be at eye level with her.
“Look at me. Sarabell, look at me. What happened to Adaro?”
A torrent of rain beats against the barrier. A fat drop falls onto
my shoulder.
“The avians were supposed to be weatherproof,” Marty says,
shielding his eyes from the drizzle.
Then the ravens caw, flapping foot-long black wings. The avians
leave their posts and take off into the sky where they blow up like
lightbulbs, shattering sparks down on us. Their high-pitched screams
become a chorus as feathers scatter and fall like helicopter leaves.
The barrier is gone and the rain beats down.
Frederik jumps from the observation deck down to where we stand.
He grabs one of the guards by his shirt and seethes into his face.
“What. Happened?”
Confusion spreads through our army. No one answers. The guard
shakes his head, uselessly attempting to cover his eyes from
Frederik’s black glare. “I-I don’t know, Fred. They were fine a second
ago.”
“Get back to the plaza,” Frederik says. “ Now. ”
I grab Sarabell by her arm and lead her back in with the others. I
sit her down on the bench. “Thalia, stay with Sarabell. Don’t let her
out of your sight.”
“What happened to the birds?” Layla asks.
Up on the observation deck, the valkyries line up with their
crossbows. Down here in the plaza, we ready our weapons. I push Layla
behind me, smelling the stupidly brave smoke she’s giving off. I
search for Gwen in the crowd, but there are so many of us.
“We’ve been breached.” Frederik’s face is calm but I pick up the
tension in his voice. “The barrier is external. Only someone inside
can break it. I want everyone to form ranks at the entrance!”
I grab Sarabell by the arm. “Did you do this?”
She shakes her head, crying. I scream at her. I shake her. She’s a
wet doll in my hands. Someone screams my name, over and over again,
but my ears are popped, like I’m in a channel leagues and leagues
beneath the sea.
There’s something else weaving in the air, beneath Sarabell’s
frantic sobs and the pouring rain. My dagger hums. My scepter glows. I
can feel it. Energy. Crackling static. It pulses like a ring around
the reef house. Stronger and stronger.
“Get down!”
I say it too late.
The reef house erupts. Sends us flying backward. My ears ring. A
warm trickle snakes from my forehead to my chin. The observation deck
is now a hole. The animals in the tanks gasp for breath on the floor.
Rachel and her troupe reappear as smoke around us.
“Don’t look so happy to see me,” she says.
I get up from the ground. “Is everyone okay?”
Layla wipes my face with shaking hands. “You’re bleeding.”
“You too.” There’s a cut on her cheek. The skin mends instantly.
“It’s a good thing I’m already dead.” Frederik pulls a long piece
of glass from his collarbone.
Marty groans, “Do you know how hard it is to get blood off
corduroy?”
“It’s black.” Layla rolls her eyes. She winces when she arcs to
crack her back. “You can’t even see it.”
Thalia picks up Sarabell and sits her between two rows of bushes.
Everyone raises their weapons toward the crumbled reef house. At first
we only see shadows breaking through the settling dust.
Jesse emerges from what’s left of the building, trailed by more
than a dozen of his faithful landlocked. His clothes are shredded.
Under the rain, a thin layer of crushed sheetrock and brick clumps on
his skin. He peels back his raw, red mouth around buck-sharp teeth.
Rachel shoots, but Jesse holds his hand up and the arrow turns into
sand.
I step forward. Jesse picked the wrong day. He smiles with his
fat, raw lips.
“All this time on land,” I tell him. “And you never thought to get
braces?”
We charge each other at the same time. Arrows whiz by. The wet
slick of swords piercing flesh fills my ears.
I can’t see anyone but Jesse. I punch him across the face, but his
head snaps right back. His nails bite into me as we tumble across the
debris. His scaly knuckles tear at the thin skin of my temple. I jab a
fist once, twice in his gut and a knee to his groin. Jesse chokes, and
in the moment it takes for him to cradle himself, I take my dagger,
hot in my hands, and drive it straight through his chest.
I take pleasure in watching his black eyes roll into his skull.
Lips twitch. Body convulses. I hate myself for it. I wonder if he’ll
break apart the way the merrows do. I wonder if he’ll turn to coral
the way Kai’s father did. I’m hoping for the coral. That way I can
crush it with my bare hands.
Instead, Jesse’s eyes come back into focus. He shows me his palms;
the red dots spreading like a stain around his wrist.
Where he touches the blade in his chest, his hands give off smoke.
He screams against the burn, elated as he pushes Triton’s dagger away
and out of his chest. He throws it at my feet. The gash in his chest
singes but heals just as quickly.
“She’s here,” he says.
I pick up my dagger and charge at him again. If the pointy end
won’t make a difference, then there’s always the other end. I crack
his skull. He stumbles backward, laughing.
“You can’t hurt me! Can’t you see? Her most loyal subjects have
been rewarded. She is here, land prince. And she is waiting for you.”
A growl rumbles from deep inside him, like a giant after waking from a
hundred-year nap.
My friends have formed a semi-circle behind me, swords, fangs,
and-where did Marty find a baseball bat? I point at the dead bodies
around him.
“You brought your friends to die,” I say. A voice inside my head
whispers, He wanted them to die.
“They understood their purpose,” he says. Jesse’s face is
distorted. “As you will understand yours.”
Then there’s another crack of lightning, this time so close that I
can feel the jolt in my bones. It cuts through the air and goes
straight for Jesse, grabbing him like arms ten feet above the ground.
The ribbons of electricity don’t come from above. They come from the
parting crowd, where Kurt stands in a half shift, wielding the Trident
of the Skies.
With one final gust, the three prongs crackle, taking hold of
Jesse once more. The lightning rockets him miles into the air, until
he’s nothing more than a shadow in the night sky.
“What is this?” Thalia asks her brother.
There’s a definite and distinct look of awe in every set of eyes
that turns to Kurt. I know there is nothing like this kind of jealousy
that’s creeping through me. It’s ten times worse than when he formed
the instant bond with my mother. One hundred times worse than when I
saw Lucine hand him the head of the trident, her manic green eyes
looking at me through the two-way mirror. She wanted me to feel this
way.
Everything is falling away with the rain, cleaning the ground for
the future she saw come to pass. Kai’s words have never rung so true
or so loudly: Nothing matters to them but their secrets . Their need
to be listened to and needed in a world that’s forgotten them.
The question still hangs in the glances traded like notes between
class periods. He got into her pool. He stepped up and took the
trident from her. And yet, he still can’t say the words. So I do.
“Kurt is the last son of the Sea King,” I say. There’s a
slithering black thing in my heart. It’s jealousy and it has taken
form. He flinches when our eyes meet. “Adaro is dead.”
Pulled out of his spell, Kurt notices Sarabell. Dirty from Jesse’s
blast and red in the face from crying. “Nieve?”
“Which means,” I say, “she’s taken his staff.”