My mate. My heart. My Champion.
Then, in an eye blink, everything changed.
One moment, the Knight-Commander and John were circling each other, swords raised defensively. The next, John was spinning away from his opponent, hurling himself straight at Neridia. His sword swept round in a great, desperate arc.
There was a loud clang of steel against steel. Neridia found herself staring at one of the Knight-Commander’s swords, point embedded deep in the ice just a few feet away from her. It was so unexpected, for a heartbeat she was at a complete loss as to how it had come to be there.
The Knight-Commander threw it…at me?
Wrenching her eyes from the quivering blade, she looked up at John. He’d had to move so fast to deflect the sword, he’d skidded to a halt close enough for her to touch. His own sword was still outstretched, point low to the ground. The mate bond vibrated with his shock.
Four inches of reddened steel protruded from the center of his chest.
Behind him, the Knight-Commander wrenched his blade free. Very slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, John sank to his knees.
“No,” Neridia whispered—and then, more loudly, echoing the scream of her inner voice, “No!”
Her former hesitation, her doubts—all were utterly washed away by the sight of her mate’s lifeblood staining the ice.
Power rose in her, unstoppable as the tide. She embraced the surging torrent, stretching out her arms, welcoming it as it filled her. She expanded, her body reshaping to match the surge of her soul.
“NO!” she roared, in a thundering chord that flattened the waves.
The Knight-Commander’s blade dropped from his hand, clattering on the ice. He turned to flee, but Neridia whipped her tail round, catching him across his back. The blow knocked him clean off the iceberg.
But not into the sea.
A huge, gaping maw surged from the water, opening wide as the gates of Hell. The Knight-Commander didn’t have time to scream, let alone shift.
The megalodon’s jaws swallowed him whole. Not so much as a drop of the traitor’s blood tainted the ocean.
“Stop!” Neridia shouted—not at the Master Shark, but at the sea dragons racing toward him.
She knew their exact positions, as she knew the exact position of every creature in the sea for miles around. She was the sea. She knew every wave and every current, as naturally as she knew her own body.
The sea dragons’ war-songs turned into discordant chords of astonishment as they broke the surface, catching sight of her. The sharks who’d been pursuing them broke off too, their bloodlust forgotten. Sea dragon and shark alike stared up at her.
“Empress.”
“The Pearl Empress.”
“The Pearl Empress!”
One by one, the sea dragons took up the whispered melody. The rising chorus strengthened, awe swelling into full-throated adulation. Beneath the sea dragons, the sharks swept in spirals of silent ecstasy.
“THE PEARL EMPRESS!” the sea dragons roared, and the whole ocean echoed their joy.
Neridia was barely aware of the deafening chorus. All she could hear was the terrible silence of John’s heart.
He’d fallen to his back, his crimson blood pooling around him. Jane, sobbing, knelt beside him, futilely trying to stem the tide with her bare hands.
We are the Pearl Empress, her inner dragon said in her soul—no longer a whisper, but a mighty voice that left no room for self-doubt. All tides must obey our will.
Nudging Jane aside, Neridia spread her claws over John’s still form. He was a sea dragon, with the sea in his veins. He was as much a part of the ocean as the waves and the tides.
He was hers to command.
Focusing her power, Neridia drew together the disrupted currents of his blood. She stopped it from spilling out onto the ice, despite the gaping rent in his chest. She forced it to move through its usual channels. She was his heart, keeping life flowing through his body.