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V ahly shouted at Baww, who’d fired in the rebel’s fighting zone, then she wheeled Kyril around to direct the stone gryphon at the fourth unit of sea warriors going hard against Eux, her Jades, and a handful of Call Breakers.

Nix flew past. On her back, Arc narrowed his eyes, and his fingers worked a spell.

The next time Vahly glanced his way, he wielded a net of sparkling magic, casting it across the sea kynd and lifting them from the water where they gasped and snarled, weakly throwing spears until Eux lit them with a focused beam of intensely red fire.

Euskal breathed flames at a hulking sea kynd male who wielded a two-headed spear.

The sea kynd slipped back into the sea, avoiding the blaze, but rose again immediately and took aim.

On Euskal’s back, Ursae spun air magic and launched it at the male.

The light made him call out and cover his eyes.

Euskal roared and released a rippling stream of bright orange flame, and the sea kynd went up in smoke.

Haldus and Baww fought with air magic and fire, blasting divots in the waves and sending sea kynd swimming. A sea kynd with a blackened arm rose behind them.

“Baww! Behind you!” Vahly called.

The sea warrior pushed his spear forward, and a wave crashed over Baww and Haldus, dragging them under. Kyril flew low, and Vahly frantically searched the water, only to see them driving out of the water ten feet away, struggling but alive.

A voice cut through the noise, and Vahly turned to see Lilia blasting from the sea.

“Strike here, Earth Queen!”

Though Vahly couldn’t see Astraea, she trusted Lilia. She flipped the oaken sword and drove the tip down beside Kyril’s heaving sides. “Bring forth your fire, earth. The Sea Queen will not bend, and so she will burn.”

The ocean vibrated, and the magic pressed against Vahly’s heart and filled her nose with the scents of new, green shoots, summer-singed ground, the musk of animals and dried grasses.

“You will never end me,” Astraea’s hissing voice sounded as she broke the surface, cheeks pale as quartz and eyes flat black.

A bolt of earthblood shot through the water and into the sky. The flow of molten earth wrapped Astraea like a golden cloak. The Sea Queen’s mouth opened in a scream.

Then she was no more.

Vahly’s heart thundered, and she gripped her sword, shaking.

Kyril roared, and the dragons joined him, but her stomach turned. She’d killed their chance at balance, and no one knew the true consequences.

The waves ceased.

In the unnatural silence, the water became like glass, blood swirling under the smooth surface around the sea folk who had stilled. Thunder rolled, growing stronger as the sky darkened.

“The sun…” Arc was saying as Nix soared over Kyril slowly. Arc’s skin had gone ghostly white.

A bloody hue spread across the sun, and pewter clouds swarmed the skies.

Frost iced Vahly’s spine. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

Two sea kynd males shouted out, pointing.

A teeming mass of sea creatures swam closer.

Large, triangular fish with whipping tails, sharks with silver-tipped fins by the hundreds, bright teal eels slithering all moved in circles around the vast majority of the sea folk, Lilia and her rebels included, their blue spears bobbing in the dead water.

A whirlpool formed, spinning suddenly faster and faster.

What do we do? Nix asked.

“I…I don’t know.”

The whirlpool centered around one soul.

Lilia.

The rebel leader looked up at Vahly, eyes bloodshot and wide. “Earth Quee—”

The sea sucked her down.

In the sky, the clouds drew to a halt, the sea creatures hovered in the water, and the whirlpool froze like time itself had stopped.

All remained quiet. In the air. In the sea.

There was movement on the distant coast. “Arc, can you see what that is?”

Nix didn’t fly him far, and Vahly was glad of it. When they returned a moment later, Arc swallowed and wiped his forehead with a hand. He was sweating. “Animals. Horses. Birds. Mice. Deer. Bears. They’ve come to watch.”

A boom sounded through the ocean like the thunder from above had crossed into the water. The whirlpool and the creatures reversed themselves. A great crack split the air.

Lilia was thrown out of the whirlpool’s center.

The sea folk gasped as Lilia’s head fell back, mouth open as a spool of dark water thrust her upward. Her finned arms and legs were limp, and her eyes were closed.

The sun peeled back its ruddy cover and blazed over her as the water cradled her and brought her lower, closer to the ocean’s surface.

A male sea kynd with a wild red beard rose on a crest of water and shouted in the sea language. Others answered him in sharp tones, gesturing at Vahly, but she had no idea what they were saying.

Lilia lifted her head and opened her eyes. Between her eyebrows was a mark Vahly recognized immediately.

She was Touched, the place on her brow a shimmering black just like the one that marked Vahly, Amona, and Eux and like the one that had shown on Astraea’s flesh as well.

Hope lit a spark inside Vahly. “Kyril, go to her,” she whispered. They flew over the wave that supported Lilia like a waterfall-turned-throne.

The sea creatures who had drifted away returned and swam around Lilia, weaving in and out of the fallen warriors and dragons, not disturbing the dead but simply coursing slowly, their movements seemingly focused on the living.

The sea folk raised their voices in a chant. “Genniétai mia néa vasílissa. I thálassa échei milísei.” They repeated the chant over and over, their voices bubbling through the water that covered their faces or vibrating in the water, sending ripples across the still surface.

Arc’s voice rang in Vahly’s head. “They say, ‘A new queen is born. The sea has spoken.’”

Kyril’s feathers fluttered in the wind, and thunder rumbled before a fork of lightning lit Lilia’s serene face. She was their new queen.

She can stop this, Vahly said to Arc. With her blood, she can balance the world.

Vahly bumped Kyril’s sides with her heel, and they soared over Lilia, the sea creatures, and the chanting sea folk.

“I, Vahly of the Land, respect the sea’s choice. All hail our new Sea Queen!” Shouts sounded from the air and the water. “Queen Lilia, will you give a portion of your Touched blood to the oaken sword to restore the balance?”

Lilia blinked, seeming to come back to herself as she watched Vahly fly.

“I am reborn,” she said quietly before speaking to her people, her words in quick sea tongue.

Then she looked up again. “Queen Vahly, I offer my blood.” She reached an arm beyond her veil of water, then drew a nail down the inside of her elbow.

Vahly urged Kyril to swoop low. She extended the oaken sword as they passed, and Lilia dropped three perfect drops of ruby blood onto the carved blade.

Emerald light flashed across the ocean and into the sky, there and gone in a blink.

Wind rushed across the sea and cooled Vahly’s cheeks.

The waves resumed their movement, and the sea surged up slightly before returning to its former level, as if the ocean had taken a great breath of relief.

The sea creatures hurried out of the crowded battlefield-turned-ritual sanctuary.

Rays of sunlight spread over Lilia, sparkling across her Touched mark as she withdrew, slipping under the surface.

Vahly and Kyril flew up and around to face the crowd. Vahly herself felt reborn, as if anything were possible.

“Rejoice in the peace we will create!” she called out over the crowd of sea folk, dragons, and elves.

Calls of joy rose from the sea folk, celebratory waves rising and splashing. The dragons wheeled in the sky, roaring their approval in the sunlight.

Vahly waved the sword of oak, and her dragons and their elven riders flew alongside Kyril back to the land, to home, to the new world they had crafted with blood, heart, and magic.