Chapter Sixty
ELARA
‘Adrian!’ Elara screamed as she saw his body tumble into the water. But before she could do anything else, the Scorpydra had turned, its focus fully on Enzo. She cursed, seeing that Scorpius had done the same.
Wrapping ropes around her hands, she swung back on to the Starred Siren to join him, the deck nearly level with the water.
‘What a dream you both had,’ Scorpius crooned. ‘A new world, with your new titan friends.’ He tipped back his head and laughed. ‘You will die, and the world will keep turning, never knowing your name. You’ll be but a murmur in old wives’ tales as they look upon us Stars. No one will remember you.’
The water around him began to bubble, an acrid stench overpowering Elara. Scorpius grinned. ‘What will you do without your ship and corpses, Queen of Death?’
The Scorpydra screeched in approval as the ghost ship began to sink into the sea. The Starred Siren sank deeper as well, as though the water was eating away at the wood.
Before Elara could reply, a low, melodious note travelled upon the air. Goosebumps rippled down her spine as it came again, clear and harmonious. Another joined, and then another.
This was not a song like she had heard on Lake Astra. It was not the call of a siren. She grabbed a lantern, swinging it out towards the water until it illuminated head upon head bobbing among the waves. And she gasped.
Sitting regally in her rowing boat, head proud—an angel amid the sea of death—was Merissa. And pushing her boat, following in a procession, were—
‘Mermaids,’ Elara marvelled. Merissa had called upon the mermaids. As impossibly beautiful as sirens, they swam, iridescent tails flicking and gleaming in the moonlight. There was something behind them, pushing them all on faster, rippling the water, though Elara could not make it out.
And one mermaid was at the forefront, swimming with her lilac-blue hair streaming behind her. ‘Clari?!’ Elara shouted in disbelief.
Her healer turned, smiling as she continued on, leading her kin with determination.
Elara let out a disbelieving sob at seeing them as they halted before the poisonous green waters. ‘Find Leo,’ Merissa ordered them, and Elara couldn’t have been prouder. ‘Bring him to me.’
Around ten of them veered off to the Starred Siren, the rest halting, all turning as one to Scorpius.
They formed a circle, the dark mass that had been behind them now in the centre.
‘Mermaids?’ Scorpius seethed. ‘How dare you defy my rule?’
‘You stole the oceans from us,’ Clari responded, true rage making her clear eyes shine. ‘Corrupted them. We fight with our king and queen. We fight for the Celestes.’
They began to spread out wider and wider as the shadow Elara had noticed rose from the depths below, revealing a great hulking body.
‘There’s something beneath,’ Elara screamed to Enzo, frantically scrambling away from the water trying to lap at her feet. ‘Oh gods, it’s another one! A Scorpydra.’
‘No,’ Enzo said, smiling. ‘It’s something altogether worse.’
A gargantuan crab erupted from the ocean, giant pincers already sweeping through the air as it attacked. Its shell was pure, glistening armour, lilac and beautiful as it repelled the green starlight magick and lunged towards the Scorpydra.
‘The crab of Altalune,’ Elara whispered. ‘It’s Karkinos.’
She looked around her, dazed, as she saw another fairy tale she had read about come to life, though so much gorier and more fearsome than anything she’d envisioned as a child.
The water scorpion bellowed as the crab’s pincer impaled the sensitive flesh beneath his shell.
‘The Scorpydra and I have been enemies for aeons,’ Karkinos said, his voice ancient and rumbling. She could feel it within her bones: the magick of him. ‘Today, it will sting for the last time.’
That note that the mermaids had sung came again, strong and healing, overpowering in the way it vibrated from them all.
Oozing sticky, bright blood, the Scorpydra swayed, caught between the lull of the mermaids’ song and its wounds.
‘Now, Majesty!’ the crab cried as it held the Scorpydra still.
Elara jumped from the ship, her dagger gripped in her hand as it swung through the air. She let out a bloodcurdling, furious scream as she landed on the scorpion’s back and slid to its stinger before plunging the blade into it.
The Scorpydra let out one last pained roar, its stinger arching and thrashing before it slammed into the crab, Elara holding on for dear life.
Karkinos cried out, flailing, before he crashed into the sinking ship.
‘No!’ Elara cried, scrambling up the drowning Scorpydra and back to the ghost ship that Karkinos was currently breaking in two.
But it was too late. With a final creak, the ship was sucked back into the sea, the Scorpydra sinking with it.
Scorpius screamed in frustration from somewhere in the water, and she turned, seeing him pacing around a large rock as he fought Enzo.
Elara tried to scrabble in the wreckage for a piece of wood—for something to keep her above the water. But to no avail.
The charm in the water was suffocating her. She might have been a more powerful goddess, but Scorpius had had aeons over her to master his powers, and she was only just relearning hers.
Elara tried to muster her moonlight, but her stomach roiled as the Star’s magick swept in, coating her insides with toxins. She had never felt so weak.
‘Don’t let it touch you!’ she shouted to Enzo.
Enzo looked around in bewilderment, seeing Elara flail before she succumbed to the water. She could not even cry, the poison so acute. She felt her magick dampen in panic, her limbs become cement. She tried to swim, to move, but couldn’t.
‘Help,’ she croaked, seeing Enzo’s wide eyes as he attempted to dodge streaks of starlight thrown by the god, looking around wildly.
Merissa and the sirens were far away, their inky heads swaying in the dawn just beginning to lighten the sky.
She saw the true wreckage then. Bodies floated all around her, bloated and stiff from Scorpius’s poison, rising to the surface.
Fish, too. She wanted to gag but couldn’t summon the energy.
Scorpius laughed as he watched Enzo scramble over the wreckage, trying to reach her while shielding himself from the rays lashing out from Scorpius’s hands.
‘Don’t you realize it yet?’ The Star laughed. ‘She won’t win this battle. Nor will you. This is not your domain,’ he roared as the waters finally invaded Elara’s nostrils, an acidic stench upon them.
Enzo raised a finger to the sky, to the dawn cresting above the horizon, the sun beginning to rise over the world.
‘Everywhere is my fucking domain,’ he replied. And then Enzo set the sea on fire.