Page 143 of Fallen Stars
His power was slipping, eyes threatening to roll back. Enzo’s nostrils flared as he slapped the pirate gently on the cheek. “Stay with me, Adrian, okay? We need you. Stay with me.”
Then suddenly, the monster was the least of their problems. Adrian felt something thud onto the deck and turned, astounded to see a woman land, crouched and covered in armour made of fish bones.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”
Isra was already launching at her, sword swinging as Adrian saw a shadow fly through the air and leap onto the deck.
He cursed, peering over the side of the ship, his heart bottoming out.
The sides of the ship were teeming with mermaids. Their tails swished, transforming into legs the higher they clawed their way up the ship.
More shadows flew, landing and launching their attack as off-key screeches filled Adrian’s ears.
The tentacle that Enzo had burned was writhing back to life, wrapping back around the Sun and squeezing as Enzo was lifted high into the air, mermaids now swarming the deck.
Isra screamed below him, Leo readying his sword again to impale the tentacle as Merissa cowered.
“Elara,” Enzo wheezed. “Save Elara.”
Adrian took a deep breath, ready to drain his power to save her, to drag her from the ocean’s depths.
And then he felt it. A moment before the others did, perhaps that oceanic power within him alerting him.
He had always been tied to the moods of the ocean, had felt it stormy and churning, as well as clear and peaceful. But this was something utterly foreign that had awoken within its depths.
A tremorous creaking sound pierced the sky. Scorpius looked around in confusion.
Enzo struggled, fire and light raining upon Scorpius’ pet, Isra and Leo pelting the mermaids with their magick.
The sound continued, like the very earth parting. The water began to roil and swirl, a gigantic whirlpool forming.
Enzo had stilled, Scorpius’s pet’s tentacle loosening as it dropped him to the ground with a grunt. Even the mermaids stopped, weapons limp in their hands as they looked around.
The waves parted, a deafening crash, and before their eyes a shipwreck was dredged up from the water. First its mast, a tattered sail with a pirate’s mark flapping in the wind. Its rigging was skeletal, covered in barnacles, rotting wood creaking and swinging as the ship righted itself.
“Holy gods,” Adrian muttered, his voice trembling. The surrounding group’s mouths were agape.
And then a mermaid began to scream.
At first, Adrian didn’t know why. What could make aMythasscream?
Then his eyes caught on what the mermaid had seen, and all colour drained from his face.
A slow grin had spread across Enzo’s face as he observed what Adrian was looking at, but the Lion’s eyes were filled with pride, not horror.
There, on the shipwreck, were corpses. Adrian spotted one figure, its jaw only bone, one eye still in its socket, scraps of flesh and cloth hanging off its frame. Another was blue and bloated, its skin not yet decayed from its bones. And there was one that wore a tricorn hat, a black beard still clinging to the grey and mottled skin of its chin. A captain. But it was not the gruesome sight of the dead that caused any remaining pirates to yell and scream, some abandoning the ship for the water, others offering up a prayer to Scorpius before them.
No. It was not the horrors that everyone was latching on to. But the fact that they weremoving. Walking, weapons drawn as each skeletal corpse scuttled about the deck, hoisting the sail and readying cannons as the captain turned its head inhumanly, his one eye looking directly at Adrian.
And there, at the ship’s wheel, adorned in sodden black, her hair inky, silver eyes alight with triumph, stood the Moon.
Enzo began whooping and clapping, slamming his hand to the ship’s edge.
“That’s my fucking girl!” he roared.
Adrian took his hat off, bowing before her, the rest of the pride following suit as the mermaids trembled.
Because Elara…