“You have a lot to learn,” my mother says.
She raises her trident in the air, swirling it around and around. With every circle, the sky seems to twist, clouds lurching and swarming until the entire sky is made of nothing but gray.
Then lightning rains down around me.
42
Lira
A BURST STRIKES THE water inches from my waist. The charge vibrates through me like hot pokers, and more lightning bolts spit in a circle, trapping me in a cage of light and fire.
Elian calls my name and I grit my teeth. At the sound of his voice, the Sea Queen turns a lazy gaze to him. As though he’s a fly she has just been reminded of. I’m not sure how much more protection the eye can offer him while still managing to keep me alive, but the only clear thought I have is that I can’t let her hurt him. I can’t let her kill him in the depths of these black waters.
Another surge of lightning drops from the air, and I spring out of the water to catch it. My skin feels like liquid against the ray of cracking light, and I know I can’t hold on for long. But I don’t need to. Just a few seconds – long enough to aim with precision that would rival Madrid’s – and I throw it through the air.
It blows clean through the Sea Queen’s side.
She lets out a monstrous cry. Skin and bone and blood and magic. They burst from her and scatter like stardust. The wound is gaping, but even if pain is the only thing the Sea Queen can feel, she barely lets it give her pause. She lashes out with a curl of water that sends me hurtling through the air.
I sink deep into the water with the force of the impact before I feel Elian’s hand on mine, dragging me back up to the surface.
“Get away,” I tell him, sending a blast of wind toward my mother.
She continues to approach with frightening speed, and I search desperately for something – anything – that might slow her down. My eyes catch the structure of the ice palace, and I don’t stop to think it through before I raise spouts of water and turn them into a blockade of icebergs. They climb higher and higher, looming pillars of frost that guard us like the spikes of a fence.
“I have to get you to safety,” I tell Elian. “We can swim under. If I put out the fire, you can take cover behind your crew.”
Elian eyes me savagely. “I’m not hiding,” he says.
A resounding boom rattles through the line of icebergs as my mother smashes into them. With her fists or her magic, I’m not sure. But the force of it is enough to make the water tremble, and I know the new wall won’t last long.
“Fine,” I snap. “Don’t hide; run instead. I don’t care just as long as you get out of here.”
Elian laughs an offbeat, exhausted sound. “You’re not understanding me,” he says, grabbing my hand. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Elian, I—”
“Don’t say something heroic and self-sacrificing,” he tells me. “Because then I might start thinking you’ve actually got some humanity in you.”
I smirk. “That would be boring.”
He nods, pressing against me. The icebergs I’ve conjured rattle, and large blocks of ice tumble around us in monstrous hailstones. It’s as though the world is crumbling.
“I don’t like you because you’re nice,” Elian says. His forehead touches mine, his lips hovering a breath away.
“That says a lot about your psyche.”
He kisses me then. Just once. Delicate in a way I’ve only known with him. And then the icebergs fall and the impact creates a wave high enough to swallow us whole. I throw my arms around Elian and let my magic coat us. Shielding us from the bursts of snow that threaten to crush us to the water bed.
When it’s over, I lift my head from the comfort of his shoulder and let out a breath. Beyond the decimated wall of crushed ice, my mother beckons.
“It would be a discredit for your legend to die in such an embrace,” she says. “I could make it so they still sing songs about the mighty Princes’ Bane. I could have them forget your cross-contamination and remember only the glory of your past.”
I push Elian behind me, keeping my hand tangled in his.
“That’s funny,” I tell her, “because I plan to make them forget everything about you. Except your death. I’ll make sure they remember that.”
The wind picks up speed, my mother’s fury swirling and tossing the air, further igniting the flames that keep my army from me. Elian’s crew. The very people who would lay down their lives for us. But I don’t need people to die for me anymore. And I don’t need them to die because of me either. The killing and the sacrifice end here, and I want each of them to see it so they can trust in the changes I’ve preached. A new world, with a new queen at its helm.