Page 79 of The Seer

“You are insignificant, you fool!” Odessa raged.

Taryn pointed with one of her stakes. “See! That’s what I’m talking about right there. I bet you’d manage a passable rendition ofPoor Unfortunate Soulsif you weren’t such a tightass.” Summoning all the magic she possessed from a cellular level, she threw the deadly ice shard.

Once again, the Succubus effortlessly batted it away.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you, girl,” Odessa said in her creepy-ass serpentine way.

A cold fist clenched around Taryn’s heart. Was Fintan slipping away? Fear for him reignited her fighting spirit, and she hurled her final stakes.

She never noticed the extra limb. Hell, she didn’t know the bitch could sprout so many! But one lashed out, and the fucking thing fileted her like a trout. It sliced through her abdomen with its claw extruding from her back. Sheer agony wrenched a scream from her throat.

Odessa grinned, savage and gleeful. The sadistic cow yanked Taryn, prepared to deliver the kiss of death. She managed a token resistance, gurgling a feeble protest.

“Did you really think to best me, child?”

Fetid breath gagged her.

“Ursula called. She wanted her look back, but then she realized you’re only the budget version—ahhh!”

She shrieked as Odessa twisted her claw, shredding organs, muscle, and bone.

Focus, Taryn. Please, for the love of?—

“Why focus?” the Succubus purred. “Ah, you forgot I can read your mind.”

The hideously forked tongue slithered between Anglerfish teeth and licked the blood from Taryn’s lips.

Internal bleeding. Never good.

Dizziness assailed her, and a haze blanketed her mind. She fought the feeling.

It was now or never.

She blanked her thoughts, gripped the amulet, and ripped it off Odessa’s neck in one smooth move. With the last burst of elemental magic, she flung it into the water’s waiting embrace, commanding the current to rush it away.

“Find Ardghal,” she breathed as one final whisper.

Ardghal’s body jerked.Once in response to the water encapsulating his amulet, and again to the abrupt snapping of Taryn’s and his bond.

Above him, the remains of the ceiling were illuminated, and Eoin systematically disintegrated the boulders. Through the shimmering waters, Bloodstone’s necklace fell, drifting ever closer as Odessa’s tentacle chased it.

A gap in the stones provided a view of the scene above water, and with dread in his heart, he looked upward.

A careless toss of Taryn’s lifeless body proved Odessa considered her nothing more than yesterday’s garbage. The pain was a thousand times worse than Elizabeth’s defection, and it lacerated his soul. It wasn’t only his grief or rage; it was Fintan’s. Odessa now had to contend with their mindless fury, animalistic in nature, and beyond anything but a need to destroy.

The amulet’s chain was almost within Ardghal’s grasp, and he curled forward, elongating his arm to reach it first. As his fingers brushed the metal, electricity shot through him, straight along his spine to his tail, healing the damaged vertebrae, muscle, tendons, and tissue. He pressed the disc against his breastbone and welcomed the current. His cells quickly absorbed the amplified elemental magic through the water and earth supporting him.

He was born to a full blooded Siren princess in this grotto’s water, and his first physical incarnation died here. The amulet had been crafted by a loving father, Bloodstone. A demigod, who, by hanging the chain around Ardghal’s neck, had gifted him the ability to walk on land. Father had allowed him to bridge the divide between the two worlds, sea and soil.

Ardghal was the onlyFíorghin Scairdeanach.

The Trueborn Surge.

And he was back to full strength.

The energy didn’t stop at healing. It surged higher, resonating like a pulse through the grotto, through the walls, the water, the bones beneath. The power of the amulet embraced him and reached inward, where the threads of Fintan’s soul still clung to what they had once shared.

For the first time since his death, Ardghal stood alone inside himself.

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