The Vast and Brutal Sea by Zoraida Cordova

Author:Zoraida Cordova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2014-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

She doesn’t let us get a word in.

A dozen merrows swoop in on us in seconds. They’re fast and strong with deformed fishy faces. The gaping mouths of sharks and eels. With webbed hands and feet, they’re a cross between wild sea creatures and humans. They are the unwanted of the seas, thrown out. They are Nieve’s children and they’ve come to storm the castle.

Their screams are feral, all grunting teeth swarming around the king.

I swim in front of my grandfather. I dig my scepter into the belly of an eel-headed merrow. He chokes on the black blood that oozes out of him and clouds the water. Kurt is as fast as lightning, ramming through the merrows’ tender heads with the prongs of his trident.

It happens again—our weapons sparking. I try to hold on to that spark, but the energy slips away as quickly as it arrived.

A scaly leg knocks the wind out of my chest and pins me to the wall. I choke on air. Water. But all I can think of is Gwen pushing the golden throne with all her weight. Kurt buried under four merrows who taste his blood from a deep bite. Then a merrow going straight for my grandfather.

I shout as teeth rip into my shoulder.

My grandfather screams as he grabs hold of his attacker’s face. He snaps the neck of the creature and lets it go, now limp in the dark water made darker by their blood.

I elbow the creature off me and push the pointed quartz of the scepter into its chest. My skin burns where I pull teeth out of my shoulder and throw them to the side.

The king clutches his chest over his heart and sinks backward. His body shakes and his blue eyes keep getting paler. I grab him from the front to keep him from sinking.

He leans into my ear and whispers, “My son.”

Only he’s not talking to me. He’s talking about Kurt, fighting blindly in the dark water. I lean my grandfather against a corner and leave Triton’s dagger in his hand.

“Stay with us,” I tell him.

But I notice the strain on his face. The hand clutching his heart as if trying to stop it from bursting out.

I click the quartz on the floor. The crystal lights. I can feel its power and I latch on to it, willing it to stay. Stay. I remember Thalia’s words to my buddy Ryan as he lay dying. Stay.

I swim and ram the ancient weapon through a blowfish merrow, its face ready to shoot poisoned thorns. The light glows from within him and he screams as it blazes through his body, lighting up his bones through flesh. Kurt’s eyes widen. Is he really so far gone that he doesn’t think I’d come to his aid?

The closer we are, and the closer we use our weapons near each other, the more they come to life. He uses the current of the trident, and soon we’re back to back taking down every creature that comes at us.

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