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“Still, I’m grateful.”
He nods, accepting my response. He’s come into his own in the last year, gaining confidence from his time as King of Delerood. For the first time in his life, I believe he finally feels like a natural extension of my rule, instead of an unworthy barnacle clinging to my claim to the throne. It’s not what he always wanted. He’s one of my consorts, not my one and only, but he’s come to respect Andric and tolerate Hook. It’s all I can ask of him.
We’ve backed Sol and his creatures toward the fissure that leads down into the deep, forcing them inch by inch closer to the cold and the dark that will spell his certain doom. He knows it too and seems determined to take as many of my people with him as possible. As I watch, the eels swarm a group of three mermen, boiling the water around them with such intense heat that their skin turns the color of cooked lobster before sloughing off their bones. The current washes the grisly sight away before it can cement in my mind, another horror to be revisited in nightmares, but it’s still awful. I’ve seen it enough times that the faces blur together, just twisted expressions of agony that will never leave my troubled mind.
Sol shines like a beacon on the reef floor. His skin is golden, his hair flaming like an inferno, burning a hole in the water three feet across. His eyes seethe with hate, focused solely on me. I deflect another strike with the trident, sending it back at him. The reef near his feet breaks apart, sending coral flying in every direction. A brittle piece strikes him in the face before he can fend it off, and I hear his roar of fury even from a mile up.
“It’s our chance,” Bastion says, grasping me by the elbow as Sol lashes out blindly, arcing power through the water.
More of my soldiers vaporize. Hook loses a hank of dark, free-floating hair and half his hat before Veseo can put his scales in the way of the blast. They char the bronze into something resembling the color of mud, but the light can’t carve into the dragon’s hide. Hook takes out his irritation on a nearby goblin shark, taking out its eyes before carving a hole into its underside. It thrashes and flounders blindly before crashing into a kraken. Tentacles wind up on instinct, drawing the injured shark toward the kraken’s beak-like jaws on its underside. It doesn’t matter that they’re fighting on the same side. Krakens are opportunists, seizing prey where they can find it. The mortally wounded shark is an irresistible lure to the beast. I see some of my soldiers adopting the same practice, chumming the water with the smaller members of the grotesquerie to keep the largest and fiercest occupied.
I see what Bastion means a moment later. A gap forms in the enemy lines as the krakens are drawn away from Sol’s position. Bastion seizes on it immediately, drawing me down toward Sol at a speed that makes my heart race. Hook and Andric follow suit, slower on the backs of the enormous scaly reptiles. Something of that size takes time to maneuver, and they aren’t used to fighting in the deep. Still, they’re a quick study, following in our wake with surprising speed when they cotton onto the plan.
The trident is meant to be an instrument of preservation, keeping the sea peaceable. My father, King Triton, corrupted its purpose when he was king, usurping Opeia’s rightful claim to the throne, banishing us all to this very spot. It seems fitting that it should all end here. My prison, Opeia’s legacy, will be the end of this false god once and for all, fulfilling its purpose in my hands.
A violent shockwave runs through the water when I strike, stilling everything in sight, including Sol for a too-long moment. The reef beneath him sinks by a foot, throwing him off balance, and all it takes is another earth-shaking roar from the dragons to tip him over towards the edge. I surge forward, skewering him on the end of the trident. He manages to dodge the blow by a fraction. I’m aiming for his throat, ready to spill his life’s blood on the ground before the trench. It lodges in his shoulder instead. He bares his teeth at me in a snarl.
“Stupid girl,” he hisses. “You can’t kill light itself. I will sear the delusional flesh off your insipid bones!”
“We’ll see about that,” I growl.
The heat coming off him is enough to dry my skin in an instant. My eyes burn from the sheer brilliance of him, but I press forward, summoning water to replace what he burns off. It’s tiring, but it keeps me from being baked like one of the root vegetables that Andric so enjoys. I plunge down, down, down into the dark, holding him aloft like a torch to guide the way from the others. Deep below there’s a gyre that will douse him entirely, or else attract the largest and most vicious krakens to his light. He seems to know it too. He’s sputtering, slowed by cold and the consuming darkness. The further away from the sun he is, the weaker he appears.
He thrashes like a fish on a line, trying to be free of me. His power is potent enough to withstand a blast, even at this distance. I can’t reduce him to so much ash, the way he did to Aunt Opeia. Iwant to. I want him to splinter apart like my fallen soldiers, to fall to pieces like his defeated eels, to be reduced to tatters like my late father.
Sol finally comes free of my trident when we’re in the deeps, sacrificing much of his shoulder to do it. He’s a pale echo of himself, clutching the raw mass of meat that is his ruined arm on reflex. It doesn’t stop the tang of blood from pervading the water. He can’t keep the bubble around him as clear as he once did, batting the sea away like it’s a tiresome fly. It’s inches from his face now. And for the first time, I see fear in those eyes.
“You can’t destroy me with that trinket,” he says, but he doesn’t sound so sure.
“I don’t have to,” I say, retreating a few feet.
Sol looks bewildered, watching me retreat with cautious hope. Then he glances up, and he blanches. I don’t knowhowhe manages to grow paler, but he does as he realizes what’s bearing down on him. He throws up his hands, tries to summon more power, but it’s too little, too late. Nouille dives for his legs, catching them between his sharp, dagger-like teeth, not seeming to notice when his lips begin to blacken. At the same time, Veseo hones in on the bleeding god, seizing him by the shoulders. The dragons tug, and Sol comes apart at the middle, spilling his guts to the sea floor.
His light goes out.
Sol is no more.
The oceans are safe.
For now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BLAZE
An insistent rapping on my chamber door draws me from my deep stupor.
I’m not sure when my eyes slid shut, or how I managed to sleep with twilight visions of Queen Arianwen flitting through my mind. I could have sworn for a time Iwasthe siren queen, fighting off one of the most feared creatures in Fantasia. I tasted blood in the water and felt the heat of Sol on my skin. But the vision fades into the distant, becoming the hazy quality of a dream almost at once, and the more I try to grasp the finer points, the more quickly they slide from my grasp, draining like water through a sieve.
“I’m coming in now, Miss Blaze,” a man’s voice says. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t immediately place it. “You should cover yourself if you’re indecent.”
With a spurt of embarrassment, I glance down at myself and realize that I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes. It’s silly to feel self-conscious about it, given my occupation. I’ve run myself ragged for weeks, only bothering to bathe or change clothes when no one was chasing me, or until I could no longer stand the grime, whichever came first. Still, it seems rude to rumple a princess’ things when she’s given me clothes and a place to sleep.
The door creaks open and I drape the coverlet over myself to disguise my error. One of the huntsmen is waiting at the door—the one with raven-black hair and a solemn demeanor. Draven, I believe.
He tactfully slides his gaze from me when he finds me clutching the coverlet to my person, coming to the wrong conclusion. He clears his throat and holds something out toward me. It takes a second for my eyes to focus enough to make out what it is in the pre-dawn. He’s holding out a rucksack, not unlike the one I carried before I was captured. This one is nicer than mine. After years of running, fighting, and exposure to the elements, my rucksack had been bleached by sunlight where it wasn’t singed by fire. It had been getting threadbare in places, too.
“You should find some clothes in here,” Draven says. “Three days’ worth, along with the supplies one of your hellhounds insists we’ll need. Dress quickly. He says we leave before the sun rises.”
