The Destiny (Blood and Destiny Book 4) by E.C. Jarvis Read Free Book Online Page B

made contact. There
would be no point activating it while the Admiral still had her in his grasp,
but she was running out of time and fast running out of options.
    Vries growled and
shoved her backwards until she bumped against something solid—a mast pole. He
grabbed a length of rope and whipped her hands painfully behind the pole,
binding them together.
    “You’re staying right
where I can see you. Prepare to fire!” he yelled as he turned back to his men,
the pirate ship drawing close, the faces of the men on board coming into view.
    Larissa stared at each
of them, focusing on the details of their features. One man had a wide, wild
smile, showing a mouth devoid of teeth; another had a scar split down the
length of his face. Their captain came into view, laughing as he whirled the
wheel around, angling them on a collision course.
    She didn’t hear the
order to fire, but the first blast of cannons stopped her heart, the noise
rattling around her head. The shot struck true, piercing wood in the hull of
the enemy ship and leaving a perfectly shaped hole in its wake. Larissa braced
her legs, preparing for the impact as the pirate ship turned, heading directly
to their side.
    “Up!” Vries bellowed at
the top of his voice, lacking in any form of panic. Seconds later, the entire
airship rose at an incredible speed, as though gravity itself had forgotten
what it was doing for a moment. Larissa slid down the mast pole, her knees
slipping apart as she crashed into the deck and crashed onto her backside.
    “Fire!”
    Cannons let fly,
blasting hard and fast, rocking the ship with their ferocity. Larissa’s teeth
ground together, and she strained to see what had happened, but they had risen
so far so quickly that the pirate airship was nowhere to be seen. Once they
emerged on the other side of the ship, she stood and managed to see.
    The canopy of the pirate
airship was ripped to shreds. They had sailed past beneath the Eagle and
now plummeted to the ground at an awkward angle, the descent unstoppable. She
couldn’t see the men on deck, as they were still too high above and the canopy
blocked her view, but she could imagine them panicking and racing to and fro,
trying in vain to prevent the inevitable. A gust of wind licked the curls of
her hair, matting them across her face, masking the final view of the ship
smashing into the ground below, but the sickening crash reaching her ears was
vision enough. When finally her hair cleared her eyes, she strained to look
over the rail, propping up on tiptoes to try to see. She hoped maybe a few
people might be walking away from the impact, but the Eagle turned
briskly, the ship far more manoeuvrable than she would have guessed from its
size.
    More cannon fire split
the air, though not from their ship nor from any pirate ships firing at them.
As they turned, the last of the evening sky giving way to black night pricked
with starlight, she saw a line of ships on their tail. These battled another
ship, familiar and distinctive from the pack by the lack of canopy.
    While Larissa wouldn’t
claim to harbour any deep affection towards the ship which had once been her
father’s and which had sailed them safely home from the troublesome shores of
Eptora, her heart did ache at the thought of seeing Cid’s work destroyed in
such utter pointlessness. She watched on, wide-eyed, heart thumping in her ears
as holes appeared in the sides of the structure and bodies flew through the air
on deck as rifle shot ripped through the minimal military crewmembers. She
glanced at Vries, who watched the scene like a hawk, his eyes flashing with a
restrained anger. For all the Eagle’s speed, they couldn’t turn around fast
enough to save the doomed ship before a cannonball shot through one of the
upturned rotors, tearing it to pieces and sending the entire vessel downward in
a spiral.
    Though she knew it was
coming, her body reacted with a shocked jolt as the canopy-less ship hit the
ground. More explosions