wrinkled like it was left in water for too long.

Someone walks in behind me and I drop it.

“It’s only me, Cousin,” Brendan says. He doesn’t look as old as I

do, but white streaks his hair. “The guard is ready.”

“I’ll be right out,” I tell him, but my voice is so distant.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Brendan says. “You warned Thalia

not to go fight him, and she did so on her own. Her death wasn’t your

fault.”

“Is that true of all of them?” I start naming people I haven’t met

yet. Then I get to the ones I have. “Dylan and Layla? Are you going to

tell me those weren’t my fault?”

Tendrils of lightning circle the prongs of the trident. Brendan

steps back.

“We must go,” I say and walk past him.

Brendan doesn’t follow right away. Instead he picks up the

photograph. It’s of me and Layla, but her face is nearly washed away.

He puts it back in the hiding spot I took it out from.

The dream changes, vertigo returning. I’m charging headfirst in

the water, my guard behind me. I can’t see my enemy’s face, but the

fury in my eyes scares me. I’m a wild thing, cutting down mermen. They

turn to surf and become part of the wave that takes me to him. His

hair is long, down to his hips. A white scar marks his face like a

crescent. But the violet eyes are still the same.

Kurt wields another trident. It’s one piece and solid and new. The

silver catches the sun.

I’m shouting. The dream-me. Not the king-me.

I tell myself to stop because I know that this is the wrong thing.

This is not what is supposed to happen. Not to me, not to all of us.

Not after we’ve worked this hard.

The image dissolves and I stand on my shore. Toliss. The white

sandy beach. Bright blue waters that you can see right through.

Something about the way I stare at the sky unnerves me. I’m waiting

for something. Or someone.

She comes out from the patch of forest that leads inland. I didn’t

expect her. A leaf is caught in her crown. I look back at the water.

She wraps her arms around me and I let her, but there is no

warmth. She talks to me. Her voice is sweet like a songbird. Pleasing,

consoling me over my stalemate with the bastard king. We’ll get him

soon enough.

Who is she? Where is Layla? Why do I keep looking at the sky?

Something in her hand glints. I want to reach out to stop her. I

can feel the stabbing pain in my side. Her blade digs deep into my

skin. She twists the knife and stares into my eyes as I fall back onto

the sand. I’m not surprised. I’m not anything.

I’m lying on the sand, bright red blood tainting everything around

me. I try to stand but poison spreads in blue lines across my skin. I

reach a hand out to my queen, but she keeps on walking.

Maybe it’s watching myself die.

Maybe it’s the chill of the room or the painful pulse that runs

through my body. But I can feel a change. I roll over on my side, sure

that I’m not going to make it out of this room alive. Maybe I’m

already dead.

I taste copper in my mouth and I spit it out. My tongue is dry and

my lips are swollen.

In my hand is the Scepter of the Earth. I’m afraid to look at the

end of it, but I force my eyes to open. The nautilus maid is gone. In

her place is a tall coral the same shade of pink as her eyes. A lone

fish is swimming in the shallows.

I hold my side where I saw myself get stabbed and replay the

vision in my head. It couldn’t have been a vision because that’s not

how my life is supposed to be. And then I think really hard about what

another oracle-Lucine-showed me the time I watched her give Kurt the

Trident of the Skies. She showed me the same thing. Me, dead, with a

crown on my head.

Thalia’s words ring like a bell: killing an oracle is a curse.

And then I feel it. The ground is shaking, trembling like an

earthquake. The quartz in my scepter lights up, and I know I’ve done

it. I’ve released the Sleeping Giants.

The sensation is thrilling, pushing every thought of death out of

my head. It is the lightning and current that flows through the earth.

I hold my scepter horizontally, and the energy that flows through it

is like ten shots of adrenaline in the chest. I could swim for miles,

for days. I hold out my scepter, and a blast of light crashes into the

wall, breaking it down.

I concentrate on pushing the lightning straight through the rock

of the ceiling until it’s a single beam into the sky. The room is

flooded white and the walls are crumbling around me, but I don’t care.

I hold the beam as long as I can.

The island trembles all the way through. Pieces of stone break

away from the ceiling. I have to get out of the chambers and find

Nieve and Kurt. But I’m high on adrenaline and the power of the

scepter. The ground is shaking so hard that it knocks me off balance

and I fall forward, right on top of the pink coral.

That sobers me up.

Focus, Amada said. Focus.

I dive back into the main artery that leads to the tunnels and

swim down. The shark guard is all gone. Instead three prongs wait for

me, pointed right at my throat.

Kurt’s violet eyes glow fiercely; his mouth is an angry snarl.

My mind flashes to us fighting in the vision Chrysilla gave me. I

shake it away because that can’t be how we end. Not after all we’ve

been through.

Chunks of the island break off from the tunnels, and the hungry

chatter of merrows echoes through them.

“You can’t go that way,” Kurt says, lowering his trident. “They’re

coming for us.”

He swims along the base of the shaking island. The ground beneath

us is also trembling, splitting like a hairline fracture across glass.

First a nick, then with every shake, it keeps going and going.

When I don’t follow, Kurt turns around. “Please.”

This could be the worst idea I’ve had in a while, and I have a lot

of bad ideas. But when Kurt gives me his back, I know he’s not worried

that I’m going to skewer him. So I follow him where he leads, back to

surface that is overgrown with vines and trees. It’s a part of Toliss

where I’ve never been before. A waterfall breaks the landscape and

rushes into a narrow stream full of multicolored fish. We trip over

broken branches and scratch our legs on jagged rocks until we’re under

then behind the waterfall. It’s relatively dry, and a hole in the

ceiling of the cave provides some light.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I have to!”

I shield my eyes as birds take flight around us. “That’s a

non-answer!”

But we keep running through the Toliss jungle, and I fluctuate

between wanting to bash him in the face and hug it out like bros

because he came back to me.

“Where are we going?” I shout as branches and boulders fall all

around us. I duck out of the way as lightning strikes the ground near

us and three trunks fall sideways, narrowly missing me. A few hours

ago, I couldn’t get the quartz scepter to conjure any power, and now

it’s made us target practice for the angry sky gods. Kurt’s screams

get drowned out in the rumble of thunder, the ripping apart of solid

rock.

“Kurt?”

He falls forward, flat on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“She’s calling to me-” He grits his teeth and screams through it,

clutching the Trident of the Skies. His unfiltered power blows through

it in sparks of lightning. His breath is labored, like someone’s got

their hands on his lungs.

“What do I do?”