How right he’d been. The effort required to raise it more than a handspan at a time leaves me lightheaded and even more breathless than before. Yet as I watch the mast inching slowly out of the water, I cannot stop a smile from spreading across my face.
It’s working.
Once I get it started, the ship does the rest on its own—popping back up like a submerged cork in a barrel. Water rains down from the damp sails, hitting the deck in a thunderous downpour. It gushes from the gunnels, seeps out from the rails of the deck, returning to the ocean where it belongs.
Chari and Xio, who wisely clung to the rigging as it sailed upward, wave down at the rest of us from the port rail.
Jac makes a crude hand gesture in return. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re a dimwit,” Mabon mutters.
Farley laughs.
“Well done, Rhya,” Penn says, treading water beside me. I did not even see him swim up, so intent was my focus. “You really have mastered your winds.”
I blink at the ragged edge to his voice. “Mastered? Not quite. It’s still—I’mstill—a work in progress.”
“But he did this for you. Soren, he—” His jaw tightens briefly, as though it is a struggle to force out the words. “He helped you. His methods, they worked. This time…they actually worked.”
I nod, feeling strong emotions lash out of him from the bond. I’m quite sure he is thinking of Enid in this moment. Of the lastwind weaver they tried to aid, only to find her wild tempests too strong to rein in. The woman he saved from certain death only to lose shortly thereafter. Even after seventy years, the pain of that loss is sharp as a blade. But beneath it, there is something new. Something unexpected.
Undeniable sparks of relief are catching within him.
I am not Enid.
I will not be swept away by my own powers.
And for Penn…there is hope in that. Hope for me. Hope for himself. Hope for an entirely different sort of future than the one he has been relegated to, a slave to his own incendiary tendencies.
“I do not know whether I am more awed by your control or envious I do not possess it for myself,” he confesses without even a shade of bitterness. His eyes are alight with warmth for the first time in days, a flicker of his old heat. “It’s incredible.Youare incredible.”
“Thank you, Penn.” I smile tiredly at him. “Ready?”
His dark brows furrow. “For?”
I do not answer verbally. Instead, I use a fresh current of air to boost him straight up out of the sea, onto the righted ship. His surprised shout as he hits the deck makes Jac and Mabon laugh. But their amusement turns quickly to shouts of their own as they, too, are lifted clear of the swells and deposited aboard.
“No offense, but I think I’d prefer to use the ladder,” Deke declares, swimming away from me toward the port stern, where Chari and Xio are lowering a rope ladder for Melité and Cadogan to climb up.
“None taken.” I grin as I turn to Farley. “And you?”
He grins back at me. “Always wondered what it would be like to fly.”
Laughing, I lift him up as gently as I can manage. He whoopsthe whole time, delighted as a child. As soon as he is settled, I heave myself airborne. I am not properly flying, not really; it is more of an elongated leap. But my heart soars all the same.
The joy is short-lived. The moment I hit the deck, I hear a chorus of panicked shouts ringing in the distance. I run to the opposite rail where the others are clustered, shoulders tense as they stare out at the other ship. It has not fared nearly as well as we did, perhaps because of its closer proximity to the shore. It is still lying on its side, sails fully submerged. And every member of its crew is swimming madly in our direction, arms flailing, faces stricken.
There is Vaughn, his powerful strokes carrying him along quicker than the others…Alaric, with his natural swiftness…the Paexyrian trio, all together in a line…
Where is Soren?
“What are they doing?”
No one bothers to answer Jac’s low question, for at that very moment the cause of their rapid evacuation presents itself. We all watch in stunned disbelief as several writhing orange tentacles, each thicker than our central mast, creep up from the surface. Three at first, then four, then six, then eight. They slide sinuously around the prone ship in a deathly embrace…
And proceed to squeeze.
The hull splinters with the ease of a matchstick. The resounding crack is enough to make us all jump.