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Bubbles stream around us, filtered through our gills. He’s fading; I can feel it, like his energy is being sapped from the back of my mind. But if I’m anything, I’m stubborn; I refuse to lose him, giving him to Yrsa rather than letting him go. I just hold him tighter, because the void doesn’t get to take him after we’ve come so far.
We fall into Yrsa’s arms.
And it’s…fluid.
Denser than water, more like…like honey, but slippery like the mercury in a thermometer. It rises around us in a strange ripple, like it doesn’t obey the laws of gravity.
This isElixir. And it wasn’t Yrsa I saw.
It was my own reflection.
I hold Orion in the lifeblood of planets, locked in a cycle of death and destruction and rebirth. This man who has tried to kill me on more than one occasion. Who has saved my life, too.
My mate. One of five.
Mywarriors.
And I hold them in my mind as I watch the Elixir knit him back together, his eyelids flickering. Here at the bottom of an alien ocean, I watch my lover come back to life.
His eyes open, amber and silver and all the colors of my mates.
He grips my arm.
Ifeel them all.
Five sets of hands, extending from the surface to pull us back up. Taln’s warm embrace, strong and comforting. Ryker’s heated stare, banishing the chill of the depths. Nereus’s elegance, his grace, mitigating how clumsy the trauma of the day has made me.
And Kye, flying me home.
Together, we push off the bottom of the ocean, and we swim into the darkness, into the cold. At first I think I’m imagining it–that it’s Georgia fireflies all over again, lulling me into a sense of complacency–but then I realize the blue dot in the distance is the Naiad.
No, not the Naiad.
The Naiad is a ghost.
It’s the Wrath.
But I’m carried upward on silver wings, Orion and I swimming faster than I thought possible, and I’m fully convinced that it’s theNaiadcarrying me to safety. A hatch opens, a welcome mat on the other side of a screen door, and we make our way through the hatch and into blinding light.
And I’m home.
A towel draped around my shoulders, my eyes adjusting as soothing voices surround me. Hands grasping mine, and then falling into shadow again as I’m brought into the embrace of all five of my men. The chill starts to disperse only after a few minutes of crying, of breathing, of telling myself that I’m safe.
And then two hands hold my face, bringing my eyes to meet two pools of lagoon green.
“How?” Nereus asks, his voice trembling.
I blink at him, still processing all that’s happened. “You gave me a gift,” I say. “And it helped me survive.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
TALN
The thing one needs most after a battle is a hot meal.
I stand in the mess hall of the Wrath like this is a normal night—like we haven’t just taken back Homeworld after six long years or running away. Lamia has been queen in Atarys for decades, destroying the planet piece by piece until her greed grew so great that the people couldn’t tolerate it any longer.
And my little human—my warrior queen—stopped her.
