Chapter 72 Enemy
The obsidian began to glow.
Not with the sickly green of the Blight, but with a brilliant, blinding sapphire. The light started at the point where my forehead touched his chest and began to spread, snaking through the stone like blue lightning.
The second depth charge exploded closer.
The world turned white. I felt the heat of the blast, the roar of the water trying to crush my lungs. I didn't stop. I pushed the note higher, my throat feeling like it was made of glowing silver. I reached for the resonance of the Memory of the Water, pulling the ancient strength of the sea into my own small body.
Thump-hummm. Thump-hummm.
The obsidian began to crack.
It wasn't the sound of stone breaking. It was the sound of ice melting. Jagged lines of blue light raced across Klaus’s shoulders, his face, his hands. Small shards of black glass began to flake away, drifting into the current like dark snow.
"Nerissa..."
The voice wasn't a sound. It was the Anchor bond, snapping back into existence with the force of a lightning strike.
I felt him.
I felt the agony of the stone. I felt the weight of the rot he was holding. I felt the three centuries of drowning he had endured. It hit me all at once, a tidal wave of grief and duty that nearly stopped my heart.
Give it to me, I thought, the command echoing through the bond. I am the wing. I will carry the weight.
I reached for the black fluid. I reached for the sludge he had taken from me in the tower. I didn't pull it back into my own lungs. I redirected it.
I sang the note of the Salt-Kiss, the one the First King had used to heal the reefs.
I channeled the rot through the song. I sent it back into the Abyssal Gate. I used the resonance of our two hearts—one of stone, one of fire—to fuse the rift shut forever.
The Abyssal Gate let out a final, volcanic groan. The toxic green light vanished, replaced by a deep, peaceful blue. The pressure in the trench equalized. The silt settled.
The obsidian exploded.
It was a silent burst of black glass. I was thrown back by the force of it, my charcoal silk dress tearing as I tumbled through the water. I hit the seabed, my vision swimming with sapphire sparks.
I pushed myself up, my lungs screaming for air—not the dry ash of the Citadel, but the cold, clean salt of the sea.
The water was clear.
The black sludge was gone. The Scourge-mist had vanished. I could see for miles—the glowing coral, the shimmering fish returning to the reefs, and the silent, dark hulls of the fleet above.
Klaus was standing in the center of the trench.
He wasn't stone. He was flesh.
He stood naked in the current, his skin pale and clear, the black veins completely gone. His hair was drifting like silver smoke. He looked at his hands, his fingers curling and uncurling as if he were remembering how to be alive.
Then, he looked at me.
The sapphire in his eyes was so bright it looked like the sun had been trapped beneath the waves. He didn't move. He just stared at me, his chest heaving as he took his first real breath of the ocean.
I swam to him.
I didn't care about the fleet. I didn't care about the harpoons. I crashed into him, my arms wrapping around his neck, my face buried in the hollow of his shoulder. He was warm—hot, even. His heart was beating with a powerful, rhythmic thrum that matched the Song of the First King.
"Nerissa," he whispered.
He didn't sound like the Admiral. He didn't sound like the butcher. He sounded like a man who had just woken up from a three-hundred-year nightmare.
He pulled me back, his hands framing my face. His thumbs brushed the saltwater from my cheeks. He looked at me with a longing that was so sharp it felt like a blade.
"You did it," he rasped. "You broke the stone."
"We broke it," I corrected.
Above us, the fleet began to fire.
They weren't using depth charges anymore. They were using harpoons. Thousands of silver-tipped spears were raining down through the water, aimed at the center of the trench. The Emperor knew. He knew the Anchor was broken. He knew the secret was out.
"We have to go," Klaus said, his voice returning to that hard, military clarity, but with a new, vibrant life behind it.
"Where?" I asked. "The Palace is gone. The Citadel is our enemy."
Klaus looked at the raining harpoons, then back to me. He reached out and grabbed a discarded harpoon-rifle from the seabed.
"We don't go to the Palace," he said. "And we don't go back to the tower."
He looked up at the hulls of the ships, his eyes flashing with a lethal, sapphire fire.
"We go to the Throne," he said. "The Emperor thinks he can harvest the world? Let's see how he likes the taste of the deep."
He grabbed my hand, his grip solid and unyielding.
"Are you ready, little fish?"
I looked at the charcoal silk of my dress, the pearls of my grief long since lost to the tide. I felt the resonance in my throat—the Song of the First King, ready to turn into a war-cry.
"I'm ready," I said.