Tempest Unleashed by Tracy Deebs Page A

unwittingly let it go, how I’d struck Kona in the chest and nearly killed him. Since then, I’d been working on control, on channeling the lightning, but I couldn’t take the chance, not right now. Not with all these merpeople around.
    Instead, I pulled inward. Gathered up the last pulses of energy I had within me. And then focused as hard as I ever had in my life.
    I pictured a spear, pulsing silver with power. With strength. Long. Unbendable. Wicked sharp. And then I went about creating it, one unbreakable inch at a time.
    It wasn’t perfect—not by a long shot. Even as I was forming it in my head, I could see the cracks, the fissures, the little mistakes I was making. If I had more time or more energy, if I wasn’t so drained I could barely swim, I would have stopped and fixed all the weaknesses. But I didn’t.
    Sabyn had grown suspicious by my sudden cessation of activity, had once again begun lobbying energy strikes across the divide between us. I fractured my attention, left half free to dodge what he was sending my way and kept the other half on the weapon I was building.
    When I was done, when it was as sharp and as strong as my flagging energy could make it, I reached out a mental hand and grabbed the spear. Then heaved it as hard as I could straight at Sabyn and his unbreakable shield.
    He saw it coming, laughed. Waved a hand to deflect it, but he wasn’t strong enough.
    A look of alarm flitted across his face and he threw out both his arms to increase the energy of his shield. To strengthen his defenses.
    But I was having none of it. I would lose this battle—I knew that. I was still weak from everything that had happened the day before, and I would have no energy left to follow up this attack. But I would strike him, would make him bleed as he’d done to me.
    Closing my eyes, I focused on pushing the spear a little bit farther, a little bit faster. Imagined it spinning, burning, crashing through Sabyn’s shield and straight into him.
    Sensing that this was it—good or bad, succeed or fail—I opened my eyes and watched as the spear shot right through Sabyn’s shield in a blaze of purples and reds and golds. The colors bounced off, slamming through the water like electric sparks. And the spear—the spear passed right by Sabyn, but not before it took a healthy chunk out of his right bicep.
    It wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind, as I was aiming to mess with more than his bicep, but it would do. Especially considering the look of abject shock on his face. Yes, it would do very, very nicely.
    Around me, people cheered—I was definitely the hometown favorite between the two of us—and I took a bow. Then, calling a draw, I crossed the circle to see if Sabyn needed help. Not that I was in much better shape, but still—it seemed like the right thing to do, no matter how annoyed I was with his so-called training methods.
    Nice shot , he called to me as I approached. He didn’t look nearly as angry as I felt. Which, strangely, only made me warier. Most guys I knew didn’t like it when a girl got the jump on them, especially publicly. And Sabyn definitely didn’t strike me as a laugh-it-off kind of guy.
    Not as nice as yours , I answered. I was still bleeding from the earlier blast to my midsection.
    He shrugged modestly. I do what I can .
    The crowd looked a little disappointed at our civility, but once they realized there wasn’t going to be any more fighting between us, they took off, exchanging random bets regarding our next training session. Fantastic. Because I really wanted nothing more than to become the new entertainment down here. People already spent way too much time staring at me as it was. They didn’t mean to be rude, I knew, but always being watched, always being whispered about as the mermaid who would finally vanquish Tiamat, got old really fast.
    So, was that really necessary? I asked once the last stragglers finally moved on.
    What? he answered with an innocence that was obviously