Wiping hair from her eyes, she turned her attention ahead, to where two immortal bodies collided like thunder.
A mass of black and gray crashed into the figure she knew to be Malum.
The clouds of gray morphed, turning into arms and legs. Margrete watched as the other entity, Darius, made himself whole. Golden hair, a compliment to his tanned body, crowned his head, the strands appearing to be spun of pure sunlight and silk. She could feel him, hear his velvety voice even now, as he turned her way. A silver mask embedded with crushed opals covered the upper half of his face, though she glimpsed a pair of eyes that were the color of the clearest seas.
Darius broke contact and twisted back to face his foe. He wound his arms around Malum’s neck, his brother’s movements sluggish as he struggled.
Margrete imagined that the centuries trapped in the ravine had weakened him and that the chains around his neck weighed him down. She understood what he’d given away when he gifted Azantian with his heart.
His recklessness would be the reason for his death.
Darius grasped the ends of a thick chain, and a bolt of lightning struck as he released a growl. His hold tightened, and the metal dug viciously into Malum’s throat.
Thunder shook the world hard enough for Margrete’s bones to rattle, and the skies opened to allow violent rain to fall, the drops forceful enough to bruise.
This was no ordinary storm.
“Give in!” Darius bellowed, forcing the chains deeper into his brother’s throat. They were both suspended in the air, the rushing waters reaching up to graze their divine forms.
Malum shook his head, and his hands went to his neck to tug on his shackles. He hissed just before Darius drove them under the water, moving as swiftly as the lightning that broke the night.
“Margrete!”
She turned at the sound of her name to find Bash swimming over to her, his arms threading through the water with power and ease. “Stay where you are!”
As if she could move if she wanted to.
Bash closed the distance between them, panting as he struggled to stay afloat. He was alive, but staying underwater for so long had clearly cost him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice a thing of misery. “Why did you come here?”
Margrete would have laughed at the anger in his tone if they weren’t on the precipice of death.
He grabbed for her hand, steadying her trembling fingers. The air was unusually cold, and she realized then that she was shaking.
“I-I had to get y-you,” she stuttered, her lips quivering. “So that I could k-kill you myself, you fool.” She let out a choking laugh, and her insides warmed when a smile graced his face.
The hand around hers tightened. “I couldn’t let you stay on that ship, and I had to slay the serpent before it devoured everything in its path. I couldn’t watch…I couldn’t watch you die.”
Margrete swallowed hard, ready to berate him for risking his life, when a resounding boom drowned out all sound.
The brothers shot through the air, straight up from the waves, their muscled arms and legs a blur as they fought. Darius still maintained the upper hand, but Malum wasn’t giving up.
When Malum delivered a punch that sent his brother flying, Margrete’s lips twitched into a hopeful smile.
But Darius was already back on his feet, floating across the waves toward his brother.
He paused halfway to peer over his shoulder, and those piercing blue eyes caught hers even as she bobbed up and down on the ocean. Margrete gasped as he smiled, his lips curling into something wicked. The mask shielded the rest of his face, but she could see his sinful delight well enough.
I’m coming for you next, darling.
The words whispered across her thoughts, phantom hands seeming to reach out and graze her mind. She could sense him everywhere—Darius breaking through her mortal barriers with ease. That smile of his flourished, and then he was turning back to his brother.
“This is madness,” Malum roared. “Haven’t you had enough after a thousand years? Isn’t it time we end this?”
Darius laughed, the sound like a purr. “Oh, yes. I do believe it is time we end this once and for all, dear brother.”
One moment Darius was fifty feet away from Malum, and in the next, his muscled frame was colliding against his twin’s. The two immortals crashed together and erupted in an explosion of devastating light.
Margrete gripped Bash’s hand as the gods drew closer. Darius held Malum’s chains, though this time, he twisted his brother to face Margrete and Bash. A devilish gleam sparked in his inhuman eyes as he pulled the shackles taut. Malum’s face contorted as his skin turned a sickly shade of blue, and then Darius let go—
His twin’s body plummeted to the water, shattering into wisps of light and sea foam.
Darius turned once more to where Margrete clutched Bash. His sights were now set on the king, and his eyes glowed silver, fizzling with sparks of electricity. He smiled.
And then Darius released the remainder of his power.
Directly onto Bash.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Margrete
Bash’s hand slipped from hers before Margrete could react, and his body was dragged beneath the churning waters. The only god here was the one who would do nothing to save him.
Margrete’s heart stopped.
Broke.
Shattered.
She couldn’t even scream, couldn’t beg Darius to spare him, for she knew he had no intention of heeding her request. With his brother’s effervescent remains at his feet and nothing but foam rising and falling on the crests of blue, Darius trained his gaze onto her.
Now, everything is as it should be.
Margrete took him in, stared down the vengeful god who seemed determined that she suffer, and then she released a deafening shriek of rage.
Her body burned, and the essence within seared, coiling like a snake preparing to strike. When Margrete lifted her hand from the broken boat, a flare of blue kindled in her palm like a wrathful fire.
Darius’s eyes narrowed, frowning at the sight.
I’m coming for you next, she thought, sending her lethal vow out into the world. She shot him one final look of blistering hot rage before she let go of the wood completely and dove into the waters that once would have drowned her.
Her body was alight with a foreign energy, a buzzing that propelled her legs to move and her lungs to swell with water. She inhaled the water and released it as though it were air. The sight of Bash, driven into the sea, had killed the girl she’d once been. Destroyed her.
In her place was a woman who would tear apart the seas to find him.
Margrete thrust forward, kicking her legs, deeper into the eternal black as the water aided her plight. She called out to the sea itself, the many parts that made it whole. She spoke to it. Commanded it.
The sea listened.
It grew dark, darker than even the blackest of nights, but Margrete willed herself to see, to adopt the vision of a deep-sea creature. Little by little, the dim became a hazy, cloudy blue, well-lit enough to make out the drowning figure not more than ten feet away.
With only Bash occupying the space of her mind, Margrete swam with ferocious speed to him. Wisps of his auburn hair floated about his lifeless face.
A battle cry escaped into the bubbling depths, one of promised vengeance and desperate love. It wasn’t muffled like most sounds this deep, but instead was as crystal clear as the northern star on a cloudless night. She reached out, her hand seeking to grasp the tips of his fingers.
He was sinking. Fast.
While adrenaline flamed within her, Margrete knew that she was losing energy, even with the ancient magic of a god coursing in her veins.
A power she had no idea how to use.
His emerald eyes were closed, skin pallid, but she was resolved to see those green eyes again. That taunting smirk, and the rare, genuine smile that stopped her heart when it appeared. Bash would
open his eyes and kiss her lips, and she would scold him for being foolish enough to attack the serpent on his own.
Bash wasn’t about to die. Not when she had just only experienced him.
With a crushing rush of purpose, Margrete kicked her searing limbs, and her fingers finally grazed the linen of his shirt. She yanked him upward, wrapping her hand tightly around his arm, and hauled his weightless body to her own.
Margrete held her pirate to her chest, panic surging as she set her sights on the surface. She ground her teeth as she pushed herself to keep swimming. Even though her limbs trembled and her vision flickered with black pinpricks, she kicked and thrashed as an unnatural current lifted them higher. The fight had not left her yet. Bash had saved her once when the very waters wished to claim her life, and she meant to return the favor.
She wouldn’t let go.
Ever.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Margrete
The next time light struck the tumultuous waves, it wasn’t borne of electricity. It was a cataclysmic collision of transcendent rebirth and the commanding force of pulsating love.
Margrete choked as she breached the surface. Unused to lungs that could breathe water, she coughed out the salty liquid and greedily gasped for air.
In her trembling arms was a body belonging to a king. His muscled form weighed her down, but Margrete fought against the current. She screamed his name, over and over again, as one might say a prayer.
Or a curse.
The smoldering heat within her swelled with each passing moment that Bash didn’t gasp for air. With every second he didn’t open those eyes and smile.
Her arms tightened around him protectively, and that mystical fire within her blossomed. It erupted and shattered. Broke her and put her back together again. Margrete felt like she was being remade from the inside out.
The waters, as if sensing the divinity flowing through her blood, responded, lifting her and Bash above the crests. They were pushed to the western shores. To land. To safety.
The sound of the sea was all she could hear—the melody comprised of both tender and vicious notes. Margrete cradled Bash as the celestial aria lulled to a soft whisper, and the tide delivered them at last to the sands.
Without the aid of the waters at her back, Margrete struggled to lift the king, to haul his limp frame farther up the beach. But something just as potent as the Heart’s power gave her the strength to carry him, to gently lower him to the fine golden grains.
“Bash!” she screamed. There was no response other than the crashing waves.
Placing her head to his chest, she listened for a heartbeat, a sign of life.
She heard nothing but the empty silence of death.
Margrete cursed and took him by the shoulders, shaking him. When he didn’t rouse, she pounded her fists against his chest.
Nothing—his chest remained unmoving.
The war raged all around her, but she paid no mind to the distant cries of battle. She couldn’t breathe, not when Bash couldn’t.
In a fit of panic, she pummeled his chest with her hands, struggling to restart the heart she knew had ceased to beat. Time passed in a blur, but still she worked, her voice hoarse from shrieking into the night. It might have been his name she called, but it was guttural and raw and altogether animalistic.
It was the sound of anguished defeat.
“No.” She sniffled, her hand quivering as it reached to cup his cheek. He looked so pale, so frozen. “Wake up!”
Her tiny fists banged against him once more, bruising and violent in their descent. She cared for nothing but the rise and fall of life—of air filling his lungs.
He remained so very still.
“You can’t die,” she whispered under her breath. “Your people need you.”
She needed him.
“Don’t you dare,” she threatened, swallowing painfully. Every inhale was excruciating. Every minute he didn’t stir roused a new wave of agony inside of her. “You—”
Margrete stopped.
She lifted her hands from his unmoving chest. The moon shone on his handsome face, and he appeared to be sleeping. Peaceful. This sickened her all the more.
He was but another soul that the sea—no, Darius—had taken, and for reasons she didn’t yet understand.
It was then that the most astonishing thought occurred to Margrete.
The sea was where he lost his life.
The sea had nearly taken her life.
Margrete held some of the sea’s powers. Malum’s powers.
With renewed purpose, Margrete inhaled sharply and placed one hand on either side of his face. She gripped him tightly enough to bruise, but her mind had already begun to drift into a realm beyond the physical: into the place where the sea and her own life mingled.
Where Malum’s sacred essence dwelled.
“Bash, come back to me,” she ordered, her heated breath tickling his pallid flesh. The wind picked up in response, and a ghostly breeze stroked her cheeks and tousled her curls. “I demand it.”
As the words fell from her tear-stained lips, her body shook, and the sacred warmth of a god’s stolen heart seared her insides.
Margrete screamed as a thousand images flashed through her mind.
Cruel gales and beautiful sunrises. Gulls with spread wings gliding across the vast sky. The full moon grazing the top of seafoam waves, its light filtering to paint the depths with magic.
Margrete sensed a pack of wild dolphins beyond the breaks. Great whites hunting for their meal. She glimpsed the vibrant coral reefs and spotted an orange starfish on the sandy floor. Freshly hatched sea turtles swam for the first time in the blue deep, and rosy jellyfish whirled above their green shells. There was an entire world beyond the shores, full of striking beasts and achingly beautiful creatures of color.
She sang to them all, called to them as she pleaded for a single soul to be returned to her. The dolphins gave a high-pitched whistle, and the sharks slowed their pace and ignored their bloodlust to listen. The jellyfish glowed with foreign light, and the sea turtles flapped their flippers. Farther away, a pod of blue whales emitted a reverberating reply of their own.
Stingrays, seahorses, octopi, squids, crabs, clams, eels—
The entire ocean answered in a jumbled chorus of abundant life.
“Come back to me, Bash.”
A sharp pang struck her chest, lasting but a heartbeat. It pierced her heart, and an exquisite light blinded her vision.
And then she heard it—
His inhale.
“Bash!” she shrieked. She helped him turn onto his side as he retched saltwater and the remnants of death.
Minutes passed before he turned to face her, and the sight of him, alive and breathing, was the most beautiful thing she’d ever witnessed. But the handsome face she’d grown to love had changed.
His eyes…They were no longer the shade of emeralds, and no golden flecks dotted his irises. The sea had taken his life and returned his soul after death. Because of this, he would be forever changed.
Bash met her gaze with adoration and tender affection—with irises of silky midnight and ashen smoke.
“P-princess,” he sputtered, coughing.
Through her own altered blue eyes, Margrete drank in the darkness of his murky pools and glimpsed the beauty of their eternal night.
“Y-you were n-nearly lost to me,” she stammered, disbelieving that he was here in her arms, color slowly returning to his cheeks. “Darius. H-he used his power on you, looked right at you as he slayed his brother. As he killed Malum. He wanted to kill you, too, and I think he…I think he succeeded.”
And with Malum’s powers, she had brought him back.
“Malum is dead?” Bash fought to raise himself onto his elbows, alarm twisting his features. Margrete snaked her arms around his torso and held him upright.
“He turned to sea foam before my eyes,” she said, her chest tight. She didn’t know Malum, but a piece of him had resided inside
of her all her life, and in that way, she felt the loss of him.
“What happened to Darius?” Bash asked, his eyes growing sharper, his body tensed as if preparing for the fight to come. And there would be a fight. Darius had all but promised he’d come back for her.
That she was next.
“I’m not sure what happened to him,” she admitted. “I dove in after you.”
Bash shook his head. “You can’t swim. I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either, Bash, but when Darius sent you below the waves, I experienced this…heat. This strength. I can’t explain it, but I feel him. Malum.”
Bash placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, his fingers shaking. “Whatever it is, we will find out together. Remember, you’re no longer alone.”
She smiled. “And neither are you.”
Bash squeezed his eyes shut before opening them to gaze upon her, his stare brimming with a thousand unspoken words.
Words he would never need to speak for her to understand.
So instead of answering him with her voice, she lowered her lips to his, tasting the sweetness of rebirth.
The kiss was a gentle caress. A reminder that life flowed through their veins, air filled their lungs, and, for the moment, they were not defeated. They were whole.
Bash pulled away first, just enough to peer into her eyes, which were full of unshed tears. He looked at her as if she were the most beautiful and enchanting being he’d ever glimpsed.
But it was time for her to release him—
Time to face Darius and her father.
Margrete knew what she had to do, and she implored Bash to trust her.
“I have to do this.” She cupped his stubbled cheeks before helping him stand. “Alone,” she added when he raised a brow. “This isn’t only between my father and me, but between me and Darius. That strength I told you about? I feel it now. And I know I can face whatever is out there.”
“I don’t like this.” Bash sighed, his Adam’s apple bobbing with emotion. He placed both hands on either side of her face, his touch freezing against her heated skin. “I can’t lose you, Margrete. I won’t.”
The Girl Who Belonged to the Sea Page 32
