Chapter Sixty-Two
ELARA
Elara was drifting, once more, through watery depths. As her eyes fluttered shut, she saw a shadowed claw reach out through her mind’s eye, a giant black figure staring at her. She screamed, opening her eyes, and instead saw a pincer wrapped around her, dragging her upwards.
She broke the surface, gasping as the crab of Altalune placed her upon his shell.
‘I’ll take you to safety, Your Majesty,’ he said.
Elara blinked, paralysed, looking at the water. Flames licked it everywhere, roaring, though the fire didn’t touch her, didn’t harm her. Karkinos continued to plough through the waves towards a structure in the distance. A lighthouse.
She hadn’t been able to see it in the night, unlit, but now, as the sun crested over the clouds, it looked like a true beacon.
To me, it seemed to scream. Home.
Elara sobbed as she saw Merissa’s rowing boat fly like the wind across the water towards the lighthouse, Leo lying prone within it. She was clutching someone else in the boat that Elara couldn’t see. The mermaids propelled them on, just as the crab did Elara.
And Adrian? She searched the sea below, now brightening and turning blue as Enzo’s fire consumed the poison, cleansing the waters.
Where it did, the flames began to sputter.
She saw Adrian nowhere as they moved through the sea of bodies, until something slid past them all—unbelievably, with a silver tail.
Another mermaid. And within her arms, the pirate lord himself.
‘Enzo,’ she murmured from where she lay, and the crab pivoted, tilting enough that she could see behind her.
Elara watched in awe as Enzo stood on the floating remains of the Starred Siren.
His power ran up the god of poison, engulfing the rock he was standing on and coating him in venomous flames, the fire a lurid green.
Scorpius screamed in agony, trying to fend it off, to splash water upon himself.
But he’d poisoned those waters, and his own power was to be his damnation.
Scorpius continued to scream, thrashing as the flames devoured him.
Enzo sent out one last bout of them as Elara saw mermaid hands latch on to Scorpius.
His eyes were wide in fear as Clari clamped a hand over his mouth, and the few mermaids who hadn’t left with Merissa dragged him into the depths he thought he ruled.
Enzo heaved, swaying from the exertion of his magick. ‘We need to get to him,’ she pleaded to the crab.
‘Do not worry, Majesty. Your subjects are already taking him.’
She blinked, noticing that, indeed, Clari had reappeared and within a few moments had dragged him forwards on to boards ripped from the Starred Siren. Enzo sagged, lying on his back on the floating debris.
They all continued to careen through the cemetery of bodies and waterlogged wood towards the lighthouse, Elara finally giving in to her exhaustion.
She drifted in and out of consciousness as the pain—so similar to when Ariete had bitten her—racked her body.
Finally, she felt the rocking of waves making way for stillness. There was the click-clack of pincers upon rock as she felt them lift from the water.
The crab below her slumped, and she blinked up to see the lighthouse looming above her as she drifted out of consciousness once more.