“I will destroy everyone you love,” Leomaris tells me. “And it
gives me great satisfaction knowing you won’t be there to save them.”
Then the herald of the Southern Seas dives backward into the
whirlpool he summoned. His men follow and then the sea is still. The
vial spins in the air, suspended, until it shatters onto the deck,
bleeding blue fire.
The explosion burns black and blue. The flames are living things,
slithering along the deck, up the masts and chomping away at the
sails. I try frantically to make my scepter work, but with every
heaving breath, my insides ache and fill with smoke, and I know the
power is gone. I don’t understand what I did-
A ringing fills my head, the aftereffect of the first blast. I
grit my teeth to stop myself from screaming. Arion isn’t screaming. In
fact, when I open my eyes, Arion isn’t beside me.
He hangs from one hand that looks broken. Blasts fill the morning
sky as the combat fire eats our powder keg. It’s like the Fourth of
July. The contents of the ship are like shrapnel. Something hot stabs
my thigh.
Get up, Tristan, I tell myself. Get up or die.
“Leave me,” Arion yells, hoarse desperation in his voice.
But I can’t leave him behind. I can’t leave him like this.
I push myself up on the side of the ship for support. Blue flames
crackle and devour the deck, licking at my heels as I make my way to
where Arion hangs at the masthead. The sound of wood breaking is like
the tick of a time bomb. The ship snaps in half, and I slam into the
knobs of the steering wheel.
Arion is screaming.
My blade slices through the ropes tying down his right hand. It
gives! His hand hangs broken and he slumps against me.
“I got you,” I say. “Just two more.”
But when I look into his onyx eyes, I know he heard it too-the
sizzle of fire as it consumes our weapons hold below, followed by a
blinding white-blue light, a deafening silence, and then our screams
as the rest of the ship blows up, and a gust knocks me into the waves.
The first time I was lost at sea, I was unconscious.
Now, I snap awake with the knowledge that I have no idea where I
am. I taste blood in the water and know it’s mine. A few feet ahead is
the shipwreck. It’s the same ship that took me to Toliss Island to
present me to my grandfather and the Sea Court. That took me to the
Vanishing Cove. That brought me back to Coney Island.
Tumultuous waves pull me in different directions, but I keep my
eyes trained on the burning ship and swim around it. All of its
contents are spilling from the seams. Silverware, cannon balls,
daggers, and the glass jars the urchin brothers collected. The rest is
burned beyond recognition.
I see a familiar black mound and swim to it, each flick of my tail
sending an agonizing shock through my body. Five, six, seven, I reach
it. My backpack. I sling my arms through the straps. It’s a tiny bit
of hope, and I let it fill my head. I watch the wreckage, trying to
spot Brendan or Kai or Arion. I wait and wait, but soon the flames eat
at the wood like a match igniting a cigarette.
I want to shout their names, but I know better. My ears perk up at
a distant echo. I haven’t spent much time communicating underwater,
but I know it isn’t friendly. Poseidon, Vishnu, sweet Baby Jesus, I
say. Please, please let my friends be safe.
The sharp cry gets louder. Nieve’s merrows have found me. I can
finally understand what they’re saying. They can smell combat fire and
my blood. They’ve found the champion’s ship.
I swim up to the surface where it feels like I’m in the middle of
a cloud. With the best breaststroke that won All-City Champ three
years in a row, I head right into the mist.
•••
When Brendan said the mist was terrifying, I didn’t think he meant
this.
The change is unnoticeable at first. Fog, thick and wet, envelops
me. The cries of my hunters are replaced by whispers along my skin.
Fish the size of marbles rise up from the depths and jump all around
me. This is not a good time to be attracting fish like I’m the Snow
White of the seven seas. Except these fish bite. The first one doesn’t
hurt, but then their white shimmering bodies become a swarm. I pull
out my scepter and concentrate on its energy connected to mine. I
thrust it outward and wait for the blinding white light to come from
the crystal but it doesn’t. The cold gold feels like lead in my hand,
and the swarm comes down on me one more time, pulling me under.
I flash back to this one time at the aquarium in Coney Island. One
of the demonstrators threw a hunk of bloody meat in the piranha tank,
and within seconds, it was clean. If I don’t get these things off me,
I’m going to bleed out. I swipe at them with my tail, breaking their
formation, but they come back together, pulling me down. I’m going to
lose the mist. I scream in frustration as more of them appear out of
thin water.
I give my scepter one more try, and this time I let everything
I’ve been trying not to feel wash over me. I think about Layla, her
eyes full of rage as Gwen held a knife to her throat. I think about
Nieve, her moon-white face waiting expectantly because I was going to
surrender to her. I think about the very first time my grandfather
showed me the history of the kings in the pool of his chambers, my
very first time at Toliss Island, and I know that I’m stronger than
this. With a shudder, light bursts from the crystal of the scepter and
the mass of marble piranhas dissolves into foam.
I look down at my arms and the red bites are gone.
It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.
But I’m farther down than I thought. I race back to the surface. I
kick my tail as hard as I can, pushing against the pain in my bones,
my arm stretched out for the finish line. The moment my hand breaks
the surface and I touch the mist, I get sucked into its current.
I can’t remember the last time I went through a portal, but this
one feels like I’m getting squeezed into a compact little box. When I
come out in one piece, my whole body sighs.
I let the water push me onto the sandy shore.
I roll over and throw my backpack off.
The sand is white and soft and dotted with smooth oblong stones. I
pick some up and sift them between my fingers. I shut my eyes and
brace against the rip of my tail. Fiery numbness coats my skin and
then stops at my upper thighs where I leave the scales because, even
though I’m alone, I don’t feel like running around an unknown island
buck naked. I rub the scales on my knees and they dissolve into blue
sand. It takes me two tries to stand up, and even then my legs shake.
I take it in. A white sun and purple moon hang at opposite ends of
the sky, creating a gradient of night and day, as if the heavens are
stuck. I suppose in a land hidden from the human plane, it’s about
right. A sea breeze guides me inland where patches of grass rise to
calf length and a forest fans as wide as the shoreline and beyond.
I empty my backpack and take inventory of my weapons. A tiny knife
that can fit in my palm. I won it from a redheaded demigoddess with an
attitude. Some wet shirts and underwear-thanks, Mom, but I prefer my
tail. Rope. Empty water bottle with my school’s logo-the Thorne Hill
Knight. A flattened bag of chips. And a red stone from Shelly, the sea
oracle of Central Park.
I don’t know what the stone does, but it was enough to raise the
stakes of our poker game, which means it has to do something. I hold
it in my palm and envision the source of its magic. Before I can stop
myself, I imagine Gwen saying that magic is gradual and not instant. I