Page 142 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“I have to send you back,” Faerie told me, snapping my stunned gaze back to her. “Your friends are getting as far from the Margygr’s spell as they can, and the further they go, the less it should grip you. Go quickly, and remember, you are my last hope. If you don’t reverse this, it will be cemented as my future—and Earth’s, too.”

I stared at her. “Wait. You’re not coming with us?”

“I cannot travel outside my realm. And even if I could, I do not have the strength. I spent too much magic holding on all these years and then helping you in the fight, and already feel myself starting to unravel.”

“You were helping?” I repeated, trying to catch up.

She laughed suddenly. “Yes, child, or you would all be dead ere this. But I can do nothing else. And it feels . . . strangely liberating . . . not to have to fight anymore. Or to see, as I have every day for fifty years, the piecemeal destruction of my world. Better for it to go all at once, in one great eruption, than to be taken like that!”

“A-all at once?” I repeated, hoping I didn’t understand.

But as usual, when it was bad news, I always got it right.

“When I go, my world does, too,” she confirmed. “You must be past the portal by then, or there is no saving you. Go—and let us hope that I chose my champion well.”

With no other warning, I found myself back under the waves. And saw Pritkin’s face emerging from the darkened flood, although it was wildly distorted and frankly terrible, and I wasn’t sure whether that was from the spell or the mess we were in. But probably the latter, as he was clutching me against him as he swam, and we were moving.

And Faerie was right. The more distance he put between us and that awful crevasse, the clearer things became. I could still barely move but could see straight, and the rest of my senses seemed to be sorting themselves out.

Enough to recognize that the little puddle of light we were shedding held me, Æsubrand, Pritkin, and Alphonse, who was ripping through the water like a dark bullet before catching up to us. And that was it. Until Bodil dove down into the haze of moonlight under the crevasse, ceding the battlefield she could no longer hold and making my heart clench for her.

“Pritkin!” I gasped, getting his attention because he was facing the other way.

He looked back, and we paused to see if the other demigoddess in the group could handle the Margygyr’s spell better than I had. And yeah. Being half-fey instead of half-human made a difference, didn’t it?

Because instead of freaking out, getting disoriented, and forgetting how to breathe, Bodil shook her head as if to clear it a couple of times, spotted us, and started swimming our way. And unlike Æsubrand had been doing, she swam straight. Even though the blue light haloing her from the ring was stuttering so badly now that it looked like she was being electrocuted.

But she didn’t appear to be harmed by it, and then I knew she wasn’t when she turned and sent a tide pushing out behind her big enough that I could feel its suction tugging on me, and I was not that close to the chasm anymore.

But, I suddenly realized, someone else was!

I grabbed for Pritkin’s shoulder and missed, but he got the idea. “Enid!” I yelled and saw him wince, as voice modulation seemed to be another thing I couldn’t control. But then he looked about and noticed the same thing I had.

The beautiful redhead was missing.

“Cassie—”

“I lost track in the fight!” I said, forcing my numb lips to form words. “She must still be back up there—”

“We can’t—”

“We have to! We can’t leave her!”

“Faerie is with her—”

“Faerie’s almost out of power and told me that when she goes, so does this place! We—”

“She told you what?”

“She helped us in the fight,” I said, gasping because my lungs were still trying to play catch up. “And said we’d have died otherwise. I don’t know what she meant, but—”

“She was using something similar to the spell on the crevasse to disorient the enemy and make it harder for them to attack us.”

“That was them disoriented?” I said, disbelieving.

“Go back to the stuff about what happens when she runs out of power,” Alphonse said, swimming closer. And for some reason, I could hear him as easily as Pritkin.

“I added him to our spell,” Pritkin said before I could ask. “Looped in his translator.”

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