Chapter Fifty-Three
ELARA
Elara spasmed in the dark depths of the water as grey starlight flashed beneath her eyelids.
Elara! she heard someone roar inside her mind as her body convulsed. Open your eyes.
The command was so forceful that she had no choice but to immediately snap to attention and take in her surroundings. She could now see the dark mass of a shipwreck beneath her.
Eli. She tried weakly to cast the thought out.
Your moonlight, Eli urged in her head.
She shook her head. She didn’t know how to call upon her moonlight. How to even begin to understand that power.
Call upon it, he ordered, his voice the hiss of a snake.
Her head lolled back as she felt death close to claiming her.
Inside you is a dragun, Elara. Let it free.
The command must have had Eli’s magick of persuasion wrapped around it, because suddenly, there, she felt something stir in her gut.
I cannot get to you, Elara. So, for the love of Stars, order your moonlight to save you. Force it to submit.
Elara gritted her teeth. You rule Death, she screamed in her mind. Isn’t that what Annabel said?
The writhing in her stomach began to increase as though spurred on by the thought.
You have been useless to me for years, she thought.
You hid away as everything around me died.
And now, when I need you, you aren’t here.
Come to me. The order rippled through her, and she felt that stubborn fucking magick within her, dormant for so long. Come to me, or we will wither and die.
As darkness filled her eyes, mouth and ears, she envisioned a key, turning in the lock on the cage of her silver dragun.
It growled, but she stared it in the face—stared at Death itself, after so long as its slave.
She did not bow or break, and it seemed to finally relent, the dragun’s head bent low.
Her power felt more alive the closer to death she got, crackling in her veins and desperate for escape.
Moonlight began to spin out of her, and Elara understood completely—as her light enveloped the rotten timbers spearing up through the ocean floor—what her powers could do.