were beating, I know it would be thundering out of his chest. I want to ask if Marty is okay. But the vampire growls like a lion.
The next wave of merrows is marching up to us. Kurt and I move forward, he with the head of the trident and me with the scepter, like Kleos and Ellanos, the old kings of the sea.
Then a bright light rises from the waves, behind the line of merrows.
A conch blasts through the air.
Riding on the back of a great sea horse is Princess Kai. Behind her surfaces a small army of mermen, their breastplates shimmering in the dark.
“That’s my guard.” Kurt takes a step forward. “What are they doing here?”
“Who cares?” Frederik says. “As long as they’re here to fight.”
Kai blows on the conch once again, waving her golden sword in the air.
And we race against the merrows, a clash of sand and sea.
If my boys had asked me how I was going to spend my summer, never would I ever have said this.
Screaming at the top of my lungs until I don’t recognize my own voice. Running, running, running against the wave of merrows, accompanied by an alliance of supernatural creatures and members of the Sea Guard.
If I’d once thought Kurt was threatening in his stoic poise, I know now that’s nothing compared to the way the Sea Guard moves. They’re a unit, as if they read each other’s minds. The night is full of final screams before the opposing fighters fall away into the coming waves. The tide pulls away the bodies, those that don’t break away the way we do.
In the onslaught, Archer wades toward me. He’s weaponless. “This is your chance, Archer.” I hold my scepter between us, the light dragging shadows across his chiseled face. “Go back to Nieve and tell her she’ll never have me and she’ll never have Kurt.”
He bares his canine smile at me. His eyes flicker to the right where Adaro’s ship is floating precariously. Layla’s scream fills the night—over the warrior yells, over the pulse of my heart in my ears. I can’t see her, but I know she’s there.
“She already has you, brother.”
My feet pound the sand, racing through the battle, toward the fire, as Archer shouts, “And when she has you, she will never let go.”
Though I can hear someone call my name, I don’t stop. A horde of merrows step in my way and I drive my scepter downward, ripping into the sand. A wave pushes the merrows into the rift, and when I pull my scepter free, the ground closes.
I keep going toward the blue flames on Adaro’s ship.
I climb up the side, past the painful moans of merfolk floating below. I think of what my mother said to me earlier: “You can’t save them all.”
It’s childish and stupid to want to ask why? Why can’t I? But here I am, hoisting over the side of a ship gone up in flames. The sails have been reduced to cinder and the mast breaks. I jump to the side as it falls against the pier. I shout her name. Layla, Layla, Layla!
It isn’t her voice that answers but Adaro’s. Under the shadows of his fiery ship, Adaro lies alone on the deck. His eyes are barely open, but he grabs the sword in his chest. Like with Kai’s father, it’s just short of a killing blow. I kneel beside him. I’m afraid to touch him. He might fall apart like the others. I wonder, how many times will I have to hold on to the dead?
Adaro grunts. There’s nothing for me to do here but try to give him the smallest bit of comfort. There are tiny thorns on his chest, red where the poison has trickled into his veins, black and pronounced under thinning flesh.
“Do you want me to save him?” Nieve asks. When I turn around, she’s not there.
I inch step by step along the deck.
Her voice carries over the ship.
She’s nestled in water. It wraps around her and raises her level to the deck. Her fingers grip the Staff of Eternity.
She’s playing me. Nothing can save him. I know it deep in my heart. “Where is she?”
Nieve has regenerated. Her skin breathes with new life. Her white hair shines under the nearly full moon, just visible against the black sky breaking through storm clouds. The blue is gone from her lips, replaced by a full scarlet mouth. “I can do it, you know. Save him.”