Page 70

R yton looked away, his mind spinning with memories of Selene, of the blood that stained the water. “I don’t know why I haven’t ended you yet. You deserve to die for helping the monsters slaughter my family.”

The Earth Queen laughed, a sickly sound. “Oh, and you haven’t killed scores of theirs?”

He jerked her up, staring her in the face. Her flesh was slimy under his fingers, her body’s weakness incongruent with the fear that Queen Astraea had shown at the mere mention of this Earth Queen’s name.

He studied her pale, eerie eyes. The scent of her turned his stomach. “We have only killed because we must.”

“Just like you must drown the entire world in salt water?”

He twisted to take in fresh salt water, to rid his body of the taste of trees and dirt that oozed from the human like a plague. “If we don’t, the dragons will continue to wipe our species out.”

“And what about the elves? They haven’t done anything to you in ages. Your queen will annihilate them too in this grand plan of hers.”

He refused to listen to anything that came out of her mouth. He set his spear’s edge beneath the line of her jaw. “The elves are aiding you and the dragons as well. They aren’t innocents. They’re disgusting creatures with no respect for—”

“And just how many elves have you befriended?”

“I have known their spies.” He shuddered.

“The worst of the elves. Surely you have to realize that a spy is not a proper representation of a species.”

His knuckles whitened around his spear. She was weaving the situation to fit her own version of the truth, and he was finished listening to her, his enemy, friend to those who had taken sweet Selene and so many others. Their screams echoed in his head.

Blood pounding through his veins, he lifted his spear, then brought the flat edge down, hitting the Earth Queen sharply across the head. Her body went limp, unconscious.

Taking her by the hair, he swam toward Tidehame, toward Queen Astraea and his kynd. The memory of Selene had stayed his hand, kept him from killing this human, but it was up to Astraea to decide the Earth Queen’s final fate.

Was he a coward in this? Most likely.

Perhaps he would kill her before they reached Tidehame and it would all be over. Maybe he would torture her for information about numbers of dragons and their locations. Either way, he needed a place to keep her prisoner, a spot that could hold her and possibly further dampen her magical abilities.

A place in the deepest part of the ocean.

He knew just the spot. Scar Chasm.