Page 33 of A Storm in Every Heart (Enchanted Legacies #2)

I gradually become aware of the throbbing in my right arm and upper chest. I don’t remember being hit there, but the blood coating my shirt proves otherwise. I lift the hem of my shirt to wipe sweat from my face, and it too comes back bloody.

Fuck, this is going to hurt tomorrow unless I can find a healer or muster up the energy to heal myself.

I’m not even sure how many men I just killed. Twenty? Thirty? Captain Connell could have been ten men on his own—he was one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen.

But I suppose I wanted it more—I had more to fight for.

And now I need to go find her.

I blink blood out of my eyes and my breath heaves as I stumble across the deck toward where I saw Odessa watching me. She’s not on deck anymore, but she and Jett can’t have gone far. I’ll find her and?—

Without warning, something smashes into the side of the boat. We rock to the side, and I falter, catching myself just before I fall onto the deck.

I whip around just in time to see a towering column of water erupt over the port side, turning the world into a blinding spray of white mist.

For a fraction of a second, I think it was my doing—that I somehow conjured another wave without meaning to—but then reality takes over.

Emerging from the depths is a gigantic black tentacle, as thick as the mainmast and lined with suckers that could easily rip a man’s head clean off. With terrifying speed, it slams down onto the deck, shattering the railing into splinters.

Before I can react, dozens of tentacles burst from the frothing sea in a frenzy—some thick as tree trunks, others sinuous and searching—slamming down with bone-rattling force.

One lands so near I taste its briny spray.

It wraps around the starboard cannon, ripping the heavy iron free with a sound like thunder.

I duck, roll, and slash at the thing with my sword, but the blade only carves a shallow groove in its slimy hide.

It wraps around my leg, yanking me off my feet and into the air. I slice at it, over and over, but the grip tightens, winding up my legs until it wraps around my chest and squeezes. I gasp for air, but can’t find it. My vision grays at the edges.

Then, from below, a saber flashes—a thin, precise cut, severing the tentacle at the base. Blood and seawater pour from the wounded monster, and the tentacle writhes for a second before it’s yanked overboard by the unseen creature.

I crash to the deck, gasping, struggling to regain my breath.

Out of nowhere, a scarred hand reaches toward me, and I look up into the face of its owner. Standing over me, wild-eyed and very much alive, is Captain Connell, hand outstretched to help me up.

What the fuck?

His throat should be open. His chest should be empty. But he stands, blood-drenched but grinning. “Alright, mate?”

Shock reverberates through me, and I scramble to my feet. “I killed you.”

He laughs, spitting blood onto the deck. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

I gape at him, a thousand questions flooding my mind, but I don’t get a chance to ask any of them. Whatever monster is beneath the ship recovers, and returns with a vengeance.

Its flailing tentacles emerge from below in a shower of ocean spray, and for one disorienting moment I think the whole ship is about to roll over. The deck tilts beneath my feet—a slick plane canted forty-five degrees toward oblivion.

Somewhere behind me, I hear a chilling scream—a raw note of terror that vibrates through my spine like a struck bell.

I spin just in time to see Odessa and Jett charging up from below deck. Her face is wild, dress torn, and her hair plastered to her cheeks. She screams again as a tentacle, swift as a whip, flies toward her.

“Dessa—down!” I shout, helpless to do anything from so far away.

Jett grabs her arm and yanks her aside just as the appendage crushes the deck where she’d been standing, boards splintering under its weight.

The impact is so strong it splinters the mainmast; above us, rigging and canvas come crashing down in a billow of torn cloth. The mast groans like something dying slowly, its shadow looming as it tilts at an impossible angle.

Another tentacle wraps itself around the broken mast and heaves, snapping it off at the base with a thunderous crack that reverberates through my bones. The deck lurches; splinters rain down like daggers. The upper rigging, still tangled with black sails and snapped lines, falls straight at us.

Odessa and Jett are right underneath it.

I don’t think—I react.

Something primal surges inside me: hot and electric at the core of my chest. In one motion I reach out—not with my hands but with something deeper—the magic answers instantly: ocean water boils up in a heaving wave that collides midair with sailcloth and wood debris, knocking both clear before they can crush her.

But even as relief floods me, another tentacle sweeps toward them from the port side—this one studded along its length with jagged barnacles that could strip flesh from bone.

Jett shoves Odessa back again, hard enough that she stumbles onto one knee. The tentacle catches him hard in the chest and swings him wide over the ruined deck.

Another scream has me tearing my eyes from Jett. My vision tunnels down to Odessa’s terrified eyes as she crouches on the deck, her arms over her head.

My own wings spring from my back as I run toward her, lifting off the ground without even thinking about it.

I reach Dessa in seconds. She screams again as I scoop her into my arms, rising into the air just as another tentacle smashes into where she stood seconds prior.

“Are you alright?” I shout. It’s such a basic question and not nearly enough to describe the terror and adrenaline that flooded me the moment I saw her, but it’s all I can get out.

“I think so?” Odessa screams back over the wind. “Are you?”

“Barely.”

I look around frantically for a place to put her down out of harm’s way while I go back and help Jett, but there’s nowhere. We’re in the middle of the godsdamn fucking ocean and— wait.

“I’m going to put you in the water,” I tell her. “I need to go get Jett.”

“No!” she screams, a stronger note of panic than I’ve ever heard before rising in her voice.

“You’ll be fine. I’ll come right back.”

“Please, no!” she screams again. She reaches out with both hands and grabs my face, forcing my eyes to hers. “Do not put me in the water, Kastian. Please !”

I stare into her wide violet eyes and for half a second I can’t think, I just nod. I don’t know what she’s so scared of—a siren shouldn’t be afraid of a sea monster—but I can’t deny her anything when she’s looking at me like that. “Okay, I won’t.”

Odessa lets go of my face and releases a breath. “Good. I swear to the gods, if you do, you’ll never see me again.”

My mouth twists with annoyance—no, anger.

Even now, hovering in the air over the wreck of the ship I just rescued her from, she’s so determined to hate me she’d threaten to disappear. “You don’t have to threaten, Princess. You could just ask.”

She stiffens in my arms but doesn’t say anything else, twisting to look down at the nearly ruined ship below us. I fly lower, searching for Jett, all the while trying to figure out how I’m going to reach for my sword without putting Odessa down.

Mercifully, in a flash of indigo blue feathers, I spot Jett flying low over the ship below. I let out a relieved breath and feel Odessa do the same.

I have no fucking idea how he escaped the monster’s grasp, but he seems fine. He’s whooping through a mouthful of blood, face split open in a wild grin as if fighting monsters was his true calling in life.

“Jett!” I shout to get his attention.

He turns midair to look at me and I swear he seems disappointed to be leaving the fight behind as he flies toward us.

Jett and I rise into the air and I squint into the distance, searching for the nearest land.

“Head south,” I tell Jett, jerking my head toward my homeland.

He gives me a long look, but doesn’t comment on it as we turn to fly toward the land on the horizon.

Just before we leave, I risk a glance back at the ship just as another tentacle punches clean through the keel, snapping centuries-old beams like dry reeds. At the prow, silhouetted against the setting sun, stands Captain Connell—somehow alive, absolutely refusing to die.

He’s caked with blood but still upright, sword flashing as he hacks at anything that moves. He laughs—actually laughs—as if he’d been waiting all day for a disaster to validate his existence.

Then a tentacle as thick as a chimney wraps around Connell’s waist and hauls him straight up off the deck.

He catches my eye at that moment and grins like a lunatic even as his ribs are nearly crushed by suckers the size of soup plates. “Let’s pray this time it sticks!”

My stomach lurches uncomfortably.

I already hate myself for what I’m about to do.

“Jett!” I yell over the din. “Grab him!”

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“I wish.”

With a shrug, he tucks wings tight and dives straight for Connell, slicing through mist and smoke.

At first, it looks like they’re both going to get crushed together by the monster’s grip—but Jett skims low over the ruined deck, slashing through barnacle-studded flesh with a knife I didn’t even realize he was holding.

The tentacle spasms; Connell slips free and drops screaming toward certain death. Jett swoops underneath at exactly the right instant, and snags Connell under both armpits. They spin wildly together before Jett recovers control, beating upward with everything he has left.

And below us, the last fragments of the ship vanish into the sea.