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V ahly’s strength was coming back to her, but she almost wished she’d simply faded away. “The elves. You killed them all.” It wasn’t a question. Queen Astraea had stated the fact, but Vahly hoped to get more information from her. How? When?

“Their queen died before my eyes.” Astraea blinked, tiny bubbles like jewels on her blue-green eyelashes.

The Sea Queen’s eerie beauty unsettled Vahly.

“It was exciting,” Astraea said. “She fought hard, and I respect her for that. She died defending some of her own. But the elves had to be eliminated because they aided you, little Earth Queen.”

Vahly’s bravado slipped as the weight of so many deaths pulled her heart into an abyss. Cassiopeia. All of her kynd. Gone. Vahly was tied to the rock wall, but she felt as though she sank, deeper and deeper into an impossible darkness.

And Arc. The pain he would feel when he found out…

Nausea swelled through Vahly, making her gag. Arc, Nix, and Kyril would go there, to the Forest of Illumahrah, and they would find nothing but corpses and destruction, a muddy mass grave.

Fire sparked through Vahly’s blood. She couldn’t let grief overtake her. She had to keep trying because she knew her friends would never give up.

While this Ryton and his horrifying queen discussed how a patrol had seen Ryton swimming with Vahly and reported back, Vahly pressed her wrists against the jagged coral and rubbed her bindings, trying to get them to break.

“Oh, yes,” Astraea was saying, “our kynd was rather fascinated when they heard you had captured a human who could somehow survive in our world. They knew who she had to be. And of course, I too was breathless to meet this adversary, the one we never thought would rise.” She grinned at Vahly with blood-red lips. “I do so enjoy a good fight.”

She didn’t look like a warrior. The Sea Queen wore a scarlet crown of coral inlaid with pearls and based in gold.

Her dress seemed ill-suited to a battle, all flimsy and pearl-strewn.

No, Astraea wasn’t like any warrior Vahly had ever seen, but there was no doubt that this queen was deadly, and that was what scared Vahly the most. The strangeness of it, the question of how such a creature would attack, the confusion of smiles mixed with vicious bloodlust. The Sea Queen’s teeth looked much like Ryton’s, not razor-edged like the dragons’ stories claimed.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t bite as well as any meat-eating beast.

Astraea probably ate hearts for breakfast.

The coral wasn’t slicing through Vahly’s bindings as well as she’d hoped.

Since her bound wrists were hidden well behind her, she rubbed harder, the branch cutting into her wrists beside her numb palms. Flexing her fingers to get the blood back into them, she kept her gaze on the sea kynd and tried not to draw attention to her efforts.

The first binding snapped, and her left hand was free.

She gripped the coral branch, pretending she remained trapped, and while she worked on the other, she attempted to feel the Earth’s heartbeat inside the rock wall at her back.

There was some sort of drumming, but the rhythm was different here.

This stone wall had been born to the sea, and it would refuse her command.

Maybe if she could get down to the bedrock…

“Take her,” Astraea said, gesturing to Vahly. “We will question her in a nicer spot, General. Although I do appreciate your penchant for drama.” She set a hand against Ryton’s chest and another lower on his abdomen.

Vahly raised an eyebrow. They were lovers. That might be something Vahly could use, an angle to work. If she lived long enough to create a plan.

Her second binding snapped as the guards—one fair and the other barrel-chested–swam forward. She would lose this, but why not bloody a nose or two?

When the light-skinned guard was within reach, Vahly slammed her palm into the sea kynd’s face.

He jerked, gargling in a flurry of bubbles as blood clouded around his white hair.

The second guard lurched toward her, an arm up to block his face.

Vahly grabbed his groin area and twisted his short trousers hard. His shout of pain rippled the water.

“Enough.” Astraea raised her spear and spoke two words, and the world around Vahly went black.