Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 145704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
My eyes bulge with surprise. Me? For what? I shoot her a questioning look, but she’s not paying attention to us, her head bent forward as if in prayer.
Whatever this powerful elemental is about to do, it involves her abilities—the three shimmering emblems marked on her forearm, hidden beneath the heavy wool, that depict her affinities to water, air, and earth.
A breeze stirs from the dead calm, like a teasing summer wind, fluttering strands of my hair, caressing my cheek.
“Ready!” Boaz roars from the shore as the soldiers prepare another barrage. His voice sends fresh fear coursing through me.
“Not yet …,” Gesine whispers, her eyes still closed. “Romeria, you have Aoife’s ring on your finger and Princess Romeria’s affinity flowing through your limbs. Use them.”
“I don’t know how.” I falter over my objection. I didn’t know how the day of the nethertaur attack either, but somehow, I sent a water beast colliding with it.
Zander rows hard as he watches the shoreline. “We need to stop those arrows. Use the sea.”
“How?” I plead for an answer because I’m drawing a blank. How do you use water to stop a flying steel blade?
“Fates,” Elisaf hisses as more arrows shoot into the sky in unison, gliding steadily toward us. They will rain down on this wooden skiff in seconds, and Elisaf is right—Boaz won’t miss twice.
My pulse drums in my head like the second hand on a clock.
Zander drops his oars and dives forward, sheltering me. Willing to take the onslaught of deadly arrows for me again. His arms tighten. “If only we’d met in your world instead,” he whispers, his lips grazing my ear.
Then maybe we would have had a chance, I finish in my thoughts. I can’t resist the urge to reach for his chest, to press my palm against the warmth and feel the steady, strong beat of a heart that is likely moments away from stopping forever.
This can’t be it, a voice inside my head screams. After all we’ve been through, this can’t be how our story ends, like lame, cowering ducks before a firing squad.
The need to protect Zander, to shield him as he shields me, surges through my body. I struggle against his grip. “Let me go.”
Zander’s arms only tighten their hold.
Dread, panic, and anger flare inside me as we brace for impact.
But the seconds stretch and the arrows never reach us, splashing into the water, faint sizzles as flames die. And then an eerie silence takes over.
Zander shifts away from me, and we peer toward Cirilea.
I squint into the dark, my view of the city blurred. “Is that—”
The wall of water crashes like a dropped curtain, scattering waves that rock our boat, pushing us farther out.
“That is how you use the sea.” Satisfaction laces Zander’s voice.
“The arrows bounced off it like useless toothpicks.” Elisaf sounds equally amazed.
It dawns on me. “I did that.” I needed to protect Zander—all of us, but he is who I was focused on—and that need channeled through this ring to create a shield. The gold band is still warm against my skin.
“It certainly was not me.”
Gesine remains standing. Her eyes are open, glowing a vivid green that reminds me of the daaknar, not in color but in intensity, as if they could bore holes through any surface. She’s focused on something unseen behind our skiff, her palms raised, hands trembling. The emblem of the silver butterfly on her forearm glows brighter than the other two. “Either I eliminate those soldiers trying to kill us or I take us out of range of their arrows. It is one or the other, and my hold on this element is not infinite. Your Highness.”
She’s asking for an order from the king.
Zander hesitates, weighing his thoughts on the shoreline where Boaz is likely scrambling to prepare another fiery assault.
“There are innocent people in the Rookery,” I remind him. People who helped us escape tonight. People who don’t deserve to suffer more than they already have. What exactly does eliminating those soldiers mean, besides the obvious? “They can’t become collateral damage.”
“And killing the soldiers will not end the opposition,” he says, as if thinking aloud.
Boaz’s commanding shouts ring out, and tension cords my neck. “What if I can’t block those arrows again?” I don’t understand how I did it in the first place.
“Choose now!” Gesine demands in a voice foreign to her normally calm deference.
“Get us out of here.” There’s resignation in Zander’s tone, as if he’d prefer to select the first option.
“I suggest you hold on.”
My hand has barely closed over the skiff’s rail when a gust sweeps in from behind us, strengthening by the second until my elaborate braids lash about and a relentless, high-pitched whistle drowns out all other sound.
I sense us sailing across the water. Shielding a hand against my eyes, I search the darkness, a mixture of numb terror and unbridled awe warring within. Sprays of seawater batter me from all sides, stifling my breath and soaking my clothes.