Page 160 of The Sea Witch
“Get. The fuck. Away. From her.”
Both Alys and the officer whirled to face the water.
Ben strode from the sea.
Water cascaded down from his hair and his clothing, and the waves churned at his boots as he stalked from the surf. His markings glowed on his body, and his eyes glittered with rage. Manacles with broken chains hung from each of his wrists, while the fragments of shackles remained on his booted ankles.
Relief that he was alive poured through her, and she nearly stumbled from the force of it.
For a moment, everyone froze, staring at him.
Ben was unarmed, but the marines’ commander collected himself. He rushed at him. Ben kicked the man in the chest. As the commander went flying, Ben snatched his cutlass from the air. He slashed at another advancing marine, and the man crumpled.
“Traitor,” the officer beside Alys shouted.
“I’m sending you to hell, Oliver,” Ben gritted. He shouldered a path through the marines, and strode over the berm, until he faced the naval officer.
Oliver lunged at Ben, who parried the blade strike with his cutlass.
“Captain!” Stasia cried to Alys. When Alys ran to her friend, Stasia said, “We need a bulwark made of sand. It is not something I can do alone.”
They both placed their hands upon the sand. Alys concentrated, summoning the constructive force of a mound-building termite. She and Stasia forced magic into the sand, pushing it with their combined power.
The sand jolted up in a long embankment. It rose fifteen feet high, with theSea Witchcrew, Ben, and Oliver at the top. The infantrymen below tried to slog through a trench of wet sand at the base of the bulwark, yet their feet kept sticking in the thick sludge.
Ben rammed his fist into Oliver’s chest. The naval officer toppled down the bulwark. He landed in a stunned heap at the bottom, mired in the wet sand.
“Go, both of you,” Stasia shouted to Alys and Ben. She jerked her head toward the forest. “Find the kataraménos thing we have nearly died for.”
“I won’t leave you,” Alys yelled back.
“We will hold them off,” Stasia answered as she launched a gale of wind down the bulwark, pushing the marines back. Susannah and Thérèse summoned stinging beetles to cascade onto the men as Inés and Dayanna fired their pistols, pausing long enough to reload, and fire again.
“Go, now!” Stasia urged.
Alys and Ben didn’t wait. They sped into the forest.
As they ran, they reached for each other, and clasped hands as they sprinted toward the prize they had been seeking for so long. The stars only knew what would happen if they failed to find it.
Ben and Alys were only a dozen strides into the forest before he stopped and pulled Alys into his arms.
“Thank God,” he breathed. “Thank God.”
“Thank the goddesses,” she shakily corrected him.
“I don’t care who’s responsible. All that signifies is that you’re safe.”
They held each other tightly for a moment, and he didn’t know who was trembling, him, Alys, or both of them. Yet the sounds of battle raged just beyond the tree line behind them.
He and Alys stepped apart, and kept pushing through the woods.
“I believed you were dead,” she said, ducking under a liana. “I couldn’t feel you.”
“Warne, theJupiter’s mage. He severed our connection after you and I dreamwalked. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do to warn you, and it bloody killed me.”
“I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
He paused, and she did, too, long enough for him to stroke his fingers along her face. “I’llalwaysreturn to you. Nothing in the whole of this cursed world can keep me away from you.”
