A moving shape catches my attention. A fin stuck beneath a
boulder.
“Well, look at you,” I say. “Big bad oracle got squished by a
rock?”
Lucine hisses at me, using her free fin to try to get me. “It’s a
curse, you know, killing one of us.”
“I think you made that up,” I say. “The same way you made up those
prophecies to Kurt. You never told my grandfather to choose him, did
you? You told my grandfather to pardon his sister.”
She snarls at me, her emerald eyes as bright as beams. “You don’t
have the nerve to hurt me.”
“Oh, I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “She is.”
Thalia, who’s been standing behind Lucine, is caked in black
blood.
“Kurtomathetis will never forgive you,” Lucine says, starting at
the sword in Thalia’s hand.
“Kurtomathetis will never forgive you either.” I point to where
Kurt is channeling all of his pent-up rage on his enemies.
Then I do a double take when I see me yelling, running backward as
Nieve comes down from her whirlwind and races toward Marty/Me.
I break into a run. Marty/Me holds his sword up at Nieve’s face,
and she stares at the blade curiously. She knows. She knows it’s not
me.
Doris neighs in the back of my head, and this connection to the
giant sea horse is like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach in
the same direction at the same time. Waiting for you, she tells me.
I’m coming, I think. Hang on.
Rachel appears beside Marty in a puff of smoke. She raises the
crossbow at Nieve’s face, the arrow snapping straight to her forehead.
Nieve blocks the arrow with the trident and the arrow’s trajectory
switches, landing straight in the heart of a female vampire. She gasps
with the shock of the wood sticking out of her chest. Rachel screams
and reappears beside the girl. I didn’t know her name. I should’ve.
She burns from the inside, her mouth still open, ready to take in a
breath that isn’t there. In the breeze, she gets carried away into
dust.
Nieve sees me, the real me. She looks back and forth between me
and Marty, and that’s when I jump, grabbing her around her waist. Her
nails dig into my back, but I push her into the lake where a whirlpool
has started.
I need to take her away from here, away from my friends.
She holds on to me as we spin in a rush out of the Toliss tunnels.
Doris? I ask. Are you there?
But I’m met with quiet. Nieve pulls back the trident, her scream a
long echo through the dark sea. I try to back away, but the currents
pull me closer to her.
Nieve is confused as a neighing sound answers her back. I push
upward toward the surface and Nieve follows. I hold out my hand,
reaching for the creature swimming straight for me. Its skin is like a
prism, part reptilian, part scales. Doris flicks her nose up and
pushes Nieve away from me.
When I saw the original three kings ride the animals, they were
the same size. It was true, that we used to be bigger. Doris is the
size of a whale.
Hold on , her strange animal voice tells me.
And I do. I grab on to the slippery mane, bracing my knees against
her neck as she rips through the surface. Above, the storm is worse
than before. The sea is teeming with yellow eyes marching toward the
beaches.
A sea dragon screeches nearby, swooping down toward us for a good
bite of me. When I turn around, squinting against the sea spray, the
sea horse’s tail bats at the sky and takes out the dragon. Its wings
flap in the water. With another kick, the screeching beast loses
consciousness.
Then Nieve is right beside us, grabbing on to the spikes of the
giant turtle. She holds on as the creature swims toward the Coney
Island shore. She aims the trident and blasts at us. Doris is quick
and dives. The force of it almost knocks me sideways, but I hold on
until we’re on the other side of the turtle.
“I have a faster ride than you,” I yell at Nieve.
I want you to get as close as possible. I need to get on that
shell.
Doris shakes her head.
I have to get on that shell!
She makes a terrible sound but takes me closer. The storm has
moved with us, Nieve controlling its forces. I remember once my
grandfather told me that the old kings shaped the seas, the land
masses, all with their storms. Nieve could do the same now. All she
has to do is bury the shore beneath the waves.
You take care of that turtle , I command her. This she likes. See?
We make a good team.
Doris kicks out with her claws, grinding against the shell like
nails on a chalkboard. The turtle is slow because it’s so huge. When
I’m on its back, I press my hand to the rough skin of its neck, the
part exposed outside the shell. He’s bleeding where my sea horse has
cut him.
“It’s not like you to hide,” I yell, turning in a circle. I can
feel her near me, but she keeps herself out of sight.
“I do not hide from you.” Nieve holds on to a spike, the trident
in her hand.
She’s worried. I can tell she’s worried because her pale blue eyes
watch the surface of the water.
Now? Doris asks.
Not yet , I say.
I walk behind a spike, giving her enough time to strike me, but
she doesn’t. She’s trying to figure out how I could command one of the
giants without the trident. She’s trying to figure out why the full
power of it isn’t hers.
Now? Doris asks.
Not yet, I say.
“You’ve got nothing left, you know,” I say. “You killed your own
daughter. Kurt is with Archer. The rest-you don’t care about their
lives, do you?”
She blasts me with the trident, but I stand sideways behind a
spike. The turtle, on the other hand, feels it and moans.
I keep my back pressed to the rough bone. “I told Gwen this is
what you were. I told her.”
“She was everything to me,” Nieve said. “Everything I have done
was for her.”
“No, it wasn’t. Everything you’ve done was for you.”
“What do you know of our world?” She moves between the spikes, the
smack of her feet getting closer, the mist turning into drizzle. “You
have never known the wrath of the kings. You have never been on the
other side of love.”
“You’re right,” I say. She’s surprised that I agree with her, but
she’s right about that. “I have never known. All of my life, I’ve been
pretty content not knowing. All of my life, I’ve had everything. Then
it was taken away-by my grandfather, by you, by my own choices. But
I’m going to get it all back.”
She laughs, a sound that sends the blood running through my veins,
a laugh that threatens to swallow the whole world. “You are powerless,
Tristan. I have the trident.”
I step out from behind the shell.
Now? Doris asks.
Nieve holds the trident over her head, and the three prongs reach
up to the sky. The quartz crystal is full of light and angled at my
face.
Now!
I don’t move out of the way.
Not right away at least. I’m not that crazy.
I don’t move for a breath, the quartz coming straight at me.
I grab it, and the light pulses in tune with my heartbeat. The
turtle heaves as Doris crashes into him. Nieve and I tilt toward the
sea but I hold on. I have my hands around the Scepter of the Earth and
then I twist.
The weapon slides out and the trident breaks.
Nieve slips and falls at my feet, as if I’ve taken the wind out of
her. That’s how it felt when I woke up in the Toliss chambers after
the sea dragon grabbed me from the cliff. That’s what it felt like