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A rden dove with a speed she’d never achieved before, even though she had no dive suit, no weights.

She had something she never would have thought to use before—something she used without pausing to consider it now, tunneling through the water with air, creating a bubble for herself that pushed through and through and through.

Faster and faster, with all the speed gravity lent her, unhindered by the mass of water.

She met up with Jade and Electra at the abandoned entrance to the dome.

In the distance, she could see the Black Tails all fleeing, the reason not at first clear.

Then, when she released her bubble of air and swam with her sister and the general up the entrance, she felt it. The sizzle. The quake. The electricity.

The moment their heads cleared the water, she heard the crack, felt it, felt the air shiver and strain, fighting to escape its confines.

Some of it did, through those first fissures. Water rained in, air bubbled out.

“No!” Electra’s scream joined with every other voice in merdom, her hands stretching out. Up.

A helpless reaction, one born of desperation, Arden thought at first. Then she realized it wasn’t. Sweat beaded on Electra’s skin almost instantly, a force unseen by human eyes pushing her down to her knees.

The water. She was lending all her strength to hold up what water she could. Her panicked eyes found Arden. “Go! I’ll follow when I can.”

She needed no more prodding. Seidon was here, in the cathedral stretching skyward, right beneath the main fissure. Its spire groaned, smoldered, and then burst into flame, the raining sea barely keeping it in check.

Arden and Jade exchanged no words, just ran. Like the million races they’d run before on their own beach, quick as the wind. Down the street, up the cathedral steps, into the doors already flung wide for the mer who were pouring out, sobbing and shouting for each other.

They thought they could flee. From so many voices, she heard “Meet me at the waystation!” as if those were still there.

What would happen when they got there and found only rubble?

Would they have air enough to make the surface, or would they drown on the way up?

No one would have known to grab air tanks.

Jade yelled to everyone they passed, warning them of the waystations’ destruction.

But that only made the panic worse. Some went to bar the exits to the city, but would they really be enough to stave off the panicked mob?

They had to hurry. Stop this, somehow, before the hundreds of thousands of panicked mer citizens could escape the dome only to swim to their own destruction.

“Seidon!” His name spilled from her lips the moment she cleared the cathedral doors. The moment she saw him, there at the front of the church, down on one knee, arms raised like an ancient statue of Atlas, holding up the world.

He was. Or the sea, anyway. As much of it as he could, while all around him others—presumably also Awakened—attempted the same.

But most of the Awakened mer were the Black Tails, who had swum away already, probably thinking they’d lost the day. The only ones here were Seidon, the royals she’d seen at his birthday ball, and two dozen men in priestly garb.

And one, still standing at the front, sword raised on high and crown gleaming on his head. Blue lightning still poured from the tip of the sword.

“Librus!” Jade shouted.

He looked at them—at Jade, anyway—and smiled. Held out an arm. “My sweet Jade,” he called out. “I tried to stop her. I thought…I thought if I could wrest it from her, I’d have the power to undo the damage she’s done. But I can’t! Perhaps, if you help…”

Jade reached over, gave Arden’s fingers a quick squeeze, and then dashed up the aisle.

Their distraction.

With the priest focused on her, Arden was able to slip around the last of the escaping congregants, toward Seidon. But she didn’t run. Couldn’t. She was too busy sensing, feeling, introducing herself to the air—in here, but more, all throughout the dome.

So much. So heavy, despite being lighter than the sea trying to crash through it.

So intent upon going up and up and up, through each fissure and crack.

With the dome’s structure compromised, it was the air itself holding up the water, and it was unnatural.

Backward. Not the way it should be. The air belonged above, not below, and it longed to escape, to gain its freedom.

It wasn’t like the hurricane, wild and undaunted and mad with its own dance. It was focused and clear and simple, that one command all it knew—up!

“Stay,” she whispered to it, curling herself around it. “Stay here. With me.”

A few bubbles escaped her whisper, but she caught the mass of it. Held it there, under the collapsing dome, while Seidon and the priests strove to hold the water above.

How could air be so heavy? How could holding the thing she’d danced with earlier in the massive storm now feel as though it would crush her? As if trudging through quicksand, she made her way along the frontmost pew, toward where Seidon knelt at the end of it, in the aisle.

He knelt, as he did at every missa, at the bottom of the steps. Humble devotion on the face he turned upward. Quivering muscles so capable, but still so finite. So aware that it was only the Triada who could send the Mercy of Waters. Only the Triada who held life in his hands.

Arden let the weight of the air press her to her knees beside him. Fighting the pressure with every movement, she slid her hand up his arm, until she could weave her fingers through his. He squeezed them in a silent message of welcome, of thanks, of fear. She tilted her face to heaven.

And she prayed for mercy.