Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,84

zaps. She didn’t need him anymore to ground her unpredictable power.

But he’d fallen for her. And he would continue to fall, forever. She might not need him to catch her, but if ever she did, he’d be there.

Just…not right this instant, not when their ship was falling, because the vacuum that had followed behind the blast was closing around him.

“Sting?”

He didn’t try to smile at her this time, since he was so bad at it, but he sent her a soft little ping. “I nul’ah-lan.” My burning night tide.

And the abyss that swallowed him was deeper and darker than anything he’d ever known.

Chapter 16

“Fuuuuuck.” Lana split her frantic focus between Sting and the Diatom. Was he dead? The ship was practically dead, the controls lagging under her touch or not responding at all. If Sting…

No. No no no. She had not gone through this—twice!—just to kill him with her bad flying.

Unless he was already… No.

Unwavering, she aimed the Diatom along the approved IDA trajectory. At least they’d end up back in the vicinity of Sunset Falls. The last time she’d crashed, she’d still been in shock from discovering she was a fire-witch and being exiled from her hopeful new home on Tritona. Back then, she hadn’t known Thomas very well, and she’d never have guessed her mother was soon to reappear, so crashing had been a bummer but not the trauma of thinking she might be scattering her ashes above their heads now…

And she’d be taking Sting with her.

She spared one quick glance at him. Still breathing, she could tell, but his head lolled to one side, that blue-green Tritonan blood seeping down in a dangling necklace over his slowly heaving mostly bare chest. Alive, but for how much longer?

That depended on her, didn’t it?

Gritting her teeth, she looked at the options that were left her on the board.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” the AI broke in. “You have insufficient power remaining for life-support or stabilizers.”

Last time that had been her fault because of her zaps. So not being personally responsible for crashing was an improvement, yeah? She dragged in a breath, the atmo already too thin to support her racing pulse.

“Redirect all remaining power to the final landing sequence,” she ordered. “Override standard safeties and crew comfort. Just get us down.” Sting might have taken the brunt of that terrible blast, but he was strong.

And so was she.

They would tumble, burning and breathless, but at least they were together.

“Recommend shunting all data gel support resources to emergency landing,” the AI said.

Lana swallowed hard. That would kill the AI completely. She’d be on her own. “Do it,” she said hoarsely. “And goodbye.”

“A hie kharea-lan,” the ship said.

“Sweet night tide to you too, Diatom,” she whispered.

She reached over to touch Sting and gave a tug on his restraint harness. It was wrapped tight around his chest, and she’d never been so jealous of an inanimate object in her life—however much remained of it.

All sensors and scanners were down except one, barely flickering. But on the dull, fuzzy image she recognized little Earth—blue-green as Sting’s blood, silver-white clouds like his eyes—looming before them. Luckily, Big Sky Country was low population density country. There’d be little chance of being seen and even less chance of actually crashing into someone. Taking one last breath of the almost depleted air, she touched Sting one last time and braced herself…

Fire.

Gasping.

Thunder that shook her bones.

This was an infinity times worse than her prom night misfire.

An even mightier jolt as if all the lightning of every storm in the universe had merged into one bolt of sound and sensation and violence threatening to rip her apart.

…Silence.

The stink of burning pinched her nostrils, and she coughed. Or she would’ve, if there’d been more air. The ship that had protected them was now choking them and burning around them, not fair.

Though every atom in her body hurt, she unfastened the restraint harness. Two of the straps were severed and one buckle shattered from the violence of their crash. Sting’s was in worse shape.

She refused to check to see if he was as badly mangled.

No way she could carry his much greater weight. And yet she did. When she staggered out through the main corridor—okay, technically she was half dragging him—she almost cried to see the churn of roiled water rising through the hold. So much easier to float him.

She hauled him out into the darkness under the Montana night sky, full of stars and a few lingering wisps of smoke. They were