Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (64 page)

He knew.

An absolute calm settled over his face. He stopped fighting the magic holding him.
 

The blade dropped out of his hand.

He spread his arms, eyes locked on me, and nodded.

I took another step, then hesitated.

Why wasn’t he fighting?

I lifted my foot, put it back down.

Hunger raged, but I couldn’t move forward.
 

No anger or betrayal reflected in those dark eyes. Only quiet acceptance.
 

Why?

“Kendra.” His voice settled inside me. Gentle, calm. Not like the blood coursing through me, but like soft silk settling across my skin.
 

“It’s okay, Kendra. I believe in you.”

Those words pushed against my skin like magic. But it was a different kind of power, stemming from a different source than the blood now inside me.

You know what must be done, sondaleur
.
 

His words echoed in my veins, but I couldn’t look away from those dark eyes.

Watching me with such openness. Trust. And something else.

Something I needed to remember.

My blood flows through you now. You belong to me.

But a different knowledge burned in my chest. Something this person said.

I… I needed to hear it.

The choice is in the why.

“Blood,” I murmured. “Blood does not make family.”

My vision cleared. And he who stood before me was no longer my sacrifice.

He was the man I loved.

Colors flooded back, the world shifting back into focus.

From behind me, Bastien continued to whisper, but his words no longer had power.
 

“You have lost everything. Your parents, Ryder, Marcella, Rhian, Ian. Your gardinels and chevaliers. Your friends. Haverleau. People die because of you.”

His blood snaked under my skin like a living being, but this time I could separate myself from it. I saw myself, who I was.

I was not it.

I was someone separate, someone whole on my own.

We were not the same.

“You cannot end me, Kendra. You have nothing.”

“Wrong.” I faced him. “I still have me.”

And he’d fucked up.

Because now I understood how his blood worked. It coursed through me, inside me, like a vacuum.

When the two become one
.

In order to expel it, I had to fill myself up with its opposite.

I remembered what had freed me from the darkness he’d imprisoned me in on that mountain.

Her voice. Nexa’s words.
 

I could stand alone because I knew I was not alone.

Silence conquers all

Find yourself in the water.

Breathe.

I stilled.

Empath reached for the magic that bound all. It was between the air and leaves, in the thin line where the sea touched the sky,
 

I dove into it, drowned myself in it.

Pain dissipated. Everything faded, colors disappeared, sounds muted.
 

There was only absolute silence.

And from it, something new emerged.

A vibration, a different frequency reverberated in my cells.
 

It grew from memory, from everything absorbed and stored over a lifetime.

It took threads from selkies and demillirs, from ondines, dessondines, and humans.

It rattled, each thread of power quickly expanding, pressing against my ribs, seeking an outlet until it blended into a single frequency.

A note of pure clarity, a harmonic pitch that blended all of these disparate elements into one whole rang through my soul.
 

A note so utterly in tune, it vibrated with perfection.

It was the note of a blooming flower, of the sunrise and sunset, of the moon’s caress and the loyalty of the tides.

The vibration continued echoing through my blood, drawing energy into a single force.

And then it pushed, scorching the Shadow’s blood in a blinding rush of heat and light.

I screamed, the sound lost among the answering roar of the world.

From the waters, the raw, unbridled energy of the immortal dessondines.

From the land, the power of the demillirs, of all those who fight despite being born to an existence not their own.

From the cliffs, a white palace greeting the sun like a jewel, the magic of a race as powerful and immovable as the earth.

And from the air, the silver sun dipping through clouds, a being whose touch marked my chest and whose magic spoke of infinite yearning and horizons, of loneliness and dreams.

Bastien’s eyes had turned into black holes, pupils constricting to pinpoints of rage, his face contorting as he dug his blood tentacle deeper inside my gut.

Pain clawed through me, a hurt worse than anything I had ever felt.

I pulled harder, screaming as the voices and hopes and dreams and emotions of hundreds of thousands of elementals coursed through me, a conflagration burning through his blood.

And then a shift.

His eyes widened.
 

I drove my magic into him.

He threw his head back and howled, an inhuman cry as elemental power coursed into him, binding him to me.

I did not belong to him.

But he belonged to us.

A shudder ripped through me, power tearing apart my insides, blistering my mind.

I had to…

I turned slightly, enough to see him one last time.

With my eyes, I tried to say everything that could never be said in a lifetime.

It would never have been enough.
 

Even if we’d had centuries, it wouldn’t have been enough.
 

My power had brought him to his knees. He shook his head, his body shaking with strain, mouth opened in a never-ending roar.

Blood streamed from the corners of his eyes, from his nose.

My hope. My love.

Still, he strained. Reached.

His hand extended toward me, willing me to take it.

But this time, I would not be able to accept it.

The ground shuddered. I could no longer keep feeding this magic.

I turned back to Bastien. Black veins appeared under pale skin, his teeth elongating into fangs.

His eyes were now the same glossy black as Jourdain’s. His lips curled and he snarled, caught on my magic like a fish on a hook.

“It’s the end,” I said.

I reached for the glittering silvery thread of magic in my chest and tugged.

A flutter of wings preceded Valeil’s arrival. The fiery heat of his tongue grazed us as his monstrous jaws clamped our shirts.

Land fell away until there was nothing but air and sky.

I flew.

Higher, higher, reaching again for that perfect swath of sky between clouds and sea, so achingly close I could touch it.

The first and last let go.

We fell, returning to the ocean’s waiting arms.

The world wavered. I called the water to me, called Jourdain and all those who had gone before me. Pale ivory ribbons and a wall of water surged up, encircling us in a cyclone of magic and water.

In the rush and swirl and roar of my home pulling me back, there was only my mother’s voice and father’s laughter; the smell of Marcella’s roses after the rain; the taste of scotch and the feel of warm golden skin; the inexplicable comfort of a friend’s hug.

Dessondine magic spiraled up our bodies, rushing around me, through me, inside me, its unstoppable blaze of primal force altering my body back from which I came.

All that remained was a single, perfect note.

A vibration of the beginning and the end, a force reverberating with the pain and joys and yearnings of what it meant to live and fight and love.
 

Magic built, a current binding him and me tighter and tighter until the earth melded with the sky and I no longer knew what it meant to live or sleep, to breathe or drown, to soar or fall and there was only the slightest ache from understanding that the taste of freedom came only with the pain of being untethered.

THIRTY-NINE

She watched.

Hidden behind a wall of coral, she peered through the opening as the creature knifed through the waters, its cries both fascinating and frightening.
 

He always came, the same one calling the same word over and over again.

“He does not stop,” a voice said.

“Mother.”

Jourdain drew up beside her. Silently, they watched the creature dive over and around them, his movements growing more desperate and agitated.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Someone who has lost something important.”

He called out the same word again and again, the word echoing through the ocean. His body cut through the water with a mesmerizing power and intent.

Selkies were not to be feared. She knew that. They were silent, protective creatures of lethal beauty.

And while a part of her remained fascinated by his visits, another part of her disliked him. The energy driving through the water, the force with which he navigated her world frightened her.
 

Something pinched her chest, a momentary discomfort gone before she could hold on to it.

“The selkie returns often to search for it.”

“For her,” Jourdain replied. “Yes. He will not give up.”

Again, that slight cramp.

“What if he doesn’t find her?”

The selkie now swam further away, his cries diminishing in his wake.

“He will not stop until he does.”

Who he searched for most be very valuable.

“I would like to have someone as important as that,” she said.

“Then you would need to make a choice.”

“What is that?”

“Something many have fought and died for.”

“Is it your power?”

“It is a power that belongs to everyone.”

“Can I make the choice to be something else?”

Jourdain stilled. “To what?”

“I do not know,” she admitted. “Something different.”

She knew there were more frightening things beyond her world. Occasionally, she sensed him, buried beneath the rocky bottom of the waters, his malevolence drifting up through the ocean vents in thin streams .

But he had been weakened, contained. Jourdain watched over him. She knew she had nothing to fear for now.

But there was something inside her, something she could not explain.

When Jourdain finally spoke, her voice was quieter than usual.

“Someone once told me my children do not belong to me.”

She tilted her head. “Then who do we belong to?”

“I think, perhaps, that is an answer you are meant to find for yourself.”
 

Jourdain turned away, her long fingers trailing along the curve of ochre coral.

“What do I do?” she asked. “How do I make a choice?”
 

“Magic listens. You simply need to listen to yourself.”

Jourdain drifted away, her figure melting back into the shadowy waters.
 

She closed her eyes. There were sparks inside her, splashes of color lying deep in her mind that she ignored because she did not know what they were.

But this time she sought them out.

She zeroed in, focusing on the one glowing brighter than the rest, and grabbed it before it could slip away and disappear.

It was a thread of golden magic, surprisingly strong for its fragile appearance, vibrating with echoes of something she didn’t recognize.
 

Images began to flash before her. Silvery feathers. An instrument glowing like fire. An eye the deep blue of the ocean. Cliffs suspended without water, upon which a white jewel spiraled and twisted like the plants lining the ocean floor.

It was frightening, overwhelming.
 

She trembled.

But curiosity prevailed over her fear.

She pulled on the thread, wanting to see what was at the end.

It was tied to something she’d lost.

In the middle of the ocean, surrounded by its weighty nebulousness, she’d forgotten this sensation.

She’d forgotten the sensation that something existed above the water, a momentous discovery that lay beyond the shimmering surface she never dreamed of breaching.

Something tied to that name, called over and over again by the selkie.
 

She tugged harder on the glimmering thread, eager to reach what she could not see. And with each pull, the thread thickened, growing until it was a rope, and then a vine for her to climb.

The connection to Jourdain snapped, a sudden, jarring disconnect. She floated, untethered in the vastness of the ocean and for a moment, a terrible fear shot through her.

A fear of being alone, floating without a base.
 

She would be lost forever.

No. She closed her eyes. The thread was still there, glowing within her.

She wrapped it close to her, held on with everything she had.

Trust bloomed, sharp and poignant.

The water would guide her.

FORTY

I opened my eyes.

Water flooded my throat. I gasped and coughed, my lungs attempting to expel it.

Short breaths pumped in and out. I jerked, arms and legs flailing. The world spun, colors and objects blending into an overly bright blur.

Panicked, I took in my surroundings. My brain felt clogged, unable to work through the sensations bombarding me, and a throbbing ache developed at its core.

Water. Water everywhere.

Light. Cold. Need air. Land.

Arms and legs kicked and thrust, barely managing to keep my head above water.

So tired. So, so tired.

My mind shook, the ache deepening as if a drill were boring a hole directly into the center of my brain.