Tree. She deserves our gratitude, not fear.”
Lieutenant Diras motioned for the patrol to pull back and lower their tridents. They obeyed. Lieutenant Diras stiffened as the blind queen advanced on him, the impaled All-Council warriors limp and moaning. The deadly spines drew too close.
“Call her off,” Gailen ordered Roa.
The warrior tossed him an amused, skeptical look, but kicked toward his queen. “Jasleen.”
She whirled to face him, her spines flashing, sharp.
He slowed and eased between the bodies, vibrating calm words.
Her spines shrank. The impaled warriors slid off and dropped to the ocean floor. She popped the spines out again, twitching a few last times in warning. A spine pierced Roa’s forearm.
He winced and gritted his teeth. “It is me. Are you satisfied?”
She abruptly dropped her shield and drifted as though lost.
He pulled her into his arms with such tenderness that he seemed like a different warrior. Roa proved it was possible to lose all the pieces that had once made him a warrior, and yet he could still give comfort to his soul mate. It was inspirational and deeply moving.
And just the beginning of their fight. “Lieutenant Diras, we must cede the castles. This patrol snuck in with a saw to cut down the Life Tree. I knocked it down, but any others could pick it up. We must all make our final stand here.”
“I fear you are right.” The lieutenant skirted the couple, and his patrol fanned protectively around the Life Tree. “What a loss.”
“It is not the first time. When the All-Council army unleashed megalodons on us, they destroyed all our castles but one.”
New respect reflected in the lieutenant’s eyes. “I think I am experienced in war, but you have already lived through a battle that they would write about in the archives.”
“I fear we are about to live through another one.”
“If we live, I will have no fears. How did you convince this stranger to defend our Life Tree?”
“I told him to go and seek safety elsewhere. He needs King Kadir alive to be recognized, so…”
“And just think, now Kadir must act grateful and thank me for saving his life.” Roa grinned with that crazy gleam in his eyes again. His damaged, unpredictable queen wilted in his arms, her long black hair trailing like a ribbon, the scars crossing her face making her expression impossible to read. “This is a better outcome than I could have imagined. And it was all thanks to your insufferable nobility.” He swam above the city center, laughing hysterically.
The patrol watched him.
The lieutenant eyed Gailen from the side. “And you convinced him to fight. Truly, you could make friends with a hungry bull shark.”
A strange bass note filled the city.
They all squinted into the distance. The army was so vast, it was visible even above the bobbing castles.
The lieutenant’s expression flattened in shock. “What is that?”
A massive shadow loomed. Its bulk stretched toward the surface. Terrible tentacles dragged over the landscape as it crept toward them.
But it did not seem to be under its own control.
Around it, masses of enemy warriors positioned red boulders. Each stone was so huge, it required a full unit to carry and another unit to maneuver. By tilting the stones one way and then the other, they drove the tentacled mass toward Atlantis.
Then it tilted upright.
Its pointed head veered for the surface like the peak of an undersea mountain. Massive squid eyes centered on the city. Its triple beak clacked.
The patrol gathered around the Life Tree.
Gailen had thought he would never see the All-Council wield an animal more destructive than the megalodons. Those legendary beasts had broken free and turned on their army, attacking both Atlantis and the All-Council equally. The All-Council had learned not to use animals that couldn’t be controlled. They had gone to Lusca, mined the red stones, and captured a beast they could control.
So long as the red stones remained intact, this beast was unstoppable.
It crossed the open plane and bore down on the city. Its tentacles tossed boulders as though they were pebbles. A mass the size of a small castle flew past the Life Tree, rocking them in its current, and dropped to the seafloor below. It smashed the megalodon bones to white powder.
“That,” Gailen vibrated with horror, “is the kraken.”
Starr almost had this communications terminal figured out.
Gailen had been so reluctant to let her go, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t gain her powers just by willing them to appear, could she?
She was a special kind of broken. Broken