Page 51 of Fate and Flame
“Or fin,” I quipped.
She dropped her gaze and glared.
I matched her bitch face with my own, refusing to blink. I was pretty sure I was winning the staring contest until the entire castle began to shake and rumble.She jerked, tilting her head at an odd angle. The corners of my mouth lifted as a gentle, familiar hand glided across the small of my back. Leora was a fucking hero.
“What was that?” Morwena snapped at her guards.
Her face became frantic as reality crashed down on her. A great lament, a cry unlike anything I had ever heard called from deep within the castle and Morwena circled her gilded sea throne, coiling her leviathan body so tight, I thought she might crush it.
A small click at my wrist, and the cuffs fell to the sandy floor. Power surged through me as strongly as all the emotions Fen had sent down the bond while I was away. I was overcome with fear, worry, anger, and determination.
Hello you,he said, his hand still planted firmly on my back.
My shoulders dropped in relief.Why can’t she see you? She can see through Wren’s magic.
“Guards,” Morwena called. “Protect me.”
Not in this form. She is practically blind in her true form.
Does everyone know that?
I’ve been researching.There was a haunting stillness to his words.
She is mine, Prince, but Lichen over there? He’s all yours.
Again, the castle boomed, the walls rattling as the light that hung from the high ceiling swayed.
Morwena shrieked. She hadn’t noticed I’d lost my cuffs yet.“Kill the girl and seal the doors. Someone has freed the hydra and she’s coming for me.”
“That would be me,” I said, raising my freed hand.
“You?” Her head snapped sideways. I wondered if she could see the missing cuffs at all.
“And a few of my friends.”
“You’ll die now, promised one. You will die and I’ll feed you to that beast myself.”
“Unfortunately for you, we’re best friends now. Although, Iamsurprised it’s a female.”
The guards rushed for me, but Fen let loose his air magic and sent them flying. Morwena unwrapped herself from her throne and moved like lightning through the water toward me. Fen shot sideways, in Lichen’s direction, and I had no idea where Wren—who had kept Fen hidden from everyone else—was. Morwena was upon me, wrapping me in her coils as all hell broke loose.
I wasn’t afraid as I dug my hands into her scaled body. Just before I plunged into my cresting magic, the doors slammed open behind us, and all three heads of the hydra called Morwena’s name. She tensed, squeezing me so hard the edges of my vision blurred. As much as I wanted to watch them fight, for a couple of rounds at least, I wasn’t patient. I let the entire wall holding my magic vanish and completely obliterated Morwena before she could make another move.
I had a lot to learn about magic.
I had no idea that using that powerful of a force, that swiftly, would knock me out. My body fell to the ocean floor, and the last thing I saw was the hydra coming for me at full speed.
Standing on land and facing a hydra, it would tower over me, its size equal only to the Kraken. One of her razor-sharp teeth was the length of my body. The sea castle was, by far, the largest of all the castles I’d been to. It had to be, to accommodate the beasts below the surface, but still, the hydra had to be the biggest of them all.
Ara!Fen called.Ara, wake up.
His voice was calm and steady, but I felt his fear trembling through me. I tried to draw myself from the blackness, but I was stuck, the force of my own magic holding me down. There, but not there at all. I wasn’t knocked out. I was pinned below the magic I was meant to control. Panic rose like a boiling pot as tremors took over.
“Rise, friend. Tell me who to kill,” a hissing voice said so close to my ear the vibrations trembled down my spine.
I had actually made friends with the hydra after all.
I needed to rein in the magic suffocating me, but I was dripping with despair, the force foreign and overwhelming. I closed my eyes and tried to right the spinning world. Nothing. I opened the iron wall and tried to force the magic back behind it. Numbness trickled up my fingers and through my arms, and if I didn’t get the magic under control quickly, I would become completely lost to it. I reached out to the bond and held tight. Fen tugged and I held onto the essence of him while I pushed and pushed until I felt my body convulsing.
