The Girl Who Belonged to the Sea by Katherine Quinn
Chapter Forty-Eight
Margrete
Bash’s handslipped from hers before Margrete could react, and his body was dragged beneath the churning waters. The only god here was the one who would do nothing to save him.
Margrete’s heart stopped.
Broke.
Shattered.
She couldn’t even scream, couldn’t beg Darius to spare him, for she knew he had no intention of heeding her request. With his brother’s effervescent remains at his feet and nothing but foam rising and falling on the crests of blue, Darius trained his gaze onto her.
Now, everything is as it should be.
Margrete took him in, stared down the vengeful god who seemed determined that she suffer, and then she released a deafening shriek of rage.
Her body burned, and the essence within seared, coiling like a snake preparing to strike. When Margrete lifted her hand from the broken boat, a flare of blue kindled in her palm like a wrathful fire.
Darius’s eyes narrowed, frowning at the sight.
I’m coming for you next, she thought, sending her lethal vow out into the world. She shot him one final look of blistering hot rage before she let go of the wood completely and dove into the waters that once would have drowned her.
Her body was alight with a foreign energy, a buzzing that propelled her legs to move and her lungs to swell with water. She inhaled the water and released it as though it were air. The sight of Bash, driven into the sea, had killed the girl she’d once been. Destroyed her.
In her place was a woman who would tear apart the seas to find him.
Margrete thrust forward, kicking her legs, deeper into the eternal black as the water aided her plight. She called out to the sea itself, the many parts that made it whole. She spoke to it. Commanded it.
The sea listened.
It grew dark, darker than even the blackest of nights, but Margrete willed herself to see, to adopt the vision of a deep-sea creature. Little by little, the dim became a hazy, cloudy blue, well-lit enough to make out the drowning figure not more than ten feet away.
With only Bash occupying the space of her mind, Margrete swam with ferocious speed to him. Wisps of his auburn hair floated about his lifeless face.
A battle cry escaped into the bubbling depths, one of promised vengeance and desperate love. It wasn’t muffled like most sounds this deep, but instead was as crystal clear as the northern star on a cloudless night. She reached out, her hand seeking to grasp the tips of his fingers.
He was sinking. Fast.
While adrenaline flamed within her, Margrete knew that she was losing energy, even with the ancient magic of a god coursing in her veins.
A power she had no idea how to use.
His emerald eyes were closed, skin pallid, but she was resolved to see those green eyes again. That taunting smirk, and the rare, genuine smile that stopped her heart when it appeared. Bash would open his eyes and kiss her lips, and she would scold him for being foolish enough to attack the serpent on his own.
Bash wasn’t about to die. Not when she had just only experienced him.
With a crushing rush of purpose, Margrete kicked her searing limbs, and her fingers finally grazed the linen of his shirt. She yanked him upward, wrapping her hand tightly around his arm, and hauled his weightless body to her own.
Margrete held her pirate to her chest, panic surging as she set her sights on the surface. She ground her teeth as she pushed herself to keep swimming. Even though her limbs trembled and her vision flickered with black pinpricks, she kicked and thrashed as an unnatural current lifted them higher. The fight had not left her yet. Bash had saved her once when the very waters wished to claim her life, and she meant to return the favor.
She wouldn’t let go.
Ever.