Crush the King (Crown of Shards #3)(101)
The wave arced higher still, blotting out the storm clouds overhead, and casting the bridge in almost total darkness. All I could see was the dark wall of water, along with those damned purple streaks of lightning zipping through it. I gritted my teeth and reached for even more magic, knowing that I had to hold the water back or we were all dead, and most likely Bellona along with us—
With a loud, booming, thunderous roar, the wave slammed down on the center of the bridge, right on top of me and my friends.
But the water didn’t touch us—not a single fucking drop.
I looked up, but all I could see was the water churning and churning, desperately trying to batter through the invisible shield of my magic. My arms were still raised high overhead, with my fingers spread out wide, but my entire body was trembling and shaking from the effort of using so much of my own power to hold back so much violent, heavy, destructive force.
The water kept crashing down, down, down on top of my shield, even as the lightning inside the wave lashed out like a hot, caustic whip. Every blow knocked me back and threatened to break through my immunity, threatened to break me, and I ended up sliding all the way back across the flagstones until I hit the railing behind me. I would have flipped over it and plunged into the water below, dooming us all, but Paloma and Sullivan reached out and latched on to my legs, anchoring me to them and the bridge.
“We’ve got you, Evie!” Paloma screamed.
“Hold on, highness!” Sullivan shouted. “Hold on!”
I didn’t have the strength to yell back. It was taking all my concentration, power, and focus to keep the water from crushing us.
But that much water couldn’t just stop. It needed somewhere to go, and it started arcing up, up, up, getting ready to come crashing back down again. I wouldn’t be able to shield us from a second blast, so with the last remaining scraps of my strength, I started pushing back against the water.
Well, I supposed I wasn’t pushing back so much as I was changing the shape and position of my invisible shield. Instead of a round dome covering the bridge and protecting me and my friends, I imagined tilting the shield to the side, so that the water hit it and started arcing up again, forming another massive tidal wave.
Even though I wasn’t tilting the shield all that much, it still took every ounce of my concentration. One degree of rotation too far, one second of inattention, one moment of hesitation, and the water would slip around the edge of the invisible barrier and flatten me, along with my friends.
So I focused on that shield like I had never focused on anything before in my life. Everything else fell away. My back pressing up against the railing. Paloma and Sullivan anchoring my legs. The shrieks and screams of everyone on the bridge. All I could see, hear, feel, taste, and smell was that crushing wall of water sliding up against my magic.
The wave arced up and up and up. Finally, when it reached its peak, I gritted my teeth, shoved my invisible shield forward, and threw the water away from us with all my might.
It was hard—so bloody fucking hard—but I pushed and pushed and pushed, shoving my invisible shield away from us, and all that damn water along with it.
The wave wobbled, but it didn’t want to move, so I reached for even more of my magic, and pushed on the shield again, and then again, and then again, as though I were beating my fists against it, even though it was my own creation.
Slowly, the water started to tilt, but not quite enough, so I kept hammering at my shield, trying to push it and the massive wave away from us. I was almost out of power, and it was now or never. With a loud, primal scream of rage, I pushed on my shield one last time.
And the wave finally—finally—arced away from me and my friends.
The water kept moving, churning, seething, but it was now heading in the opposite direction. Even though the danger had passed, I kept my hands raised and my shield locked in place. I couldn’t physically get my body to move at the moment, so I stood there and watched the wave roll away from the bridge and head exactly where I’d wanted it to go.
To the Bastard Brigade ship.
The weather magiers were still standing on the deck, and I thought I could almost smell their shock, horror, and fear at the sight of the wave zooming toward them. A few magiers turned and ran, probably to jump off the opposite side of the ship so they could try to swim to safety, even though that wouldn’t save them.
The rest of the magiers snapped up their hands, desperately trying to summon their own magic to do something, anything, to keep the wave from killing them. But they didn’t have enough magic or time, and a few seconds later the wave crashed down right on top of the Mortan ship.
Bull’s-eye.
For several seconds there was just noise and spray and one concussive boom-boom-boom after another. The wave and the water seemed to go on and on and on . . .
Finally, the wave dissipated, although the water still churned, frothed, and bubbled, as though the entire surface of the harbor was quaking and shaking. I squinted, trying to see exactly how much damage I’d done.
The Mortan ship was gone—and so were the weather magiers.
No, that wasn’t quite right. The ship wasn’t gone so much as it was splintered into pieces, and broken bits of the wreckage bobbed up and down on the surface of the water like fishing lures. The largest piece of the ship that was left was the mainmast, and it quickly sank beneath the waves like an arrow that had been shot toward the bottom of the harbor.