think I paid attention during our lessons. But I did. I mirror his every move.
Side shuffle, three o’clock, turn, and six o’clock.
It pisses him off, Mr. Predictable. He sucks in the air around us and blasts me with his trident. My quartz absorbs the blow, taking the force deep into the crystal. I have to hold the scepter hard so it doesn’t shake out of my hands.
From the corner of my eye, I see that the battle is coming toward us. The Sea Guard clusters on the beach and kneels in Kurt’s direction. They hold their swords up. One of them says, “Sire—”
“This is between us.” Kurt holds his hand up to stop them. And I want to laugh, because I know I had the same look on my face the first time Kurt called me “sire.”
Then there are the others, Frederik leading his Alliance, Penny, and Kai. In the back of my head, I can hear Shelly saying, “And in darkness we will remain.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Kurt says.
I hold out my arms. “It’s too late for that.”
We both extend our weapons and fire again. The light of my quartz and the lightning sparks of his tridents are white-hot beams clashing at the center. This whole time, he’s underestimated me. As a man. As a friend. As an opponent.
“Stop!” The scream comes from the left. Thalia is going to walk right in the middle of our fire. “Stop it!”
I pull away first and a spark of the trident hits my chest. I fly back and hit the balcony of the pier, cleaving the wood in half.
“Tristan was going to trade his scepter for Layla,” Kurt shouts. “I had to do it.”
“Where is she?”
I gesture at the black water. “Gwen and Nieve took her.”
“We will figure this out,” he says.
“In case he forgot,” I get up and thunder back to him, “Layla can’t breathe underwater. She might already be—”
“Nieve wouldn’t,” Thalia says, pleading back and forth to both of us. “Not knowing what she means to you.”
“You never even wanted to be here, Kurt,” I say. “Why don’t you go back to your cougar girlfriend and have her read you some more bedtime stories about your new father.”
Kurt’s fist slams into my cheekbone. Thalia’s shaking, putting her arms between us. I can feel it. The one thing that held us together is dissolving. Kurt is no longer my guardian. He’s my opponent.
“Oh, of course you’d never get mad at Tristan.” Kurt turns away from Thalia. “Forgive me! Why would you have any sympathy for your bastard brother when Lord Tristan is going to make you human? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I have never been ashamed of you.” She points her finger in his face like a dagger. “Not now, not ever. But I see now that you will never love me if I do what makes me happy.”
She turns away, running off the pier and into the shadows of the boardwalk.
“Way to go,” I say.
“Oh, shut up,” he says, and I know he’s wanted to say that to me for a long, long time.
“I don’t want to see you again.”
“Neither do I.” Without looking back, Kurt runs off the pier. He shifts in the air. The violet of his scales catches the moonlight, and in the swiftness of a dive, he’s gone.
The Sea Guard is gone.
The Thorne Hill Alliance has brought all of their wounded into the Wreck. They turn the dinner tables into emergency stations. I’m lying across the bar top with my dagger on my chest and my scepter in hand. I make it turn on and off like a light switch.
Rachel walks past. “You fought well.”
“I think I’m dead and I’ve gone to hell,” I say. “Because you’re being nice to me.”
She nods at Marty and keeps going to tend to the others.
“You saved my life,” Marty tells me. “I thought I was dead. I saw a big light at the end of the rainbow, and it was Santa Claus holding a ball of light. He doesn’t really wear red. He wears brown leather, because when the reindeers get old, he uses them to make clothes.”
Kai comes around and takes the bottle from Marty’s hands. They shake and she has to pry away his fingers. I think I hear her whisper, “It’s okay.” But there are so many whispers I can’t be sure. I can hear alcohol poured over wounds and the howl of pain that comes after.