Chapter Fifty-Eight
ELARA
Elara watched in awe as Adrian’s eyes, glowing a godly blue, dimmed.
The illusion around him shattered, everything explained in a moment.
Why she had always seen an odd shimmer around him like a glamour, why only he had seen through her glamour in the pits, why she had felt drawn to him—why they had met by happenstance too many times to be called coincidence. Adrian was a Celeste. The Water.
Adrian blinked in shock, looking around him, from Santi’s body, now coated in silver, to the moonlight retreating back into Elara. He went to speak, but a terrible wrenching sound deafened them as the ship lurched. Elara cursed as water began to spill on to the deck.
Adrian embraced Santi, the starlight gone, eaten up by Elara’s power.
‘My ship is going down,’ Adrian said faintly.
‘Merissa!’ Elara said in horror, all thoughts of the revelation she had just witnessed disappearing. ‘She’s below deck. Save her, Adrian. Make sure she gets out of here alive. And take Santi’s body somewhere safe until we can give him a proper burial.’
Adrian nodded, and she could see in his eyes so much that he wanted to say.
‘We’re going to make it out alive, Adrian,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll have the time to understand what just happened.’
‘Promise?’ he mumbled.
‘Promise,’ she said.
He gave a shaky nod, hauling his friend’s body across the sinking deck.
Elara climbed the wreckage of the ship, trying not to slip as she searched for Enzo. When a hand touched her shoulder, she flinched before recognizing the scent, the touch.
‘Enzo!’ she cried, whirling to him. He’d made it through Scorpius’s poisonous wall, and she clutched him tightly as she wept. ‘Thank the gods, thank the gods,’ she said.
He hushed her, stroking her hair. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ he said. ‘You’ve fought so well. It’s nearly over.’
‘Where’s Leo?’ she said.
‘Leo’s knocked out, but breathing.’
‘Adrian,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Enzo, Adrian is one of us.’
Enzo looked incredulous. ‘What?!’
‘I saw it…He’s the Water. We found him.’
Enzo blinked in shock. ‘Then I hope he helps us out of this.’
The two looked out into the darkness. She knew the beast, that scorpion, was lurking somewhere beneath, waiting, Scorpius with it.
‘That creature,’ Enzo said. ‘It’s a mythas.’
Elara nodded. ‘The moment I saw its tail, I knew. It’s the Scorpydra.’
Tales of it had terrified her as a child.
The giant water scorpion said to roam the bottom of the ocean, tied to the god of poisons himself.
Sofia had often teased her when they swam in the Still Sea that she had better be careful or its pincers would clamp around her feet and drag her to its depths.
‘We should aim for the stinger,’ she said.
Enzo nodded, pacing as he looked out to the black water.
‘Come out, coward!’ he shouted.
She heard footsteps and turned to see Adrian, eyes haunted. ‘Merissa is going to the rowing boats,’ he said quietly. ‘And she’ll take Santi’s body with her. So now I’m going to fucking kill Scorpius.’
The joyful, unserious pirate she had once known was gone, and she reached out to squeeze his arm. Death changed a person. And she understood better than anyone the vengeance that often covered grief. For Scorpius had done to Adrian what Ariete had done to her.
‘Come on, then,’ Enzo roared to the water. ‘Show yourself, Scorpius.’
A churning began in the ocean, the waves chopping and turning.
‘Can you not control it?’ Elara asked Adrian anxiously.
Adrian shook his head. ‘I’m trying. It’s corrupted by Scorpius.’ More water sloshed into the ship, and Elara felt it sink down a notch as she clung to Enzo for balance.
‘I think I should go back to the ghost ship,’ she said.
It was waiting there beside them, some of the dead that hadn’t been dragged back to the sea still upon it.
She took in the scene around her properly—all the dead bodies littering the ship and floating in the water, just as they had in the fighting dens.
She pushed the revulsion down as she looked back at Enzo.
‘Stay safe on there,’ he said.
‘If I can get to his beast, that leaves you and Adrian to deal with Scorpius.’
Enzo nodded before pulling her in and kissing her—hard.
When his tongue slipped into her mouth, she melted against him, savouring the warmth of him, staving off the damp and the darkness if only for a moment. She pulled away.
‘You both have so much strength within you.’ She made sure to turn to Adrian too. ‘Never question it.’
And then she took a rope and swung back towards her shipwreck.