Page 171 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Nori sprung away from the drones, realizing ash had been sifted along the shore. One of them grabbed her hair, yanking her off her feet.

Sand sprayed as she fell, as they drove a knee into her neck.

Kazimir kicked the drone, a heel-stomp through the air. It landed in the drone’s face, the crunch of fragile bone sickening in my ears.

Diara’s bowstring stretched. Aren’s sword arced.

Electricity lit through my skin, fire through my bones, my heart pounding in my head as my feet pounded through sand.

Kye ran beside me, his strides longer, faster. My mother’s breath tumbled off my shoulder, just behind me. Someone pulled me off course, grabbing the silk at my neck, forcing me to slow.

Olinne.

“Stay here,” she said, her blue eyes wide with fear. “Command your storm outside their eclipse.”

The sky clattered again, the roar of it bright and vibrant, fizzling under my skin. Olinne’s hand left mine as she tore away, straight through the icy eclipse crystalizing along the shore, leaving footprints in the frost as she stripped her body of her own water-call.

If my stones blocked the drone’s eclipse like it had in the river, I was free to move wherever I wanted. But I held back instead. Here, facing the ocean, I had a full view of the beach, bodies crawling in all directions.

Sixty drones.

Sixty were coming. Climbing from the water like monsters from under a blanket. More and more of them emerged, sprinting toward us.

Kye.

It wasn’t the enclosed space of the cavern. The moon lay draped in shadow, but dim light was strewn across the beach, the stars betraying us from eons away.

Kye didn’t stop, but his glow thrummed under his skin like a song, glinting bright through his sunburst tattoos until his skin heated enough to match it. He ran like a star shooting through the night sky, twin blades in his hands.

I raised a palm, and the threads of fire cracked from my veins, igniting over my hand.

The world rattled. Sand shifted. Fire ignited.

A twitch of my fingers and I threw it into the tide, where it burst into a thousand jagged edges, the inside of my mind shattering under the noise. For a moment, the sea lit with white, silhouettes of rising bodies frozen within time.

Diara loosed her second arrow into the throat of a drone mere feet from her. The Naiad fell, but another one rose in her place, ripping the bow from her hands.

Aren shoved that drone away, leaning into his heels to swing his sword into another.

They moved without fear, ignoring when steel cleaved their bodies. Aren’s sword swiped across the drone’s stomach, a fatal blow. A human would have dropped to their knees, holding the wound in their hands. But the drone absorbed Aren’s blade, ignoring the waterfall of red that streamed from their body, stepping closer to Diara.

Hadrian tore the drone from her, sending it across the beach in a spray of frosted grain just as the tide washed a flurry of bodies over the shore. The drone whirled back to her feet—and an arrow embedded between her eyes.

Golden light flung through the air, as bright as day, flooding from a burning torch with two blades. Kye stepped into the frost, fog blooming from his molten mouth. In the beat of a heart, every soul shaded their eyes from his brilliance.

Then the drones charged for him.

I reached for the stars again, ignoring the trickle of heat escaping from my nose. Throwing bolt after bolt into their running bodies.

Olinne slammed into a Naiad that stood over Nori, knocking herself to the ground along with the male. He shoved to his feet, but Kazimir wrenched him away, tossing him like a doll back to the sea just as my starfire blared through the tide.

“Get away from the water!” I screamed.

A hand wrapped around my head from behind, fingers dragging down my face.

An inferno screamed over my skin where the hand trailed, over my eyes and mouth. My starfire shuttered from my fingertips, deadened in an instant. I sprang away, scrambling to face whoever it was—

Selena stood behind me, the wind streaming through her hair and skirt, the red in her bloodshot eyes vivid against the blue. Not far from her feet, Pheolix had dropped to a knee, a knife low in his gut.