Page 138 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

He stared at me, and his eyes were terrible. “Cassie. I’ve destroyed two worlds.”

“You haven’t. Zeus did—”

“With my help.”

“We don’t know that! And even if we did, that’s still on him!”

“No, it’s on me. I could have taken myself out of the equation, vanishing into the hells or . . . by other means. And I should have as soon as I knew what Zeus wanted from me. But I wanted—” His hand came up and clutched my shoulder, but not as he usually did. But barely there, as if he didn’t think he had the right. “I wanted you. I wanted a life for us, and I wanted it so badly I made myself blind to the risks. I even came here when—”

He laughed, although there was no mirth in it. “When I knew, if I lost, it might end up costing us the war, and if I won . . . I would get a throne I don’t want and responsibilities I can’t handle.”

He shook his head. “How can I be a good king when I can’t even keep you safe?”

I covered his hand with mine and pressed down hard enough for him to feel it. “You’re not responsible for that—or for this. And you’ve done an amazing job ever since you came here, and against ridiculous odds. Neither of us knew how hard this was going to be—”

“I knew. And I have bumbled about, barely keeping my head above water. I would have been trapped by my other half, possibly permanently, if you hadn’t come up with a way to free me, and before that, Feltin’s men had us well and truly cornered in that hallway. We wouldn’t have gotten out of the kitchens if you hadn’t bought us time.”

“And I would be dead if you hadn’t saved me in the dining hall and again in the corridor,” I said, frustrated. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—we work better together. We’re practically unstoppable together! Only Zeus’s spell was working against us.”

And Pritkin’s insecurities, which were worse than I’d realized. No wonder the spell had taken him so hard. It had had the perfect in, the ideal path through the shields of the most dangerous man I knew. Who inside was still the little boy that nobody wanted, the child who had grown up alone because his grandmother tried to kill him, his mother feared getting near him, and his father was waiting until he grew up to see if he’d be worth his time.

He’d been little better off than the slaves here, maturing on a farm where the house and pigsty didn’t look that different, and forced to make a life with little help from anyone—a life that had been jerked away from him time and time and time again. Until suddenly, one day, somebody wanted to put a crown on his head, not because they thought he deserved it, although he did more than the rest of them put together! But in a desperate bid to prop up a failing system.

A system he wanted no part of but which he had braved anyway . . . for me.

“We’re better together,” I told him tearfully. “We always have been. And we will find a way out of this. But I can’t do this alone; I need you, I need every ounce of your strength, and I need—”

More time, I thought, but we’d had all we were going to get, because our other problem took that moment to arrive, blowing through the enormous main doors and sending them spinning halfway across the expanse of polished floor.

And ready or not, here they came.

“Into the water!” someone yelled, but it was already too late, although not because of the creatures fighting each other to get in the room. But because of something even more immediate.

Suddenly, bodies were falling everywhere, like a hideous rain. One splatted in front of me, a fur-covered nightmare with five or six rows of teeth in its misshapen jaw that would have had me screaming in horror, except that it was dead. As a doornail, I thought, staring at a mushed-up mass of fur and blood and bone that lay there and bled at me.

I looked up and saw that a horde of the creatures had crawled through the gap left by the now-missing river, clustering along its banks in the hundreds, framing the serpentine opening. Which no one had worried about as it was over an impossible, fifteen-story drop! Only it wasn’t impossible for most of the dozens now jumping down on top of us, who shook off the stunning fall and quickly got back to their feet.

Or back to their appendages, which might be a better phrase, as insect-like bodies were as prevalent as the hairy animal type. They were interspersed with more amoeba-type things and others with angles that confused the eyes and broke the brain because they didn’t belong in nature. At least not our nature.

And then a sixth sense had me throwing myself to the side as something hit the ground where I’d just been standing. And sprang at me for a split second before being sent rocketing back against the far wall by a blast from Enid, who was screaming hysterically and targeting everything in sight.

“Get to the water!” Pritkin yelled, grabbing my arm. Right before he was jerked away by something with wings and dragged into the air.

“Pritkin!” I screamed, watching as he formed his shields into a shiv as long as his arm and plunged it into the creature’s belly, gutting the thing mid-flight.

I saw them fall, started to run that way, and got cut off by a surge from a group of the now rapidly landing creatures. But Bodil had decided that she wasn’t going down without a fight and had hopped onto the highest rock surrounding the crevasse and raised her arms. And before I could wonder what she thought she was doing, a roar of water shot out of the fissure, what had to be thousands of gallons of it, formed itself into a wave and bitch-slapped the horde.

They tumbled backward, desperately struggling for purchase on the slick and now wet floor while an ocean crashed around them. It knocked them off their feet and into each other, and then into the side wall as if a freight train had run over them. And there they stayed, splayed against the rocks as the surf pounded, battered, and broke on all sides.

It was an impressive opening salvo and one they hadn’t expected. But it wouldn’t help us for long because we couldn’t escape through the same crevasse that Bodil was using to defend us. Leaving us trapped and waiting on the main force, and we wouldn’t be waiting long.

Damn it, we should have taken that swim! But we hadn’t, and no way could Bodil handle them all. But she knew this place like the back of her hand and might still have a chance—if she left us behind.

She could get to Rhea even if I couldn’t, and Rhea was smart. Maybe together, they could figure something out. And erase all this before it became the end of our story—and everyone else’s!

“Go!” I screamed at her over the roar of the water. “Get out of here!”

“Stop trying to be a hero,” she seethed, calling up two huge, watery fists from the flow like the golden one Pritkin had used on the Cetus.

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