Time fucking stopped.
67
Maren
The door to Selena’s apartment burst in a spray of wood. The tip of a sword broke through, halting after only cutting through a few inches, but then it withdrew and struck again, sending more wooden chips flying behind Kye’s head as he stared at me.
I stared back at him, oxygen flooding my veins with relief after I’d finally let myself transition and open my reserve of air. I’d held out as long as I could. Longer than any human.
My hair floated around my face, dancing in time with the lithe vines of shield weed. And the long, lustrous fins of my tail did the same, weightless in the water. Kye watched me, wide-eyed, palms pressed into the glass so hard his fingerprints flattened against the early sunshine.
And I was all out of whatever energy I’d restored under the moon the hour before, fighting to stay afloat. I couldn’t even lift my head to gaze eye-level at Kye. Beyond the water, his shoulders sagged. He slowly lowered into a crouch, knees falling to the floor.
I closed my eyes, unable to look at him.
A final crack, and the wooden door exploded. It hung from its hinges on one side, the other springing free of its lock and falling flat inside the room. Selena marched over the top of it, and Kye’s blade looked too big in her hands, but she cut through the barrage of broken furniture straight to me, sword raised over her head.
The piercing glass was a stroke of lightning in my ears. Lines printed across the surface in an instant, fractured and thin, a spiderweb that span from the floor to the iron lid. Selena hit it again.
And then a sudden current yanked me through. I tumbled out with the escaping water and a river of broken glass and weed. Arms caught me before I made it very far, pulling me into warmth, turning my shoulders so my face pointed up and swiping hair from my mouth. Molten gold eyes stared in shock, but fingers curled tight around my arms, and Kye’s throat bobbed.
I hardly noticed Selena as she made a noise very close to a growl, stalking to the opposite side of the room and slamming the blade into Thaan’s door. Seated on the floor, legs askew and back sloped against the wall, Thaan shook his head. “Don’t.”
“I want to be sure he’s gone, the traitorous bastard,” Selena spat. She lifted the blade again, bringing it down hard enough it stuck, and hoisted her foot to the door to yank it out when suddenly it blew open. And threw her to the other side of the room.
Cain stood in the doorway.
Water covered every inch of the floor, and it began to rise in tiny, sparkling drops. Everywhere. Like strings of glass beads lifted toward the ceiling, as clear as crystal and as thick as mist.
Thaan shoved to his feet, eyes mutinous, and then froze. His hands went to his throat, clawing and raking at his neck, scoring his own skin, eyes suddenly bulging as his face flushed violet.
“Stop,” Selena cried, rolling onto her hip. A gash in her temple from the thrown door streamed down her cheek and into the hair behind her jaw.
Cain plucked his glasses from his nose and tossed them away. He paced into the room, and the water beads around him followed his step. Kye pushed me off his lap, rotating toward the small man, but the beads pressed against him, slowing his attack until he stood unmoving, trapped like a mouse under a mountain of stone pebbles. Cain stole another foot inside, hands carelessly held out in front of him, and the beads pushed against us all. They bit into my skin, a thousand of them, forcing me upright and then carrying me over soggy seaweed and shards of glass.
I pushed back, fighting for control of the water—but my reserves had long since depleted. Locked tight, I couldn’t even open my mouth to speak. I might’ve been a queen. But even a queen can be useless.
Cain continued to the center of the room, all of us locked in the watery grasp around him. He stopped. Bent at the waist. And reached a hand to the floor, flicking aside a sprig of weed.
Unburied, the Breath of Safiro gleamed.
Electricity sparkled in Cain’s gaze.
He stretched a single finger to the stone. And reeled back as though it had burned him.
Then his eyes found mine. Myspiculaehardened under cold claws at the base of my neck, so strong I choked.
And before he lit toward me, I knew he planned to leave the palace. And take me with him.
His first step pressed Kye over the jagged lip of the empty glass box. His second separated Kye’s body from mine. His third laid me flat against the sodden floor, but his fourth drew him close enough that the beads lifted. He kneeled down, tilting his headas he studied me, pronate and motionless. Trapped under hard beads of glassy water.
“In the volcano?”
I bared my teeth at him. “Yes.”
“Under ice?”
“If you know, why do you ask?”
