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"What did he say?"

"All he could think about was you, Teive was a promise that he wouldn’t use it unless it was absolutely necessary"

"Where was Kona through all this?" I all but screeched "I don’t believe for one second that he illing to allow anything from Tiamat aboard that yacht with him"

Mahina looked out over the water "I don’t know that I’ else So What happens to Kona if Mark’s out of the way?"

"What do you mean?"

It was her turn to be exasperated with "

"That was just a fight"

"I know But did you see the look on his face during the fight? He would have killed Mark if he could have"

"What are you saying?"

"You knohat I’ You just don’t want to ad Kona’s not hu--especially when threatened--isthe fact that you have chosen Mark over hi a jump to think he took Mark with him--"

"To kill him? Just because I love him? You really think Kona has that inside him?"

"Oh, he won’t kill him He’ll just make sure the Leviathan or Tiamat or Sabyn does"

The last cobwebs inthen, faster than before Because while I didn’t want to even i like that, what Mahina had said ht Tiaht Sabyn, even take on the Leviathan if I had to But Kona? Hoas I supposed to fight him too?

Chapter 25

I was pretty ot to the water I was ready to just dive in, but Mahina--as always--was the brains of our operation She secured four guards for us, along with food, weapons, and underwater backpacks Kona and Mark were traveling on the yacht, so if we hurried--and the stars aligned--we could swim to Kona’s territory faster than he and Mark and the others could get there

"Why didn’t you wake me?" I demanded as we filled the backpacks as fast as we could "I could have stopped this before it ever got to this point--"

"Believe ht Zarek to check on you He told me to let you sleep it off"

"Sleep what off? That doesn’t evenhow groggy and out of it I’d felt earlier when I had finally struggled toward consciousness Like I was slogging throughI told hiain!"