The stone beneath her bare feet should have grounded her, but she felt nothing. Not the chill nor the breeze off the sea winding through the tower’s windows. There was only the chaos in her mind.
Syrena stood deathly still above the basin, breath caught in her throat, eyes wide and unblinking as the final images replayed in her mind: Esmyra, bound in a net and dragged like an animal across the sand.
Silence stretched between her and Azarian, and she found herself unable to move. Unable to blink or even breathe.
He hovered behind her, not daring to speak yet. Not when her fingers were curled so tightly around the marble edge of the basin that her knuckles had gone bone white.
She was thankful he typically knew his place, knowing when to play advisor and when to step aside as her right-hand witch.
A single breath left her lips, tremoring, before a crack of power snapped through the air like a blast of sunlight.
“Fuck,” Syrena whispered.
Then she turned, the golden waves of her hair bouncing with themovement. “They have her. That wretched, Irah-blessed king has her.”
Azarian stepped forward, keeping his voice low. “We must act swiftly. If they used the vel?—”
“She’s powerless,” Syrena snapped. She glanced down at the soul-mark on her wrist. “And I can’t feel her.”
“What did you see?”
“When the bond winked out, I raced up here, demanding it show me the cause. It brought me to an alleyway where she was cornered by several men, right before they captured her.” She blew out a trembling breath. “They caught her in a fisherman’snet, for fuck’s sake.”
Syrena had worked too godsdamn hard for this. Everything that had been leading to these upcoming days had been planned for centuries, and she wasn’t about to let that be ruined now. Not when she nearly had Kaelypso’s power in her grasp.
She rushed down the tower steps, her mind racing with what she’d seen.
Atlas Rowe had taken her sister, and Draevyn was nowhere in sight. Was the fire-wielder in agreement to bring her to Sumnae? Was he even aware?
“She’s mine. Herpowerismine,” Syrena muttered as she entered the castle proper, striding toward the throne room. “Esmyra belongs to no man. No god. And no king.”
Azarian followed. “You should’ve placed more guards on her.”
Syrena scoffed at him. “How do you think we realized she was missing? The second set of guards couldn’t fuckingfindher,” she growled. “Instead, what they found were the remains of the others she left behind.”
The throne loomed ahead, and the mosaic of their goddess forms on the tile before it glinted with salt-worn colors. She stared down at it, her reflection caught in the polished shell and coral.
“I’ll leave Sumnae in ruins,” she said flatly. “I’ll drag it beneath the sea until the salt corrodes its bones. If they kill her before we can, they will see what real wrath looks like.”
She meant every fucking word.
Syrena paced like a caged predator, her silk robes swirling behind her. The throne room was silent, save for the soft tapping of her nails against her necklace, and the soft shuffle of her movement over the floor.
Azarian leaned against a pillar, arms folded as he watched her. “And if the fire prince finds her first? His brother may have been the one to capture her, but I doubt he will allow her to be handed over for torture. We can’t exactly afford for her to learn the truth either.”
Syrena spun, face snapping toward him. “No. She won’t let him close enough to even speak without killing him. Not again.” But even as she said it, doubt flickered. Her sister had always been reckless when it came to him—so frustratingly human when it came to her love for Draevyn.
“Esmyra is so much like Kaelypso. She was evenbeforethe merging of the bones,” Azarian said calmly. “All that power. All that rage. Andstillshe hesitates when it comes to him. Just as Kaelypso had with Irah. Just as you?—”
Syrena was before him in an instant, a taloned nail sliding out from the tip of her finger, halting at the skin of his throat. “Mind your fucking tongue.”
Azarian raised a brow. She knew he was aware she would never kill him. She couldn’t afford to. He was all Syrena knew in the grand scheme of the last nine centuries. He raised her, taught her the ways of Maerinys, and showed her a past life she lived. The witch had told her of Naerysa’s plans all that time ago, and the betrayal she succumbed to because of it, letting her fury stew in it for nearly a millennium.
And he was the only way she could complete what Naerysa originally set out to do.
Her jaw clenched, teeth aching. She stared out through the high-arched windows, her gaze cast over the glittering sea.
“She’s vulnerable beyond our walls as long as Lephyrin has velsinyte,” Syrena murmured, more to herself now as her pacing started again. “Especially after the ritual. We should’ve locked her up until the Moon of Malya was upon us.”
