Page 38 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

E ither the shocked expression on my face sent Raj into a new phase of terrorizing me… or his new master did. In a blink, he transformed from a water dragon into the vicious beast who'd stolen me from my sister. The dragon who haunted my nightmares. A terror who breathed fire—and air.

A shudder ran through my limbs involuntarily, a trauma response to facing that monster again.

Phantom cold coated my skin, just like it had when I’d been dragged through clouds over Evaness, certain at any moment that the dragon would drop me.

For a moment, the entire world seemed to shrink, as if I was looking through a telescope the wrong way, my sight contracting in dread.

The beast’s eyes widened as he realized his effect on me, as if he could taste my panic.

Could he? With my heart in his chest, was my fear more prominent? Or were the tears leaking down my cheeks the giveaway?

Raj’s wings unfurled, black membranous sails the size of a ship's that burst through the edges of the air bubble.

Sucking in a deep breath of air from the sphere we were suspended within, the dragon's lungs expanded, and his claws shot forward, encircling my upper arms, each sharp nail several inches thick. Shackles.

Lightheaded from a lack of water in my lungs, I didn’t even think of calling the ocean to me as the dragon’s wings folded over us, encasing us like seeds inside a pod.

Lost.

You’ve lost.

That was the one twisted response my mind managed, one last pathetic kick to my own ego.

A forked tongue danced inside the beast’s mouth as it opened into a sick and twisted smile—until those lips and that tongue moved. And moved again.

Not spitting fire—but forming what looked like silent words, as if he was mouthing something to me.

Instead of the desolation I’d just experienced, my entire body was subsumed with desperation.

Frantic urgency that I realized was not my own—it was his.

His pulse was pounding, dragging my heart through a wild race, like a chariot hitched to a stallion whose driver had been thrown.

The throbbing in my veins grew faster until it was out of control and making me dizzy.

Confusion addled me. My vision was already speckled with dark flecks, my mind hazy, and I couldn’t grasp the full significance of what was happening.

The dragon shook me, jostling my arms and snapping my wrists.

The ocean took my movement as a sign, a signal, and it gave a pitch-bending howl that almost sounded like a war cry before it bounded forward in a rush, eager—less like an instrument and more alive than ever.

Almost as if the water had realized it was about to lose the one person capable of hearing its song. The last sprite.

Water gushed through the gills on my neck and rushed into my lungs, the bubble around us collapsing, the dragon and I sinking, his weight making us drop like a stone.

I gulped water, uncaring about his hold as oxygen revived me and clarity sharpened my sight.

Still, his tongue lashed and lips moved in the same pattern again and again—stubbornly repeating the same message despite the water he was clearly taking on as fewer and fewer bubbles escaped from him with each repetition.

As breathing slowly restored my mind, I was finally able to decipher his frantic message.

Help.

Help him? The djinn who’d nearly destroyed Evaness? Who’d suppressed his own people? Who’d just attacked me?

Did he actually think I would?

It was a ludicrous request, one that almost made me laugh angrily. But I stopped myself. Even though I fully planned to end us both, what if I extracted information from him first? Information that could protect Okeanos from whoever was working with Raj.

It was worth a try.

I shoved my palms down and the sea erupted beneath us like a geyser, shooting us upward and breaking his grip on me.

His wings splayed out in an effort to keep his balance as the water hurricaned upward.

We split apart the surface of the waves and rose and rose until we hovered thirty feet above the sloshing surface.

Above the ocean and beneath a storm, where dark clouds glimmered with lightning, billowing gray silk lined with jagged gold lace.

This time, I didn’t shove the ocean away from my body and force an air barrier to choke the dragon and myself.

Instead, I let the foaming waves rise and fold themselves into a cloak that streamed down my shoulders, over my folded wings, tickling my neck while my gills received a steady stream of liquid oxygen.

“Who has the ring, Raj?” I hissed as a fork of lavender lightning seared across the sky around us.

Thunder shook our bones before the dragon opened his mouth. And when his lips parted, his head jerked upward, and his claws spread out…he resembled a marionette as his head swung down and his gaze zeroed in on me and the inside of his mouth began to glow.

He wasn’t in control.

I dove sideways.

Beneath my feet, waves leapt up, keeping me aloft and shoving me along so that I seemed to skate upon the water. One moment, I was right in front of the dragon. The next, my cloak of foam was streaming out into the stormy air behind me, and I was thirty feet away.

A stream of fire smashed into the water where I’d just hovered, leaving steam billowing up in a white veil that temporarily blinded me.

Raj burst through the haze a moment later, mouth snarling as more flames flickered along the edges of his dagger-sized teeth.

Whoever was pulling his strings clearly wanted a fight.

"Is it Valdez?" The accusation turned his name into a curse word, flying from my mouth with anger, without any sort of assurance I’d get an answer. I didn’t know where Raj began and ended, where the person who held his ring was—what was him and what was them. But I had to take the chance.

The dragon screeched, Raj’s head reeling from side to side in a quick denial before his mouth popped open as if his jaws had been pried apart.

Another jet of fire shot toward me, a spiraling sword of pure yellow flame.

My arm flew up on instinct in a blocking motion. A spiraling shield of water rose from the ocean and the flare slammed into it, sizzling into oblivion.

But the sea didn’t stop with my gesture, didn’t create the shield and then await my next command. It went rogue.

A bright horn sounded in my ears, a trumpet signaling attack.

The note warbled as wave after wave rose up in front of me in a jagged wall that separated me from the airborne dragon.

And then one, by one, like soldiers, those waves marched forward, swelling up until they crashed into the dragon’s belly, battered his wings, and threw Raj off balance.

As he tumbled back in the waves, flapping and struggling to regain his balance while the ocean punched into his ribs again and again, I heard a plaintive call.

Someone yelled my name in the distance.

Glancing down through the waves, I thought I spotted Mateo swimming upward, the silver of his tail glinting. It looked like he was reaching for me.

Guilt and fear blossomed, threatened to distract me from this fight, and I couldn’t afford distraction.

My palm pressed down, urging the ocean current to shove the disguised merman backward.

Down far far away, where Raj couldn’t hurt him.

There was no time to glance down to check on him because Raj transformed into the water dragon just long enough to spiral through the waves and make the ocean’s attacks against him ineffective.

But as his body burst through the wall of water right in front of me, navy smoke encased him for a split second before the flying nightmare was back, hovering before me.

“Who is your damned master?” Each word was punctuated with a step as waves rose like pillars for me and I stomped toward Raj, rising with each stride until my face hovered near his, my expression as black as the anvil-shaped clouds above.

If it wasn’t the pirate, who’s masterminding this attack?

He gave a feral screech that was grabbed by the wind and throttled.

How long had the sultan been under someone else's control?

Who'd found his ring?

The questions crowded up my throat, each one slamming into the one before until my tongue felt thick. But none of them were voiced because another jet of flame arched my way.

My hands swept up and a ring of water spun up and encircled me, revolving around me so quickly that it batted back the fire.

Raj tried again, flapping his wings and spitting flame from another angle.

I added another spinning ring around myself, smiling mockingly at him when the flames couldn’t find their way to me, the tiniest sliver of wicked pride rising within.

The dragon huffed, smoke rings puffing from his nostrils, and I swore I saw a ferocity akin to lust in his eyes.

Raj had killed so many—it would make sense if battle had warped his senses to make fighting about pleasure and not survival.

A slight tingling began in my own lower belly, the perverted and inhuman side of myself gaining steam as I continued to use my power. The side of myself that saw Raj merely as a collection of skin and bones. An impediment.

Was this how he thought?

Was this a showcase of what I’d become?

The sizzling heat between my thighs denied the loss of all my human senses…but was lust even part of humanity? Or was it an animalistic?

Fire ended my philosophizing as a jet of orange heat grazed my shoulder and sent pain careening up and down my arm.

“Ahhh!” With a cry born of outrage and agony, I swiped my good arm in an arc, creating an arch of ice spears that rose on a wave and positioned themselves like a crown of ice rays above the dragon’s head.

“Tell. Me. Who.” I growled. “Stavros?”

The dragon simply purred in response, a low, wanton sound vibrating deep in his chest that made my nipples harden.

Was that a yes or is he toying with me?

Furious at my body’s responsiveness, I sent three spears stabbing.

Two bounced right off his scales but one hit the tender joint of his shoulder and sank in several satisfying inches.

My own shoulder throbbed twice as hard as before, but my tongue traced over my lips in brutal satisfaction at our matching wounds.

The dragon’s lips parted, and he showed his teeth in what anyone else would consider a snarl but I knew it was a smile. I knew because the air between us rippled with carnal heat right before his mouth opened and he swirled his forked tongue, a ring of flame sailing out.

With a slap of my hand through the air the ocean made to bat down the flame, but the ring split into five sparkling lines that soared off in different directions, evading my waves, teasing them. Teasing me.

Raj was enjoying this fight.

But I was too.

With a snarl, I send all the remaining ice spears hurtling down at him. His scales protected him, and the spears cracked on impact, slivering to bits.

But I waved my fingertips and let the slivers melt, slide over him as tiny cold droplets, coating his skin, and my own, with goose bumps.

Anticipation sent my heart pounding in his chest.

Sent my own pulse racing.

Our eyes locked and I felt our breathing synchronize. That pounding, driving need within my veins thumped harder with the knowledge it was within his too.

Our joint heartbeat was an unyielding force that whipped through us like the wind thrashing around the globe.

Unseen but wild.

Forceful.

Unstoppable.

So potent that my body ached to bend to its will.

The dragon’s wings flapped, and Raj edged closer. My hand wavered and the ocean pushed me forward until we were so near I saw every stripe of color in the beast’s eyes and he saw the tremble running across my skin that had nothing to do with the rain pelting down on both of us.

He was panting.

So was I.

My vision grew white hot as we stared at one another, volatile with violence and lust, with a need stronger than anything I’d ever felt before.

One flick of my wrist, that was all it would take. One flick of my wrist would harden all those tiny water droplets under his scales into icy needles that could stab him through a thousand times over.

But my hand was frozen.

Above, golden lighting suddenly crackled through the cloud, and I saw it fracture… and then arc right for us.