“Heal him,” she commanded someone—Niven or Ori—but no one moved. Niven was too afraid and Ori was spent.
Selena looked at Sebastian. He was different now. Before Calinda, he was Julian, the man she loved. Calinda turned him into Sebastian Vaas. The island had killed her love too. She marched across the sand, her booted feet sinking into the dampness, until she was standing before him.
Hope burned in his eyes. “Selena…”
“There are skiffs yon,” she said, pointing with her chin at the small docks where the Bazira had left their boats.
“Aye,” Sebastian said, hope burning in his gray-green eyes.
“We need you to row the boat,” she said coldly.
His hope died. She healed him swiftly. But only enough.
I must conserve my strength. An end…
She watched as the deathly pallor left Sebastian’s skin and she felt relief as the pain of a dozen wounds left him. An ugly open wound on his cheek closed, restoring his beauty.
A false beauty, she thought, no deeper than the skin I healed. Another, tiny voice told her there was more to him than that but she silenced it. She let his silent pleas go unanswered and turned away.
She got them going, marching them to the makeshift dock.
“Everyone into the boat,” she commanded.
“I was told the Vai’Ensai believe a …a body should be buried,” Ori said gently, still holding Cat tightly. “To keep the soul from wandering.”
Selena braced herself to look once again at Ilior’s dead body.
“He will not wander,” Selena said, her voice sounding as though it were coming from leagues away. From somewhere cold and barren. “I will bury him,” she said. “I will bury them all.”
The group climbed into the skiff without speaking; they looked at her now fearfully, none dared to touch her or talk to her further. Sebastian took up the oars.
“Svoz?” Selena asked.
“Lost on Saliz,” Sebastian replied. “Accora kept him.”
Selena nodded and looked away when he tried to hold her gaze. She watched as Isle Calinda receded. Ilior’s body was a dark shape on the sand. Other shapes, other bodies, had washed up near him. The tide was coming in.
Selena’s lips curled. Indeed, the tide is coming in.
The Black Storm was closer than they had left it.
All were aboard and the skiff was stowed. Ori took Cat below. Cat was wounded somehow but the small woman flitted in and then out of Selena’s thoughts. Unimportant. The crew gathered around, smiling their pleasure at their return. Marcus Bailey beamed beneath his beard to see her and Sebastian, but the smile faded quickly. Whistle bounded up to Selena, happiness writ all over his face. He stopped short when he saw her and backed away. Somewhere, she felt bad for frightening him, but it wasn’t important. She turned to Sebastian.
“Take us another league out and no further.”
“Selena,” he said slowly. “What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done.” She fixed him a cold stare. “Do it.”
He looked about to protest but then nodded and went to do her bidding. Selena went to the starboard rail, as the ship was perpendicular to Isle Calinda. Around her, orders were shouted, sails unfurled, and soon the Black Storm was parallel to the island as the ship began to sail away on a westerly wind, plowing a path through the dead. Then more orders and the sails were furled again and the ship drifted.
Selena climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck. The crew watched her go; she passed Niven who might’ve spoken to her but she couldn’t hear him. She climbed the ladder. Sebastian was at the helm, watching her, but he made no move to stop her.
It will likely kill me.
Likely. She was exhausted to the point of collapse and the grief of her open wound, of Ilior’s death…it hounded her just outside the periphery of the edge, like a caged animal eager to maul its prey.
Death would be a relief, she thought idly. If I survive, that pain…it will be there. Waiting for me. This is the end.
The sun was struggling above the horizon and storm clouds spilled an unending torrent of rain. They hovered over Isle Calinda and wept for the doomed island.
Selena raised her arms. She saw only Calinda, a tiny shape huddled against an orange and gray horizon, sunlit enough so that her target could not escape. The words were on her lips but she did not need to utter them. She felt the power well up from within her. From behind, footsteps on the deck. Voices shouting. But none dared to touch her.
The seas began to boil.
She thrust her arms higher; her shoulder screamed and she lent her voice to the rising wind. The waters roiled, swells rocked the ship but passed under it, heading toward Calinda.
More, more, more…
Selena called more power, more magic, and the waves began to grow. The ship was tossed but she kept her footing, concentrated on directing the water to do her bidding.
The seas obeyed.
Wave after wave battered the island but it wasn’t enough. Selena summoned more power and with another scream, thrust her arms to the sky.
A great wall of water rose in front of the Black Storm, rising up until its crest was lost to the sky above. Selena felt her body bend and stretch and twist, trying to contain the power. Pain wracked her, the hole in her chest turned her every sinew to ice. Yet she held on. Her teeth clenched, her head pounded with the strain, her arms felt as though they were tearing from her sockets as she thrust the water up ever higher. And when she could hold it no more, when the very seas around them seemed shallow as the water fed her wave, she thrust her arms forward with a final scream that clawed its way out of her throat. She fell to her hands and knees but could not let go yet, could not let the darkness or death take her. She had to see. She had to watch Calinda die.
She crawled to the rail and hauled herself up and watched as the wall of water raced away from the ship, toward Calinda. A tidal wave that made the waters she sent crashing into the island ten years ago look like a child’s splash. She was dimly aware that the others were at the rail beside her, stupefied, but she could only watch her creation.
Bodies of the dead were caught up in its swell; she could see them in the sunlight, trapped in the wall of water and carried toward the island.
Yes, she thought. Make it clean. Make it stop.
And then the tidal wave swept upward, rising higher, impossibly high, and then it crashed down on Isle Calinda.
The roar was deafening, human-sounding; like hundreds of voices crying out in their final throes. White water crashed and roiled in a huge turmoil of spray that stretched for a league and a half, obscuring the island in foam and churning water. It was as if the sea were devouring Calinda, and Selena found the strength to nod with satisfaction. She was slipping down, but she held on long enough to watch as the seas calmed and the roar—the cries of the dead, she imagined—were finally silenced. The waters were clean, no dead could be seen floating among the remaining small swells. The seas settled.
Isle Calinda was gone.
Selena heard the gasps around her, but they were beyond her now.