Page 5 of The Sundered Blade

But that was the point—splashing and noise and fighting for air. He heard Karreya yelling his name as he bobbed to the surface, but turned his attention away from the ferry, focusing on the surrounding water, thrashing his arms and legs to stay afloat while waiting for a hint. For any sign that his ruse was working.

Even though he was looking, it still caught him by surprise. The water heaved and boiled, tumbling him backwards, and when he bobbed to the surface, he found himself facing a creature that robbed him of all speech or courage.

A bulbous head, a single eye, and a wide mouth ringed with teeth… The monster gazed at him with mindless hunger before a tentacle suddenly wrapped around his waist and pulled him forward, lifting him out of the water on his way towards that toothy maw.

This was not, he decided, how he’d pictured his day going. But at least he was no longer drowning.

Grasping the steel ball in icy, trembling fingers, Vaniell filled it with magic, feeding it more and more until a white-hot rush of power flooded the etchings on its surface. And as the tentacle carried him nearer and nearer, he pulled back his arm, preparing for the moment…

The mouth opened wider, revealing even more teeth, and as his feet lowered inexorably towards that gruesome doom, Vaniell tossed the enchanted marble down its gaping throat.

The monster paused. Squirmed. Retched.

And exploded.

The tentacle that was holding Vaniell went limp at the same time the explosion threw him backwards, smashing him into the side of the boat. He had only a moment to register what had happened before he slid into the water, stunned and in considerable agony. His limbs refused to move, even as he began to sink beneath the waves. A piece of tentacle the size of his torso fell on him, and he would have gone under had he not been seized by the outstretched talons of a black wyvern.

Kyrion yanked him out of the water like an osprey taking off with its catch, then dropped him unceremoniously on the deck of the miraculously still floating ferry.

There… Karreya was racing towards them. Leisa, too, was still alive, and Senaya hovered nearby. The enchantment had worked, everyone was safe, and he hadn’t even blown himself up.

Perhaps the day had not turned out so badly after all.

CHAPTER2

They reached the far side of the gulf, disembarked, and were making preparations to depart before Karreya’s hands stopped shaking.

He’d justjumped in. Without warning and without weapons.

How could he be so careful with his words and so completely careless with his life?

This feeling… She considered the turmoil of her thoughts and decided it must be anger. She was angry with Niell—so angry that she wanted to yell, or to hit him—and that frustrated her further.

She did not want to be angry. Anger dulled her senses and disturbed her focus. But so, according to Madame Inci, did all the other emotions, and Karreya was not ready to give up on all of them.

Not now that she had discovered hope. Friendship. Family. Not once she had seen them in action and experienced the power they could wield. She’d always understood the ways that they could hurt, but it seemed such bonds were not entirely simple.

Much like her feelings about Prince Vaniell of Garimore.

“Sit,” she told him icily, when his efforts to help proved rather more disruptive than otherwise. His teeth were still chattering, and he listed heavily to one side thanks to his collision with the side of the ferry.

“I swear I’m not broken,” he insisted, his familiar crooked grin looking a bit more pained than usual. “Just very, very”—he winced as he raised one arm to brush his sodden hair out of his face—“bruised. In several places.”

“Because you did not stop to plan before you leaped overboard,” she replied tartly.

“Be mad if you want to.” Niell did not seem to be taking her anger very seriously. “But at that moment, it seemed that planning was not what was called for. Other methods weren’t working. I had todosomething. Though I should probably confess that I didn’t expect it to explodequiteso spectacularly.”

Karreya regarded him askance. “How could you not know what to expect? It was your own enchantment, was it not?”

“Well…yes?” He shrugged as if in apology. “But isn’t as if I can go around testing things like that. I create enchantments with an idea of what I intend, but the more dangerous ones sometimes go a little sideways. There’s really no way to know exactly what they’re going to do until I actually use them, so I don’t even attempt it unless I’m forced to.”

He’d told her once before that he was not good in a fight unless he was in deadly earnest, and it seemed he’d spoken the truth. And once again, he’d proven that his audacity was perhaps his most effective weapon. Where others would stop to think, he simply trusted his instincts and jumped, and Karreya could not fault him for it. Not when she had literally just admonished him to know what he must do in the moment and then act.

So why was she so angry?

Kyrion’s rumbling voice intruded on her thoughts. “We should hasten. You’ll want to be on the road before the sun rises.”

On the road. By sunrise. The faint gray light of dawn already illuminated this grim, forested shore, which meant she would soon be riding for the city called Hanselm, with only Leisa and Senaya for company.

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