Page 80 of Waves
Gulping in a deep breath that erupted as steam before my eyes, the air around me was suddenly ice cold instead of hot.
Was I dead?
But how was I still floating? Why did my wings still ache? My neck swiveled and I realized that Avia and I were encased in a giant floating globe of ice. Tendrils of amber lightning zagged across the surface, crackling—making it glow so brightly that I had to squint. With force that sounded like the lash of a whip, the lightning cracked the ice. Fractures spread and deepened, and massive chunks of the sphere broke off and plunged into the depths of the ocean below. But by then, the light was retreating,spent and defeated. Thunder belted through my ears as I turned back to stare in awe at the queen.
She’d saved me.
Not once, in a thousand years, not even in my earliest memories, had someone ever shielded me, stopped fate from extracting its pound of flesh.
But she had.
Chapter 35
Avia
“Avia!” Keelan’s frantic shout overpowered the howl of the wind, and I twisted around to see him burst up through the waves just beside me, his bad arm wrapped around Mr. Whelk’s back, the turtle bearing most of his weight. His eyes screamed nearly as loud as he did—fear radiating from him.
His mother surfaced a moment later, wet hair fanned out across the waves as she reached toward her son, though they were separated by several waves. “Keelan!” Her lower lip trembled, and her expression dragged at my heart because it was the same expression that Queen Gela had worn the moment we found out Bloss had run away.
We’d been in her chambers selecting necklaces for my sister’s wedding, when a page had rushed in. Queen Gela had paled, clasped her hands in front of her heart, and gotten a look on her face—the very look that Sahar had as she reached for Keelan and latched onto his arm with one hand.
A hand that had a black ring on one finger.
My lungs seized for a moment, and I couldn’t breathe.
Raj’s ring.
The world seemed to narrow. The beams of light in the distance that signaled an end to this storm disappeared from view. I stopped feeling the sputtering rain on my arms. The grumbling tone of the dragon poised in the sky over my heart evaporated.
That ring was the only thing I could see.
That tiny black gash across Sahar’s finger was like a sword through the ribs—a deep, sweeping, painful thrust that sliced me apart.
She was behind everything?
The woman I'd trusted above all others? Whose son I'd fallen in love with? Who stayed at my side day in and day out as I was plagued by one issue after the next? The throb inside my chest reverberated all the way up my throat and I nearly choked from the pain of it. All my worst fears coalesced—she was the embodiment of the treachery I feared. The treachery I probably deserved, because I knew how evil I could be, could feel the monster beneath my skin even now.
When?I wanted to ask as Sahar yanked her son closer, protectively, and the ache of betrayal morphed into a deep-seated longing.
How many nights had I wished for a mother like that?
Someone who’d come for me.
Hold me close.
Neither Gela nor Mali had cared for me at all.
Depression soaked into my skin, as cold as the pelting rain.
But beneath that ice-cold self-loathing there was a warm bit of emotion. A bit of fight left.
Bloss had come for me.
I didn’t have a mother, but I had a sister who’d torn the world apart to get me back.
A deep throb of gratitude pulsed through me. Love. And it helped me understand Sahar’s betrayal. Understanding had aprice, however. My moment of reflection cost me, because the second that Sahar had Keelan plastered to her side, she reached for her ring.
Fury snapped its teeth, the dark desire to retaliate and cage her—dangle her above the ocean on a plank suspended from a ship, letting the sharks jump to bite at her, and the gulls to gorge on her eyeballs, letting her skeleton drift across the sea as a warning to all my enemies?—
