Page 6 of Waves (Tangled Crowns #6)

Avia

“ A gain!” Lizza commanded, her yell scratching at my eardrums.

We were out in the open ocean far beyond the tent ring and peering eyes and I was doing horribly.

I wanted to fling my face hard into a bit of coral reef off to my right and hope something poisonous lurked within it.

In my left hand, I gripped a stone spear. For inspiration, Lizza had said. My other palm was empty and open, but it was the more weighed down, aching, because magical exhaustion was heavier than any weapon.

But I lifted my right hand and closed my eyes for the millionth time, trying to fill myself with the song of the sea.

The notes were faint. Distant. Nothing like they’d been during the attack. Not even like they were during the parade. They were so far away. Pinpricks of sound.

Desperation threatened…but emotion would derail me.

Get it together, Avia, I scolded, pulling in deep breaths and trying to force myself into a state of calm. I tried to channel Bloss and her confidence. That bold determination she always seemed to give off. The oldest sibling entitlement.

You are mine, I told the ocean.

The notes sounded a little less hesitant. A bit louder.

Another breath and then there were harps and vielle strings vibrating through the water.

My fingers curled and magic pulled at me. I tried to imagine my body as a forge as Lizza had suggested, a place where the raw magic was formed and shaped. Weaponized.

An ice ball dropped from my hand, clattering down onto the pile of the hundred I’d already made.

“Dammit!” In frustration, I lobbed the spear at the ground, sending up a flurry of ocean sand and forcing a tiny crab to scuttle for cover.

I was not improving.

Posey lifted her vine-like fingers to her lips and called out helpfully, “You know, if we got the right court painter, they'd be able to transform those ice balls into skulls, so it looked like you were hovering over the skulls of your enemies.” Of course, she’d mention skulls.

Half the skin around her lower lips was gone and her own skeleton peeked out eerily.

Lifting my arms, I tried to blast her with cold water for impertinence, but another ice ball, this one smaller than all the rest, simply formed between my hands like a child’s snowball on land. “Sard it all! Nothing’s working.”

Lizza’s hand reached up to scratch at her temple, moving the flesh there in an unnatural way that made me suspect that there was no muscle left beneath it. “Perhaps we need higher stakes.”

And she turned and marched off, not bothering to explain herself.

A few minutes later, she returned with some saddled swordfish and a few guards, though they stayed even farther back than they had when I’d gone wandering with Keelan. Either my mage scared them or she’d told them to mind their business.

“Let’s go,” she ordered impatiently, not waiting for us to reach our mounts before she was on her own and on the move, swatting at the beast’s rear and urging it to hurry.

There was nothing to do but follow.

We rode for nearly an hour until we came to a spot near the pale sands of the Umra Desert.

This time, instead of massive mountains I’d visited with Keelan, there were strange pillars of dark rock and green coral.

Holes at the top of these structures emitted black smoke that billowed out into the ocean and sent waves of uncomfortable heat in our direction, the sort of heat that instantly made the bands of scales on my cheeks and upper arms ache.

“What is this place?” I asked as I dismounted.

“Told those idiots—” she nodded toward the guards—“to find us the most dangerous place they know. They call this the chimneys. Say they look like sky-breather chimneys and, if you get too close, that smoke will melt the skin right from your bones.”

“Really?” Posey tilted her head, studying the smoke swirls snaking upward.

“Well, Avia’s going to test it out,” Lizza declared. Her stringy hair floated up in the hot water and tangled, making her appear even more unhinged than usual.

Glancing at the vents, which seemed to puff out copious amounts of pitch-black fury, I hesitated. “Are we sure that’s safe?”

“Course it’s not. You did terrible with safe. Now, your life is on the line. Each time you mess up, you take a step closer to that,” Lizza stuck an arm out and pointed, and I wasn’t quite certain, but I thought there might be a little bit of manic glee in her rotting features.

“I don’t?—”

“Posey, stab her.”

Without warning, the undead soldier lunged at me, drawing her sword quicker than my eyes could follow.

Panicked, I lifted my hands, straining for something, anything. There was a swell of sound around me, not quite music, but a cacophony of noise that was nothing like the ocean song I’d heard before. My palms met the blade?—

Uneven balls of ice formed all the way down to the hilt of the cutlass, transforming the weapon from fierce looking into a toy.

A toy that smashed into my chest in a blow that would have killed me if the blade hadn’t been insulated.

As it was, the hit jarred my bones, forcing me backward, my wings fluttering.

The heat from the chimneys behind me made my scales flaring in alarm.

“Pathetic!” Lizza croaked as she dug carelessly around in the satchel slung over her shoulder. Bringing out a wriggling sea cucumber, she took a massive bite and stared at me for a long moment before she stiffened and raised her hand.

“Wait a minute!” she yelled with her mouth still stuffed full.

We froze as she hobbled forward and glared at me through narrowed eyes accusingly.

Then, she reached up with her free hand and yanked on my hair, pulling me down.

With swift movements she took the elven chain I wore for protection from my neck, sliding it into her pocket. “Damned elves. Probably interfering.”

Alarm ripped across my features, but she only smiled in response, showcasing goo-covered teeth as she turned to Posey. “Do it again. But this time, actually hurt her!”

Posey immediately moved, over a century of training making her sure and swift despite her decaying muscles.

Meanwhile, I scrambled—my back toasting, my wings sagging from the heat. Alarmed sweat trickled down the back of my neck as I raised my hands.

I didn’t even have time to do more than hear the ocean’s song before the searing cold of the icy sword shoved me farther back into the boiling water and I let out an ungodly scream.