Page 150 of Fallen Stars

Enzo yawned as he sidestepped it before slamming the flat blade of his sword into the star’s shoulder. Scorpius cried out in pain.

“Sounds like I had every right to be if this is how all the Stars fight,” Enzo replied.

Scorpius’s face contorted as he shook his head. “You will never be our king. We will never accept you.”

“Good. That means I can pluck each of you from the sky and kill you as I wanted to.”

“Perhaps you think yourself a match against us. But against her, oh, you are nothing.”

“Who? The big bad Dark you’re all obsessed with? Shall I keep a candle on to stave off the shadows?” Enzo mocked.

“You should have just let us rule,” Scorpius said. “You have no idea what you’ve unearthed. I want you to remember this was your fault. That whatever comes now—you only have yourself to blame.”

The fear struck deep within Enzo. He knew the Dark was no joke, that it had been a very real threat. But he’d be damned if he let Scorpius see even a glimpse of that fear.

As Scorpius prattled on, Enzo used the moment to look around, seeing Elara who was waving to him from a rowboat, a slumped Adrian at her feet.

She was screaming his name, and he looked back at the god, cursing.

He wanted to end Scorpius himself after what he had seen him to do Adrian. Enzo wished he’d jumped in earlier, but he understood the vendetta Adrian had with Scorpius, that the resentment ran deeper than battle and that it had not been Enzo’s fight.

Now though, he’d use the best tool at his disposal.

Enzo drew his arms in a circle, a ring of flames springing up around the god. It was difficult to hold as it was, the Star’s magick battling against his own. He used the last bout of his strength to force the wall high and contain Scorpius, angry starlight flashing through the flames as the Star roared.

The wall of flames would hold Scorpius, for the time being.

Then Enzo ran to the ship’s edge, locating his soulmate, before diving into the water.

Adrian knew he was dying. The burnout had been too much, magick spent and unable to combat Scorpius’s poison, which wrapped and squeezed around Adrian’s heart. The vision in his good eye blurred while Elara, he guessed, hauled him back to the wreckage of his beloved Starred Siren, also being eaten away by poison.

A captain always goes down with his ship, a passing thought reminded him, and he could have laughed at the cruel irony.

For so long he had tried to flee the water, only for it to be the last thing he felt before he died.

He wished he had the strength to kill Scorpius, to at least hurt the Star before he crossed over. And Oceanne… He wished he’d gotten to kiss her, just once—this female who had piqued an interest in him that he’d thought long withered.

He heard Elara scream a jumble of words, but it drifted, distorted, to him as the water began to lull him.

Elara heaved with her oars, and his eye fluttered shut.

Let the ocean take me, he thought. If any element was going to do it, he was glad that it was his beloved sea.

He heard the clank of damp wood against wood.

A panicked voice shouting another’s name.

A lurch, another body in the boat.

“Shit.” The murmur of a voice he really fucking disliked. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” a smoky voice hedidlike responded.

He frowned in his delirium. Positive about what?

“El, the risk, what if he’s not….”

Silence, as Adrian lost grasp of the world.

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