“There could be Enchanted they didn’t drain,” I snap as my blood pounds. “We don’t have long before it’s gone.”
I can feel he’s still uncertain. The tentacle coils around my waist. For twenty years, he believed I was dead.
“The fire won’t hurt me,” I tell him, and shove a vision of my burning room into his head. “Hurry.”
Be careful, little knight.
His tentacle carries me up over the ship’s hull, where the fire hasn’t reached yet. It’s chaos on board. The fire roars to my left. Sailors plunge overboard, risking reapers or drowning to escape the flames as the ship goes down. Two groups fight over a rowboat. One man sprints directly into the flames.
I break into a desperate run the moment my feet touch the ground, dragging on the kraken’s power to strengthen my limbs and cover more ground.
It doesn’t work as well as the armor used to. Not because of the volume of power, but because I only have my own limbs, not metal that’s been inscribed with enchantment marks.
I whip around the deck to plunge down the rear stairs. The berth is empty. The oil lanterns still flicker on the walls. By the time I find the bunkroom water sloshes up around my ankles. I rip the door open and step inside to the dark room, heart pounding.
There’s no hum of power. No strand of enchantment. Whatever knight rode this Hellion, he drained every single one of them to defend the ship against the dragons. I came down here for nothing. I grip the doorframe and stare into the dark.
Too late. I’m too late.
A scream rips from my throat, guttural and raw, not grief but rage at how pointlessly these lives have been wasted.
Come back, little knight,the kraken warns as the water rises up around my knees. It’s moving fast.
I wade through it to the stairs and sprint up as the dark water rises after me. The entrance back onto the deck is wreathed in flames. Gritting my teeth, I pump my arms and run up the stairs towards it.
As my head clears the stairs, the ship shakes and wrenches down into the water. The kraken’s tentacle plunges it down to extinguish the flames. I kick my legs like Roiven taught me, trying to reach the surface. The kraken grabs me with another tentacle and whisks me away from the wreckage.
I rise to the surface in time to see a blast of blue fire shearing toward us.
“Kraken!” I scream. He’s a big target, even bigger than Sava. The kraken shoves me under water, so fast and hard that I can feel the pressure pushing against my body as dizziness washes over me. Through it, I feel the blow hit. Not me. Kraken. Pain, so fierce it doesn’t allow any other thoughts, bursts over us both.
“No,” I scream, into the air bubble he brought along with me. Bright blue blood swirls in the water above me. They’ve hit one of his tentacles. The kraken thrashes, sending shockwaves across thesurface of the ocean. I watch him drag the Hellion named Gut down into the deep, crushing the ship’s frame so it can’t rise again.
“What are you doing?” I shriek. “There are innocent people on that ship!”
I kick my legs like Roiven showed me, keeping them straight beneath me, and rise up toward the surface. The kraken’s tentacle pushes beneath me, helping me ascend. When my head bursts above water I cough through gritted teeth. My ears are pounding.
Those bottom feeders have become stronger,the kraken says, his thoughts laced with pain.
“How badly did it hurt you?”
It is far from deadly. But it stings worse than a venomous coral.
If they were to hit him enough times, in enough places…
You cannot live in fear, the kraken reminds me.
Another blast comes toward us, aimed for my familiar and not me; I doubt they can even see me, with how small a target I am. The kraken’s head sinks further under water, avoiding the blow, but he holds me up above the surface where I can see.
“You can’t go after the ships,” I rasp.
Then how do you intend to kill them?
I heave air and wipe the sea water from my eyes, turning to look at the landscape of the battle. Sava swoops over a ship, roaring and then shooting fire that crackles over the ship’s shield. If the kraken destroys a ship, the Enchanted die. But if I board and attack, the ship’s knight will drain the Enchanted fighting against me.
Unless I can kill them fast enough.
“That one,” I rasp, pointing at one of the old Hellions. They’ll carry more Enchanted since they take more work to power. “Put me there. And reach over this side of the ship first, so the other Hellions don’t see—”
