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“Eventually, I found someone I could tolerate enough to use for my survival. A man with connections and wealth that I knew I could leverage to begin building my new life on land. I’ve worked hard to forget his name. Because I remember how he treated me. And how he treated our daughter, who I never wanted to bring into this world in the first place. Poor sweet Marina. She was a fool just like you. Trying to chase some man across the sea. Thankfully she came to her senses after some very vivid…dreams.” She paused with a hand on her heart and a fake hint of sorrow as she spoke about the daughter I remembered reading about. I recalled the old letter I’d found last year. The one from Cordelia to Marina trying to keep her from moving to the seaside. It made even more sense now. Everything she’d orchestrated had always been for spite. For vengeance. For herself.
She continued, her features hardening again. “Her father meant nothing to me. But I suppose I played my cards well. In death he finally showed his worth. He left me everything when he died. And through the decades I used it to create the empire I have today. Because I had to.”
Between the trident’s silver prongs jumped wild sparks of electricity as she spoke. Without explanation, she pointed the trident down at the water.
“That’s what you need, Katrina. If we’re to build a better world, you need someone willing to challenge your feelings. You need to realize life isn’t fair, and love doesn’t create strength. Only weakness.”
I blinked, watching on in confusion as power flowed from the trident, opening a rift in the seawater below.
“What are you doing?” I shouted over the roar of the water.
“I’m putting the trident to the test. It can clearly control time and space. But let’s see about life, shall we? It’s been said it can even bring back the dead who made the sea their grave. So, I’m bringing back someone, just for you.” She winked at me coldly, and I feared what was to come next.
I stopped in wonderment, my mouth hanging open in awe as I watched the sea roil where Cordelia commanded. The rift in the sea glowed like the trident itself, and after a moment, a figure emerged—a man.
I rushed to the railing, leaning over in desperation to see if it just might be possible that she’d brought back Milo. The faintest feeling of hope fluttered wildly in my heart until it hurt. Maybe, just maybe, she wanted to let me have him back. But as the sky darkened with black clouds overhead, I clearly recognized the terrified face of Bellamy as he burst forth from the water gasping for air. And I shattered right there.
“Why would you do this?” I screamed, the cold feeling of betrayal taking hold. So many emotions flooded me, I couldn’t even pinpoint what hurt the most about seeing Bellamy resurrected. It was a cruel trick on us both. “Let him rest! He’s been through enough!”
Cordelia’s calloused smile sent a shiver down my spine, and I rushed to grab one of the flotation devices left on the deck from when the crew had pulled McKenzie and Noah to safety. “Help me pull him in!” I cried to my friends, who hurried alongside me as we tossed Bellamy the lifesaver.
He grasped at it in a panic as water crashed over his head and the waves tossed him like a barrel. My heart broke a little at how terrifying and confusing this must be for him. Being freshly resurrected and first opening his eyes to all this.
I felt weak against the tides pulling the rope connected to Bellamy, but with Noah and McKenzie’s strength added to mine, we mustered the strength to draw him in and help him up and over the side of the hull.
He gasped, coughing up seawater and holding his stomach as I helped him stand straight. It was a strange sight to see him like this, helpless and afraid, when just a few hours earlier I’d watched him leading a charge onto a ship with cannons blasting and swords drawn fearlessly. Now he looked the same way he did when I first met him months ago in the library, clad in his drenched dark jeans and black jacket, his jet-black hair cut shorter than his days as captain in his father’s fleet.
“Where am I?” His voice quivered, but the sound of his voice—the familiarity of it—was enough to give me some pebble-sized semblance of comfort in the midst of everything else happening around us. I looked at him with a weighty, heartbroken stare and a well of tears fighting their way to my eyes.
“The end of the world,” I said.
40
Black Sea
Katrina
Cordelia had taken the opportunity to position herself at the front of the yacht, summoning the power of the trident to begin her long-awaited mission. The trident continued pulsing with power as the sky overhead darkened like ash with more clouds and thunder. Cordelia’s face, illuminated by the glow of the scepter in her hands, held firm as she concentrated on manipulating the currents and rising waves through the power of the trident.
“Forty days and forty nights it took to flood the earth once. This time around it won’t take so long.” She spoke, more to herself than anyone around her. The divers and crewmen on her boat watched in amazement and fear as the ocean began to rise, massive hills of water rolling and lapping slowly as the ship lifted higher, until finally even they grew too fearful to stay out on deck and ran for cover in the cabin.
“Cordelia, stop!” McKenzie screamed, her lightly freckled face now spotted with tears as she watched the scene unfolding before her. Noah rushed at Cordelia but was thrown back from a force of power that leapt from the trident, leaving him writhing in pain on the deck as seawater splashed over the sides.
“Tell your friends there’s no use!” Cordelia called to me, stepping up to the highest point of the prow where she lifted the trident like a prize. “But don’t worry. If you’re on my ship, you’ll be spared. You have my favor.” Her deep red lips curved into a smile that made me recoil.
I thought of my family and my friends’ families. I thought of Bellamy and the heartless thing Cordelia had just done to us both by bringing him here. And then I thought of Milo and how he’d been taken from me over and over because of the woman playing God at the front of this ship. And I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. I didn’t even care to save the world anymore. Clearly, I’d failed. But that meant Milo had given himself up for nothing. And that was what tore at me in ways I couldn’t overcome.
Bellamy wiped away a trickling tear from my cheek as I stared emptily at the deck floor between my feet. “I remember everything,” he said softly.
“Everything?” I sniffed, startled by his words. “Like, even 1720 everything?”
He nodded, his gaze being the only steady thing I had to cling to as I stood bewildered. And then I fell apart, falling into his arms as he hugged me tightly, in a tender, protective way that gave me just one tangible second of comfort and familiarity in all this chaos.
“Is he dead? Did he make it?” I cried, burying my face in his wet shoulder. “What happened to him?”
“He made it,” he said. “He got away.”
A wave of relief surged through me, but my heart broke all the same, knowing Milo was left behind, alone, trapped somewhere between his present and his past, and never able to return to his future. He would’ve continued aging through the years, and that meant he was long dead by now. His own course of history was changed forever, and I could search the world for him, but I’d never find him in this lifetime with a beating heart.
