Page 60 of Waves
My queen.
I didn’t even question that thought, didn’t second-guess or waver because the truth of it thrummed in my veins. Avia was mine to torture but also mine to protect.
She didn’t have the elven chain to protect her anymore.
And I’d witnessed her use of her magic first-hand. She was growing into her power, but she didn’t yet have the ability to stop something like this.
It was up to me.
I had to save her.
With that single-minded purpose, I kicked hard, swimming through the current, swerving to avoid the whirlpool—which was moving. It slid smoothly along the ocean floor, kicking up dirt and shells—a skirt of muck and mayhem.
It shouldn’t have been moving.
Whirlpools, unlike twisters, were created by opposing currents and water currents weren’t fickle like wind.
What the hell was going on?
As I shoved through water that felt thick as bread dough, I tried to pull my hands together to unwish this disaster. But the water swirled every which way, and my hands kept getting ripped outward and flung away from me—the water was unhinged. Not behaving naturally at all.
It was behaving as if controlled by magic.
Panic squeezed at my throat, sharp fingers digging into my windpipe as my way became even harder, more circuitous as the whirlpool expanded and swallowed up even more people.
I saw Keelan and his turtle sucked into the melee, their bodies swept upward, disappearing behind a swirling wall of churning blue. A terrified female scream followed them. Next to Avia, her adviser collapsed on the shell platform, falling to her knees as her son disappeared. Her hands stretched forward grasping at nothing, terror and grief prying sob after sob from her lips.
Avia’s own expression was haunted as she stood, arms lifted, trying to summon her power. Struggling. Failing.
Her guards tried to yank her backward, out of harm’s way, but she shrugged them off, yelled something I couldn’t hear through the chaos of the fleeing crowd. And she tried again.
Beautifully stubborn.
Brave.
And…as her expression hardened, and her jaw clenched—vicious.
My queen was angry.
Her own fury lit my chest with flames, spurred me to swim faster, to pull my arms together harder. I rounded the back side of the churning whirlpool, a good hundred feet from it—just farenough to avoid its suction. Arms and legs burning, I pushed them harder, forcing them to ignore the desire to collapse into limp strings.
From the whirlpool, a thin spiraling line of blood emerged, darkening the water and the edges of my vision.
Again, I shoved my arms together, hands reaching for my ring, the black circle that could halt this massacre. Halt this storm that was spinning steadily closer to Avia’s platform.
I was uncertain how, because the bluster of the whirlpool was so loud and the high-pitched screams were tearing at my eardrums, but a low chuckle somehow made its way through the dense noise.
My head turned, seeking it out immediately.
Once upon a time, it would have been exactly the sort of sound I would have made.
The kind of glee I would have gotten from gore and chaos—still might have gotten—if the threat were to anyone else.
I spotted a group of silhouettes huddled in the distance on a bridge overlooking the tournament. The pebbled surface gleamed under their feet and the peaceful water around them glimmered in the moonlight as they watched.
Watched but made no move to help.
One of them had a shark fin.
