Frederik returns. If his heart were beating, I know it would be
thundering out of his chest. I want to ask if Marty is okay. But the
vampire growls like a lion.
The next wave of merrows is marching up to us. Kurt and I move
forward, he with the head of the trident and me with the scepter, like
Kleos and Ellanos, the old kings of the sea.
Then a bright light rises from the waves, behind the line of
merrows.
A conch blasts through the air.
Riding on the back of a great sea horse is Princess Kai. Behind
her surfaces a small army of mermen, their breastplates shimmering in
the dark.
“That’s my guard.” Kurt takes a step forward. “What are they doing
here?”
“Who cares?” Frederik says. “As long as they’re here to fight.”
Kai blows on the conch once again, waving her golden sword in the
air.
And we race against the merrows, a clash of sand and sea.
If my boys had asked me how I was going to spend my summer, never
would I ever have said this:
Screaming at the top of my lungs until I don’t recognize my own
voice. Running, running, running against the wave of merrows,
accompanied by an alliance of supernatural creatures and members of
the Sea Guard.
If I’d once thought Kurt was threatening in his stoic poise, I
know now that’s nothing compared to the way the Sea Guard moves.
They’re a unit, as if they read each other’s minds. The night is full
of final screams before the opposing fighters fall away into the
coming waves. The tide pulls away the bodies, those that don’t break
away the way we do.
In the onslaught, Archer wades toward me. He’s weaponless.
“This is your chance, Archer.” I hold my scepter between us, the
light dragging shadows across his chiseled face. “Go back to Nieve and
tell her she’ll never have me and she’ll never have Kurt.”
He bares his canine smile at me. His eyes flicker to the right
where Adaro’s ship is floating precariously. Layla’s scream fills the
night-over the warrior yells, over the pulse of my heart in my ears. I
can’t see her, but I know she’s there.
“She already has you, brother.”
My feet pound the sand, racing through the battle, toward the
fire, as Archer shouts, “And when she has you, she will never let go.”
Though I can hear someone call my name, I don’t stop. A horde of
merrows step in my way and I drive my scepter downward, ripping into
the sand. A wave pushes the merrows into the rift, and when I pull my
scepter free, the ground closes.
I keep going toward the blue flames on Adaro’s ship.
I climb up the side, past the painful moans of merfolk floating
below. I think of what my mother said to me earlier: “You can’t save
them all.”
It’s childish and stupid to want to ask why? Why can’t I? But here
I am, hoisting over the side of a ship gone up in flames. The sails
have been reduced to cinder and the mast breaks. I jump to the side as
it falls against the pier. I shout her name. Layla, Layla, Layla!
It isn’t her voice that answers but Adaro’s. Under the shadows of
his fiery ship, Adaro lies alone on the deck. His eyes are barely
open, but he grabs the sword in his chest. Like with Kai’s father,
it’s just short of a killing blow. I kneel beside him. I’m afraid to
touch him. He might fall apart like the others. I wonder, how many
times will I have to hold on to the dead?
Adaro grunts. There’s nothing for me to do here but try to give
him the smallest bit of comfort. There are tiny thorns on his chest,
red where the poison has trickled into his veins, black and pronounced
under thinning flesh.
“Do you want me to save him?” Nieve asks. When I turn around,
she’s not there.
I inch step by step along the deck.
Her voice carries over the ship.
She’s nestled in water. It wraps around her and raises her level
to the deck. Her fingers grip the Staff of Eternity.
She’s playing me. Nothing can save him. I know it deep in my
heart. “Where is she?”
Nieve has regenerated. Her skin breathes with new life. Her white
hair shines under the nearly full moon, just visible against the black
sky breaking through storm clouds. The blue is gone from her lips,
replaced by a full scarlet mouth. “I can do it, you know. Save him.”
“In exchange for this?” I hold my scepter sideways, so hard that
my knuckles are white.
“How did you know?” Her voice is dry, amused, and full of venom.
“Everything has a price.”
“So true,” she says. “But I am no oracle. I do not require
anything but your devotion. Your love.”
“Look at what you’ve done!” I spit over the ship at her. “How
could anyone love you?”
“I didn’t start this, Tristan.” She’s serene in her confidence.
“My children know the things I did to make them well when no one else
would take them. All our creatures are precious. I do this for our
kind. I do this for us.”
“That’s why you sent Jesse to die for you?”
“That’s why I sent Jesse to distract you.” She turns the staff in
her hands. “You’re as impulsive as my brother, never stopping to look.
You see only what’s directly in front of you. Only what you want in
the moment.”
“You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”
“Don’t you dare…” Behind me, Adaro’s voice comes in an angry
whisper. “Don’t you dare give in to her.”
That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? If I let him die, it’ll be my
fault. Like Ryan, like Marty. No, Marty’s fine. I saved Marty, like I
couldn’t save the others. Everything that’s happening here is my
fault. In the dark of the night, the silver witch waits for me to
devote myself to her.
Deep in my heart, I know what my grandfather would do. He locked
her away for a reason, but she found her way out. Everything she does
is calculated, studying us like prey before she swoops in and swallows
us whole. She’s one step ahead of me, knowing that I won’t let her
kill Adaro. If I were my grandfather, I would have done things
differently. Then again, I’m not him. I’m me.
“I thought you’d hesitate.” She squeezes her hand, and when I turn
around, Adaro screams like he’s burning from the inside. It’s cut off
abruptly as, little by little, he erupts into bubbles, trickling away
on the deck until he’s nothing but a pile of sand. Everything he ever
was. Everything he would ever be is blowing away in the wind. Poof ,
just like that.
On the deck of the ship, I point the quartz scepter at her.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Tristan.” She lifts herself in the
wave again. The wind is drying her hair, giving her the effect of
flying.
I ready myself on the ledge. “Get off your wave, and we’ll settle
this once and for all.”
“You can’t kill me. You must know that.”
“Because Archer brought you the spring water.”
She nods. “And the more I drink it, the stronger my magic and the
more I can help our kind.”
“I can still hurt you,” I say, hoping it’s true. Hoping Layla is
safe.
“This is all wrong, Tristan. Don’t you see? I don’t want you dead.
I want you with me.” The rains start up again. She lifts the staff
over her head and pulls at the sky until the lightning returns. “And
the scepter, of course. If Adaro’s life wasn’t enough, then perhaps
this one will make you feel differently.”
She casts light over the pier.
Gwen stands at the edge, a small silver knife in her hand, the
blade pressed against Layla’s neck.
“Gwen!”
She won’t look me in the eye. Like inside the reef house. Like