submersible walls closed in on her. She tried not to scream.
This was normal. This was her isolation chamber. Don’t think about it. It doesn’t matter.
Her nerves shrieked that it did matter. It mattered a lot.
She released the door and hugged her knees to her chest. Calm down.
But her body rotated in the water.
Isolation, weightlessness, no sensation.
The world fell away from her. She was unmoored. Alone.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe.
Gailen would come.
They were linked. He would hear her silent panic and come.
But he didn’t come.
He’d wanted her to go with him. She could feel him now. His panic and terror only amplified hers.
We are linked.
Channel the Life Tree.
Help me, Starr.
But she couldn’t.
She was trapped.
If she’d gone with him, things would be different.
The Life Tree shrieked, and she heard its pain through the iron. Starr moaned.
Gailen…
Pain pounded her.
It had been so easy for him to leave her behind. She was the kind of person who was easy to abandon.
Just like in the hospital.
Take these thoughts away. Don’t think about it. It doesn’t matter.
Please!
But the thoughts wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t even force herself to pass out and stop thinking.
These thoughts used to drive her crazy. She’d had them all the time when she’d known that no one was coming. When her birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Christmas passed in the dark, and she could see the signs of other families visiting their sick children, and she got nothing because it was too much work for anyone to visit her. She’d begged for those hurt feelings to go away, and one day, the shield had appeared and granted her wish.
Now it was gone.
Starr knotted her fingers in her hair. She’d nearly made herself bald, and the nurse had chided her for ruining her looks. The tug of pain did nothing.
Thoughts swirled, attacking over and over, ripping pieces of her mind away.
She reached for the shield, but it wouldn’t come.
You have to thank the shield, her therapist had said. Thank it and say it’s no longer necessary.
But now it was necessary. She chanted her thanks and begged it to return over and over, but nothing worked. It never came back.
She had wished it away, and now it was gone forever.
Twenty-Seven
The kraken tore the concrete blocks from the seafloor. The cable snapped with an audible twang, and the submersible fell. It disappeared into the debris storm engulfing the plane.
“Starr!” Gailen screamed and kicked forward.
Lieutenant Diras caught him. “You cannot help her now.”
He fought the lieutenant.
“You cannot help her! She will survive this, Gailen. She is a queen.”
His fighting slowed. She was a queen, but she hadn’t found her full powers yet.
They should never have separated.
He’d convinced himself she would be safe. He needed to get to her, to save her.
“Think, Gailen. Think!” Lieutenant Diras shook his shoulders. “You cannot get to her through this storm. You must stop the kraken.”
“Only a queen can stop the kraken,” he vibrated urgently. Starr needed him. He must go, even though it would be suicide. “Only she can make the tone that breaks the red stones.”
“Breaks the…of course.” Lieutenant Diras called out to Roa. “Your queen must make the tone.”
Roa, still hugging his queen, did not take his eyes off the looming kraken “What tone?”
“The tone. All the queens know it. It is low like the sound of a squid.” Lieutenant Diras made the low ommmm that Queen Dannika had taught them after her first successful encounter with the kraken. “It soothes the animal and shatters the mirror stones. Make your queen emit it.”
Roa finally tore his gaze to the lieutenant. “I do not make my queen do anything. She has one defensive power and it is the pufferfish shield.”
“The kraken will not even prick a tentacle on her pufferfish. King Kadir will die if his Life Tree fails. Your only chance to get recognition is to do the tone. Make her understand.”
Roa flattened his lips, but he turned to his bride and vibrated softly. With her, he was so patient. She struggled once, twice in his arms. He insisted, holding her with his elbows the way he’d carry a broken trident, and despite the approaching storm, he maintained an unnatural calm. She calmed too.
“I need you to say ommmm,” he vibrated in a whisper. “Do you understand? Ommmm. Do it with me. Ommmm.”
She made a couple of abortive attempts, and then finally, her chest vibrated. “Om. Om.”
“That is right. Longer now. Ommmm.”
“Omm.”
“Yes. Ommmm.”
She made the tone for longer and longer.
The Life Tree caught her focus and