Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
AERO
Aero had worked magic for eight hundred years. He’d called storms across mountain ranges, summoned lightning to devastate armies, created weather systems that lasted for weeks. He knew power.
This was something else entirely.
When Cassia’s magic reached for his, he gave it everything—centuries of accumulated force, his dragon’s lightning, every scrap of atmospheric control he possessed. She took it and shaped it, her precision guiding his raw power like a conductor directing an orchestra.
He felt her mind touch his through their shared magic—not telepathy, but impressions. There. Push there. Hold. NOW.
Wind screamed across the harbor, slamming into the wave’s face with enough force to send spray flying a hundred feet into the air.
Lightning cracked from the suddenly dark sky—his lightning, but aimed with her accuracy—superheating the water, creating pockets of steam and vacuum that disrupted the wave’s momentum.
Atmospheric pressure shifted, Cassia manipulating it with surgical accuracy, destabilizing the structure Nerissa had spent weeks building. The wave was an impressive feat of magic, but it was also fragile—built on carefully balanced forces that could be disrupted by someone who understood them.
Cassia understood them. And with Aero’s power behind her, she had the strength to exploit every weakness.
The wave slowed.
Aero felt Cassia’s grip tighten on his hand. Felt her magic drawing more from him—not demanding, but asking, and he gave it freely. His dragon roared approval as their power merged, storm meeting storm, chaos finding harmony.
The wave shuddered. Cracks appeared in its massive face—fractures spreading like spider webs across glass. The wind pushed harder. The lightning struck faster. The pressure built and built and built.
“It’s working.” Cassia’s voice was strained, her face pale with effort. “We’re actually—”
The wave broke.
Not crashed—broke. Shattered into a thousand smaller waves that still rushed toward shore but no longer carried the devastating force of Nerissa’s creation. The seawall wards flared bright as they absorbed the impact, ancient magic holding against the assault.
Water surged over the breakwater, flooding the lower docks, but it wasn’t the catastrophe it could have been. Wasn’t the town-ending disaster Nerissa had planned.
Aero pulled Cassia against him, relief flooding through his veins. They’d done it. Against all odds, they’d—
Something rose from the harbor.
Nerissa emerged on a pillar of churning water, carried upward like a goddess ascending from the deep. Her hair moved around her face as if still submerged, her iridescent eyes blazing with fury. She was beautiful in the way that storms were beautiful—devastating, deadly, utterly merciless.
“You think you’ve won?” Her voice carried impossibly clear over the chaos, cutting through wind and waves like a blade. “You’ve won nothing.”
Something ancient erupted in Aero’s chest. Threat. Enemy. Kill.
He started to move, to put himself between the siren and Cassia, but he was too slow. All his ancient speed meant nothing when Nerissa opened her mouth and sang.
The sound was wrong. Not music—weaponized fury, years of rejection compressed into a sonic blast that tore through the air like a physical force. It wasn’t aimed at him.
It was aimed at Cassia.
“No!” The word ripped from his throat as he threw himself toward her.
Too late. Too fucking late.
The blast hit her full force. Her body lifted off the seawall like a rag doll, flying backward with sickening speed. He heard the impact—heard something crack, bone or stone, he couldn’t tell—and then she crumpled.
She didn’t move.
The world stopped.