Her breaths rush in and out of her, joining the constant whoosh of the violent seas.
Teddy was right: fear lives at the boundary. Because inside the eye of the storm? Here, it is beautiful.
Calm in the calamity of the violent seas. Peace in the perils of this land. Serenity in the strength of her own strategy.
Something burns against her chest.
Seren frowns, attention diverting from the wave, her breath still heaving from the run. At first she thinks it’s just the strain in her ribs, the bruised ache of muscle and bone protesting the violence of the crossing after Teddy’s training.
But the heat sharpens.
The amulet.
It pulses once beneath her collarbone, hot enough to sting through the fabric of her tunic.
Seren’s hand flies to it instinctively.
Another pulse.
Stronger.
Her breath catches.
“Seren.”
The voice isn’t sound.
It’sinsideher—threaded through her bones, reverberating through her mind like a distant echo, carried along the same invisible current that binds the amulets together.
Her heart slams into her ribs.
The wind howls around her, The Perils tearing at the edges of the barrelled wave, but the voice cuts through it all with terrifying clarity.
“I need you.”
Elyssara.
Desperate.
Seren paces forward, her feet carrying her before she can think. She stumbles, boots skidding against wet stone as she nearly loses her footing.
“Come for me.”
The amulet flares hot in her palm as she grips it.
“Please.”
Her pulse roars in her ears.
For a heartbeat, there is nothing but the roar of the sea and the thunder of her own blood.
“Azhareth.”
The word cracks through the connection like a snapped thread.
“They have Kael.”
Seren stops dead.
