Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A winged creature made of shadows and onyx flames. Its essence, destruction, its power unmatched. I was the only one left standing against it. We need to prepare. We need more power, all of us.
Abright clearing opened before my eyes as muggy Lotrennian air filled my lungs. Trees and boulders sat uprooted, their previous resting places dark and damp. Splintered branches made way for a view of the Eye of the Wood in the distance.
Tiberius’s left hock ached, and a steady stream of blood trickled from his shoulder.
A vicious smile stretched across Queen Antares’s petal pink lips as she raised her arms, locking an invisible shield into place.
Her palms flipped to the bright sky, small shards of sharp rock lifting from the ground to follow the movement.
Ti! I screamed into the cast. I can’t stay! We’re being attacked! Somewhere, fire and pain and death beckoned, but the queen’s words locked me into this shared cage of consciousness.
“Speak to me, Tiberius. Let me in,” the queen purred.
Lyvia. Ti pleaded, exhaustion and panic making his mind’s voice weak. His ears pinned against his head as he readied a blast of shadows.
Dread sliced through me. What had she done? We never should have parted…
The queen’s light brows narrowed, and her lips curved upward. As her porcelain hands twitched, a volley of shards sped toward Tiberius. He bolted, sending his own wave of Obscura hurtling toward the rocks and bucking against the queen’s shield.
Pain lanced through his flank, warm wetness dripping down his side.
“You’re strong, Tiberius. Too strong for a human.
Lyvia does not have what it takes,” she urged, dropping her hands and turning to a small pack settled in the nearby bushes.
“You need an elf to bond with. A mystic. A queen.” She knelt as she removed something.
A flash of silver drew Ti’s eye as he caught his breath.
She turned and stood.
“And if you do not bend, you shall break,” she declared in soft threat, as she let the object unravel from her hands. A thick, leather whip loosened itself from the handle. Thinly braided fortissa chain wrapped around the whip from its handle to its tip, where it met with a sharp iron point.
A stillness came over me as rage pounded through my body, wherever it was. Tiberius sent a blast of Obscura, obliterating the leather base of the whip, but the fortissa remained.
FLY! I screamed at Ti as the queen’s toned arm lifted the whip above her head and slashed at a diagonal for my caeluma’s withers. White-hot pain lanced through his shoulder as the sharpened tip cut through his smooth coat. Muscles strained as he spread his wings.
“BEND!” the queen bellowed as her arm raised once more. “Or you will bleed!”
Ti faltered as pain seared across his wing. My heart pounded, my hysteria rising as my mind frantically searched for a way to help Tiberius. Far. I was too far to protect him...
Shield, Ti! We need a shield! I screamed as his wave of darkness reached for the queen and bucked against her wall of wind.
Darkness is all I have, he heaved. Death is all I have.
His wings were injured. He flapped again and staggered. I clung to our connection with desperation, my mind racing as fast as Ti’s breaths.
It’s not! I called back as that small tune of transformation pricked my consciousness.
“Come to me, Tiberius,” Queen Antares commanded as she lifted the fortissa whip once more.
I love you.
CHANGE IT! I screamed. TRANSFORM THE DARKNESS!
Tiberius’s mind raced against my own as he processed the words, the iron tip of the whip arching in a long, silver line against the blue sky. I shoved that song-like power down our bond from miles away, sending every bit of love I had for my caeluma—my horse, my shared soul—with it.
A surge of energy buzzed out of my being and into his, colliding with a strange, powerful force. He gathered it in his chest, and I sent an image of a ship’s sail sliding down our casting connection.
Dark power erupted from him in a blast of black, tiny sparks of golden energy hovering at its edge as he stretched that darkness into an impenetrable sail, separating himself from the queen.
The iron whip clanged against the dark shield, its tip bouncing back and ripping across the queen’s cheek. She staggered back, her delicate hand flying to the blood dripping down her face and the whites of her eyes flashing.
Tiberius funneled the darkness into the shield of death, and I poured my love down our connection. The two of us shared a fleeting moment of triumph.
The queen’s shocked wrath morphed into curious greed as her eyes slid from the blood on her hand to Ti’s shield.
“Transcindiel,” she murmured, as she stood. “You can transform…death?”
Her lips spread into a wide smile, insidious delight dancing in her eyes.
Death… A distant memory pricked my mind.
“The magnitude of this power,” she mused, snapping her own shield back into place. “Death and transformation… Creation. Used together… Let me see, Tiberius. An oath binds us, whether you wish it or not.”
Queen Antares stalked toward Tiberius.
“It’s tied to our last breath, caeluma, until fulfilled. Or until death.”
Air oaths can only be broken by death… Tiberius whispered.
A question formed in my mind, but my thoughts scattered as Tiberius blew a snort and bared his teeth. The queen stepped closer, eyeing the shield of darkness, her wind testing its defenses.
The queen’s hand on the iron whip twitched, Ti’s eyes narrowing in on the movement. She raised the weapon once more, and the fingers of her free hand contorted and twisted as her wind spun the shards of rock back into the air.
Ti’s massive hooves shot into the air as he reared, and I bellowed a war cry down our connection as the force of our bond morphed back into that strange energy. He shoved the Transcindiel power alongside the darkness, and as his shield dropped, the darkness shifted.
Ti’s long, crimped tail merged into a whip of his own as his hooves crashed into the dirt. He spun, the tip of the death whip sharper than any iron blade, and it snapped through the space between them.
Silence stretched for an invisible moment before a blast shook the clearing and sent Tiberius and the queen flying away from each other. Ti’s ears hollowed out as air whipped from his lungs, searing pain slicing a line down the center of his chest.
My chest.
What?
Dread squeezed me like a vice, and nausea rose as my cast with Tiberius shattered, dragging me away from my caeluma and back into my body. My lungs gasped in the frigid air surrounding me, and I let out a scream as I looked into Vulcan’s panicked eyes.
They held firm, as did his hands, and he growled through breaths, “Do not let go.”
Vulcan’s hands gripped my wrists as I hung over the edge of the upturned Centurion.
Fifty feet below, icy waves crashed against floating debris.
The screams of men were drowned out by the baying of the ancient beast, and I caught a glimpse of a white fin as it surged toward a group of men huddled on a stack of crates floating in the surf.
I snapped my attention back to Vulcan, covered in blood, and I twisted my hands to grip his wrists.
He narrowed his blonde eyebrows at me. I clung to Vulcan, trying my best to squirm my way up the sinking ship, but the golden hull was smooth and slippery.
If the beast patrolling the waters didn’t feast on us, we’d fall to hypothermia unless we got out of the water and into the shelter of a shield.
The Kraken sailed north in the distance, retreating to a shallow cove on the shores of the Death Dunes.
An explosion blasted from behind, rocking what remained of our ship and tipping the upturned hull.
Vulcan swore as the momentum shoved him over the edge, and I lost my grip on his left hand.
I swung outwards, still clinging one-handed to his other arm as I slammed into the rudder.
A scream ripped from my lips as my back hit its sharp edge.
Vulcan scrambled, reaching for me as I swung back and forth, a blazing pain ripping through my arm.
He caught hold of my other as the warm wind propelling the Hydra engulfed us.
The ship cut through the burning wreckage and slowed fifty yards from where we hung. Lord Astraeus rushed to the ship's edge and waved his arms.
“He’s signaling us to swim,” Vulcan called to me over the chaos.
I glanced back at the Hydra, shield still intact.
Vulcan read the wariness in my face, and he said, “We don’t have a choice. Don’t let go.”
I squeezed his wrist in response as he released his legs from the rail he clung to, and we fell into the icy surf.
The shock of the glacial water sucked the air from my lungs.
I floated below the surface for a moment, the icy water soothing the sharp line of pain on my chest. My lungs screamed before my brain finally commanded my legs to kick.
My head broke through the surface. The icy wind against my face was worse than the frigid waves.
Flames and smoke clouded the air above the surface. Vulcan kicked, and I followed.
We surged forward, swimming as fast as we could, putting distance between our upturned ship and nearing the Hydra when Aquila called to us in warning. My stomach turned to liquid as the current of the approaching sea beast rushed beneath our legs.