Page 148 of Fallen Stars

“We can’t just leave Adrian,” she cried as the ship shuddered, nearly entirely sunken. There were shrieks all around.

Enzo’s clothes began to steam, the salt from the poisonous waves already drying on his clothes.

Her Sun was godly, his eyes shining completely gold as he harnessed his power, fire and light hissing through the air.

Elara knew that she and Enzo were safe from the water, that Scorpius couldn’t kill two awoken titans that easily. But one who was asleep… She looked back to Adrian’s body disappearing beneath the waves.

“Shit,” she snarled, scrambling to the edge, taking a few readying breaths.

“El, what are you doing?” Enzo managed to shout above the din, sparing her a glance.

It cost him a lash, a ray of starlight slicing his cheek as it whirred past. He cursed.

“Being the only person here with common sense,” Elara shouted back.

She gritted her teeth, hauling her body and ducking as a wave rocked over her.

Adrian’s blue hair finally bobbed out of the sickly waves, and she muttered up a prayer as she saw how ravaged his face was, the beauty marred by blood and a thick cut that slashed from brow to cheek. She scaled the ship, seeing the last rowboat tied beneath, Leo rowing furiously ahead, and launched herself into her own.

Her ankles jarred as she sank into the rowboat, the swirling waters nearly capsizing it.

She saw Adrian’s body again, the current pushing it out, as though the ocean itself was rebelling against Scorpius, hurrying Adrian away from the Star.

She took a deep breath before setting her jaw and picking up two oars, setting a brutal pace as she chased after Adrian.

The ocean was a graveyard. Everywhere she turned dead, bloated bodies floated, the poison having taken hold instantly.

She swallowed bile as her oar touched the corpse of a member of Adrian’s crew, recognising the man as she tried to manoeuvre her way through.

Adrian was paces ahead, his body limp as the current continued to hurry him along. It was fascinating, his command over the ocean. And Elara knew, with the same intuition that had known Enzo was her soulmate, that she had to save him.

She winced as she hit another dead body, trying to balance her rowboat against the whirlpool Scorpius had managed to conjure.

And then to her utter shock, a mermaid’s tail whipped past her, pale blue and glimmering as it flicked out and back into the water, seeming to chase Adrian’s drowning form.

“I thought I’d killed you all,” she snarled as she gave chase.

Adrian had never felt pain like this. His eye lanced with it, spreading down his face in fiery rivulets. The minute his skin had come into contact with Scorpius’s charm, it had flooded him with poison, a burning racking his body.

What an irony, he thought to himself as he tried to scream out in pain. That the ocean he loved so much was what would kill him.

A wave engulfed him, and he tried to fight, but the poison was swirling in his veins, Scorpius’s charm taking and taking, furious in its power.

The last thing he had heard was Elara scream his name before the pain had taken over.

He tried to kick out, one last desperate attempt at living, but the poison was too ferocious, too evil, and with a soundless scream, Adrian sank beneath.

It was cold and dark in the depths of the ocean, and he heard a haunting voice singing as he tried to stir. Was he dead? Was this the locker that as a pirate he’d been promised in death? He tried to kick out but felt arms around him. He struggled, but the singing continued as the clean scent of oceanflower wafted to him.

The form behind him was definitely female. He could feel her curves beneath him, the song she was singing so achingly beautiful.

The lancing pain within him was abating, as though her very words were carrying the pain along and out of him.

He tried to move again, to turn around, but her grip was a vice as he felt himself continue to be dragged up, up, and upwards.

Moonlight.

It broke over him, fresh air wrapping around him like a balm as the woman behind him continued to sing. He felt the pain abating as she sang and wished he could speak, wished he could open his eyes.

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