Page 131 of Pirate Witch

I tap the crystal on the pommel of mine twice. Blackness explodes, just like Val promised it would. Darkness means nothing to me, and I hope that Catherine hasn’t stolen vampire night vision on top of everything else.

If she has, it’s taking her a while to adjust. I manage a solid slash to her ribs and another to her arm. She swings out wildly with her flaming sword. I’m not expecting it, and it catches me in the thigh, searing my skin and ripping a shocked scream from my lips. I catch myself when I would’ve fallen and stagger forward, raising my sword to deal the final blow.

Still blinded, the Eagle lunges forward. Straight onto my blade. Her scream as she realises her mistake turns into a roar of fury at the realisation that she’s lost this fight. Dropping my athame, I use both hands to yank it up with all my strength, then twist it inside her chest. I have to brutalise her heart if I want to make regeneration impossible for her stolen healing abilities.

Catherine isn’t one to admit defeat so easily. While I’m distracted, with both hands on my sword, she wraps her arms around me. She pins my arms to my sides and spins both of us on the spot. Even with her wound, that unnatural strength of hers doesn’t falter as she takes a step back.

“If I die, you’re dying with me,” she growls.

I realise her intention too late. My stomach drops out from my feet as we topple over the edge and into the open air. Falling.

Catherine holds me tight in a lethal embrace as we plummet toward the wave-lashed rocks below. With a last heave of my own strength, I force her away from me and summon a shield of Solar magic between me and the ocean to break my fall.

Nothing happens. There’s no magic left in the charm.

So there’s nothing to absorb the shock as I hit the water with bone-shattering force. Air explodes from my lungs in an explosion of bubbles, and the automatic urge to suck in oxygen to replace it is rewarded with a mouthful of seawater.

Smash.

I slam against a rock. The delicate, still healing skin of the wound on my stomach rips back open on impact. I scrabble for purchase, but I’m ripped away before I can find a handhold.

My whole body feels like one big bruise, and the sigils on my back are throbbing so badly that they drown out all the other hurts. Despite the torment I’m suffering, my mind fixates on the water surrounding me, labelling it the greater threat.

Unlike when Val took us underneath the waves and I could admire them, this time the ocean is pressing in on my body. Surrounding me in unfathomable darkness. Crushing. Cold.

Terror swells in my throat as I thrash this way and that, trying to figure out up from down. My legs kick like Klaus taught me, but I don’t know if I’m heading farther into the abyss or towards air.

It’s pure luck that my face breaks through the waves seconds later and I can suck in a gasping breath.

I’m kicking, splashing, and flailing. My head bobs back under a wave and I thrash harder in response.

Goddess, I’m going to drown and no one knows where I am.

No one is coming to save me.

Another wave crashes over my face, dragging me back under.

ChapterForty-Three

NIKLAUS

It takes us too long to dispatch the soldiers in the palace. Longer still for Rysen to track our witch out into the grounds. All of us are bleeding, but none of us pay any attention to our own wounds. With each passing moment, our worry for her only grows, and by the time Opal appears, we’re all frantic. The cat wobbles out of an outbuilding in front of us, then almost collapses before the vampire reaches her.

Goddess. What does this mean?

Where is our mate?

Ry scoops the wounded cat up in his arms, and the cat gives him a careful nip while we all wait with bated breath for him to speak.

He turns to us, face stricken.

“She says Kier is wounded in the tunnels below. Nilsa fought Lily and Catherine, and then they both fell into the ocean.”

No.

She can’t swim.

I’m racing across the grounds before anyone can stop me. Cas and Nos hot on my fins. Thankfully, the traps on the walls are built to keep people out, not in, because I don’t have the presence of mind to worry about them as I leap the six-foot brickwork and dive headfirst over the other side.