewhere. Looking for me.
I intend to find them.
Kairyn flounders in his heavy metal, pinned against the corner of the wall as more and more seawater plunges into the cell. He makes a garbled sound, calling for help likely. With my own beastly roar, I feel the force of my magic flood my body, a dam breaking inside of me just as it has in my cell. Water lifts at my command, and I plunge it over the top of the new High Prince of Spring, cutting off his cries for help.
Fighting against the flood, I make my way over to my bed. With a deep breath, I duck down, grasping for the slit in the mattress. My fingers clutch around the chain with a single seashell token. I put it around my neck and tuck it into my shirt.
Outside, I see three silhouettes darting through the water. The girl swims at an impossible speed, just out of reach of the two sharks. I need to get to her now.
But how? I can’t make it six hundred feet up to the surface, let alone help her. She has made a bubble around her head; some form of water magic I’ve never tried before.
“Come on, Rosie,” I say. “Now or never.”
The water’s up to my waist now, and if I don’t do something soon, I’ll drown here with Kairyn. “Bubble, bubble, bubble.” Little baby bubbles emerge on my fingers, but nothing controllable, nothing I could trap air in.
“Come on!” I can do it. I’ve done harder things before, things everyone else thought impossible. I turned an arrow to water, summoned golden roses, transformed my friends into birds—
And if I transformed them, I could transform myself.
I place my hands on my neck and close my eyes, picturing the fish that surrounded my prison for these three long months. The gills that sucked the oxygen straight from the water.
A surge of magic courses through me, eager to be let loose. Delicate slits rise up beneath my fingers along both sides of my neck.
“Holy shit. I did it.”
I look around as if there’s someone to congratulate me, but there’s only Kairyn, floundering against the waves, completely pinned by his armor and cloak. His helm pops out of the crashing, white water. “Stop!”
The water is past my collarbone now, so I take a deep breath and plunge under. Water drifts past my gills, relieving the ache in my lungs as if I’ve just taken a huge gulp of air. Ahead, the gap where I smashed the melted glass still shimmers with heat. I take one last look at Kairyn, unable to get to the surface of the cell, then swim out of the hole.
The open sea surrounds me. Blue everywhere: above, below, around. Fear creeps in at the openness of it all, the endless abyss.
But I’ve just spent three months in a box. I could use a little openness.
I kick my legs out, trying to fight my blurry vision to catch sight of the girl and the sharks. When I turn, the immensity of the prison barge swarms over me. It appears almost as an underwater mountain, a hulking structure with a steel hull encrusted with barnacles and seaweed. How long has this thing been here and what was it used for before?
Something rushes past me, and my vision becomes nothing but white bubbles. I shake my head to see the young girl beside me, eyes wide with panic.
“Move!” she mouths. She grabs my arm and urges me forward.
I feel the sharks before I see them, the force of their movements sending water spiraling around me. Their eyes are hauntingly large and vacant, driven solely by hunger.
Water rushes into my mouth as I attempt to scream. I fling out my hand, feeling for the one thing that has always protected me.
My golden thorns find root in a patch of seaweed on the hull of the barge. It’s like coming back to myself. The girl tugs me again, but I stop swimming and face the sharks. Just as their jaws open to wrap around us, I pull on my thorns. They erupt from the barge and entangle the sharks’ tails, yanking them back against the steel.
The girl blinks at me, and her lip quivers. She tangles her fingers in mine and points up.
Our legs kick in synchronization. Her free hand swirls before her and the water pushes us faster toward the surface. She’s very talented in water magic.
Within minutes, we breach the water’s edge. For the first time in months, I see the sun. I cry out as it burns my eyes, but hardly have time to think before someone’s grabbing me around both shoulders.
I’m pulled up by two women, before I’m tossed down onto the wooden ground. Eyes still burning, I try to take in my surroundings: a wooden ship with huge white sails drawn. I stagger to my feet and look around for the girl who rescued me.
But I see another girl first. She looks about the same age as the first, not more than sixteen. She has long, straight auburn hair, pale skin and golden eyes I would know anywhere.
In a deadpan voice, she says, “Hi. Glad you’re alive.”
“Th-thanks?” I stammer.
The girl turns to my rescuer, who’s wringing out her black curls, the bubble around her face now gone. “So, how’d the Autumnfire drill work?”
“Perfectly,” my rescuer responds. “First time I’ve ever said that about one of your experiments.”
Autumnfire. Those golden eyes. I hold the gaze of the second girl and know we’ve met once before. Eleanor, Farron’s little sister.
One of the women who dragged me onto the boat turns to the young girl who saved me. “What are your orders, captain?”
The young girl walks to the wheel and grabs the spokes. “We secured the cargo. Set sail for the open ocean. Let’s see these bastards try to outrun The Deathly Sky Dancer !”
Now, I know. We have met before. With all the adrenaline coursing through me earlier, I hadn’t been able to place her. But the confidence I saw in her just now has assured me of it.
I was rescued by Dayton’s little sister, Delphia. The steward of Summer.