Page 71 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

I clenched my teeth, looking for whatever it was he waited for. And then found it.

Shadows, shapes, dark forms that blotted out the obscure sun. Descending toward us.

“How many?” Pheolix asked near my ear, so calmly I almost wanted to shake him.

I counted instead, my nails cutting into his hand. He didn’t flinch.

Ten, eleven, twelve…

“Thirteen.”

Pheolix didn’t respond, but his thumb twitched against mine as though the number meant something.

And when the nearest shape careened through the vortex, his head snapped toward them, already shifting to place himself between the figure and myself.

He was a different male than the one who had taken Kye. Larger, thicker, and perhaps a bit slower, but still fast enough to approach in a blur of silver-blue. Pheolix caught the Naiad’s fist in the center of his hand, yanking it to the side. Bone cracked, a delayed snap underwater.

The drone rolled away as if his snapped bone hadn’t even hurt, flinging his opposite arm toward Pheolix’s face. But Pheolix had already grabbed both sides of the Naiad’s head.

He twisted it, a sickening crunch through the waves. Then let the Naiad fall away, already catching the fist of a second drone.

A third joined, and a fourth. The sediment stirred, too thick to see anything but Pheolix’s pale-rust hair and an onslaught of elbows. His movements were precise, rhythmic. An echo of time and bone woven together. He knew when and how they attacked, catching their limbs before they could connect. I barely noticed. A silhouette hovered next to the surface, a male Naiad and a floating human.

I shot from behind Pheolix just as Nori and the others broke through.

Aegir and Selena joined the fray surrounding Pheolix. Nori and Olinne burst after me. If the unknown Naiad was surprised to see us, he didn’t show it. I reached for the dagger strapped to my hip. The blurred lines of his body sharpened into view the same moment a clap resounded against my chin, knocking my head back against the rocks.

Light flickered over shadow. Sound distended.

The world dropped to silence before I blinked, rousing myself. I’d sunk lower than I’d been the moment before.

My dagger was fixed tight in Olinne’s hand, and blood streamed from the enemy Naiad’s ribs in a wide gash. Kye had drifted slightly downstream, wedged by the current in an alcove of rock. Nori had wrapped herself around the drone’s waist, hooking onto one of his arms to pin him down while Olinne took another wild slash.

My head pounded as I forced myself upright, the light from above streaking through my eyes in a wave that sent nausea to my stomach. Even through the watery smog, Kye’s skin was too pallid, his lips tinted violet.

My heart leapt into my throat.

I lurched toward him, but my movement felt delayed. Heavy and lumbering. My mind moved fast, but time moved slow, demanding I wait for it to catch up. My fingers didn’t shift the way I commanded them to, but I reached him, slanting his chin toward mine, clumsily angling for his mouth.

A fist in my hair jerked me back. The world reeled sideways, my axis a queasy tilt. I struck blindly at whoever held me, my knuckles ramming into a cheekbone. But they absorbed my punch, holding tight, pulling me away from Kye.

I rolled, finding a female drone. She reached for my throat, nails slashing at my chest, scoring jagged lines. Blood stained the water vivid red, the taste of iron in my mouth. I punched at her again, listless, and she ignored me, wringing her arm oddly to the side. It was only as the bite of metal cut into my neck that I realized she’d grabbed hold of the chain—the Breath of Safiro.

She twisted, warping the chain into a silver noose. Cinching it tight.

Again, I sent a desperate plea to the river around me, but the growing cold was the only answer, the water paralyzed by her eclipse.

I batted like a thrashing snake, tumbling and winding myself to break free. My arms flailed as I aimed to strike her again, but she leaned away, pulled away, shooting downriver.

Green dust distorted as a sudden blow to her shoulder slammed her into the rocks. The jolt rippled through my spine, my bones grinding against my joints, snapping me like a whip. A ring of fire erupted around my neck, though the tension of her pull had shattered. She’d let go.

No—she hadn’t let go. The chain was still in her hand, the rest of her flattened under a mighty body of deep blue, a shining neck and a wild mane and beating hooves. The light had snuffed from her eyes, but Kolibri turned, bucking her muscular tail at the drone. Then blasted away like a rock hurled from a slingshot, leaving the Naiad to fall eerily to the river floor, a tangle of broken limbs.

Kye was where I’d left him, pinned by the rough water in the corner of the rock, his color a violet gray that sent a knife through my heart. I ignored the drone’s crushed body, hooking my mouth over his and exhaling. His lungs expanded, pink flushing through his cheeks before softening to his familiar olive skin. His hand pressed dimly against my back, as if fighting through the surge of Naiad oxygen in his blood.

I’ll be back, I said, unsure if he could hear me.

Naiads swam from every direction when I turned back around. Far more than the thirteen I’d originally counted. A few bodies lay at the riverbed, none that I recognized. Huddled in a corner, Aitne held onto Diara, Hadrian, and Aren. Cebrinne floated over her, fighting a drone who looked hardly old enough to have left home.