Page 69 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Blackouts

Rayze

I snap my compact mirror closed with a snarl and step over pirates, their corpses littering the deck. They died on their knees. Mouths slack. Eyes glazed. Hands still gripping the weapons they took to their own throats.

Can you hear the bodies?

Gods fucking dammit. Warrick is going to ruin everything.

Rain plasters my hair to my cheeks, phantom pains throbbing through my hands. Their scars flash white beneath the moonlight as I stretch and pop my fingers, boots smacking across the flooded deck.

I grab one of the ropes dangling from the ship’s side, swinging a leg over and glancing over my shoulder.

Only four more fleets stand in my way. They hover across the skyline, feeding off the lightning pulled into Synlon’s coils.

My attack plan is simple.

Kraken warships are a lot like Serpent nests. If I want to take Saltmaw, then others must fall first, but I can’t just tear apart their ships. I need to cut them off from their power supply.

The Dredge.

It looms like a broken spine over Synlon, ribs of steel exposed where walls have caved, the command center for the city’s power hijacked. Lightning feeds straight into The Kraken’s prized warship where it clings like a parasite.

Saltmaw.

The ship drinks deep, and the heavy buzz of neon throughout the city jitters and cracks.

Jaw tight, I turn my back, tug down my goggles, grip the rope—and drop.

“HOLD,” I command.

Power rips through the knots I buried in the ship’s bones.

The hull seizes. A sharp crack tears through the rain, and the vessel folds against itself with a high-pitched shriek.

I wipe blood from my nose and smile.

You see, Kraken warships recently got a new upgrade from The Storm: Volt cores.

And Volt doesn’t like me very much.

Threads burn black, Volt corrupting my command— brEAK.

My boots splash onto the street, and I land in a crouch, shoving up my goggles just in time to catch my favorite fucking part.

The ship explodes.

Shrapnel hisses. Masts ignite. Lightning ruptures through crawling fractures, wood and steel snapping outward as each one of my knots burns through. A cloud of smoke mushrooms into the night, licking the underbelly of Synlon’s storm.

Then debris slams down through the rain.

I bolt beneath tattered awnings and shattered carts, flaming wreckage splintering against the ground. Roaring orders crash through the night, The Kraken demanding his usual retribution, but he’ll never find me.

Not until I want him to.

Just like Warrick.

At least, that was the plan before my snake started remembering .

The neon tubing coiled between alleys snaps to black, and I freeze, my eyes adjusting to the dark. I count low under my breath.

30 seconds. 90.

A long hiss pulses above the city accompanied by the heavy crackle of Kraken sails.

120.

Electrical currents sprout from the top of buildings, funneling into the base of their massive warships.

200.

The blackouts are getting longer and more frequent.

I dart across the street, whipping my goggles off and pushing them into the pocket of my ragged, stolen trench coat. They were a gift from Aleksi after the Daughters helped her heal. Well, for the most part. Making sure Synlon is mine is just as much for me as it is for her and Sonya.

My heart aches thinking of my sisters, of Warrick.

He remembers.

I expected all of it to be gone, his entire mind obliterated in the fallout of our Bond, and fuck me, I didn’t think there was any hope left for us. Loving him—it meant hurting him, hurting the Daughters, hurting myself. Letting him hate me now, it’s the only shield I have to protect us both.

But I can’t stay away. Not if he’s jeopardizing everything . If Warrick says another fucking word about magic, Fate will demand I do the one thing I could never do.

Kill him.

I weave through scattered corpses, everything above ground in Synlon more or less a graveyard. The tubes alongside abandoned high rises stutter and blaze. Their light crawls, chasing the dark into the gutters, and I press my back against brick, my gaze trained on The Dredge.

I glare at the pirate flag that ripples against the top floors. The Kraken’s crest of a blue skull with orange tentacles leers down in warning and promise, but he hasn’t won. Not even close.

The lower levels of the tower still belong to Synlon. Warrick’s misfit army of freed Skin, Chrome Guards, and cronies filter in and out of the building’s front doors, patrolling.

But the middle levels are by far my greatest accomplishment.

Blue glows and ruptures between the eleventh and sixteenth stories, weapons a blur of steel behind cracked, tinted glass.

It never stops, Serpents and pirates too evenly matched.

Snakes may have Volt, but The Kraken is the king of the Rig Trade.

His entire operation relies on innovative weaponry and fucking zombie soldiers.

Where Warrick gains, Torren takes it back. Night after night.

They exhaust each other so perfectly, and it’ll work—unless they start searching for a power greater than Volt.

Me .

Movement flashes out of the corner of my eye, and I tense.

Naked bodies leap over puddles and tip toe around the corner of The Dredge, ducking into the alcove of the main doorway.

The Skin from Fang’s Edge.

The woman at their lead bangs a trembling fist against the front door. It swipes open, chrome armor flashing in the moonlight peeking between storm clouds and ships. A Serpent crony of the Chrome Guard surveys the Skin, and I recognize him—Dacre Henson, Warrick’s new Commander.

“Inside,” he grumbles, kicking the door wider.

At least a dozen Skin line up, waiting to be beckoned into the building. They shiver in the cold, their skin stretched tight over their bones. The rain washes the blood from their kills at Fang’s Edge, but it can’t take away the haunted looks in their eyes.

I inhale and approach the doors.

The storm soaks me. Hair slick to my skull, fists clenched at my sides, I stride up the steps and meet Henson’s startled stare. He moves to shut the door.

I wedge my boot in the gap. “Let me through.”

Lightning waves over his armor, his eyes dark as he looks me over, trying to decide my affiliation. “Take off that coat. Let me see your ink.”

I push into him, shoving past the Skin crowd funneling in behind me. “I wasn’t asking,” I mutter.

“You can’t just fucking walk in here,” Dacre says, hand gripping my arm.

I twist free and stride through the stripped foyer into the open lower level of The Dredge.

“Grab her,” Dacre’s growl slices the air.

The stink of sweat and infected, injured flesh assaults me. Power coils pulse low along the edges of scorched walls, flaring blue whenever lightning feeds them from above. Maps cover the walls, stabbed through with knives.

Guards swarm, chrome bodies crashing forward to barricade my path, blades drawn. My boots skid as they shove me back, steel to my ribs, to my throat, to my spine.

“Down,” one snarls.

I snarl back.

Dacre shakes his head as I’m shoved to my knees. “You’re lucky I don’t gut you.”

I bare my teeth. “You’re lucky I’m here in peace.”

The Commander scowls and steps back. “We’ll see. Cuff her—”

But the floor shudders, the hanging overhead lights flicker out, and curses rise.

Another blackout.

Never thought I’d thank the siege.

I rip my bow into my grasp, the weight re-balanced to spare the worst of the damage in my hands. Reinforced grip, adjusted tension. I can’t shoot like I used to, but with magic, I still have perfect fucking aim.

I load an arrow and make a slow circle in the dark.

Dread tightens around my neck, and a deep awareness settles over me.

There isn’t a gaze in this room that isn’t ringed in blue.

Eyes jitter around me, the dark nothing to those with enhanced vision from the Volt they’ve injected or smoked. My snake’s gone to great lengths to ward against my magic.

He definitely fucking remembers, but how much?

The sharp zing of metal rings as Serpent blades are drawn. Then the lights hum to life, and the front doors of The Dredge bang open.

My breath hitches.

My bow lowers.

Warrick . His name flutters through my mind. Russell Ivor may be dead, but The Serpent lives.

He wears the trademark Serpent vest, reinforced with scavenged plating and scorched leather, his arms exposed for my greedy eyes.

His dark cargo pants are torn at the thigh, belt lined with makeshift knives and his Serpent blade.

His twin, tatted serpents climb the bare expanse of his bruised, scarred torso before they disappear beneath his mask.

He’s everything I’ve suppressed into nothing, and I will savor this. The finality of us. For however long I have it.

Warrick. Fucking. Ivor. The Snake of Madness. Looking at me like a starved man seconds from devouring his final meal.

Or carving it to pieces.

It’s hard to know these days.

He thrusts through the throng, biceps tensed and gaze unwavering. Eyes the color of ice glow with Volt behind the diamonds of his mask.

Then he’s inches away. Touchable. Lickable.

He says nothing as his hand lifts to my cheek, the room dead silent. There are no words for all I’ve forsaken, taken.

He touches me. He’s fucking touching me .

Volt snaps from his palm, pricks and stings against my face, but I don’t care.

My lashes flutter shut, the warmth of his palm a force to be reckoned with.

I should move away, but I can’t bring myself to.

There’s no Bond chaining us. Not anymore. Everything between us now, it’s real .

His hand shifts. Slowly. A caress. A worshiping. A—

His fingers close around my throat.

My eyes snap open. Every mental and emotional shield slams down inside me.

But he lifts his mask with his free hand, and I lose my fight. Nothing could pry my attention from that mouth. The sinful hook into a calculated smirk. The white scar through his upper lip and the looped silver piercing through his bottom.

Gods, I’ve missed him. Three months of breaking ships and watching him in mirrors, wondering when or if I’d ever feel his touch again.

Tiny electrical currents of Volt buzz from piercing to piercing. He smiles, wicked in its want to consume me, and lightning crackles between his teeth as if he swallowed a storm.

A thousand alarms sound through my skull, but I can’t focus.

The twitch to his lips—the little falters in the smile he forces—tells me he can’t either.

Our Bond is gone, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully resist us .

I let my bow hang at my side and slide a hand up his tatted chest. I mirror him, my fingers closing around his pulse.

He swallows against my palm, and he leans ever so slightly into my grip, the tension along his jaw slackening.

My eyes trace his face. “Hello, my snake,” I whisper. “Did you miss me, too?”

His eyes comb over my face. His grip tightens on my neck.

Then—

“Boots on the ground!” A lookout screams. “Boots on the—”

An intense wave of energy smashes into The Dredge, and we slam backward.

I cry out, but arms crush around me mid-air, Warrick’s embrace immediate and punishing. Volt flares where we touch, but he doesn’t let go.

He twists us in the fall, shields me with his body, before we hit mud-tacked stone. His breath cracks out of him with a low groan, and my head bangs into his chest, his heartbeat thundering against my ear.

I cough, straining to lift, and squint against the harsh blaze of orange smoke.

Beyond the blown wide front doors of The Dredge, it rolls across the ground like fog, a heavy bronze device marked brASS wedged into the pavement where it made impact. Smoke steadily spools from it, and a smile touches the corners of my lips.

“ Devil ,” Warrick rasps, shoving me off him, “what the fuck have you done?”