The breaking period: Day 1, hour 12
Cold was worse than death.
How had I ever been afraid of fire? It was warm, cozy, and comfortable.
Ice was agony.
It was torture.
Cruelty.
Death.
A frigid wave crushed atop us and slammed our bodies against the jagged, rocky sea floor. Little pebbles tossed in the churning sea and pelted me like miniature grenades.
They were tiny little rocks and should have just been a nuisance.
After hours at sea, they were my worst enemy.
John’s arm interlocked with mine, and his tight grip was the only thing that stopped me from being sucked out into the malignant abyss. He was the only thing stopping the water from drowning my lungs and shocking me into stillness.
The seven of us stood waist-deep in the water with our arms twined together as yet another freezing wave crashed atop us.
Lothaire screamed expletives at us, his imposing presence shrouded in a red haze as he stood atop the rocky shore and frowned down at us.
Rocks pelted.
My feet slipped over the jagged edges, and the pinch of split skin was followed by a burning sting as salt and pebbles dragged across my wounds.
I dug my fingernails into John’s forearm and fought to keep my eyes open.
My heart pounded.
The chill locked my muscles, and my heart slowed as I fought the urge to close my eyes and let the water wash away my problems. It wrapped around me like a heavy blanket and offered to solve everything.
All I had to do was let go.
“Stay awake!” My arm was wrenched in its socket as John shook me vigorously.
His actions made my brain rattle in my head and chased away the invading fog.
“I’m up. I’m up,” I said before I hastily sucked in air and held my breath as a wave slammed me backward, then pummeled me down.
“You better be,” John mumbled as he wrenched me up out of the breaking sea with so much force that my numb limb screamed with pain.
Salt water burned as I blew it out of my nose, and I answered by digging my short fingernails harder into his arm.
Blood dripped from John’s nail-gouged forearm and tracked down my pale hand.
It mingled between us, a symbol of our shared suffering.
When we’d first gotten into the water, Corvus had sneered, “Pampered pretty boy goes on the end.”
No one had moved.
“That’s you, Egan. Fucking move. Or I’ll make you.”
It seemed wrong that someone so tall and attractive could be so cruel.
I’d locked arms with John at the end of the line and refused to look back at the flaming fucker.
Corvus had decided who I was. I wasn’t going to waste my breath trying to correct him. Even though Orion, the quiet man who stood beside him and stared at me with stunning brown eyes, was way prettier than me. Even when I was a girl.
But Corvus didn’t taunt him and call him pretty.
The sea shoved her water down my throat, and the choking pulled me out of my musings. I had bigger problems than handsome fae men.
The ocean was a cruel mistress.
The wind screamed like it was dying as the eight of us heaved and hacked.
For the first time since I’d arrived at the academy, no one postured for dominance.
Nature was the great equalizer.
We struggled to endure.
In the beginning, I’d expected Corvus to stand in the middle of the chain of bodies, where it was safest. But he stood at the other end so he was exposed like I was.
His one arm was locked with Scorpius’s, who held on to Orion. Next, Horace was linked with Orion, and the two demons were hooked together, with Vegar next to John.
“You got this,” John grunted over the wind.
In ten hours, I’d learned everything I’d thought I knew about the human species was clearly a lie.
How had I ever thought humans were weak?
John’s strength was the only thing that held me up and kept me going. He was firm and solid and never once complained.
But the smiley man who bounced on the cot and grinned at me was gone. His dimples were a memory.
John’s dark features were tight with concentration, and the boyish planes of his face were hardened into something harsh and menacing.
He was a different creature.
And we suffered. Together.
John never complained about my nails or even glanced at his blood. I’d only known him for a few hours, but I felt like I knew him.
His chirpy demeanor and harsh concentration reminded me of Sadie.
In the crashing waves and shrieking wind and the endless fight against an indomitable force, I knew that John was going to be my close friend.
Lothaire screamed, “Aran, stand the fuck up! If you fall down one more time, you’re going into the sensory deprivation tank.”
“Yes, sir!” I shouted back as I lost my footing once again and choked on salty water.
Lothaire held a black baton in his hand and slammed it across your face if you didn’t reply with a “yes, sir” immediately after he spoke to you.
I’d learned the hard way.
In the first five minutes in the ocean, Lothaire had shouted an order at me, and I hadn’t responded.
Now my right eye was swollen shut from the force of a baton bludgeoning it.
I never forgot to respond after that.
In the present, Lothaire screamed something, and the veins on his forehead bulged with rage, but I couldn’t hear him over the crashing of the waves.
“Yes, sir!” I gurgled back instinctively.
For the first few hours, I’d been furious at Lothaire.
This wasn’t training.
This was torture.
After three hours, my teeth had chattered with such ferocity that I’d thought my jaw was going to break and my anger had drained into self-pity.
At six hours, the cuts on my feet and legs had burned unmercifully as salt and stones had ripped the wounds wider.
My sweatpants had been shredded with tears, and the sopping material did nothing to stop the cold.
Everything hurt.
Now, ten hours later, I couldn’t feel my limbs, and my thoughts were scattered. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.
Did we just get into the ocean? Or have I been here for hours?
Everything was a jumble of pain, pebbles, blood, water, choking, and ramming against unmercifully jagged rocks.
I trembled uncontrollably. We were both standing in the same ocean, but John’s skin burned hot compared to my icy skin.
If I had any ability to do anything other than suffer, I might have deduced it was because I was so much smaller than the rest of the men. Half my width was a mirage created by my enchanted disguise.
They had hundreds of pounds of muscle on me. More than they even knew.
And the ocean was merciless.
She didn’t care that you were exhausted and hurting. Didn’t give a fuck what you wanted or how badly it hurt.
The wind screamed endlessly, and the surf crashed across the rocks in an unending parade.
A circle of misery.
An inferno of abuse.
Another wave slammed me down, and my arm wrenched at an impossible angle as John’s punishing grip just barely stopped me from disappearing into the savage ocean.
Pebbles slapped my face.
The waves pulled away from us, water draining down to our knees, as it gathered into another wave.
Lips trembling, my teeth chattered so hard that my head hurt.
Lothaire walked back and forth on the dry shore in front of us as he smacked his baton in his hand and shouted, “You will never be strong enough. You will never have enough control. You will never master yourself unless you know true suffering.”
A wall of ice plunged me face-first into water. My nose and mouth filled with it, and I struggled in a disoriented panic.
Finally, I inhaled sulfur-stained air as I gagged on salt water.
Lothaire’s single eye glowed as his voice mixed with the howling wind. “You will never be anything more than a slave to your impulses, if you don’t know how to withstand the pain.”
The waves never stopped coming.
In the red haze of an eternal eclipse, Lothaire’s pale skin shimmered eerily. Sparks lit the air around him like his power didn’t want to be contained.
Please, sun god. Please end my misery.
I tracked every movement Lothaire made as I waited for him to yell that our time in the ocean was over and we could get out and get dry.
I was obsessive.
But no matter how closely I tracked him with my eyes and pleaded in my head, he never said the words.
The pain made me light-headed, and I lost the will to hack up water—lost the energy to fight against the crushing surf.
Sleepiness returned.
Lothaire continued to shout, “You will never amount to anything if you don’t learn how to survive on nothing but sheer willpower!”
I kept drowning.
Lothaire kept talking. “As most of you know, the Black Ocean contains high amounts of sulfuryl chloride, a rare chemical compound that degrades all sentient creatures at a cellular level.”
Another wave rammed into me.
That explained the harsh sulfur scent.
Lothaire smiled like he had a secret and said, “This is the only ocean in all the realms that is known to weaken everyone. In other words, the toxic compound nullifies powers.”
John leaned forward as an undercurrent slammed against our shins.
Arm ripping out of my socket, nails in his muscles, I leaned forward with him and screamed into the wind. The eight of us fought against the pull.
Lothaire paced. “In the Black Ocean, you are as weak as you will ever be!” His single eye twitched maniacally.
This was worse than a nightmare because even at my lowest, my imagination couldn’t conjure up this torment.
Lothaire smiled, and his opal fangs gleamed. “This is the greatest honor any person in all the realms could hope to experience!”
I would have laughed if my jaw weren’t chattering violently from the cold.
“You get to exist in your lowest form. Now you know what it’s like to be a rock on the ocean’s edge.”
He paused dramatically. “You know what it’s like to be nothing!”
Lothaire’s voice mixed with the shrieking wind. “Only those who have known what it is to be nothing can ever rise to be something!”
Shut the fuck up and let us out! I screamed at him in my mind.
The world spun around me.
If my heart weren’t slowing further as my muscles atrophied and bones locked, I might have been inspired.
I wasn’t.
Please let us out of this water. Sun god, I’ll do anything for you.
I would never again take a warm shower for granted.
As another wave crashed over my head and pulled me under, a cold, wriggling animal slammed against my skin.
I was too cold to be disgusted.
Too tired to care.
I stared at Lothaire, begging him to end the torture.
Any second now, he’d tell us to get out.
It would be over soon; I just needed to hang in a little longer.
Any second.
One. Two. Three.
Time trickled by.
Endless moments expanded exponentially.
Five hundred and one. Five hundred and two.
We kept drowning.
One thousand and forty-two. One thousand and forty-three.
I lived lifetimes in the Black Ocean.
Eventually I stopped counting because it wasn’t helping.
Five miserable fucking hours later, Lothaire shouted, “Your special time in the Black Ocean is over. Get out. Now.”
Get out?
A couple of hours earlier, I might have found the strength to crawl out of the freezing waves with dignity.
But that was before.
Before I’d lost count.
Before I’d lost hope.
Before I’d stopped feeling anything.
Limbs tingling, lungs hacking, I barely registered that the men were walking forward.
They had let go of one another and were climbing up the rocky shore.
They can walk?
They barely shivered as they stalked out of the frothing waves.
They looked like gods of the sea.
Competent.
Strong.
Tremors rocked my frame as I coughed up salt water and fell to my knees. I’d just take a quick nap.
John dragged me out of the ocean. “Stand up, Aran. Be strong.” Ocean water dribbled out of his mouth as he glared down at me.
His grip was merciless, and I was grateful.
I tried to nod up at my new friend, but that was too much effort. Teeth chattering and body shaking in uncontrollable spasms, I struggled to crawl as he dragged me out of the surf.
The movement rattled my frigid bones. The negative temperatures in the shifter realm were nothing compared to this.
Sopping clothes clung to me, and the icy water trailed over me like shards of glass.
I stopped pretending like I was helping. With one hand wrapped around my arm, John followed the rest of the men and dragged my limp body up onto the jagged, rocky shore.
The once-chilly air was now unnaturally warm, a sharp contrast to the frozen ocean.
But it didn’t bring any relief. The warm air made my wet clothes seem colder.
I convulsed as John dragged me, my eyes fluttering as all six hundred of my muscles cramped at the same time.
It was almost funny.
The endless cuts on my feet and legs left a sticky red trail across the black-and-gray rock beach.
“Stand up.” John grunted as he shoved me to my shaky feet. The bank of the rock beach sloped upward at an angle too steep for John to drag me up.
“I g-g-g-got it.” I vomited seawater all over myself and groaned with disgust. I hated throwing up.
Just climb.
I collapsed on all fours and pulled myself up the rocks.
John sighed down at me as he staggered and slipped on his bloody feet. “I guess that works.”
A few yards in front of us, Corvus had each of his arms wrapped around Scorpius’s and Orion’s waists. He walked with power as he used insane strength to hold up two very large men.
Behind them, the two demons and Horace weaved and stumbled like they were drunk.
I kept crawling.
The thought of a warm shower was the only thing that kept me moving.
We were probably a hundred yards from the barracks, but it might as well have been a hundred miles.
A hundred years.
It’s all just made-up measurements anyway. Does anything really exist? How can I be alive in this moment and now the next? The past is gone like it didn’t exist. Was I ever even in the water?
I’d reached a new level of suffering; I was having an existential crisis.
If nothing exists, then nothing matters, but if everything exists, then must everything matter?
Bloody hands and knees moved forward. One after the other.
So many realms in the universe. So many planets and galaxies. But where is the universe located? How can so much just exist in the vacuum of space? Space cannot be nothing if there is so much life within it.
But where does it come from?
Where are we?
What are we?
How could life be a good thing if there is so much suffering?
I startled as John tripped and crashed to the rocks beside me. He heaved, and his arms shook as he pushed himself back to his feet and kept stumbling forward.
Hand forward. Knee forward. Hand forward. Knee forward.
If I could cry, I would have.
You will never know the secrets of the universe. You will always be a puppet in a shadowland of pain.
A sharp rock sliced my palm, and I was overwhelmed by the sudden urge to beg someone to carry me to warmth. I wanted someone to save me.
No one ever came.
Sadie was the only person who’d ever truly been there for me. Now she was realms away with no clue where I was or what I was going through.
“Pick up your feet and fucking walk.” John’s hand tangled in my short hair, and he roughly pulled me upward. “Get up before Lothaire looks back or he’ll destroy you.”
Vomit dribbled down my chin as my stomach rebelled against my movements. But I pushed myself up onto shaking legs and half shuffled, half fell forward.
John wrapped his arm around my shoulder and stopped me from face-planting.
I wrapped my arm around his waist, his heavy weight collapsed against me, and my organs burned inside me like they were exploding.
For a second, we stood still and heaved.
Our embrace was the only thing that kept us standing.
Slowly we stumbled forward.
The friendly human might have become an angry bastard, but he was the only reason I was surviving.
Without him, I would have been sucked out to sea.
I had no doubt the three kings, two demons, and vampyre would have gladly let me drown. Released my arm and watched me disappear into the waves with smiles on their faces.
It didn’t matter that I’d survived hundreds of bullet wounds in the beast realm, war in the shifter realm, and torture in the fae realm.
When you were immortal, it was easy to joke about death.
If the Black Ocean weakened a person’s abilities, then I wasn’t immortal in the water. A creature would have eventually eaten my body and torn my heart to shreds.
A giant sea creature ruling on the seat of death.
I am the new fae queen, said the killer octopus to the elite fae.
Manic laughter bubbled up my throat.
We tripped, and John groaned, “Don’t laugh.”
“B-B-But g-g-iant octopus-s-s.”
The glare he gave me would have withered a lesser man.
The moon’s rays cast John in a spooky haze as we leaned against each other and kept stumbling one step at a time.
I wasn’t attracted to John, but I recognized that he was impressive.
It was obvious why he was the last person who’d survived the training program. Why he’d lived when four others had died.
The human was much more than he seemed.
“Almost there,” John groaned. The barracks was only five feet away.
I was nauseous with relief.
Warm shower. Warm cot. Warm clothes. Warm. Warm. Warm.
But then the unthinkable happened.
Lothaire didn’t stop. He kept walking past the barracks, toward the rock steps that led to the fortress.
He walked away from the broken cot that was waiting for me.
My knees gave out.
“Fucking stand up,” John groaned in pain, and I locked my knees together before we both tipped over.
“It’s time for class,” Lothaire said casually, not bothering to turn around and look at the people he’d just tortured for hours.
There was so much further to go.
I couldn’t do it.
John leaned into my face with wide, manic eyes and gritted teeth. He slapped my cheek with a bloody palm and growled like an animal.
“You will walk with me up to that motherfucking fortress. Or you will die pathetic and weak, just like the others.”
“Good. I want to die,” I snapped back.
“I guess the kings were right. You really are just another pampered little boy.”
I answered instinctively, “I’m not a boy.”
“Then be a man,” John grunted as he took a shaky step forward.
I moved with him and whispered under my breath, “I’d rather not.”
If he heard me, John didn’t comment.
As we took painful step after painful step, in my head, I chanted, Arabella Egan. Princess. Queen. Rightful ruler of the seat of death. Woman. I refused to forget who I really was.
We made it up the steps to the fortress.
Together.
Neither of us would have made it without the other.
