WaterMage Rising

Chapter 11

"That's right." Adam's jaw dropped. "You can tell that by touch? Impressive."

Heat flamed Selena's cheeks once again, and she sipped her champagne to cover the reaction. "I forget that most people can't. It's just something I've always been able to do."

Adam reached out as if to take her hand, but then to his credit seemed to decide against it and instead popped a mini quiche into his mouth. "One of my best friends is a water mage, and he's got this amazing read on magic the way you seem to. I'm a fire mage and can't sense what's in a spell to save my life."

"A girl I knew from school is a fire mage, and she is like that, too. Maybe it comes with the territory." Olivia had always said she wished she could feel magic the way Selena did, but no matter how hard she tried, she'd never succeeded.

"Maybe. So, is this your first time cruising?"

Selena let out a heavy sigh. She'd already let on way too much information about herself without even realizing it. "Wouldn't you like to know? Let's forget all the personal details and keep the mystery going. I'd imagine you travel a lot, but I'm not going to pry."

At the next table over, an elderly man with youthful, piercing blue eyes stood, his metal chair scraping the deck. His face had turned purple with rage, or maybe too much champagne. How much of it had he drunk? "I don't care if you believe this Cunningham fellow is the most powerful mage in existence, he's crooked as sin, I tell you, and you're fooling yourself if you think his little project will save us from the nonmagical. If he gets his way, he'll let the whole world know about our magic, and they'll exterminate every last one of us!"

His companion, a man about twenty years his junior, also leaped to his feet, jostling their table so hard his three empty champagne flutes tipped over and shattered. His face had turned red, and he huffed and puffed as he glared across the table. "You're the fool for buying into that isolationist propaganda," he accused, his words slurred. "And a bigot! My wife — er, my friend's wife — is nonmagical, and it's completely ridiculous that we all have to hide it, when it's an open secret that everyone knows mixed couples like that."

"Don't you dare call me a bigot! I have nothing against the nonmagical, but they will never understand our world, and they attack what they don't understand."

"That's right! Get him," Selena heard someone shout. "People like him want to risk our world, and for what?"

Selena stiffened as the two men raised their palms and shifted their bodies into a duel stance, with legs spread evenly apart for balance. The argument brewing between the men had started to draw a crowd, and the onlookers added their own shouts and encouragements to fight a literal battle over the politics that had deeply divided the mage nation.

The older man unleashed a whirling sphere of air magic at the younger one. The blue sphere gusted around the younger man, sending shards of broken champagne glass flying everywhere. Onlookers cried out and raised their arms to shield themselves. One piece came within a fraction of an inch of the protective bubble, while another grazed Selena's cheek.

Selena let out a hiss of pain and clapped a hand to the injury.

"Oh, no." Adam's eyes widened as he stared at Selena. "How bad is it?"

"I'm fine," she gritted out.

"Hey!" Adam shouted to get the crowd's attention, but nobody glanced his way. He tried it again, blaring his voice with air magic. "You people injured this beautiful lady here, Knock it off before someone gets badly hurt, or worse!"

The shouts and jeers from the onlookers only got worse. The younger man retaliated with a glowing red ball of fire magic that hurtled toward his opponent until it stopped to hover directly in front of him. Tendrils of flames burst from the sphere and wrapped around the older man's arm, singing the skin wherever it touched. The man shrieked in pain.

"That's enough," Selena snapped, swiping the thin trail of blood from her cheek, but her voice was swallowed by the people surrounding them. She amplified her voice with air magic. "Enough! Go inside and party the night away or something before you impale us all with glass, burn us to a crisp, or rupture the delicate, razor-thin bubble that's keeping us all alive."

Her warning came too late, and this mob was too angry and drunk to listen. As the ship began its submersion into the sea, a duel erupted.

Egged on by the older man's torment, someone else in the crowd unleashed a green sphere of earth magic. The sphere hovered by the older man, too close to the ship's protective bubble. Green tendrils ending in sharp spikes pierced the sphere and jabbed indiscriminately at those nearby.

"Stop, you idiots!" Selena yelled again, seeing what was about to happen next. As she summoned her water magic to douse them all in an icy shower that would end the duel and send them scattering inside, one of the tendrils pierced the bubble and ripped a long, jagged tear across the forward-most point of the ship, where the ship had already submerged. Water rushed into the gaping hole, and the pressure of it spread the tear wider and wider as Selena watched in horror.

She was going to drown. The entire bubble would rupture, the hull would break in half, and she and everyone on board the ship would drown because of the stupidity of these men. Adam pulled her against him as if that could protect them from the doom rushing at them, but she was too numb with shock to push him away.

As she plunged underwater, the only thought she could manage to cling to was, I don't want to die.