Page 145 of Fallen Stars
She regarded the beast writhing as it tried to flick off the dead now swarming it with their weapons. She saw the mermaids beyond being killed ruthlessly, the dead merely a blur of bones as they hacked down the living. They all carried her death power within them, each chipping away at the enemy before them.
Elara knew she couldn’t kill Scorpius alone. But his pet, his mermaids—that she could do.
“I need to get onto that ship,” she murmured to herself, and as she watched the rest of her crew leave, she took a deep breath, winding one of the ropes in one hand, and swung to the Svetan ship herself.
She landed surefooted, to utter pandemonium.
Bodies were strewn across the deck from Enzo, Isra, and Adrian’s culling early, small fires still burning.
She noticed a few enemy survivors cowering in the corner of the ship, voices hoarse as they begged the dead to forsake them. The dead did not listen, instead wielding ancient curved swords or barnacle-encrusted knives as they gutted them swiftly.
The mermaids fared no better, twitching tails cleaved from bodies as, in death, they returned to their natural state. They fought viciously, using tooth and claw, but they were no match against something already dead.
The beast within Elara inhaled deeply, the scent of fresh blood sweet perfume to her.
Scorpius was still in the ocean, his beast wrecking the Svetan ship, trying to latch onto anything to upend it and send them all to their watery deaths.
Elara whistled, and her crew stood to attention.
“The beast,” she said, and they nodded as one. They began to swarm the tentacles, clambering up them as though they were ropes. She heard the beast roar as it tried to shake them off, any dead flung to the ocean simply climbing back up the sides of the ship to try once more.
Elara walked forward, seeing Enzo ahead, still lancing fire at the beast and Scorpius atop it. He turned and did a double take as he saw her next to him, wrapping her into a bone-crushing embrace as his other hand continued to punch fire out.
“Don’t youeverleave me again,” he said roughly.
“I’m sorry, my love. I can’t promise that.”
She kissed him hard before turning, only one goal in mind as she observed the mammoth before her. It had been their mistake to attack the tentacles, each one only reforming and growing. It was the head of the beast that she needed.
She looked around to the dead bodies littering the deck. Her dead were still hacking at the corpses, though there was not a living being in sight, save for themselves.
She nodded, flaring her moonlight and focusing on spooling it back to her. The dead had served their purpose, had bowed before their queen. And now, she would let them rest once more.
“Sleep,” she commanded as the silver reached out to the skeletal figures. They all turned to their queen as one, heads bowed. “Sleep,” she said again, and they skittered to the sides, walking off the ship’s edges with eery grace. And with a sigh, Elara sent them back to their watery graves.
She turned back to their last threat, an emptiness striking in her chest as she watched her subjects disappear. She strolled forward, using her emptiness as fuel, as a tentacle slithered towards her, Scorpius still controlling it.
She didn’t flinch as the tentacle wrapped around her, allowing it to pick her up off the ground.
Leo was shouting in alarm, the others trying to attack the tentacle, and Enzo… Enzo hadn’t moved, or spoken, his eyes fixed on hers as she looked back once before focusing on the monster in front of her.
Her arms were wrapped tightly by her sides as she rose past even Scorpius, a sneer on his face as he let her be led to her death, the god still focusing on killing Enzo below.
Elara was utterly calm as the beast raised her to a slitted eye, yellow and reptilian.
And as its cavernous, fanged maw opened, ready to devour her whole, she pressed her lips gently to the space between its eyes.
Moonlight sighed out of her, finally, finally given another release, as it coated the beast. One last wail pierced the air, as well as a cry from Scorpius, and the beast crumbled, leaving the Star falling through the air and right into the waiting arms of her pride.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Elara fell through the airherself, landing moments after Scorpius, the Star already hauling himself up. Her body slammed onto the deck, and Adrian heard her moan as Enzo rushed to her.
The Star arced his trident through the air in one fell swoop, pointing to Adrian.
“You?” he snarled, peering closer at the pirate on the verge of passing out. Isra supported him as Adrian’s face blanched. “After all this time. It makes sense that you’d have found each other.”
“What?” Enzo hissed, stroking Elara’s hair as Leo handed him another sword.