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I glanced at Bastian, who looked a lot like a man who knew his time was up. He quickly turned and summoned his shadow water, and it shot up from the ground, cloaking him in flowing midnight before it twisted into a cyclone that he drove into the walls. The whole place shook violently and sent chunks of stone raining down. I dodged them just barely, running to meet Milo as he worked to salvage Bellamy’s body amidst the chaos. As he lifted him, the steps cracked between them, pulling apart and ripping Bellamy out of his reach. Milo’s half gave way, and the only thing he could do to avoid falling to the churning water below was to throw himself to the only piece of solid floor left—the same piece on which I stood. He stumbled off the quaking steps toward me just as they collapsed behind him.
Serena knelt on the altar, face in her hands as she groaned Bellamy’s name in agony. Through her tears, she paused long enough to catch Bellamy’s body with a wave before he slid into the sea. The wave cradled him in place, holding his limp figure safely out of reach of the torrent. Serena cried his name, and drew it back to her, where she pulled him from the water and held him in her arms as everything around her toppled to pieces.
The squeal of McKenzie drew my attention from behind. I whipped around to see her with Noah, running as he tried to shield them both from the crumbling ceiling. The floor was giving way and pieces of it sloughed off into the ocean below the cliff it was built on.
“Both of you get out of here NOW!” I screamed.
“We’re not leaving you!” McKenzie screamed.
“Yes you are!” I summoned water from the sea behind me and sent forth a blast that whisked them both away and back to safe, dry ground. I just hoped my mom had stayed put at least wherever Noah had taken her.
I’m okay. Don’t worry, Trina.
I didn’t expect to hear her voice in my head right then, but I couldn’t have been more glad of it.
Good. I’ll see you soon. I called back to her. Just stay away from the sea right now.
There was an unusually long pause.
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Trina.
“Mom, what is that supposed to mean?” I blurted out loud. She never answered me.
Milo finally reached me and urged me to the exit back to the tunnel. “You need to go…What? What’s wrong?” He panted, taking notice of the twisted look of confusion on my face.
“Nothing,” I lied, shaking away the thoughts of Mom for a moment. “But I can’t leave! Bastian’s getting away.”
“Serena will take care of him! It’s not your fight anymore.”
“Oh yeah? Where is she then?” I screamed, realizing she was no longer up on the altar. And neither was Bellamy’s body. As I glanced up, the altar still somehow intact despite the rest of the fort having crumbled to pieces around it.
The watchtower above us had long fallen, leaving an open night sky above us and the sea before us. Milo and I stood on the open ledge, searching desperately for any sign of Serena or Bastian.
“I don’t see them. What if Serena’s too heartbroken to stop Bastian?” The ocean wind whipped my hair across my face, and I spat out the wild-blowing strands as I tried to talk through them.
“Surely she wouldn’t let Bellamy die for nothing!” Milo screamed over the roar of the water that seemed to be crashing up against the cliff more and more loudly by the second.
There was a bubbling in the ocean, marked by a heavy darkness rising up from the bottom. It bloomed into a bubbling fountain of black, and the waves around it churned, parting to reveal the top of a charred mast. The water continued swirling, and the wind grew stronger as it lifted a ship from the depths. But this ship was in pieces, with wooden slats missing and broken mast poles and torn sails. It was coated in an inky black, similar to the dark matter around Bastian…almost like tar. And Bastian himself was at the helm, a vision of his true self. No longer an eccentric, vibrant club-owning collector, but a dark sea captain dripping with power and the decay of the souls he kept captive.
“His ship.” Milo muttered, his eyes wide as he watched the ship rising up before him. “He’s trying to run.”
My eyes scanned the waters, and I remembered what my mom said. Was she down there? And more importantly, if she was, why would she be?
I suddenly felt a call to jump in as well. The sea tugged at my soul and my siren side was immediately in control. I resisted, though it was like trying to ignore an all-you-can-eat buffet on an empty stomach. Painful, tempting, and hard as hell.
Suddenly something burst forth from the water, glowing with a light that illuminated the crystal waters around it for meters. It was Serena, wearing the sea as a flowing gown, and no longer the size of a human. She was now a giant—at least two or three times the size of her normal height. The Crown on her head dripped with golden droplets, as if the water that touched it melted right into the precious metal.
The call of the ocean grew louder. I stepped forward, ready to let myself drop right in. Milo gripped my arm from behind. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I said, turning around to look at him. “I just have to go. I can’t stop it.”
He looked at me with a long pause. He pressed his lips together and released my arm. “Your eyes are blue. Go on and do what you have to do.”
I nodded and with a leap forward, I dove off the cliff into the ocean. I’d never fallen from such a height before, but the need to be in the water below overrode the fear of the drop. Crashing into the waves, my lower half quickly morphed into a tail and all at once, I was at home.
51
Seafoam
