Her war had begun.
Endless masts rose from the sea like sharpened teeth, and as she stared down at them, a rush of memories clawed their way to the surface of her mind.
The searing pain when the shard was in her spine, her body convulsing and powerless. The nights she lay awake, terrified to move, trapped in a prison of agony.
The betrayal.Her only kin, theoneperson who should have protected her, had only ever sought to destroy her. Syrena had torn Esmyra apart piece-by-piece in more ways than one, stripping her of her dignity, her freedom, hersouls. Both hers and Kae’s.
Her fists curled tighter around the serpent’s horns.
The lies. Syrena had carved her way between Esmyra and Draevyn, knowing all along their souls called to one another. And Esmyranearly killed him for it, thinking he was the one who betrayed her all along.
Her eyes burned, not with tears, but with fury that felt older than the sea itself.
A goddess’s fury.
Her sister forced a bond on her through compulsion, thinking the chains had been unbreakable. Syrena thought she could bend Esmyra, break her,consumeher.
But she thought wrong.
Esmyra had suffered heartache, agony beyond comprehension, and loss—but here she stood. Alive and stronger than ever imaginable. And Esmyra wouldn’t stop until her sister was nothing but seafoam at her feet.
Draevyn had believed in her without hesitation. He loved her for all that she was and would follow her to the ends of every world to prove it.
Never again would Syrena rip him away from her.
This was her vengeance.
Her knuckles whitened as she braced herself, feeling the serpent coil beneath her with barely contained power. Lightning erupted through the sky as her blood sang with power. She inhaled, the salt air burning in her lungs.
“And now, you’re all going to drown for her sins,” both Esmyra and Kaelypso said in tandem, the words echoing through the atmosphere.
The serpent answered with a roar that shook the Maerinys’s castle in the far distance. Its massive tail whipped across the sea, striking several ships broadside and splintering the wood as men were thrown into the waves, screaming.
Esmyra lifted her hands, calling out to the sea. The ocean obeyed her command, towering walls of water rising before crashing down on the enemy fleet. Her power engulfed multiple ships, before capsizing others, dragging soldiers into the abyss.
Spears flew upward at her beast, glinting in the blood-red glow of the moon. She snarled and the waves answered by curving around herand Levaia like a shield, the weapons bouncing uselessly off the watery wall.
The serpent dove, and she went with it, plunging beneath the surface. For a heartbeat there was only silence, the rush of bubbles streaming past her face before they burst upward again. Levaia impaled another ship with her horns, lifting it half from the water before smashing it apart.
Esmyra’s heart thundered.
There would be no mercy.
No hesitation.
No longer would she see this as a battle. It was annihilation commanded at her will.
A jagged pull tugged at the edges of her mind. Esmyra blinked, her brows furrowing at the sensation. It was subtle at first but then grew insistent.
“It’s Naerysa!” Kaelypso warned.
Fuck.
The bond flared, a cold, twisting claw trying to latch onto her consciousness and siphon her power. And that was when she realized her mental shield had dropped, focusing on the army before her instead.
Esmyra’s stomach clenched. She recognized it instantly, but now it felt magnified the higher the Blood Moon rose in the sky. Her vision blurred slightly, the roiling sea around them fading into the edges of her awareness as her sister’s throne room flashed.
“NO,” Kaelypso screamed.
