CHAPTER FORTY #2
The grin on Evelyn’s face expanded excitedly. “Then I kill you, kill her, and then kill everyone else. It’s simple really. Are you that selfish? Your mother sure was when she chose blood over her daughters.”
My mother.
I winced at the insult. My mother was tricked and fell into the Ocean Mother’s sick trap.
“Leave her out of this.”
Spit flew from Evelyn’s mouth as the goddess laughed, a nasty gurgling sound.
“She willingly took the first sip, niece. It was only I that offered it.”
The goddess reached out and gripped my arm, jerking me forward. A blade appeared within the Ocean Mother’s palm, slowly slicing away at the skin along my forearm. Cobalt blood rose above the skin, dropping across the sides of my arm.
The goddess took control as always, asserting her dominion over the realms and over me. Evelyn lowered, her mouth cusping the cut, tongue lapping up the sapphire syrup. I hissed when she drew the liquid from my body, my own hand reaching to clutch my vest.
The pain shocked throughout me, shivers overtaking my senses. I shook without external cause, like fear replaced every emotion I knew. My head spun with dizziness nearly immediately, my feet stepping in every direction, trying to steady myself.
I turned inward, pushing past thought and breath, searching through the deepest parts of myself for the well of power buried there.
It simmered below, bubbling to my chest, fizzing like medicine in water.
I mentally gripped it, but it slipped out of my grasp, oozing between my mind’s fingers.
White haze covered my peripherals, my body wobbling back and forth on unsure feet.
I pulled and pulled, collecting any shard of power I could muster.
It was foreign, like the first time my bare feet touched land or when my eyes first blinked away at the wind. I had felt that power only once.
I’ll save him at least.
The Ocean Mother’s mouth bit into me, eliciting more blood with a new puncture. I jerked back, the goddess’s teeth tearing at my flesh along my forearm.
Blood dripped from Evelyn’s lips, framing the corners and falling to her chin. She was frenzied, eyes bloodshot and crimson—an addiction the Ocean Mother enticed for our parents that even she could not sever.
“Caelyn!” Noctis’s wail carried faintly from behind the hill—frantic, desperate, terrified—but I couldn’t afford to be pulled by it, not even for a moment.
And I remembered what I fought for.
I don’t hold power. I am power.
Energy erupted from my outstretched hands, eyes shut tight to the onslaught of water that pierced the space between the goddess and I. The energy formed in a precise blade, spiraling for her, but the Ocean Mother dodged faster.
She advanced, her hands clenched and twisting together, wringing out the rage as she stormed toward me.
Her bloodshot eyes shot daggers, promising a slow and brutal death.
Each step became heavier the closer she got.
Water rushed around the goddess, driven by power, encapsulating her backside like the feathery tail of a peacock that shined against the sun’s light.
A power display, driving my own fury to burn even hotter.
I threw my arm above my head as the goddess shoved the tsunami of energy toward me, and it slammed with brutal force into the titan’s weapon, bouncing off its glinting metal surface and soaring back toward the Ocean Mother.
Evelyn. The power cut the air, aiming for my sister’s face.
The goddess fell to the sand, plastering Evelyn’s body to the ground, singeing the ends of hair from her head that caught in the surging energy.
“You—” she hissed “––really are a pain in the ass.”
“Where is she?” Noctis screamed again as he crested the hill, then kept coming, dragging himself forward on raw determination alone.
Inch by inch he crawled toward me, shackles biting into the ground and carving desperate ruts behind him, like even the earth couldn’t keep up with his need to reach me.
He can’t help. He needs to stay far away.
I prayed for Raveeka, unsure if the titan could hear my prayers, begging for her to hold him back. He would erupt on her, but I needed him alive. His Bound needed him to live. And the only way to ensure he lived was to keep him far away.
Please. Help me. Help him, I begged for the titan. I would beg for him. I’d lay my entire life at the Ocean Mother’s feet if he got to take one more breath.
The goddess lifted herself back to her feet, a snarl imprinting on my beautiful sister's face—a face made for joy contorted into malice.
Noctis tried to take to the skies, but the shackles strangled the power before it could rise.
He hit the ground hard, the impact barely slowing him as he forced himself forward instead.
He dragged himself on, every movement ragged and feral, wings twitching uselessly against his back.
He was getting closer… too close… each broken pull of his body erasing the distance between us.
Shit.
“She’s begging in here,” the Ocean Mother laughed. I held in my cry, instead standing firm.
“Evelyn, if this is the end, I’m glad it’s written with us fighting together.” The tears collected along my lower lid. “I don’t think I’d be brave enough without you.”
“Pitiful,” the goddess spat, but her face exhibited pure ecstasy, each step deepening the wrinkles.
I wouldn’t allow it to take the words from me. “If there’s nothing after this, at least there was always us. I’m so sorry.” The first tear fell, and then the next ran down my nose.
A crash ripped across the ground ahead, and I looked up just in time to see Raveeka drop from the sky and slam into Noctis, driving him harder into the earth.
She stayed airborne above him along with the Aetherkin Bound dragons, circling and striking to keep him pinned, while his wings twitched uselessly beneath the shackles, unable to lift him even an inch.
His roar rolled across the realm like distant thunder.
He will never forgive me.
I tightened my grip on the trident and aimed it for the approaching goddess.
Evelyn will never forgive me.
I pulled for the power within the weapon, letting it surge through my body, swirling like an ocean’s storm within the well of my own energy.
Zahara is dead. Jun’s and Calvin’s agonizing faces in grief replayed in my mind.
The power burned under my skin, boiling the blood within. The goddess grinned further, her bare feet sinking into the sand as she approached, her hands splayed out as she conjured her own magic.
Torvryn. The innocents dead along the battlefield. The merfolk sacrifices. My parents.
Air resisted its motion into my lungs, only evaporating into steam as it entered my burning body. Power burned my throat, rising with such intensity, I nearly buckled under its weight.
I directed my words to the Ocean Mother within my sister. “And it’s all because of you,” I seethed. Throwing both arms upward to the sky, a cascade of icy blue like Noctis’s irises streamed toward the clouds.
The Ocean Mother made a grave mistake by looking. A distraction.
I ripped the Sunder Coin from my pocket and slammed it into Evelyn’s chest. Bless Noctis for sneaking the relic into my pocket, because without it, I would have been drained.
The Ocean Mother screamed from the mouth of my sister and reared back, but she was too slow—too distracted.
Her red-rimmed eyes snapped to me, wild and desperate, searching for something over my shoulder.
We spiraled together in a circle, arms digging into each other’s skin.
I threw myself free and launched two slicing daggers through the air behind me, holding the trident beneath my arm.
The fury in the goddess’s wavered, edged with something thinner, more fragile.
She lunged anyway—sharp, desperate, a last attempt to seize control.
Too late.
The goddess began to come undone. Light slipped from her skin, threading out through every pore of Evelyn’s body in pale, drifting strands.
It wasn’t violent. It was a slow unmaking that no force could halt.
The strength went out of her all at once, and she folded into the sand, emptied of whatever had filled her.
The air glittered with white, flowing fragments, lifting and streaming past me, a soul searching for a vessel to reinhabit.
They circled.
There was nothing left for them to return to. Her body would not accept her soul back, because I’d already shot two daggers through each of the Ocean Mother’s eyes.
Evelyn’s body lay still, closed to me, as the last of the Ocean Mother’s presence unraveled into the open air. The tendrils dispersed, flowing across the sand, until they disappeared across the sea.
“Caelyn?” a scratchy, hoarse voice whispered from the sand in front of me.
Evelyn.
I dropped to the sand, knees digging in.
“Are you okay?” I asked, grasping my sister’s face between my hands and inspecting.
Evelyn nodded with a shy smile.
“You did it,” she blubbered, tears welling in her eyes.
I did. I’d done it. We all did.
I lifted Evelyn back to her feet. She looked around in shock—or wonder. It was her first time on land in her own body.
“You’ll love it here,” I assured. “You’ll love all of them, too.”
Raveeka collided into the sand, her chest rising and falling behind her breaths.
“Where is it?” she asked wildly, nose snarled.
I nodded toward the tendrils floating aimlessly away over the sea, and the titan tore off, splitting the sky.
Tangerine hues erupted from her body, enclosing the soul of the Ocean Mother.
Flames exploded above the waves, each salt-sized piece of the goddess drifting to its surface in charred sinister glitter.
The crew descended the hill, Noctis in the lead from the sky, the shackles gone from his wrists.
Raveeka must have unchained him with the key she kept.
He looked ravenous, eyes piercing my soul.
For a second, I thought he was still being controlled, then remembered the Ocean Mother was gone for good.
Her soul initially sent to wander inevitably, but the titan ensured it was incinerated.
Talk later. We have something more urgent to handle.
My eyes shot wide.
Is everything okay? I asked down the bond as he got closer.
Perfect.
Noctis was on a mission, and he stormed right for me. His hand clasped the back of my neck, tethering through my hair. His other hand drifted along my back, stopping just above my belt.
My head tilted back, neck exposed, and Noctis used the tilt to lean in. Our lips melted into each other, and he erupted in need. His tongue ran across my lower lip, his teeth gently grazing the skin. The world had gone quiet in the strange, hollow way it does after too much noise.
The kiss came fast, like neither of us could stand the space between us a second longer. It wasn’t careful or hesitant. It was heat and relief and everything left unsaid crashing together at once.
Without separating, he lifted me under the thighs. My legs wrapped around his waist, clinging tightly to him.
I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t need to ever again. I wanted more—wanted all of him then and there.
My nails dug into the skin of his shoulder, and he hissed. A smile played against his wet lips.
“We can save that for later,” he laughed against my tingling mouth and lowered me to the ground. His head dropped to mine, and his eyes closed. “Next time you shackle me, I better have more fun than I did today.”
“Promise,” I said, but I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me. It was raw and emotional, packed with weeks of hard-earned victory.
Evelyn cleared her throat. Calvin and Jun stood behind Noctis, attempting to look in any direction other than the two of us. Raven perched on Calvin’s shoulder, eyes staring right at us.
When Noctis and I finally pulled back, neither moved far, still close enough to feel the echo of the tension between us.
We had much to do to ensure our life-long peace, but I looked upon my family with such pride, a quiet ache threading through it all. The victory felt heavy in my chest, shadowed by the absence of Zahara who should have been standing here with us.
I ripped myself from Noctis’s arms, throwing mine over Calvin and Jun’s necks.
“She would be proud of you both. For what you saved, and the lives you finally get to reclaim.”