Page 40 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)
Avia
“ A via!” Keelan’s frantic shout overpowered the howl of the wind, and I twisted around to see him burst up through the waves just beside me, his bad arm wrapped around Mr. Whelk’s back, the turtle bearing most of his weight. His eyes screamed nearly as loud as he did—fear radiating from him.
His mother surfaced a moment later, wet hair fanned out across the waves as she reached toward her son, though they were separated by several waves.
“Keelan!” Her lower lip trembled, and her expression dragged at my heart because it was the same expression that Queen Gela had worn the moment we found out Bloss had run away.
We’d been in her chambers selecting necklaces for my sister’s wedding, when a page had rushed in. Queen Gela had paled, clasped her hands in front of her heart, and gotten a look on her face—the very look that Sahar had as she reached for Keelan and latched onto his arm with one hand.
A hand that had a black ring on one finger.
My lungs seized for a moment, and I couldn’t breathe.
Raj’s ring.
The world seemed to narrow. The beams of light in the distance that signaled an end to this storm disappeared from view. I stopped feeling the sputtering rain on my arms. The grumbling tone of the dragon poised in the sky over my heart evaporated.
That ring was the only thing I could see.
That tiny black gash across Sahar’s finger was like a sword through the ribs—a deep, sweeping, painful thrust that sliced me apart.
She was behind everything?
The woman I'd trusted above all others? Whose son I'd fallen in love with?
Who stayed at my side day in and day out as I was plagued by one issue after the next?
The throb inside my chest reverberated all the way up my throat and I nearly choked from the pain of it.
All my worst fears coalesced—she was the embodiment of the treachery I feared.
The treachery I probably deserved, because I knew how evil I could be, could feel the monster beneath my skin even now.
When? I wanted to ask as Sahar yanked her son closer, protectively, and the ache of betrayal morphed into a deep-seated longing.
How many nights had I wished for a mother like that?
Someone who’d come for me.
Hold me close.
Neither Gela nor Mali had cared for me at all.
Depression soaked into my skin, as cold as the pelting rain.
But beneath that ice-cold self-loathing there was a warm bit of emotion. A bit of fight left.
Bloss had come for me.
I didn’t have a mother, but I had a sister who’d torn the world apart to get me back.
A deep throb of gratitude pulsed through me. Love. And it helped me understand Sahar’s betrayal. Understanding had a price, however. My moment of reflection cost me, because the second that Sahar had Keelan plastered to her side, she reached for her ring.
Fury snapped its teeth, the dark desire to retaliate and cage her—dangle her above the ocean on a plank suspended from a ship, letting the sharks jump to bite at her, and the gulls to gorge on her eyeballs, letting her skeleton drift across the sea as a warning to all my enemies?—
I cut off my violent fantasy just as my fingers began to lift because Keelan met my eyes with his own worried gaze and Mr. Whelk made a plaintive moaning sound.
That single moment, that one look from my silly soldier, told me he had no idea what was happening.
Told me that everything that had happened between the two of us was real.
His expression was utterly baffled and scared, and just like that —I couldn't do it. There was no way I’d attack her if it meant hurting him.
So, I simply watched her twist the ring, letting the rage inside me grow molten and burn the inside of my throat.
Though I hadn’t known him for very long, Keelan’s soul was a torch in the darkness. He was light and dancing when all else was bleak and black.
I couldn’t live with myself if I destroyed him, and if I killed his own mother, it would.
One part of my chest throbbed with despair and defeat, told me to bow my head and accept my fate. But the newer, inhuman part of me—the part that burned with magic and viciousness—still screamed to end her. The two sides of myself yanked at me and it felt like I was being torn in two.
Sahar twisted her ring as a thunderclap shook the air and made the waves tremble. She screeched, words more like a banshee’s scream than a siren’s song “I wish you’d kill?—”
Keelan’s head whipped around in shock to face his mother just as my hand sawed upward toward my shoulder and a thin wall of water erupted, shoving the two of them apart, a swell of it surging into her mouth and cutting off her words before she finished that wish.
She gurgled and spit, but I didn’t let up, shoving miniature swell after swell at her faster than she could breathe.
Above me, a massive flap of the dragon’s wings forced air pressure to bend my spine as the beast rose. The hole in my left wing throbbed as the air behind me heated and activated the frayed nerves, which tingled in anticipation.
Shite. He was going to fulfill her wish anyway.
Seconds—I had mere seconds before I burnt.
My palm trembled and the water behind Sahar lifted and solidified into a spear of ice. But before I made it surge forward, a hand burst through the ocean, grabbed it, and shoved it into Sahar’s gut.