Chapter 47 #2
He grew closer and closer, determined to save her, but Adara didn’t need his help.
Power surged within her, and she focused it all on the surface of her skin, heating it to the temperature of scorching flames.
The pirate behind her screamed, burning where he held onto her.
She elbowed him in the gut, and he staggered away, his sticky, blistered skin peeling off her.
Adara pivoted, sword flying horizontally through the air, decapitating her assailant.
Blood gushed from his stump of a neck. His head rolled away with a trail of scarlet in its wake as the body thunked to the ground.
Footsteps approached behind her, and she whirled to face them, sword swinging. Steel clashed between them. Adara gasped as she met a pair of emerald eyes across her blade. Shoulders slumping with relief, she lowered her sword.
Dominic reached out a bloodied hand to cup her cheek, his eyes scanning her for injury. “Are you all right?” he asked breathlessly.
She leaned into the solace that was him, giving him a gentle smile as everything seemed to fade away.
The sound of steel ringing and arrows whooshing through the air and bodies thudding to the ground fell away until the cacophony was a dull drone in the back of her mind.
Adara traced the sharp line of his jaw, the soft curve of his lips.
Pressing her forehead to his, she slid her hand around to the nape of his neck, his presence slowing her rapid heartbeat.
All that mattered was him. It was Dominic’s calloused palm softly brushing her cheek, not the filthy pirate’s that had been on her moments ago.
“I’m fine,” she reassured him.
Dominic’s hand abruptly dropped from her face, drawing a knife from his belt and flinging it to the side.
It sank deep into someone’s chest. The body that dropped dead at their feet brought everything crashing back.
Sounds of battle rushed through her ears, and she was acutely aware of the blood spattered against her clothes, her skin, the lingering taste of it in her mouth, the smell of charred skin.
She was destruction in the flesh. She was death incarnate.
Gods, she’d almost struck Dominic. Guilt hollowed her stomach, sending her pulse into a frenzy once more. “I could have killed you!” she scolded, hand falling away from him to tightly grip Infinova as more pirates charged their way.
Dominic dropped to a knee, slashing out with both swords in a whirlwind of steel, sending two pirates toppling to the ground, unable to walk with slit ankles. When he rose to meet her eyes, he swung one sword up to rest on a shoulder.
“No, love, you couldn’t have,” he retorted with a cocky smirk.
Before she could come up with a snarky response, he was already diving back into the maelstrom, bodies dropping in his wake.
“Nice performance!” Asher said as he approached. Blood dripped from the sword in his hand.
A flash of white hair and a lanky figure ran by, Vesper and Sawyer joining the fight as well.
It was strange to see the archer wielding any weapon other than his bow—which hung across his back along with a quiver of arrows—yet his skill didn’t balk.
Neither did hers as she pressed her back to Asher’s, their movements one with each other as they fought the pirates surrounding them.
Asher lashed out, his blade slicing cleanly through a pirate’s arm.
The man screamed, his severed limb dropping to the deck in a puddle of blood.
Adara swung her sword, only to be parried by a burly pirate three times her size.
Her muscles strained to shove against him with their blades crossed between them, but Asher’s back against her provided leverage to hold him off.
She drove her knee into his groin. The man doubled over, and Adara didn’t hesitate to shove her sword through his skull.
“I got your back!” someone shouted over the sound of weapons clanging and the groans of dying pirates as Asher delivered a series of swift cuts that split a man’s stomach over and over.
Caleb carried a hefty mace in one hand and a large sack of what she assumed were coins and other stolen treasures in the other.
Cords of muscle shone through his tunic as he tossed the sack over the small gap between their ships, then swung the mace with ease.
The metal spikes on its end came crashing down on a man’s skull.
Brain matter splayed on the deck with a sickening splat.
Knives glinted through the darkening sky as they soared across the deck, each finding its mark. Adara smiled, pride surging through her to see Silas’s training put to use.
Someone came at her, swiping high. Adara ducked low.
Blood sprayed as her sword slashed his lower legs.
She jabbed the pommel of her dagger into one’s head, knocking him out cold.
Then thrust her sword into another’s chest. A river of scarlet dribbled from his parted mouth as his last breath left his lungs.
Pressing a blood-slick boot to his chest, Adara shoved, yanking her sword free as his lifeless body fell over the railing.
Seeing her take down her enemies in a few precise moves, a few of the other pirates hesitated.
But some—brave, stupid fools—charged at her with a battle cry.
Steel and blood filled her vision in a blur as she dodged and slashed.
Blood spattered her skin, mingled with the red in her braided hair, loose strands plastered to her face with sweat.
The sound of the dying filled her ears—their screams, their last breaths, their lifeless bodies hitting the deck.
Adara didn’t care. She just kept slicing and stabbing and burning.
Across the ship, she glimpsed someone sneaking up behind Silas, whose dagger looked so puny compared to the broadsword hefted by the pirate he fought.
Niran fought a few feet away, eyes locked onto Silas, fighting to reach him.
But Niran was too far. He wouldn’t be fast enough.
The sleeve of Silas’s shirt was dark with blood.
He retreated a step, his dagger no match for the pirate’s sword.
So small compared to the hulking brute he faced, who drove Silas unwittingly backward, where another approached to end the boy.
Magic flared. A sapphire whip coiled around her arm, shooting across the deck to wrap around the pirate’s throat.
Screaming in agony, he released his sword, clawing at his neck before falling to the floor.
At the sound of the pirate’s agonized cry behind him, Silas turned, horrified at the demise he was so close to meeting.
Another flaming whip shot from her palm, arcing and weaving through the battle until it latched onto the wrist of Silas’s other attacker.
The pirate screamed, but didn’t let go of his weapon.
Neither did Adara. The fiery rope burned and burned, blistering flesh building beneath.
She tightened the whip around his wrist until it scorched cleanly through his bones.
Another trill scream echoed as his bloody hand dropped with a thunk.
His cries were silenced when Silas hurled a knife into his throat.
Something slammed into Adara’s back. Her shoulder barked in anguish, teeth clacking as she crashed to the deck. Burn them, her fire urged.
Her skin began to heat, and the body scrambled away from her.
“Don’t fry me!”
The fire swiftly dissipated at the sound of Evreux’s voice. He spun around to deflect a sword aimed at him while Adara scrambled to her feet.
“Don’t sneak up on me!” she said, parrying a blow then pivoting to help Evreux, who was expertly defending himself but couldn’t land a true strike.
“Next time, I’ll let you get stabbed in the back,” he quipped.
Adara distracted their attacker with a few quick strikes. The pirate easily blocked, giving Evreux an opening to deliver a deep laceration across his ribs.
Despite the gore surrounding them, Adara smiled.
The ship shuddered, followed by a haunting rumble that reverberated through the deck, sending chilling vibrations into her boots and up her spine.
Everyone on the ship abruptly halted at the uncanny noise, plunging them into utter silence save for their heaving breaths and the waves splashing against the hull.
Adara’s expression fell. Trepidation rattled through her veins, churning in her gut, tightening her chest. “What the bloody Hel was that?” she asked over the sound of blood rushing in her ears.
Her heart felt like it would explode out of her chest. She’d never heard such an eerie noise.
Scanning the Plagued Sea, she could see nothing as night settled over them.
The ocean was pitch black, consuming even the reflection of the bright moon and stars, yielding no answers to what monsters lay within its unforgiving domain.
She searched the ship for Dominic to find his eyes locked on the water, swords falling from his hands and clattering on the ground.
Her heart skipped inside her chest, breath hitching at the sheer terror lining his face, his eyes wide with despair.
No one dared move but her as she cautiously made her way through the crowd of frozen bodies, footsteps light and silent as she crossed the blood-slick deck.
Adara stood by his side, slipping her hand into his. “Dom?” she asked, voice barely audible.
Dominic stood frozen, unresponsive, with wide eyes locked on the undulating waves, his breaths coming in ragged pants.
The low, bone-chilling growl sounded again, like distant thunder splitting the sky, except this came from beneath the restless waves. As if the beast would cleave the world in two, parting the ocean to swallow them whole.
Dominic breathed two words that cursed them all. “A lykren.”