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Q ueen Astraea and her entire army—a whirling mass of scarlet coral spears and finned bodies—swam down deep to the blackest region of the sea, near the bedrock.

The island’s base appeared, a bone-white wall in the darkness.

The arched entrance to Ryton’s tunnel opened like the mouth of a whale, and Astraea charged inside, her warriors at her back.

She glanced at General Grystark, who rushed ahead to catch up to her.

His ashen eyebrows furrowed, and his armless shoulder twitched as he swam.

With his remaining hand, he raised his spear to salute her, then called up a spell to illuminate his weapon.

The magicked spear cast enough light for the advance units to see inside the tunnel’s black maw.

General Venu kicked his legs in a burst of speed and came up beside them.

“My queen,” he said, water bubbling at the ends of his eel-dark hair and around his mouth, “you’re certain the tunnel is clear?

The most recent engineers’ report stated the last third of the passage remained unstable, and I humbly urge you to—”

“Do not question our queen, General Venu.” Grystark stared straight ahead. A muscle at his jaw tensed.

Astraea smiled. Attacking Grystark’s wife Lilia had been such a wise decision. Now, the general was truly at her beck and call. “Venu, do you not believe in risking all for the good of our kynd?”

Venu paled and dipped his chin respectfully. “Of course I do, my queen.”

The tunnel veered southeast, then sank deeper. Venu illuminated his spear to join Grystark’s, and soon the advance units followed suit. The army coursed through the tunnel that snaked beneath the island, water rushing along their steely faces and powerful limbs.

A plume of dust rained from above, and Astraea dodged a sinking rock that had fallen from the ceiling. Venu’s gaze touched her for a moment, but her glare put him back on task.

Yes, there was risk here, and well Astraea knew it.

But annihilating the elves who had turned on her, the elves who were now supporting the new Earth Queen, was key to accomplishing her ultimate goal of swaddling the entire world in water.

Today, they would take out those arrogant, betraying, loathsome elves, and the Earth Queen would have one less army at her back.

Then the Earth Queen would only have one army to support her—the dragons.

If Ryton failed to assassinate her, the war would continue on more even ground.

Astraea with her one force and the Earth Queen with her scaly allies.

The elves were a wildcard, unpredictable with that magic of theirs.

She’d discounted their place as enemies for a long while, thinking them weak and unfit for fighting sea folk, but the Earth Queen had bothered to treat with them.

There must have been a reason for her efforts, some power that Astraea had yet to see in the elves. They had to be eliminated.

A thundering echoed down the tunnel.

Astraea’s heart skipped, her gaze tearing across their path, looking for the source. “What is it? Grystark, swim ahead!”

His eyes shuttered, then he plunged onward.

The warriors behind Astraea slowed. She spun and raised her voice, the sound trumpeting through the water with her sea kynd magic.

“Fear not! We own this day! Faster now! Faster!”

Mouths drawn and white knuckles on spear shafts, the advance units poured past Astraea to follow Grystark.

Then a rock ledge the size of Astraea’s throne room broke from the tunnel’s wall and collapsed on the warriors. The dusty stone trapped a dozen or more, and the sea folk behind Astraea shrieked.

Hissing, Astraea drew back from the billowing particles of broken rock, then swam onward, her temples pounding. “Don’t be cowards! Keep on!”

Screams rippled through the eddies created by the fallen ledge.

As Astraea slipped through the cloudy water, over the fallen debris, a warrior reached a hand out for help. She kicked past. That fighter was already dead. There was no saving one crushed by such a fall.

Grystark swam out of the gloom, warriors zipping past him and heading onward. “My queen,” he shouted, his voice tight as they swam forward again, “We must retreat. We’ve lost half a unit already.”

Astraea’s blood sizzled, and she struck out at Grystark with her spear. He reacted quickly, raising his own weapon, then rage swallowed Astraea whole. She shouted a spell that burned her throat with its intent, the warbling words meant to kill.

The spell shot Grystark, and his limbs froze in the water.

Astraea let the others swim past, her gaze locked on her work. He deserved this and more. Traitor. Doubter. Unfaithful.

As Grystark’s eyes grew hazy and fluttered closed, she nuzzled into his neck. “Your wife will die this night. Slowly. Surely. And her blood is on your hands.”

Blood singing with victory, she shoved him away into the depths.

Astraea and the rest of the army exploded from the end of the tunnel into a sea painted in shades of sunrise.

Headed away from the Lapis shoreline, they rushed toward Illumahrah, through a gusting southward current, speaking spells to fight the water’s undertow.

As ordered, the units encircled the peninsula that housed the ancient land forest.

Venu hurried to Astraea’s side. “My queen! General Grystark is missing. I have taken control of his brigades.”

“Then move ahead with the first strike.”

The warriors Ryton had trained to multiply salt water gathered at the tip of the peninsula.

The sounds of their spellwork crashed through the azure and pink world, a churning, smashing noise that was music to Astraea’s ears.

They weren’t as good as she was at the new magic, but they weren’t bad.

She grinned as the water built and rose above their heads.

A great wave gathered, then Venu’s folk jabbed their spears at the new salt water.

The storm of spelled liquid thundered at the peninsula.

Astraea dashed to the rough surface, breached, and called water to carry her closer. She didn’t want to miss a moment.

Sliding two tympanic leaves over her gills, she rode her own small wave to the very edge of the shoreline. Venu and many others joined her.

The giant wave curled at its tip, frothing like a rabid beast before raging inland to rip castle-sized trees at the root and wash verdant greenery and black earth from its home.

“Are they all still asleep?” Astraea gripped her spear in both hands, face stretched with a vengeful smile. “I hope they show up to fight. I’d love to see what they can do.”

But there was no sound from the elves. No outcry or shout for a defense. Salt water gushed over possibly half of the peninsula from what Astraea could see. Trees shook in the seething mass of water, their roots bobbing to the surface.

Astraea faced Venu. “Call for another great wave. I don’t think we’ve reached the more populated areas.”

Venu dove like a bolt of lightning, and before Astraea knew it, another enormous wave roiled into being. She applauded the power of the creation as the watery form steepled high. The wave punched into the Forest of Illumahrah, deep and far beyond the reach of the first strike.

Shouts reverberated across the water. Golden light erupted from the sparkling waves, and a wind born of air magic tossed Astraea’s hair. An army of elves floated above a third great wave that Astraea’s clever warriors had assertively called up.

“Now, this is interesting. Let us see what they do with this.” She whispered a spell, her lips brushing the cold coral of her spear.

“ Jagged, breaking,

Pulling, tugging,

Take them deep. ”

Her spells were not worded as prettily as Ryton’s, but they were far stronger because of her Touched mark and the forceful capacity of the magic boiling in her veins.

A lone female elf with a swirling crown of light and dark leapt from one floating tree to another. Astraea couldn’t see her clearly from this distance, but it was obvious this was the Queen of the Elves. Her sunlight-colored tresses flared around her face and her hands held storms of night and day.

The Elven Queen threw her magic at Astraea.

Wind tore the tympanic leaves from Astraea’s gills and left her gasping.

Blood racing, she dove into the water only to be tangled in a false night, the darkness swamping her senses entirely.

She set her jaw, then swam directly toward the surface.

That creature would not be the end of her. How dare the elf even attempt it?

Tearing out of the water and leaping high, Astraea eyed the elf.

Some of the elven folk grasped for branches or logs that rolled and jostled in the tumult, while others were aloft like the Elven Queen, leaping from one pile of floating debris to another with impressive jumps.

A male with bulging eyes shouted to the Elven Queen as he went down, and the Elven Queen risked a whipping lash of whitewater—a wave that could drag her under—to snag his arm and pull him to safety beside her.

Two of Astraea’s warriors rose from the waves and aimed spinning columns of water at a group of magic-wielding elves. Light flashed around the elves, their gusts whirling the water away from their perch on a flat of wood. But the columns of water, their sound almost deafening, would end them.

The Elven Queen spread her arms wide, and a net of gold and inky darkness linked her hands.

Making a sweeping motion, she appeared to fly through the air.

She thrust herself between the spinning columns of water to protect the others.

The columns blasted her, and she disappeared into crashing water.

“Gone so soon?” Astraea whispered, enjoying the show.

All around the area, elves battled her warriors with light orbs and unspooling purple magic, but her side was definitely winning. Elf after elf plunged beneath the water to be devoured by great creatures of the deep or to drown in the crush of spelled eddies.

Wind roared, and suddenly, the Elven Queen lifted from the water, her golden hair dark from the sea and her magic blazing. Moving like an orchestra’s conductor, she forced the wind at the spinning columns, and the water evaporated into the sky in bright droplets. Then she faced Astraea.

“Queen Astraea, why must you destroy the balance of the world?” the Elven Queen said in the language of the sea, her accent wispy and haunting.

Astraea spat the bitter taste of raw air from her mouth and uttered a spell to help her shout back to the Elven Queen.

“You give aid to those who would destroy my kynd. Speak not to me about balance! There has been no balance since the birth of the Lapis clan. I seek to set the world to rights, blanketed in ocean water and peaceful for those who deserve such a life. Now, die, and leave me to my quest.”

Pointing her scarlet coral spear at the Elven Queen and raising a sheen of water over herself like a bridal veil, Astraea shouted a spell that would leave no trace of this upstart.

“ Take her, Sea,

Rip her, Ocean,

Flay and salt her until there’s no more to see. ”

Perched on a floating and gnarled branch, ragged leaves surrounding her like dead fish, the Elven Queen spun, hair flying, and threw a flashing orb at Venu.

He disappeared beneath the waves, but the orb gave chase and Astraea could just barely see his body jerk in pain as the light exploded over his face, surely blinding him.

Astraea’s spell hit the foaming water eddying around the Elven Queen. The sea heaved. A sound like one thousand crashing waves rushed across the peninsula, then the water grabbed the Elven Queen and dragged her under.

A frenzy of sharks, called by Astraea’s spell work, flew through the waves toward the Elven Queen.

Astraea’s heart whirled inside her chest, her eyes bright.

The Elven Queen’s hand broke the roiling surface as wine-dark blood billowed around her body. The sharks slithered out to sea. Pieces of torn flesh and lengths of the Elven Queen’s hair floated on the glistening waves.

And another of Astraea’s enemies, another being who might try to suppress her, to beat her down, was gone. Just like that. The Sea Queen had suffered not a cut nor a bruise.

The sea enveloped Astraea, and she joined her army to celebrate the beginning of the end.

Next, she would take down every last Lapis dragon on the island.