Chapter Twenty-Eight King of the Deep #2
Ignoring the aches that were sure to become a patchwork of purple skin, Reya wiped her stinging eyes and crawled the distance to Caelan.
She turned him over, clasping either side of his agonized face, and then she held out an arm dripping in silver blood.
He stared up at her for a beat too long, and she shook her arm in frustration, shouting over the roaring of the Kraken and the screams of drowning men, “Drink it, you stubborn bastard!”
The Kraken lashed the water, sending another wave for the Acadia—a wave that could doom Caelan forever.
“DO IT NOW!”
Caelan gripped her elbow and wrist and held her gaze as his tongue slid up her forearm.
He swallowed.
Water rained down, and Reya held on to Caelan tightly as the ship rocked. When the wave retreated back into the Deep and the Acadia righted, she opened eyes that were burning with salt water and scanned Caelan’s face.
Reya didn’t know what she was looking for.
Did curses break instantly? Was the legend even true? Did he get enough of a mouthful? Nothing was happening at all. Why was nothing happening? Caelan groaned.
She cupped his face. “Come on, fire fingers.”
His whole body stiffened, and his back arched off the deck. Something was very wrong. Caelan gripped her arms hard enough to bruise. The blood was supposed to heal him, not cause him more pain.
His breathing slowed, and the muscles beneath her hands relaxed.
Under the light of the moons and stars, Reya barely dared to breathe as the blackened veins on his jaw and cheeks began to retract.
Through his soaked white tunic, she could see the dark, coiled web of the curse fading.
And that was color in his cheeks, she was sure of it.
“Caelan?”
Their gazes locked, and she watched as embers flared to life in his irises.
Her laugh choked off into a sob.
Leagues beneath them, the seafloor shuddered. But not from the Kraken. She had felt that shudder before. Nets and crates that were strapped down began to rattle. Even Reya’s teeth clacked together. The sweat and seawater on them turned to steam.
Reya was thrown back by the pulse of energy that burst from him. Her head hit something hard and she cried out, reaching up to feel for blood.
What the blazing stars?
Caelan pushed himself up on a fist. Fire licked across his chest and down his arms, turning his tunic to ash and revealing freshly healed skin, not a blackened vein to be found. The sight nearly wrecked her.
Ire raced across his skin, shifting from emerald to gold to red and back again. Whole. Indomitable.
The power she’d felt from him before was nothing compared to this.
Here knelt Caelan Halcyon as he had been made by the All-Gods.
A general of Alethia. A protector who had inspired legends of ancient warriors.
A firestorm waiting to break across the world.
Glowing like steel bright from the forging.
When he looked up at her, he grinned like the All-God of death himself. And Reya grinned back.
There was no time to celebrate, though. Not as the sea around them rumbled. It wasn’t over.
Caelan didn’t waste a minute. Flames billowed across the ocean’s surface, turning the foam to steam and forming a barrier between the men in the water and the Kraken’s jaws, giving them the chance to climb back on board.
That cavernous hole of teeth opened wide as the thrashing Kraken turned toward the Acadia.
It was done playing with its dinner. Water swirled into its open mouth, fighting the flames, and the ship began to ride the current it was making.
Men stepped back as Reya approached, fear and awe in their eyes.
Omira was waiting for her at the railing.
“Don’t forget your promise,” Reya said.
Omira’s jaw flexed. “They’ll hate me forever.”
“At least you’ll be alive to hate.” She’d told only Omira of her plan. Hers was the one mind Thance would not look inside. “You’re the only one who will do it.”
“You’re right about that,” Omira said, resolve in every word. “I will.” She flicked out her spear.
Reya took up a stance at the railing, as far as she could get from the crew, and journeyed inward to the crystal wall.
She felt the prick of Omira’s weapon between her shoulder blades, a promise to make good on the vow Reya had drawn from her, to be her fail-safe in case the Rage consumed her again.
Reya imagined the floodgate bursting.
“Touch her, and I will melt your bones,” Caelan said, grabbing on to the shaft and squeezing until the weapon glowed orange, and Omira was forced to let go. It clattered to the deck.
“All-Gods damn it, Caelan!” Omira shouted, clutching her burned hand.
Reya could barely hear them anymore. The magic was already humming beneath her skin, raging at its confines.
“Don’t you dare, thief,” Caelan said, stepping up behind her and reaching around to hold her arms. “Together,” he said into her ear. Somehow it felt like more than just an offer to help, but an offer of something greater, stronger.
Together, she would not have to give everything.
When she nodded, Caelan pressed himself to her back, instantly drying her clothes everywhere their bodies touched.
“HIT THE DECK!” Kalúe’s command was heard in every corner of the ship.
Caelan didn’t so much as flinch. “On my count.”
Reya laid her hand against that beautiful crystal wall and closed her eyes. She could do this.
“One,” Caelan said.
She would do this. For the tendril of a future that awaited on the other side of freedom. For Kalúe and her beautiful ship.
“Two,” Caelan said.
For Caelan, Omira, and Thance.
For her brothers.
For herself.
“Three.”
Layers of teeth flashed as the mouth of the Kraken surged toward the side of the ship.
Reya and Caelan erupted.
Blue fire and light illuminated the night, and even the beast’s roars were drowned out by the raging brilliance of their gifts, storming like a comet—right into the Kraken’s gaping maw.
The two strands of power merged, cobalt flames licking against the stream of starlight, like they were calling to each other. The sight of it robbed her of breath.
Water sprayed as Reya and Caelan burned into the very heart of the Kasmore Deep. Exhaustion, thorough and heavy, swept through her as that cavern of power drained. Still, she gave and gave.
Suddenly, she was no longer on the Acadia.
Snow coiled in the winds off the Etellinian peaks. A small stone cottage stood before her, two words painted on a wood plaque above the door: Alder Hollow.
Another building stood off to the side, identical in color and build, only smaller and infinitely warmer.
Her father’s smithy. Her mother’s garden stretched between them, frozen and barren beneath the snow.
An oil lamp glinted inside Ash’s stable.
Reya shivered as a freezing northern breeze licked the sweat off her back.
Light poured in rainbows from the diamond-patterned stained glass windows of the house, and smoke curled from its slightly crooked chimney.
She placed her palm on the frosted pane and peered inside. It was just as she remembered, down to the childish painting of their family on a kitchen cabinet. Paxton had added two long red streaks over her head for her hair, and she looked like she was being decapitated.
Handmade blankets were strewn across the couch and chairs. In the corner, a wooden ladder led up to the loft where she and her brothers had played and slept.
Across from the kitchen, Hector Connery’s Etellinian steel sword was mounted on the mantel above the fireplace in its place of honor. How many times had she sat before the hearth just to gaze at it?
She was home.
The front door was cracked open, as if in welcome.
Caelan’s voice cut through the pitch of the northern wind, calling her back. The word was calm, as if in another world they were not, in fact, about to be devoured. “Reyanwyn.”
But she couldn’t take her eyes off the open door.
She’d been avoiding this place for ten years, but now that she was here, she found herself wanting to stay.
Even though she knew what was about to happen.
Knew that the safety of this moment was an illusion, fragile as the snowflakes falling against the warm glass windows. That it was all about to melt away.
When Caelan said her name again, there was a faint trace of warning.
And then warm hands cupped her face, the heat like a tether out of the memory. Grounding her. Sweat dripped down her back and chest.
“Come back to me, thief,” he said against her lips, and slid his mouth over hers. Replacing her worst memory with a different one.
The white winds faded like ashes on a breeze. Her mouth opened beneath his, and she tasted the salt of her tears on his tongue.
Sealing the floodgate was nothing like before, when bottling that power was an act of sheer will.
With the cavern near empty, it was easier than closing a door.
Their magic dissolved into wisps of fire and light until it was no more than burning blue stardust on an artificial wind. She was so tired.
Her eyes fluttered open, tears clinging to her lashes. Caelan’s thumbs traced her cheekbones, wiping the tears away as if they were yet another enemy to conquer.
They had done it.
Her legs crumpled beneath her, and Caelan caught her a moment before she hit the deck.
Through heavy-lidded eyes, Reya watched what remained of the King of the Deep sink slowly into the obsidian depths.