The Savage Blue

When I trigger the alarm, I make a run for it.

I trip over a devil girl carrying a tray full of champagne flutes, then the dessert cart rolling down the hall. The floor trembles as heavy boots run behind me. When I look over my shoulder, the same friendly werewolves that lovingly chucked me out the first time are coming for me.

They growl and snap at the air, teeth crunching like the grind of a bear trap. Yellow eyes and snouts elongating from their faces. I pull my scepter from between my shoulder blades. The light of the quartz fills the dark and doorless hallway. Their howl turns into a laugh, and I wonder if I’m heading out the right direction. I have a vision of two gnarly wolves tearing me to pieces, and I point the quartz over my head.

The charge comes quickly, from my chest, up my arms. The blast hits the ceiling, illuminating the falling debris. The bouncers howl and curse at me. A small fire builds quickly in the narrow hall. Smoke fills my lungs and the sprinklers rain down. I can see the red exit sign, and I push harder and harder until I’m out on the street.

I don’t know how big the Second Circle is, but I’m not where I started.

It takes me a second to orient myself.

Despite the familiar buildings, the area doesn’t look right without the usual crowds. I stand in the middle of the street. The lights change from green to yellow to red. There are no cars. No sirens. No passersby.

Instead, there are dozens and dozens of birds all along the fence that marks the New York Aquarium.

Ravens and golden eagles and even bats are beating their wings against the drizzle. Their cries form a united melody, a warning in song. I head straight for the aquarium, but I ram against an invisible barrier. I press my hands on the barrier, and every time I hit it, a tiny shock of electricity jolts me.

One of the ravens turns into a girl no taller than my chest. Her arms are wings and her hair is as black as her feathers. “Announce yourself.”

“You’re kidding me.”

The steely black look in her eyes tells me she isn’t.

“I’m Tristan Hart,” I say. I hold the scepter in my hand. The crystal emits a soft glow.

The raven girl dips into a short bow and opens her wing to the side. The force field opens. I can’t see it, but I can feel the temperature difference, like a line of heat separating the aquarium from the outside world.

When I take a single step forward, someone screams my name. Gwen is running down the street, soaked through and through.

I take her by her shoulders, concerned about the fear in her eyes. Gwen is never scared. “Are you okay?”

She nods and attempts to smile. There is no way she would ever admit to being nervous, so I take her hand and try to step through the doorway. But the raven girl closes it again and a sharp caw flies from her throat. “Frederik says only the Sea Prince is to enter.”

“She’s with me,” I growl.

The girl becomes a raven again and pecks at my hair before lining up with the others on the fence. But she does not stop us. We cross through the gate, where the cold, wet night doesn’t follow.

“Where were you?” I ask.

We sprint across the parking lot, cutting across to the entrance to the aquarium.

“The princesses,” she says. “They’ve all gone.”

The guard at the door doesn’t stop us. I don’t know what he is—human, android, ghost—and I don’t care. He nods at me once and opens the door.

This leads to the reef portion of the aquarium. Tanks are backlit with white and blue light. The ceilings are so low to the ground that I feel like I’m swimming through a tunnel. I look into the glass of the contained ecosystem. My breath fogs. The giant turtle swims directly at me. He presses his nose to the glass. There’s something in his eyes that is old and so eternal. A creature of the past. How do you survive, I wonder. How are you still here?

I snap around to see Gwen. It makes me laugh. She’s twisting her fingers with her own hands. She refuses to look at me. She’s staring at the tank of jellyfish. They bloom and glow like shimmering ghosts across the water.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell her.

“Tristan.” She touches my face. Her hands are so cold. I’m not ready to talk about what I’ve just seen, and whatever is on her mind, she isn’t going to tell me. We stand in the quiet blue darkness of the aquatic house. “I—”

I take a step back to give her some space. I can’t have her trying to kiss me again. Not now. Not here. Not ever. I need her strong and I need her present. “What is it?”

“We should find your friends.”

I lead us through the tiny maze of giant tanks. The fish follow us with their open mouths pressed against the glass until I push on the double doors out onto the main road that divides the aquarium houses. True to Frederik’s word, the Thorne Hill Alliance is here. I feel like I’m at the Vanishing Cove all over again. In the middle of the plaza, weapons are being exchanged.

I scan the crowds but don’t see the faces I’m looking for.

“Tristan!” Thalia shouts from above. She’s on the observation deck, waving us over.

We race up the flight of steps, under the canopy. Layla stands beside Thalia. They’re sweating and out of breath, holding swords in each hand. I’m filled with a need to drop everything and pick her up in my arms. But the thunder and rain break against the barrier, and all I can do is squeeze her hand.

Frederik and Marty are conferring with Rachel. She’s got a bigger crossbow. They’re pointing at the gray line of the horizon. A thick fog is settling over the shore.

When they see me, they stop. Rachel’s bow vanishes to smoke.

With my scepter in hand, I stand before my friends. They’re staring and searching. They can see that I don’t have the trident and I don’t have Kurt.

“It’s almost sunset,” I say.

“What happened, man?” Marty takes off his cap and scratches his head. “Where’s your new pitchfork?”

“Where’s my brother?” Thalia asks.

My mouth is full of saliva. I turn to the side and spit.

“Frederik,” I say, “fill me in.”

Frederik hesitates, taking stock of the tension I’m giving off in waves. “I have a group of valkyries who will stay behind, led by Rachel. The first line is on the beach right now—vampires and werewolves. They won’t go in the water so we know they’ll make sure nothing gets past.”

“Good.” I’m nodding too hard. “Good.”

“What about other mermen?” Frederik asks. “The other champion?”

I level my turquoise eyes to his black ones. “Adaro isn’t fighting with us.”

“I see.”

“When it comes to merrows, you have to cut off their heads or stab their hearts. Otherwise, they won’t die.”

“I’m familiar with the method.” Frederik flashes a yellow smile, then turns to whisper something to Rachel. She smiles at me, and the action is so bizarre that, in that moment, I realize she thinks I’m a dead man.

“In case of a retreat—” Frederik begins.

“Way to put a damper on such a sunny day, Freddy,” Marty says.

“It is my duty to be prepared,” Frederik responds coolly. “If we must retreat, we return here. The reef house has a floor latch that leads down to our tunnels and back out onto the boardwalk.”

“Good.” I’m still nodding too hard. “Good.”

“Tristan,” Thalia says forcefully. “Where is my brother?”

“He’s still down there,” I say, turning away from her and readjusting the harness across my chest. “In the Second Circle.”

Marty mutters darkly. “I told you guys.”

“Did something happen?” Layla asks.

“Did the oracle not have the trident?” Gwen asks.

“Tristan,” Frederik says. “The others are dividing weapons if you’d like to further arm yourself.”

“I’ve got weapons,” I say.

But Frederik grabs my arm and gives me a push in the direction of the steps. “Just in case.”

I realize he’s giving me a way out and I take it. I can’t be the one to break the news to Thalia. How will she take it? Surely, nothing’s changed between them. They’re still siblings. They still grew up together. It shouldn’t matter.

I head toward the weapons and immediately recognize a face. “Penny,” I say, surprised. “What are you doing here?” She’s holding a sword in her hand.

“Do you know how to use that?”

“I’m not just a waitress,” she says, pointing it at my heart. “What about Jesse?” I say. “And the others?”

“The landlocked are free to make their own choices.” She motions to a small group of people I saw at the meeting. There isn’t anything threatening about them. Their skin is slightly green and blue. One hacks at the air, grasping a steel club with webbed hands. “That is the one thing that binds us. I want to show my son that he has the freedom to do anything he wants.”

“Where is Timmy?”

She holds the blade to her eyes so she can see her own reflection. “With his father.”

“What happened?” Layla runs up to us. “Where’s Kurt? How did you and Gwen get here?”

My thoughts are racing, trampling over each other. I place my hands on her shoulders and look right into her eyes. “Kurt is still with the oracle.”

I pause for effect.

Her eyes widen. “You mean with her?”

I nod. “I’m sure he’ll find us.”

“And she didn’t have the trident?”

“She did.”

“Then where is it?”

I can’t breathe. Something is happening to me, weaving its way through my thoughts. Kurt is my uncle. Kurt is the son of the king. Kurt has the Trident of the Seas. Wind and rain whip against our invisible force field. The giant birds’ song is a terrible wail pounding against my temples.

I try to shut it out, but I realize it’s not the birds. Someone is screaming.

“It’s starting,” I say.

The guard I passed at the entrance marches up to me. “It’s a girl. She came alone.”

“We’ll go check it out,” I say. “The rest of you stay here.”

I follow the guard back through the reef house.

Marty marches alongside me. “I was getting claustrophobic in there.”

Under the arc of the aquarium where the boardwalk meets cement, Sarabell pounds wet fists against our shield.

“Let me in,” she cries.

“So you can kill me?” I point my dagger at her.

“No, Lord Sea.” She shakes her head wildly. Her black curls are matted to her face. “No, Lord Sea. I wouldn’t—Adaro—Adaro—” Her cries are hysterical. She tries to stand but falls back down.

I turn around but her scream rips through me. I fight against my own reason. But with the encroaching darkness, can I really leave her out there alone?

“Adaro is what, Sarabell?”

Her eyes are red, tears mixing with rain. “Adaro is dead.”





A fire explodes in the distance where Adaro’s ship was hidden. Hundreds of voices scream in the darkness. The shadow of our first line of defense is a wall cutting across the sand. They’re standing, waiting.

Sarabell presses her hand on the invisible wall. “Please, she’s going to kill me too.”

I keep my dagger level to her face. “Tell me what happened.”

She cries and looks back at the dark horizon. “Please…”

“Let her pass,” Marty says. The avians rustle their feathers, and a breeze blows in as the invisible fortress opens.

I pick Sarabell up off the ground. Her legs give out. I kneel to be at eye level with her.

“Look at me. Sarabell, look at me. What happened to Adaro?”

A torrent of rain beats against the barrier. A fat drop falls onto my shoulder.

“The avians were supposed to be weatherproof,” Marty says, shielding his eyes from the drizzle.

Then the ravens caw, flapping foot-long black wings. The avians leave their posts and take off into the sky where they blow up like lightbulbs, shattering sparks down on us. Their highpitched screams become a chorus as feathers scatter and fall like helicopter leaves.

The barrier is gone and the rain beats down.

Frederik jumps from the observation deck down to where we stand. He grabs one of the guards by his shirt and seethes into his face. “What. Happened?”

Confusion spreads through our army. No one answers. The guard shakes his head, uselessly attempting to cover his eyes from Frederik’s black glare. “I-I don’t know, Fred. They were fine a second ago.”

“Get back to the plaza,” Frederik says. “Now.”

I grab Sarabell by her arm and lead her back in with the others. I sit her down on the bench. “Thalia, stay with Sarabell. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

“What happened to the birds?” Layla asks.

Up on the observation deck, the valkyries line up with their crossbows. Down here in the plaza, we ready our weapons. I push Layla behind me, smelling the stupidly brave smoke she’s giving off. I search for Gwen in the crowd, but there are so many of us.

“We’ve been breached.” Frederik’s face is calm but I pick up the tension in his voice. “The barrier is external. Only someone inside can break it. I want everyone to form ranks at the entrance!”

I grab Sarabell by the arm. “Did you do this?”

She shakes her head, crying. I scream at her. I shake her. She’s a wet doll in my hands. Someone screams my name, over and over again, but my ears are popped, like I’m in a channel leagues and leagues beneath the sea.

There’s something else weaving in the air, beneath Sarabell’s frantic sobs and the pouring rain. My dagger hums. My scepter glows. I can feel it. Energy. Crackling static. It pulses like a ring around the reef house. Stronger and stronger.

“Get down!”

I say it too late.

The reef house erupts. Sends us flying backward. My ears ring. A warm trickle snakes from my forehead to my chin. The observation deck is now a hole. The animals in the tanks gasp for breath on the floor. Rachel and her troupe reappear as smoke around us.

“Don’t look so happy to see me,” she says.

I get up from the ground. “Is everyone okay?”

Layla wipes my face with shaking hands. “You’re bleeding.”

“You too.” There’s a cut on her cheek. The skin mends instantly.

“It’s a good thing I’m already dead.” Frederik pulls a long piece of glass from his collarbone.

Marty groans, “Do you know how hard it is to get blood off corduroy?”

“It’s black.” Layla rolls her eyes. She winces when she arcs to crack her back. “You can’t even see it.”

Thalia picks up Sarabell and sits her between two rows of bushes. Everyone raises their weapons toward the crumbled reef house. At first we only see shadows breaking through the settling dust.

Jesse emerges from what’s left of the building, trailed by more than a dozen of his faithful landlocked. His clothes are shredded. Under the rain, a thin layer of crushed sheetrock and brick clumps on his skin. He peels back his raw, red mouth around buck-sharp teeth. Rachel shoots, but Jesse holds his hand up and the arrow turns into sand.

I step forward. Jesse picked the wrong day. He smiles with his fat, raw lips.

“All this time on land,” I tell him. “And you never thought to get braces?”

We charge each other at the same time. Arrows whiz by. The wet slick of swords piercing flesh fills my ears.

I can’t see anyone but Jesse. I punch him across the face, but his head snaps right back. His nails bite into me as we tumble across the debris. His scaly knuckles tear at the thin skin of my temple. I jab a fist once, twice in his gut and a knee to his groin. Jesse chokes, and in the moment it takes for him to cradle himself, I take my dagger, hot in my hands, and drive it straight through his chest.

I take pleasure in watching his black eyes roll into his skull. Lips twitch. Body convulses. I hate myself for it. I wonder if he’ll break apart the way the merrows do. I wonder if he’ll turn to coral the way Kai’s father did. I’m hoping for the coral. That way I can crush it with my bare hands.

Instead, Jesse’s eyes come back into focus. He shows me his palms; the red dots spreading like a stain around his wrist.

Where he touches the blade in his chest, his hands give off smoke. He screams against the burn, elated as he pushes Triton’s dagger away and out of his chest. He throws it at my feet. The gash in his chest singes but heals just as quickly.

“She’s here,” he says.

I pick up my dagger and charge at him again. If the pointy end won’t make a difference, then there’s always the other end. I crack his skull. He stumbles backward, laughing.

“You can’t hurt me! Can’t you see? Her most loyal subjects have been rewarded. She is here, land prince. And she is waiting for you.” A growl rumbles from deep inside him, like a giant after waking from a hundred-year nap.

My friends have formed a semi-circle behind me, swords, fangs, and—where did Marty find a baseball bat? I point at the dead bodies around him.

“You brought your friends to die,” I say. A voice inside my head whispers, He wanted them to die.

“They understood their purpose,” he says. Jesse’s face is distorted. “As you will understand yours.”

Then there’s another crack of lightning, this time so close that I can feel the jolt in my bones. It cuts through the air and goes straight for Jesse, grabbing him like arms ten feet above the ground. The ribbons of electricity don’t come from above. They come from the parting crowd, where Kurt stands in a half shift, wielding the Trident of the Skies.

With one final gust, the three prongs crackle, taking hold of Jesse once more. The lightning rockets him miles into the air, until he’s nothing more than a shadow in the night sky.





What is this?” Thalia asks her brother.

There’s a definite and distinct look of awe in every set of eyes that turns to Kurt. I know there is nothing like this kind of jealousy that’s creeping through me. It’s ten times worse than when he formed the instant bond with my mother. One hundred times worse than when I saw Lucine hand him the head of the trident, her manic green eyes looking at me through the two-way mirror. She wanted me to feel this way.

Everything is falling away with the rain, cleaning the ground for the future she saw come to pass. Kai’s words have never rung so true or so loudly: Nothing matters to them but their secrets. Their need to be listened to and needed in a world that’s forgotten them.

The question still hangs in the glances traded like notes between class periods. He got into her pool. He stepped up and took the trident from her. And yet, he still can’t say the words. So I do.

“Kurt is the last son of the Sea King,” I say. There’s a slithering black thing in my heart. It’s jealousy and it has taken form. He flinches when our eyes meet. “Adaro is dead.”

Pulled out of his spell, Kurt notices Sarabell. Dirty from Jesse’s blast and red in the face from crying. “Nieve?”

“Which means,” I say, “she’s taken his staff.”

Frederik steps forward like a shadow at my side. He shouts, “Form ranks!”

Kurt turns to Sarabell. He lowers the crackling prongs of the trident to her face. She stares at the lightning, then at his face. “If you lie to me, witch—”

“I’m not lying!” Sarabell cried furiously. “Adaro wouldn’t listen to me. He wanted to come to your aid, and then came the silver witch. Adaro threw me off the ship and the others fought. I could hear them. They said they would wait until your barrier was down.”

“All of our avian shields were destroyed,” Frederik says aloud. “After you entered. Aren’t you one of the sea folk rarely gifted?”

“Aye. But as Lord Sea knows…” Her smile is slow. She trembles in the cold. “I am not the only one.”

Gwen doesn’t flinch. Rain washes away the dirt from her, head to toes.

Sarabell raises her hands slowly. I can feel the spark of her magic pulling from the air around us, directed right at me. I raise my scepter at the same time Kurt does his trident.

Neither of us are as fast as Rachel, holding her crossbow. The crowd stands back. The spring is released and it flies past my ear. Sarabell’s open mouth gapes at the air, unable to scream as her body breaks down into foam under the rain.

My heart is a hammer in my eardrums. I look to Rachel and all I can say is “You?”

“I owed you,” she says.

There is no time for thank-yous. Frederik freezes, listening to the air as if there are voices only he can hear.

“They’re coming ashore,” he says.

We race through the archway and onto the boardwalk.

Dozens of them. Rot and death cutting through the fog. I hold my scepter by the hilt over my head, casting a light over our first line. The vampires are fast and strong, but the merrows come in massive numbers. Archer leads the way, curved swords in each hand, and hacks at anything in his way. The blue fire of Adaro’s ship is coming closer, threatening to crash against the pier.

“Call them back,” I tell Frederik.

“What?”

I break into a sprint, jumping over the railing and onto the sand. “Just do it!”

Archer doesn’t see me. He’s confused as the Thorne Hill Alliance retreats so willingly.

Tap, tap…my fingers to my forehead, my utterly silent Morsecode prayer.

I flip the scepter. Point the quartz down. Earth-shaker, Kai called it. I slam it into the ground, and like a ripple, the earth shudders and opens beneath our feet.





The crack in the ground spreads like broken glass.

Water fills the hole quickly, pushing the merrows into the opening. It disrupts the path of the sea and a wave crashes over us. I feel hands all over my skin and I blindly lash out with my scepter. The light pulses, suspended underwater. Their open mouths swim at me from all sides. The tide pulls us back and I push my arms harder and harder to get back to shore. I stab the ground once again. The tremble shakes all the way to the boardwalk, rippling the wood as I close the wound, devouring the merrows, trapping them in the earth.

Another wave crashes, and the next line of Archer’s army slithers onto the sand.

I hold up the scepter as a light beam.

And then they’re running onto the sand. The merrows fall away in a mudslide of melting flesh as the Alliance crashes over them in a fury of fangs, claws, and swords.

Kurt’s encircled by a breeze. In his hands, the trident is a torch of lightning, pushing the creatures of the deep back into the shallows.

I unsheathe my dagger, cutting cleanly across the neck of a merrow. He breaks apart at my feet and I move on to the next one. This time the merrows are faster. Stronger. Every time I kill one, more and more spring right out of the sea.

I go to the aid of a vampire; a merrow with the head of a swordfish is ramming needle-like fingers into the vampire’s heart. I come from behind and stab the merrow through the back of his head.

“Good thing it isn’t wood,” I say.

He growls but manages a wry grin. “Still hurts.”

“Take the wounded to the Wreck,” Frederik says, suddenly a flash beside me. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He spits over and over but is dissatisfied. “That is the most wretched thing I’ve tasted in my life.”

Something hits me from behind and I fall on top of him. The wave crashes behind us and we start retreating farther up the beach. They’re like hydras—we cut off their heads and more keep coming out of the sea.

I flip the scepter back to the ground but Marty screams at me. He’s covered from head to toe in oozy, black merrow blood.

“Don’t! Not unless you want to decimate the boardwalk. That thing’s barely holding on as it is.” He swings a sword and grimaces as another merrow breaks away at his feet.

“I’m sorry,” I scream, back to back with him. A ring of the gnarliest mermen I’ve ever seen, scarred in patches like Archer, forms around us. “I know when you woke up, killing sea creatures wasn’t the first thing on your mind.”

“I did.” Marty breathes like a bull. “I had lox on my breakfast bagel.”

My laughter confuses my opponent and I jab him in the jaw. He doesn’t move but keeps charging. I freeze as tentacles wrap around his face, slithering through his nose. His body convulses as a small gray thing slides out from his nostril. The whites of his eyes are spiderwebbed with black veins until he bursts. As he washes away, the tentacles turn into hands. Penny’s face is surprised and ecstatic.

Marty pulls his blade from another pile of merrow mush and grimaces at Penny. “You are one sick mother—”

Marty tenses. A long red needle pierces through his chest. My body follows his to the ground. I press my hand on the wound. The blood pools all around his neck. Behind me, Frederik is paler than ever. Marty’s trying to speak, trying to joke.

“Don’t talk, Marty.” Frederik pushes my hand away and replaces it with his own. Marty tries to laugh but he spits out blood. I scramble for my pockets until I find the tiny bottle. I twist off the cap.

Frederik asks, “What is that?”

“It’s all that’s left,” I say, dropping half the contents on the wound and tipping the rest into Marty’s mouth.

“Of what?”

“Their secrets,” I say. “Take him.”

Frederik looks torn. Marty’s slack in his arms. “You need me.”

“He needs you more.”

I turn around, hoping that my last drops of spring water can save Marty. I run around the dead bodies on the sand. The merrows are frantic at the smell of blood. They stop fighting and devour, leaving them defenseless against our swords.

Even Archer can’t get their attention, but he’s busy on his own. Kurt blasts him with crashing electricity that would reduce a man to ashes. But Archer lies on the wet sand with eyes wide open, like he’s drawing life from the water. He gets right back up and barrels into Kurt. Kurt presses his feet on Archer’s stomach and flips him over. Kurt swings the trident across Archer’s face.

He doesn’t need my help, so I run to Thalia. She’s got a nasty slash running down her arm. She glances at it like it’s no big deal and helps one of the Alliance—a wire-thin guy about my age with glowing yellow eyes. Our numbers are falling faster and faster. More merrows are coming in with the waves. We reform our line, even closer to the boardwalk. Kurt steps in beside me.

“We can’t let them get into the city,” I say to Kurt.

“There are so many of them,” he replies.

Frederik returns. If his heart were beating, I know it would be thundering out of his chest. I want to ask if Marty is okay. But the vampire growls like a lion.

The next wave of merrows is marching up to us. Kurt and I move forward, he with the head of the trident and me with the scepter, like Kleos and Ellanos, the old kings of the sea.

Then a bright light rises from the waves, behind the line of merrows.

A conch blasts through the air.

Riding on the back of a great sea horse is Princess Kai. Behind her surfaces a small army of mermen, their breastplates shimmering in the dark.

“That’s my guard.” Kurt takes a step forward. “What are they doing here?”

“Who cares?” Frederik says. “As long as they’re here to fight.”

Kai blows on the conch once again, waving her golden sword in the air.

And we race against the merrows, a clash of sand and sea.





If my boys had asked me how I was going to spend my summer, never would I ever have said this.

Screaming at the top of my lungs until I don’t recognize my own voice. Running, running, running against the wave of merrows, accompanied by an alliance of supernatural creatures and members of the Sea Guard.

If I’d once thought Kurt was threatening in his stoic poise, I know now that’s nothing compared to the way the Sea Guard moves. They’re a unit, as if they read each other’s minds. The night is full of final screams before the opposing fighters fall away into the coming waves. The tide pulls away the bodies, those that don’t break away the way we do.

In the onslaught, Archer wades toward me. He’s weaponless. “This is your chance, Archer.” I hold my scepter between us, the light dragging shadows across his chiseled face. “Go back to Nieve and tell her she’ll never have me and she’ll never have Kurt.”

He bares his canine smile at me. His eyes flicker to the right where Adaro’s ship is floating precariously. Layla’s scream fills the night—over the warrior yells, over the pulse of my heart in my ears. I can’t see her, but I know she’s there.

“She already has you, brother.”

My feet pound the sand, racing through the battle, toward the fire, as Archer shouts, “And when she has you, she will never let go.”

Though I can hear someone call my name, I don’t stop. A horde of merrows step in my way and I drive my scepter downward, ripping into the sand. A wave pushes the merrows into the rift, and when I pull my scepter free, the ground closes.

I keep going toward the blue flames on Adaro’s ship.

I climb up the side, past the painful moans of merfolk floating below. I think of what my mother said to me earlier: “You can’t save them all.”

It’s childish and stupid to want to ask why? Why can’t I? But here I am, hoisting over the side of a ship gone up in flames. The sails have been reduced to cinder and the mast breaks. I jump to the side as it falls against the pier. I shout her name. Layla, Layla, Layla!

It isn’t her voice that answers but Adaro’s. Under the shadows of his fiery ship, Adaro lies alone on the deck. His eyes are barely open, but he grabs the sword in his chest. Like with Kai’s father, it’s just short of a killing blow. I kneel beside him. I’m afraid to touch him. He might fall apart like the others. I wonder, how many times will I have to hold on to the dead?

Adaro grunts. There’s nothing for me to do here but try to give him the smallest bit of comfort. There are tiny thorns on his chest, red where the poison has trickled into his veins, black and pronounced under thinning flesh.

“Do you want me to save him?” Nieve asks. When I turn around, she’s not there.

I inch step by step along the deck.

Her voice carries over the ship.

She’s nestled in water. It wraps around her and raises her level to the deck. Her fingers grip the Staff of Eternity.

She’s playing me. Nothing can save him. I know it deep in my heart. “Where is she?”

Nieve has regenerated. Her skin breathes with new life. Her white hair shines under the nearly full moon, just visible against the black sky breaking through storm clouds. The blue is gone from her lips, replaced by a full scarlet mouth. “I can do it, you know. Save him.”

“In exchange for this?” I hold my scepter sideways, so hard that my knuckles are white.

“How did you know?” Her voice is dry, amused, and full of venom.

“Everything has a price.”

“So true,” she says. “But I am no oracle. I do not require anything but your devotion. Your love.”

“Look at what you’ve done!” I spit over the ship at her. “How could anyone love you?”

“I didn’t start this, Tristan.” She’s serene in her confidence. “My children know the things I did to make them well when no one else would take them. All our creatures are precious. I do this for our kind. I do this for us.”

“That’s why you sent Jesse to die for you?”

“That’s why I sent Jesse to distract you.” She turns the staff in her hands. “You’re as impulsive as my brother, never stopping to look. You see only what’s directly in front of you. Only what you want in the moment.”

“You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”

“Don’t you dare…” Behind me, Adaro’s voice comes in an angry whisper. “Don’t you dare give in to her.”

That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? If I let him die, it’ll be my fault. Like Ryan, like Marty. No, Marty’s fine. I saved Marty, like I couldn’t save the others. Everything that’s happening here is my fault. In the dark of the night, the silver witch waits for me to devote myself to her.

Deep in my heart, I know what my grandfather would do. He locked her away for a reason, but she found her way out. Everything she does is calculated, studying us like prey before she swoops in and swallows us whole. She’s one step ahead of me, knowing that I won’t let her kill Adaro. If I were my grandfather, I would have done things differently. Then again, I’m not him. I’m me.

“I thought you’d hesitate.” She squeezes her hand, and when I turn around, Adaro screams like he’s burning from the inside. It’s cut off abruptly as, little by little, he erupts into bubbles, trickling away on the deck until he’s nothing but a pile of sand. Everything he ever was. Everything he would ever be is blowing away in the wind. Poof, just like that.

On the deck of the ship, I point the quartz scepter at her.

“I’d be careful if I were you, Tristan.” She lifts herself in the wave again. The wind is drying her hair, giving her the effect of flying.

I ready myself on the ledge. “Get off your wave, and we’ll settle this once and for all.”

“You can’t kill me. You must know that.”

“Because Archer brought you the spring water.”

She nods. “And the more I drink it, the stronger my magic and the more I can help our kind.”

“I can still hurt you,” I say, hoping it’s true. Hoping Layla is safe.

“This is all wrong, Tristan. Don’t you see? I don’t want you dead. I want you with me.” The rains start up again. She lifts the staff over her head and pulls at the sky until the lightning returns. “And the scepter, of course. If Adaro’s life wasn’t enough, then perhaps this one will make you feel differently.”

She casts light over the pier.

Gwen stands at the edge, a small silver knife in her hand, the blade pressed against Layla’s neck.