Kaden swallowed and edged closer, as though he were contemplating scooping me up and flying back across the cavern.
The Watchman’s half-rotted nose twitched as he scented the air, and those bloodied pits narrowed in reproach. “Kaden, son of Elowynn, destroyer of realms, and a huntress with the powers of a . . .” He paused to consider before his mouth split into an unsettling grin, revealing rows of broken teeth. “Coranthe witch.”
The Watchman moved his head from side to side, and I had the odd feeling that he was looking at Kaden, though there was no way to know for sure. “You should not have come, Dark One.”
His words rumbled through me with an undeniable sense of foreboding — not a warning, I realized a second too late.
No. The Watchman was a creature who gave no warnings.
He raised that staff in his wasted arm and brought it down with a resounding thud that echoed through the cavern.
Immediately, I felt the power in the fortress shift in response. Terror clanged through me as I glanced over the ledge and beheld the churning wall of dark water rising from below.
The waves thrashed and raged at the Watchman’s command, rising until they formed a shimmering whirlpool of fetid water around us.
I glanced at Kaden, whose face mirrored my own unease. The Watchman’s body blurred behind the wall ofwaves, and he raised his driftwood staff. The solid mass of water split down the middle, whooshing between me and Kaden and creating a wall that separated us.
My unease morphed into panic as the whirlpool contracted, pressing in on me from all sides.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Desperate, thrashing helplessness.
That was what it felt like to drown.
With the water the Watchman commanded crashing in on me from all sides, I was nothing but an insect swept away by a flood.
I held my breath, but water forced itself into my airways. My lungs seized with the pain of a thousand white-hot knives, and my own tears mixed with the salt of the sea.
It was horrifyingly silent inside that crushing storm of water. I couldn’t yell. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t hear Kaden as he drowned beside me in his own tide of doom.
My chest burned as I kicked and fought, but there was nothing I could do. I was no match for the Watchman’s magic — no match for the sea he so ruthlessly commanded.
I could feel the darkness pulling me under — feel my body failing me. But I forced my eyes open as I pummeled the waves, determined to face my enemy.
There was only more darkness.
I was going to drown, I realized. This was how it would end.
I’d nearly died the night Silas had found me in that alleyway, and I’d spent my evenings hunting down vampires ever since.
I’d staved off death even as I’d walked beside it. Now I was going to drown on dry land.
But just as that cruel reality began to sink in, I felt my legs give out from under me. The water released me from its grip, and I crashed onto solid rock in a torrent of brackish water. It streamed down my face and arms, which were now splayed on smooth, cold rock.
My lungs seized painfully as I retched, expelling a stomach full of nasty water. With great effort, I pushed myself up on all fours, my arms quivering with the strain of holding myself up.
Gasping and choking, I looked over and saw Kaden hunched in a similar fashion.
He looked so awful that a streak of fear chased away my own discomfort. His usually tan skin was pale and clammy, and his eyes seemed unnaturally bright. His wet hair was plastered to the side of his face, which, for one unguarded moment, was swathed in pain like I’d never seen on him.
He seemed to realize that I was watching and hurriedly tucked it away, hiding it behind a mask of grim resolve as he surveyed our surroundings.
We were in some sort of sea cave whose mouth was open to the air. Metal bars spanned the entrance, and just below was the thrashing black sea we’d crossed to reach the Watchman’s fortress.
It was a cell — a cell carved into that bleak, jagged rock overlooking the ship graveyard.
