Page 37 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

L ightheaded, I thought I was hallucinating. That my own lack of oxygen was impairing my thoughts, deluding me into imagining a tether between the dragon and myself.

That was why I opened my palm, and a rivulet of water burst through the bubble surrounding us, freezing as it soared past me and—at the flick of my wrist—transforming into an ice ball the size of my skull. It zoomed into the beast’s open maw, slid right through his teeth.

My hand jerked and spikes exploded out of the ice and speared through his muzzle, piercing right behind his nostrils and down through his lower jaw with effective brutality. His mouth was pinned open, ice spikes flaring from him like sun rays.

The dragon’s amber eyes flashed as a timpani of drumbeats thundered through my head, the sea booming as it heeded my every thought, hardly needing any direction at all.

A choking cry erupted from the monster as his heartbeat faltered again.

So did my own pulse.

No.

No.

Lowering my hand slowly, as if in a daze, I folded my fingers into a balled-up fist and the spikes from the ice ball retracted. Ribbons of blood streamed down the beast's cheek and neck as I stared up at him, phantom pain contorting my own face.

The dragon had my heart.

That much was clear, which meant the dragon was Raj.

Not one of his sons. Not a puppet. Not one of the men who’d proved themselves a turncoat and abandoned my tournament. Not some rebel.

The Sultan of Cheryn was my worst enemy.

And my magic was tied to him.

My life force was tied to him.

I didn’t need to set a trap at all.

The irony alone was devastating enough that if I’d had enough oxygen, I would have laughed.

I’d planned to kill us both anyway…but realizing I had no choice, no chance at all, cleaved my stomach, splintered my thoughts, severed the sense of righteous fury I’d clung to and turned it into sorrow.

Our shoulders were sagging, our eyes growing hooded, heads drooping.

Raj’s chest started to heave as he struggled to breathe, desperately trying to wring every bit of oxygen from the bubble.

The burning ache and lightheadedness spread through me as well, as if we shared an illness. As if we were one and the same.

But then my body flailed in rebellion, rejecting Raj and death and my foolish plan—and the sea responded to the instinctive flickers of my hands.

A tiny rivulet of water burst through the upper half of the bubble. Both our heads turned slowly toward the rippling blue line as it splashed against our faces like a welcome breeze.

Our gasps synchronized as our lungs greedily refilled. Again and again.

And with every breath, I felt our pulses align.

Felt a tug toward Raj.

A tug—not of enmity—but of recognition.

Every stripe of amber in the dragon's eyes caught my attention as we stared at one another, and I wondered if he could feel it too.

This connection.

Our link.

My foolishness.

The beast blinked and I braced, fully expecting the creature to evaporate in a puff of smoke—or wisp of blue.

That didn't happen. Raj didn't transform out of the dragon and into his true form in order to gloat and make his killing move.

Goose bumps prickled along my skin and an ache pulsed through my broken fin.

What was he waiting for? My eyebrow ticked up.

His front claw lifted slowly, as if the air around us was molasses.

I tried to move but my last thrashing beckoning to the sea had sapped most of my energy. As if I was bedridden and broken, I was stuck motionless as Raj’s sickle claw dragged up along the outside of my arm, sharp and curved as any blade.

I stiffened, bones suddenly feeling both as brittle and as hollow as glass. The claw scooped beneath my chin and my pulse pounded as I waited for him to carve a line across my neck. A frantic, desperation riddled my entire being.

But then the beast's claw retreated and hovered in front of my face, the pad of his paw toward me almost as if he was waving.

What?

Confusion stripped away my logic for a moment and I couldn't even process what I was looking at. I couldn’t imagine what the dragon intended, not until I saw his digits part and assumed he was about to reach for his ring.

That solid black ring that Bloss had described again and again to me as she relived the horror of dropping it into the ocean.

I tensed in expectation for a minute before I realized there was no ring .

A finger was missing—severed, the wound still healing.

Every nightmare outcome I'd imagined suddenly compounded, because even though this dragon was Raj...he wasn't in control.

Someone else had his ring.

Which meant everything hinged on their wish.