Sand met her feet, and soldiers scrambled before her. Some tripped over their own boots, some clutched broken weapons, all their eyes wide as if staring at a nightmare made flesh. Others stumbled backward, screaming their prayers for forgiveness to the goddess they betrayed.
Esmyra raised her hand and writhing tendrils of water slithered over the sand and latched onto their lips.
Panic erupted. They clawed at their throats as the water forced its way in, flooding lungs and silencing screams before they could form. Their eyes bulged as their bodies convulsed.
The scene eerily mimicked a memory.
Esmyra recalled the shore bordering Lephyrin’s kingdom. One that she had wrongfully condemned their innocent people to avenge her father when she should’ve only claimed the life of their king. She had unleashed this same drowning on them all, but her wild wrath had been consuming her from the inside out.
Her rage had demanded blood, and she obeyed blindly. But now her mind couldn’t be clearer.
These soldiers weren’t innocent. They carried blades sharpened against her name.
Their own goddess’s name.
Their knees buckled in the sand, bodies collapsing as salt water gushed from their noses, mouths, and eyes.
She watched with a calm, chilling focus. Not a flickerof doubt touched her.
The beach became littered with the drowned, their bodies twitching as the tide crept up to claim them.
Her gaze shifted to the palace in the distance, while the serpent loomed and guarded her back. A small smile touched her lips, a chill running along her spine as revenge was already within her talon’s reach.
Esmyra inhaled deeply. “It takes a thief to know one,Sister. You stole my life, my crown, and even attempted my name, thinking it would go unpunished.”
Her grip on the spear was tightening so hard the shaft nearly snapped. “And now I’ve come to steal the breath from your fucking lungs.”
CHAPTER 66
Atlas
The sky bled red above as the crew raced through Maerinys, aiming for its castle. They were moving fast now, but Atlas’s heart had already run ahead—straight to Elowynne. Every step, every breath felt like a countdown keeping measure with the pounding of his pulse, until the numbers began to press against his skull.
Each second was another moment she was still in that sea bitch’s hands, another breath she might be forced to fear for her life.
He remembered promising her—swearingto her—that she would be safe with him.
And yet here they were.
Atlas’s jaw clenched, and he gripped his sword tighter, feeling like the only thing tethering him to what remained of his patience. Without it, he might have already stormed through every barrier between them with nothing but desperation as his guide.
He refused to lose her. Not after everything.
Atlas had once seen that masquerade ball as nothing but a death sentence to the life he’d always lived. And while he’d been right about that, the only difference now was he couldn’t have been prouder. Elowynne had made him a better man, had guided him into the ways of being a proper ruler.
Once they reached her, he didn’t care if the world was burning around them… he would never let her go again.
His stare lifted to Draevyn’s back as they all sprinted, following him to Maerinys’s looming castle.
The stench of charred flesh from the cave lingered in his nose, the sight of twisted, blackened creatures imprinted behind his eyes. He couldn’t shake the thought of what Draevyn had endured down there… DraevynandEsmyra, cornered and surrounded by monsters that shouldn’t exist.
Realmonsters.
Perhaps he should’ve taken his brother more seriously when he tried to explain all they went through together. He never believed something could force a bond between two people who loathed each other so intensely that it fueled the very reason for why they were there in the first place.
Esmyra was the worst kind of person and the most ruthless kind of criminal.
Howcouldhe have believed the man when he claimed to love her?
