Page 144 of Fallen Stars
Elara had raised the dead.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Cold silver light flooded Elara’sbody. For a moment she drowned in it, clutching and gasping, and then…there was only light.
Her magick worked of its own free will, spiralling out from her like a living beast, writhing and obliterating anything in its path.
The human part of Elara, that small kernel that existed now that this titaness’s powers had awoken, watched in awe at how easily the moonlight cut down her enemies. The mermaids who’d had her in their clutches only moments ago turned to floating ash.
She turned around slowly, surveying her surroundings.
The corpses she had animated dragged themselves across the husk of the ship, its timber rotten and smelling of damp and sea salt.
None spoke, and yet, she heard the clutter of their voices in her head, the dead whispering to her.
“Our queen, our queen, our queen,” they chanted. The mortal Elara wanted to stagger back, wanted to vomit at what she had just awoken. And yet her moonlight wrestled for control, that primal force keeping her back iron straight, her eyes unflinching.
“You’re awake,” they whispered. “We’re so happy you’re awake.”
Elara forced herself to breathe, understood that resisting her magick now was the surest way to death. She allowed it, received the churning silver within her, the death powers with it.
The voices began to wash over her, lulling her.
“What would you have us do, queen? Should we kill them? Should we kill them all? Kill them, kill them, kill them,” they echoed.
Elara opened her eyes then.
“The mermaids,” she whispered. “Those who touched my soulmate first. Then Scorpius. And his beast.”
Hisses of laughter skated over her skin as the captain—one-eyed and flesh stripped to the bone—bowed to her before wordlessly issuing orders, the crew seeming to know instinctually what to do.
She scanned the sea, seeing Enzo jumping and waving from the enemy ship as gold light burst from him.
She smiled with relief. Her Sun, who wasn’t horrified like the green-faced Adrian next to him. And was blissfully alive.
She felt her ship lurch and turned.
Scorpius’s amusement had been replaced by wrath as he urged his monster on, riding atop it across the waves as its tentacles punched holes into the shipwreck. More tentacles slithered back to the Svetan ship where her family lay vulnerable.
“Crew.”
The dead around her stopped what they were doing, all turning to her expectantly. She fought back a shiver at how easily she’d been able to command them. “I need half of you to get onto that ship,” she commanded, pointing to the Svetan ship. “Protect them at all costs.”
And with merely a bow, half of the crew peeled off, swinging from the ropes and tumbling to the enemy ship.
A blast resounded as Scorpius’s starlight took aim at her.
She turned and ducked, seeing an arm thrown across the deck as Scorpius’s starlight cut it clean off, looking in horror at the walking corpse it had belonged to.
And yet the dead sailor continued on, unfazed, as he went to load his bow and arrows with one hand.
“What is this?” she whispered, looking at her own hands as she stayed crouched.
Without any more time to deliberate, her magick swamped her again, scaling out onto the deck and into the ocean.
“More,” it begged her. “More, more, more.”
She looked around, knowing that the shipwreck she found herself on was onlyjustremaining afloat.