Page 76 of Waves
Our link.
My foolishness.
The beast blinked and I braced, fully expecting the creature to evaporate in a puff of smoke—or wisp of blue.
That didn't happen. Raj didn't transform out of the dragon and into his true form in order to gloat and make his killing move.
Goose bumps prickled along my skin and an ache pulsed through my broken fin.
What was he waiting for? My eyebrow ticked up.
His front claw lifted slowly, as if the air around us was molasses.
I tried to move but my last thrashing beckoning to the sea had sapped most of my energy. As if I was bedridden and broken, I was stuck motionless as Raj’s sickle claw dragged up along the outside of my arm, sharp and curved as any blade.
I stiffened, bones suddenly feeling both as brittle and as hollow as glass. The claw scooped beneath my chin and my pulse pounded as I waited for him to carve a line across my neck. A frantic, desperation riddled my entire being.
But then the beast's claw retreated and hovered in front of my face, the pad of his paw toward me almost as if he was waving.
What?
Confusion stripped away my logic for a moment and I couldn't even process what I was looking at. I couldn’t imaginewhat the dragon intended, not until I saw his digits part and assumed he was about to reach for his ring. That solid black ring that Bloss had described again and again to me as she relived the horror of dropping it into the ocean.
I tensed in expectation for a minute before I realizedthere was no ring.
A finger was missing—severed, the wound still healing.
Every nightmare outcome I'd imagined suddenly compounded, because even though this dragon was Raj...he wasn't in control.
Someone else had his ring.
Which meant everything hinged on their wish.
Chapter 33
Avia
Either the shocked expression on my face sent Raj into a new phase of terrorizing me… or his new master did. In a blink, he transformed from a water dragon into the vicious beast who'd stolen me from my sister. The dragon who haunted my nightmares. A terror who breathed fire—and air.
A shudder ran through my limbs involuntarily, a trauma response to facing that monster again. Phantom cold coated my skin, just like it had when I’d been dragged through clouds over Evaness, certain at any moment that the dragon would drop me. For a moment, the entire world seemed to shrink, as if I was looking through a telescope the wrong way, my sight contracting in dread.
The beast’s eyes widened as he realized his effect on me, as if he could taste my panic.
Could he? With my heart in his chest, was my fear more prominent? Or were the tears leaking down my cheeks the giveaway?
Raj’s wings unfurled, black membranous sails the size of a ship's that burst through the edges of the air bubble. Sucking in a deep breath of air from the sphere we were suspended within, the dragon's lungs expanded, and his claws shot forward,encircling my upper arms, each sharp nail several inches thick. Shackles.
Lightheaded from a lack of water in my lungs, I didn’t even think of calling the ocean to me as the dragon’s wings folded over us, encasing us like seeds inside a pod.
Lost.
You’ve lost.
That was the one twisted response my mind managed, one last pathetic kick to my own ego.
A forked tongue danced inside the beast’s mouth as it opened into a sick and twisted smile—until those lips and that tongue moved. And moved again.
Not spitting fire—but forming what looked like silent words, as if he was mouthing something to me.
