Page 11 of Gemini Hunted
Had toactto save the witching world and reverse our slow extinction.
Is it so hard to believe another witch, blessed (or cursed) with powerful recessives and a pedigree as royal as mine, could also feel… compelled?
I’m trying to wrestle my chaotic thoughts into some kinda order, with one hand resting on the sea dragon’s muzzle and the other limp around my flashlight, when a shadow flickers across my peripheral vision.
Suddenly I remember the shark.
Fuck.
Alarmed, I swing my flashlight up. It’s not the shark, but a sleek black diver who darts into view. For a sec, I think it’s Ronin. But rather than sporting a long ribbon of sable ponytail, this guy’s head is encased in a hood. He’s narrower through the shoulders and hips than Ronin’s powerful frame. This diver, he’s rapier slim. He’s speed and stealth instead of muscle. He darts through the sea like a barracuda.
His fist drives forward with a flash of serrated dive knife.
I barely have time to suck in a breath of precious oxygen before that knife slices through my breathing tube. A last wisp of air slips between my lips. Followed by a sudden flood of seawater, salty and bitter as brine.
I spit out the useless mouthpiece and clamp my mouth shut to preserve that last precious lungful of air.
Last time I checked, I was forty feet down.
I need to surface.
Fast.
But the flashlight I’m still clutching plays over the game bag fastened to the diver’s weight belt. Through the cloudy mesh, I make out a gleaming crescent of gold.
My clairvoyance—that new gene that got switched on when I became Zephyr’s queen—sparks to life. The flaring curve of a cornucopia, swirling with arcane glyphs for fertility andabundance, encrusted with the jeweled symbols of the twelve witching houses, dances in my mind’s eye.
The Horn of Ceres.
That’s the magical artifact that’ll win the Dean’s Challenge. Another diver—one of Cleo’s, damn it—has clearly gotten there before me.
Fuck.
Me.
Sideways.
Through the shield of our visors, my eyes lock with his. The rival diver. A jolt of recognition steals half my oxygen. Those eyes are hauntingly familiar, almond-shaped and tilted like Vasili’s—but chocolate gold instead of arctic blue, divided by the narrow bridge of an aristocratic nose.
I’m staring at Nikolai Romanov.
Vasili’s Russian oligarch dickwad of a dad.
Nikolai’s been Team Cleo since Day One.
Behind him, the sea erupts in a violent explosion of bubbles. Water churns under the powerful convulsion of a massive merlot body. As my beam dances wildly over the scene, the sea darkens with a sudden cloud of green dragon ichor. Cleo writhes in a spasm of agony.
The slender shaft of a barbed fishing spear sprouts from her long throat.
At her anguished periphery, I glimpse the broad-shouldered frame of another diver, still gripping his speargun at the ready. An inky swirl of ponytail floats around his head.
Ronin.
Nikolai spins to combat this new threat. As he does, my hand drops to the sheath at my belt. A heartbeat later, my dive knife slices through the fragile mesh of Nikolai’s game bag.
The torn fabric floats aside. Gently, the Horn of Ceres tumbles into my hand.
A bubble of elation swells my chest like a mushroom cloud.
