Page 83 of Waves
Palms up, I lifted my hands. The storm rumbled out a cruel laugh as I made Sahar rise on a plume of water and float toward me. As soon as she reached me, I slid my hand down, freezingthe pillar and melding it with her spear. Her eyes were wide as she gasped, unable to breathe.
Traitors should know horror.
The pitch-black thought might have come from the swirling mix of my emotions with Raj’s or simply from my own evil depths.
I wasn’t sure—but it didn’t matter.
I stood, leaning toward her as the clouds started to pelt us with slush. “Should I make this your tomb?”
“Please—”
My hands curled into fists and suddenly the surface of the ocean was riddled with star bursts of ice, each side sharp as a sword.
“Avia!” Mateo’s voice snapped my concentration, startled me, and I glanced down, suddenly worried I’d impaled him.
He raised an arm and reached for me, expression beseeching. “This isn’t you,” he called out, and his words somehow dove beneath the tapestry of my rage and plucked at the tiny heartstrings remaining.
He was wrong… but he was also right.
It was me. But it wasn’t who Iwantedto be.
Not for him. Not for the kingdom.
Setting aside my anger felt like shedding armor before battle. Heavy. Wrong. It allowed less favorable emotions like sadness and self-loathing to surface. My hands trembled and my throat tightened as I lowered my arms and took a deep, calming breath.
“Avia,” Raj said my name for the first time and the way he said it was aghast. Disbelieving.
I thought I perceived a trickle of disappointment running through my veins, which simply made me redirect my anger and him and snarl, “Shut your mouth.”
Surprisingly, he heeded me, and I took a deep breath to gather my thoughts.
A trial first.At least a questioning. That would give me time to gain control of myself and avoid becoming the ruthless dictator that instinct urged me to be.
Impassively, without sympathy, I gazed at Sahar where she moaned and clutched at her ruined hand—still impaled but not yet bleeding out because the ice sealed and partially numbed the wound. She hovered in a space between life and death.
“Why did you betray me?”
Her wheezing breath interrupted her more than once as she answered. “Keelan almost died. Again and again. I realized it wasn’t going to stop until I had to bury him.” There was a harsh bite to her final words, the ferocity of a snarling mother who’d do anything to protect her child.
My glance toward Keelan and his pale, shocked expression told me everything I needed to know about his involvement—he had no clue.
I turned to Raj, where he hovered effortlessly, watching, his thick lashes laced with raindrops. “How did she get this ring? I wish you’d tell me the truth.”
The djinn’s lips twitched to one side reluctantly, as if he didn’t really want to answer me. There was a new flare of hatred in my belly, but it didn’t feel directed at me, it seemed like Raj was furious with himself. “Taft told her about me.” A gasp went up from Mateo as the djinn continued, “I don’t know how he found out.”
I did. I’d sent the blue man to spy on Watkins and they’d been roommates. Clearly the nixe found out something different than expected. But when? And why had he gone to Sahar?
“How long ago?” Try though I might to keep my royal tone, my throat closed up at the end of the question and it came out pitchy. Hurt.
“After the whirlpool,” Raj responded.
I’d been bedridden and Taft had gone to her. So, she hadn’t been my enemy until the end. Or at least hadn’t had the means to do so.
“Keelan!” Sahar gasped, extending her good hand down toward her son, as if she wanted to hold him one last time. I glanced at her wound and realized that her body heat was slowly melting the spear inside her belly. She had minutes, perhaps less.
My head swiveled to look at Keelan’s ashen face. Red rimmed eyes blinked up at me—and I watched a man as his belief broke, snapped in half by a reality he had never expected.
As much as her betrayal hurt me, his anguish was worse. I’d felt it—that realization that I was born of a monster. My fingers flicked and he rose up next to me, the water creating a matching liquid cape and throne for him, though he didn’t sit. He stood, eyes fixated on Sahar, though his expression was distant.
