Chapter Fifty-Seven
ADRIAN
At first, Adrian didn’t know what Scorpius was doing. Elara was beside him, her dagger now in hand, sword discarded at her feet.
Then he felt it: something rising from the depths of the water. He felt it in his blood.
There was a deafening roar, and Elara turned slowly as every hair on the back of Adrian’s neck stood up. ‘What was that?’ she whispered.
Adrian heard screams, the sound of splashing as bodies were thrown overboard. He made his way to the edge of the ship, squinting into the dark depths of the sea. He could make out nothing in the night. He peered around to the inky black waters on either side, writhing and chopping against the ship.
‘Adrian?’ Elara called out, running towards him.
‘I don’t—’
Something slammed into her, knocking her to the deck as she screamed in pain.
‘Elara!’ came Enzo’s roar.
Adrian stumbled. ‘What was—’
Another slam; this time the sound of wood splintering beneath him. The ship tipped.
Adrian scrambled back towards Scorpius.
Another blow came out of the darkness, right in front of him, and he fell backwards as a hole was blown in the floor by his feet. His head slammed into the jagged, splintered wood of the deck, just avoiding the gap, and he hissed in pain.
The world spun, his ears ringing, and a trickle of blood made its way down his neck. He looked around, trying to get his bearings in the darkness. All he could see was Scorpius above him, the glow of his green light and the flames behind him as Enzo tried to battle through.
‘Elara?’ he cried hoarsely. ‘Leo? Santi?’
He looked through the wreckage into the deck below, seeing Leo, who had fallen down a floor, knocked unconscious, blood trickling from his forehead.
Then, suddenly, a giant tail, wickedly serrated, like a blade with a bulbous, glowing stinger on the end of it, wrapped around the mast and wrenched it off.
Power began to course through Adrian’s veins—and it felt like rage. At seeing his friends in danger, his crew commit mutiny, his sister die—it seemed to roar and charge out of him.
Stalking forwards, he followed the pull of the ocean, the call, allowing it to embrace him, to quiet the roaring in his ears and the terrible shrieks of battle and death around him.
He grasped its power and tried to wrestle it out of Scorpius’s control. He fought against the current, forced it to submit, wrapped it around himself, and then raised his arms.
To his wonder, a giant wave began to build behind Scorpius, who he could make out more clearly as he stumbled and staggered across the roiling deck.
‘What are you?’ Scorpius said, tilting his head as destruction and death lay around him, looking at the oncoming wave.
Adrian only gritted his teeth, balancing the enormous, terrifying force of the ocean at his fingertips. Scorpius laughed as he turned to his beast, only the sting of its tail visible as it curved around the ship.
‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll die anyway,’ the Star hissed and shot a poisonous stream of starlight directly at Adrian.
The wave crashed into the ship as Adrian dropped it, but it was too late—the starlight already spinning towards him.
A shadow barrelled in front of Adrian as the wave enveloped Scorpius and dragged him into the sea. There was a cry as the figure took the hit of starlight, crumpling to the ground.
Adrian bellowed as he made out Santi, there on the floor, struck with divinitas, Scorpius’s starlight stripping him of his skin as his body convulsed.
‘Santi!’ he screamed. His quartermaster was nothing but a bloodied mess as Adrian fought through the destruction of his ship on hands and knees to get closer to his best friend’s body. ‘Santi!’ he wept. The man was a brother to him, the only one he trusted with his life.
Scorpius’s magick was abhorrent as it whirled around the quartermaster.
Adrian tried to touch Santi’s body, tried out of desperate hope to summon the drop of healing he possessed, then reeled.
The magick was insidious—the moment he made contact, he could feel it attacking his bones, his own magick.
A sickly feeling washed over him as he looked at the body, barely recognizable.
‘Lay me with her,’ Santi said hoarsely. ‘Lay me beside Annie’s ashes in a coffin by the sea. Don’t let him take my body, Adrian, or I’ll never be with her in the Hallowlands.’
Adrian sobbed as Santi coughed. ‘I think I always knew you were destined for greatness, Adrian. I see you for who you are now. I knew you had to stay close to the Moon.’ His eyes fluttered shut. ‘Don’t let him take my soul. Please. Please call upon the Moon.’
‘Elara!’ Adrian cried.
Suddenly another body was battling through the wreckage, and Elara was before him. There was a gash at her temple, her arms cut badly. She too looked sick, fighting against Scorpius’s poison.
‘I’m sorry, Adrian. I’m so sorry.’ She knelt beside him and took his hand in hers. He noticed that her own eyes were filled with tears as she looked at Santi.
‘Majesty,’ Santi said, blinking up at her. ‘Please take me to the Hallowlands. Don’t let the Stars have my soul.’
Tears, silver and glistening, coated her cheeks as she wet her lips. ‘I-I don’t know how,’ she whispered, her hair whipping around her face in the maelstrom.
‘You do,’ Santi whispered. ‘It’s within you.’
Elara hovered her palms over Santi until a sparkling silver light beamed between her hands.
As Santi took his last breath, it coated his body, running over the terrible wounds, combatting the wicked green of Scorpius’s magick.
As it did, Elara looked furtively now and then to Adrian, who could barely see for his tears, until Santi’s whole body was encased in silver.
But then something strange began to happen.
Her moonlight, steadily streaming out of her, beautiful in the way it glowed like quicksilver, began to warp. Not just over Santi, but towards Adrian. Elara frowned in concentration, her fingers moving as though trying to haul it back. But with a will of its own, it wrapped around Adrian.
The moment her light came into contact with his skin, Adrian gasped in pain. A searing, wrenching sensation pulled on his chest, as though it was yanking something out of him.
‘Adrian?!’ Elara shouted in alarm.
But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. The pain lodged in his chest travelled further down to the pit of his stomach, the well of his magick.
Adrian cried out as he felt something begin to shift and grow.
Everything was muffled, all sound drowned out, until the only thing he could hear was the roar and rush of waves.
Had he gone deaf? He shook his head from side to side as Elara mouthed something to him, but still the water roared and pounded through him.
Suddenly, images began to flick past as he screwed his eyes closed against the pain in his head.
A crown of coral. A throne in the depths.
Power—never-ending, unlimited power. Over rain, seas, rivers, lakes.
He saw storms and shipwrecks. And he saw…
Elara. Though she had hair as white as snow.
He saw the two of them laughing together in a silvered kingdom as rain fell over them, the skies unbelievably full of stars.
One final image imprinted itself on his mind: of the moon, full and ripe on a dark night, beaming down to the ocean, its tides pulled to her.
‘Adrian,’ Elara whispered, and this time it was in awe. Adrian looked down at his shaking hands, glowing with a faint blue light. He saw the pale edges of the tentacles on his arm glowing too. ‘The…the illusion. It’s cracked. I see you now.’
Adrian raised his eyes, and Elara was smiling, eyes brimming with tears. ‘I remember you,’ she said. ‘You’re the Water.’