Page 36 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

T he black beast curled its body into loop after loop as it swam toward me, baring dagger-like teeth as long as my forearm.

Though he didn’t have wings like his land-faring counterparts, he did have massive spiraling horns and tiny fluttering fins along the plates on his spine that rippled with every movement. With dark spikes jutting around his head like a lion’s mane, he was something straight out of a nightmare.

A shadow cast from the gray clouds above slid over him with perfect timing, making the waves dim and everything grow colder—or perhaps that was because all my blood had frozen inside my veins.

Across from me, Mateo swore, and his hand found mine, squeezing. He muttered softly, “It’s not blue. It’s not him,” as if it was necessary to absolve his friend, the nixe.

Even if Taft could have transformed into such a monster, I doubted he’d ever be able to cast out a net of menace the way this beast did.

Taft’s presence had been too small and unassuming.

The lashing fins and tail of this dragon were wild, whipping up and down like banners in the wind—war banners.

His anger charged ahead of him. No—this dragon had more ferocity than Taft ever had.

“It’s worse.” The words slipped from my lips though they shouldn’t have. I should have stayed stoic and pretended to be calm.

Ominous ocean waves rolled toward us as the dragon lashed back and forth.

The sludgy water smashed into us and tipped the carriage where it had paused, our driver struck as dumb at the sight of a dragon as we were.

The force of the waves thundered against the coach, pushing it, the metal groaning.

Scraps of panicked braying from the seahorses filtered in as the waves ripped them from their reins.

Mateo and I exchanged a wide-eyed look as the entire car tilted and the window slid up over us until it became a skylight.

The orange glow at the back of the dragon’s throat was the brightest thing in the ocean above us. An apocalyptic sun.

Our fingers knotted together so tightly that even the best sailor couldn’t have undone them. Mateo’s heartbeat seemed to make the water pulse around us, thicken until it was hard to breathe as the carriage slowly sank, unable to stay afloat without the movement of the seahorses.

“It could just swim past,” Mateo whispered, his hope as thin as the first ice of winter. Voice cracking. Even he didn’t believe that wishful lie.

I didn’t dare glance at him because I couldn’t stand for my terror to grow any larger. Like the moon, it glowed huge inside of me, rising and swelling and undeniably the master of the night sky. Of me.

Foreboding cinched my intestines. Even my knuckles ached with fear.

The dragon hurtling toward us made no attempt to swerve or hide his intentions. No, his marquise-cut eyes glittered like yellow jewels as his gaze locked onto me in my ridiculous carriage. This trifling box, which posed no threat to his claws and teeth.

He was coming right for me.

Something about this attack felt different than those prior. Earlier disasters had either been public or had a surprise factor. A shock value. But this dragon swam at me from a distance rather than stealthily approaching and announcing his presence by snapping my coach in his massive jaws.

Letting me stare at death as it plunged toward me was a deliberate challenge.

Raj was showing his hand. Revealing his powers and reveling in my own lacking magic. Thumbing his nose at me.

This attack felt direct. Final.

Why now though?

Why a dragon?

Why not kill me with the whirlpool and let me wash away? Why not let my death be some tragic accident?

My heart hardened as I realized this was crueler. More terrifying. Thus—more fitting.

I’d studied the Fire Wars along with every other monarch’s child growing up. The savagery of the dragons had been drilled into every one of us. On land, towns had gone to flame, been turned to ash by soldiers struck with the madness of blood lust who ordered their dragons to spit fire.

But a direct dragon attack was rare.

And supposedly far worse.

Dragons were a brutal species, second only to humans.

And they liked to eat live prey over several days, shredding them bit by bit.

It had turned my bones to jam when I’d first been snatched by a dragon back in Evaness.

The beast had flown me back to a cavern and I’d nearly passed out from the panic until I’d seen other people emerge from the cave and realized that that dragon was under someone else’s control.

That I wasn’t necessarily going to be eaten alive.

My eyes scanned the ocean, searching for a sign that this dragon too had a master. But all I saw was Sahar shoving Keelan behind the nearest supply cart. Ugo and Paavo surging forward near me. I didn’t see a puppet master.

Perhaps this beast had no strings.

If it was Raj…he was beholden to no one.

If he was the dragon or if he controlled this beast, then he wouldn't make the mistakes he’d made before. I would not be held captive.

“Many a soldier turned their sword upon themselves rather than become a dragon’s meal.

” I still remembered an old tutor with two missing teeth and a nasty scar along his upper lip lecturing us in a small tower room.

Tucked away between stone walls of the castle of Evaness, safe and sound, I’d loved to listen to those lectures as I’d clutched my velvet skirts and shivered at all the scary picture my imagination painted.

Now…I vaguely wondered if I’d become one of those stories.

If someday, some little girl would clutch her dress and shriek when she heard of me.

Perhaps.

But if she did…I wanted her to know that I’d died fighting.

That I’d faced the end head on, with my head held high.

And that was why I squeezed Mateo’s palm once before pulling away from him and backing toward the door.

“What should we—” He didn’t get to finish the question before I was out of the carriage, slamming the door on him and swimming upward.

With my damaged wing, my swimming was awkward, and I listed to one side until I stroked harder with my hands and used my legs to kick, straining just to rise ten feet, feeling pathetic and worn by the time I had.

As soon as I cleared the carriage, our tiny traveling party dotted my vision. They floated, scattered about, panic making them jellyfish of them.

“Hide!” I yelled, hoping to spur them to action. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Gita startling and then darting backward. I assume Humberto followed her.

Whatever Raj had in store for me, I could at least give the others time to escape.

He wanted me, not them.

Inhaling, I lifted my arms. Desperation ripped away my hesitance. My uncertainty. My self-doubt.

Instead of seeking out the song of the sea, I imagined yanking it inward, not calling to it, not asking, but clawing it toward me. Grabbing and dragging it across the velvety mud of the ocean floor and forcing it to heed my demands.

A roar filled my ears, and I wasn’t certain if it came from my own magic or the dragon.

Not until I saw the beast’s terrifying maw gape open to reveal a second row of gleaming teeth.

A sulfurous stench billowed toward me as the dragon’s tail whipped out in a wide arc that stretched so far the tip tapped a distant hill and sent rock tumbling.

Fear punched through my gut and bile coated the back of my tongue, but I tried to cloak both those sensations in anger. I tried to wrap myself in fury. Bind myself with the dark intentions that lurked inside the shadowed cavity where my heart once lay.

Because at this moment, my evil was my strength.

One didn’t fight a terror like the Sultan of Cheryn with kindness and flowers—one fought with fury and hatred.

Beneath it all, I knew I had what it took.

Perhaps not to survive. But at least to fight.

I could deceive others with the facade of my goodness. My kindness. Manners. All those trivialities that burned to dust in moments like this.

They meant nothing.

Deep down, beneath any hope about restoring goodwill to Okeanos, I was well aware that taking on this kingdom was a matter of jealousy. Of pride and peacocking and privilege.

The desire for the crown, to become queen was selfish—because my entire life I’d hungered to be special. Something more than human. More than a second daughter. And…once I’d discovered the truth, more than a pawn for an evil mother. More than a container for an evil heart.

More.

So here I was, set to face a monster.

The worst the world had ever known.

And yet…I couldn’t deny that I was on the same path as that monster myself.

I was the reason Watkins was dead.

The reason so many innocent bodies had been fed to the glacier to become part of the freeze. I was the reason Julian and his inventions were ripped away from the world.

Me.

The wicked versus the diabolical.

Two fiendish, despicable beings canceling one another out.

The sun would probably shine brighter once we both were gone.

Inhaling a breath I didn’t deserve, I filled my lungs before I slashed my arm through the water in front of me. Instantly, a barrage of a dozen ice spikes erupted and hovered before me, harp strings pinging inside my eardrums and striking me dumb for a moment. Shocked.

My magic never came that easily. Never—well, only once.

But I didn’t have time to dwell on why it might be working, nor even appreciate that it was.

The beast was far too close. Flicking my wrists outward, the ice shards shot toward the dragon so quickly that they whistled through the water.

Another flick sent my guards flying backward, away from where they’d been swimming up to uselessly posture to protect me.

But I didn’t spare them a glance. My gaze was solely focused on the dragon.

The obsidian monster jerked his head to the side and my spears flew past him. Useless. Tiny toothpicks, unlikely to even dent the armor of his scales even if they had hit him. That was pathetic. I posed as much challenge as a child.

Better. I need to do ? —

His undulating tail smashed into my side. Thick as a man’s skull, even just the tap it managed sent me flying sideways. Pain rippled through me as my top rib cracked and then the one below it. And then the one below that. I felt like a stone tower crumbling story by story.

Automatically, my back began to arch as my body moved to cradle my injuries. Fighting against that need, I straightened, refusing to let the beast see me cowed. But doing so made white hot pain slash behind my eyes and I had to swallow down a thick scream.

The dragon’s face blurred, and a strange thumping hit my ears—almost as if my pulse was thundering and my old heart was throbbing painfully within my chest.

I blinked. His beast’s cat-like eyes narrowed on me as if in concern…No. Just concentration.

Steam bubbled up from his flaring nostrils as he lifted his head to shriek at the heavens. His bellow set waves churning in foamy dismay above us.

My skin pebbled in response and my toes and fingers grew cold, as if the heat was already retreating from my body. As if my bones already knew what fate had in store for me.

“Avia!” Keelan’s voice seemed like a distant dream. Unreal and hollow.

“Keelan. Stay back!” His mother screeched in panic.

Their bickering was as unreal as a painting hanging in a castle gallery. Swiping brush strokes that played at reality as they argued.

The only reality was the monster in front of me, a dragon so wide and tall that he took up every inch of my sight.

Slashing my arm again, I sent a wave of heavy ice spheres as large as cannon balls hurtling toward the monster’s neck. But the frozen globes smashed into the metal plates of the dragon’s scales and rang like bells, discordant music the only damage done to the snarling beast.

My breath grew strangled, dismay and panic making it hard to breathe, phantom bruises lining my throat.

How the hell was I going to kill a beast like this?

The dragon snarled, curling its body into an infinity symbol before using the coil to spring forward like a snake, snapping at me.

On instinct, I closed my fingers and splayed them out again, unthinking. Simply conducting the water on instinct.

We both rose up on a swell that bulged beneath us, making us shoot upward, leaving everything behind. My stomach dropped as we soared—it felt akin to flying.

Meanwhile, the dragon writhed in front of me, awkwardly and uncomfortably—unable to propel himself against the weight of the raging water.

A smug smile ticked up the corner of my lips.

But the dragon’s tail struck again, spiraling in a loop around my feet, cinching them together and then flicking me around in a dizzying circle. I spun so quickly I thought my brain might splatter against the inside of my skull.

Meanwhile, the dragon wrapped more of itself around me in ringlet after ringlet of pain. Tendrils contracting. Narrowing. Pinching every one of my nerves.

No.

We die together.

Before his body captured my arms, I swung them out wildly. Choppily. Frantically. The discordant notes of the ocean screamed in my ears. And suddenly, there was no oxygen.

The sea retreated all around us, pulling back above and beside and below us. The water carved out a bowl of misty air—just enough to keep us floating and suspended. Just enough to keep me gasping—hardly able to breathe.

Like land creatures tossed into water, we were sea creatures flung up into the sky. Into the thin, choking air.

The beautiful blue wall of water formed a sphere around us just outside our reach.

Up, up we went. We hovered in the middle of a giant bubble that floated toward the surface.

My guards, Mateo, my traveling party, everyone became specks in the distance as the dragon and I remained suspended in this pearl of oxygen.

And thrash though he might, any time the dragon moved, the bubble moved with him—keeping us perfectly centered.

My lungs began to burn and silver flecks sparkled along the edges of my vision.

Tight. Everything was tight.

Across from me, I heard the dragon wheeze. Heard him struggling to breathe. And the sound was beautiful.

Glorious.

Until I heard how the flailing beat of his massive heart was a thump that rattled through my own chest.