The word had barely left him when the first borders crossed.
They came fast, leaping over the battered gunnel of their ship with hooked blades, pistols, short axes, and the practiced cruelty of those who had killed often enough to no longer waste motion doing it.
The first deckhand to resist had his throat opened before he could finish shouting. A second tried to reach a flare-caster mounted near the stairs, only for a bolt to punch through his eye and drop him where he stood.
The captain of the ferry tried to call for order. Stowing his pistol and cutlass while he chased after his men, racing for the deck against the mayhem.
A pirate smashed the hilt of a sword into his mouth, breaking teeth and sending him down into the blood gathering along the planks.
Seleste's fingers tightened at her side.
Light gathered beneath her scales.
Roc's gaze shifted to her hand.
"No."
She looked at him sharply.
"Do not tell me what to do."
"Acting now will get passengers killed."
"Standing still may do the same."
"I know."
That answer stole the sharpest part of her retort.
The pirates shouted from above.
"All passengers to the main deck! Bring your belongings, keep your hands where we can see them, and maybe the sea will be kind enough to let you keep the rest!"
A child began crying nearby.
A mother pulled him close, trembling so hard she could barely stand.
Roc closed his booklet and slid it into his coat.
His fingers brushed the green twine at his wrist.
Seleste noticed.
"You are going to do something foolish."
"I have not decided yet."
"That is not reassuring."
"I know."
He turned toward the door.
Seleste stepped with him.
Together, they followed the crowd.
By the time they reached the main deck, the pirates had already taken the ferry.
Passengers were forced into rows, hands raised and eyes lowered. Personal belongings were thrown into piles. The deckhands who still lived had been bound near the mast, several bleeding from wounds that had not been dressed and would not be unless their captors decided blood loss was inconvenient.
Near the boarding bridge stood a woman with a leather eyepatch and a curved knife at her hip. She moved through the passengers slowly, inspecting them the way one might inspect animals at market.
When she pointed, pirates dragged the chosen toward the raider vessel.
A merchant with rings on every finger.
A young engineer whose toolcase caught too much attention.
An elderly scholar carrying a sealed mapcase.
A pair of siblings, one of whom cried hard enough that a pirate struck him with the back of his hand.
Seleste trembled.
Not with fear.
With restraint.
Roc stood beside her, his gaze moving from one pirate to the next, counting blades, positions, movements, exits, and the distance between fear and slaughter.
Then one of the pirates saw Seleste.
He stopped.
His eyes dragged over the shimmer of her scales, the shape of her ears, the faint oceanic glow beneath her skin.
"Well now," he said.
Seleste's expression froze.
The pirate grinned wider.
"Rare catch."
Several others turned.
Roc's hand shifted.
The pirate reached toward her.
"Do not."
The words cut through the deck with a quietness that made them more startling than a shout.
The pirate paused.
Slowly, he turned.
Roc stood tall among the passengers, hands visible, expression unreadable, eyes locked on him with such calm that even the pirate seemed uncertain whether to laugh.
"What was that, boy?"
"I said do not."
The eyepatched woman's gaze moved toward them.
A few pirates chuckled.
The one before Seleste stepped closer to Roc.
"You know what happens to boys who speak out of turn?"
Roc lifted his left wrist.
The opalescent spearhead caught the morning light.
The laughter thinned.
One of the older pirates standing near the boarding bridge swore under his breath.
"Hold."
The pirate before Roc looked back.
The eyepatched woman's eye narrowed.
Roc turned his wrist, letting the spearhead and green twine show clearly.
A murmur passed through the raiders.
"Sapphire Coves," someone said.
Another spat over the side of the ferry.
Seleste looked from Roc to the pirates, taking in how quickly the air had changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Interest.
And most of all, Greed.
The eyepatched woman stepped closer.
"You native?" Her breath quickened at the excitement of his response.
Roc did not answer immediately.
His gaze moved once to Seleste.
Only once.
Then he said, "The Coves are my home."
The pirate who had reached for Seleste drew his hand back as though the scales he had coveted had suddenly grown teeth.
The eyepatched woman smiled a crooked smile, with her scarred cheeks bearing her cruelty.
"Call the captain." She commanded with a piercing calm.
The man who came was not dressed like the others.
He crossed from the pirate vessel with a lazy confidence that made haste seem beneath him. His coat was dark, his collar open, his red sash knotted loosely at his waist. Scars crossed his bare chest beneath the fabric, some old, some newer, some worn with the pride of someone who wanted the world to know he had survived all manner of wounds and learned very little mercy from them.
His right hand was dripping red.
Not painted.
Bloodied.
When pirates claimed a vessel, the captain marked it with their palm, the blood a mixture of their own and the blood of whatever soul had previously ruled the thing now taken. It was an old custom among the red-sailed bands, brutal and absolute. The marked hand established authority, and those beneath it obeyed without question.
This man had already marked the ferry.
Roc watched him approach.
The pirate captain looked at the spearhead.
Then at Roc's blue hair.
Then he smiled.
"Bluebat, is it?"
Roc's expression did not change.
"I did not give you my name."
"You did not need to." The captain stopped a few steps away. "Sapphire Coves birth blue hair and stubborn fools. Seems the waters remain generous."
Several pirates laughed.
Roc did not.
Seleste looked at him, then back at the captain.
There was something there.
Not familiarity.
Worse.
Memory.
"I am Jasco," the pirate captain said.
"I did not ask."
The silence that followed was so abrupt that even the crying seemed to stop.
Jasco laughed.
Not loudly. That would have been safer.
"You have a tongue on you."
"I have a request."
"Oh?"
"Release the passengers. Leave the ferry. Take what you have stolen and go."
This time the pirates roared. The eyepatched woman leaned forward.
Jasco only smiled.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I challenge you."
The laughter died.
Seleste's eyes widened.
"Roc."
He did not look away from Jasco.
"By bloodied hand, your authority is unquestioned among those who follow your mark. Then let that authority answer to mine."
Jasco tilted his head.
"You are either very brave or very stupid."
"I am from the Coves. We are often accused of both."
A few pirates muttered.
Jasco's eyes narrowed, but amusement lingered.
"And what exactly are you offering, Bluebat?"
"If I win, the passengers are released and the ferry continues."
"And if you lose?"
Roc's jaw tightened.
"The passengers live."
"Not enough."
"I will give you the route to the Sapphire Coves."
The air changed.
This time even the passengers felt it.
Greed moved through the pirates like wind over dry grass.
The Sapphire Coves were small in the grand scale of the First World, barely more than a coastal stretch near the southern end of Whitewater Port. Yet what they lacked in territory, they made up for in worth. Beneath their warm waters and volcanic caves, N-Type ores surfaced through oceanic eruptions, depositing rare minerals along hidden shorelines and cavern walls. Gems formed there that could not be found by ordinary mining, carried in colors that seemed to hold pieces of the sea, storm, and flame.
Many had searched for the true heart of the Coves.
Few had returned with more than pretty stones and broken ships.
Jasco's smile faded.
"The real route?"
Roc said nothing.
Jasco stepped closer.
"You would trade your home for strangers?"
Roc's gaze darkened.
"For those who should not have been taken."
Seleste gripped his sleeve.
"Do not do this."
Roc turned slightly.
Her voice lowered, not with command this time, but something far more dangerous to his restraint.
"You cannot mean that."
He looked at her hand, then at her face.
"I will not let them take you."
Her expression sharpened.
"What makes you think I require saving?"
"I did not say that."
"Then what are you doing?"
Roc's eyes softened.
Not much.
Just enough.
"What I can."
Seleste fell silent.
There it was again.
The thing she had glimpsed the night before when authority, trickery, and even flirtation had failed to move him in any expected way. Not lust. Not pride. Not the hunger of a boy trying to impress a girl.
Affection.
Quiet, maddening affection.
The sort even he did not seem to know how to name.
Before she could say anything else, two pirates seized Roc by the arms and pulled him toward the boarding bridge.
He did not resist.
Seleste moved to follow, but the eyepatched woman stepped in front of her.
"Passengers stay where we can see them."
Sea-green light flared beneath Seleste's skin.
Roc looked back once.
"Miss Fairosee."
The name stilled her.
Formal. Careful. Infuriating.
"Please be patient."
Her fingers curled until her nails bit into her palms.
The pirates dragged him across.
The pit was built into the center of the pirate ship.
A lowered fighting ring rested beneath the main deck, reinforced by ironwood and dark metal braces. Sand covered the floor, pale in places and dark in others where old blood had sunk too deep to be hidden by fresh layers.
Passengers from the ferry were forced to watch from above, guarded by blades and pistols.
The pirates gathered around the pit with eager eyes, climbing railings, crates, rigging, and barrels to get a better view. Bets were already being made. Insults already thrown. Some laughed at Roc's height and coat. Others eyed the spearhead at his wrist.
Jasco descended first.
One of his men offered him a blunt sword.
He took it.
Then looked at Roc and threw it aside.
"If the kid thinks he can fly," Jasco said, removing his coat, "give him his wings."
His armoured gauntlets followed.
Then the chest plate.
By the time he stood bare-chested in the pit, arms wrapped in black cloth and scars crawling over his skin, the gathered pirates had already begun chanting.
Roc stepped down opposite him.
He did not remove his coat.
He did not draw a weapon.
Jasco rolled his shoulders.
"Get past me. That is all."
Roc's fingers flexed.
Fine mist gathered at their tips.
Jasco noticed.
He smiled.
"Quaint."
Then he moved.
The sand beneath Jasco's first step exploded into the air.
Roc barely raised his hands before Jasco's kick crashed into his chest.
The impact buried him into the dirt.
For a moment, there was no sound.
Then came the choking.
The slight tingle in his mouth.
The pressure.
Roc's body curled as a torrent of fluids splashed from his lips into the sand before him, drawing jeers, retching, and delighted disgust from the watching pirates.
"Holy shit, he dropped him with one hit!"
"What did you expect? Mouth off to the captain and get folded."
"Isn't that a bit too intense?"
"Look, look. He's getting back up."
One hand steadied Roc against the sand.
Then the other.
His body trembled.
He tried to breathe.
Failed.
Tried again.
The first breath that entered him came with a sound so strained that Seleste's own chest tightened in response.
A coughing fit followed, violent enough to shake his entire frame.
Jasco stood where he had landed, arms crossed, expression unchanged.
Roc's shoulders shook.
Then a sound escaped him.
A laugh.
Low.
Sickening.
Wrong enough that the pirates closest to the pit stopped cheering.
"Ha…"
His head lifted.
"Ha…ha…"
Seleste's fingers tightened around the railing.
Roc lurched upward like a figure remembering the shape of a living body.
"I saw it," he whispered.
Jasco's brow creased.
"What are you on about?"
Roc's silver eyes rose to him.
"I am sure I almost died…"
Mist began to gather around his hands.
"…because I finally saw it."
Jasco's expression soured.
"Speak sense."
Roc forced himself to his feet.
The air around him shimmered.
"I saw," he said.
The mist around his fingers thinned into threads, visible only where the morning light touched them.
"But I will show you."
Roc vanished from where he stood.
No.
Not vanished.
Moved.
His body accelerated toward Jasco before the captain could fully react. Jasco tried to raise his arms, only to find that his limbs ignored the command. His body froze as though he had been locked inside his own skin, forced to face what was coming.
Roc spun through the air.
For one heartbeat, his body twisted unnaturally, warped into the shape of something broken.
Then it snapped into place.
His fist drove toward Jasco's jaw.
It was not the fastest strike Jasco had ever seen.
Not the strongest.
Not the cleanest.
But in the space between heartbeats, instinct overrode confidence.
Jasco wrenched his neck aside.
The strike sheared past his cheek.
Heat ripped through the air before him.
The binding spell shattered, and Jasco's body followed the motion of his leaning head, staggering half a step away as Roc tumbled from the air and landed on both hands and feet.
The sand hissed beneath his touch.
Steam rose from his fingers.
Jasco lifted a hand to his cheek.
A thin cut had opened there.
His eyes narrowed.
"What kind of magic is that?"
Roc rose slowly.
"Entanglement."
The silver threads moved around him like living vapour.
"I can restrain or capture anything I can get my Misting Threads on."
Jasco stared.
He did not seem to be lying.
That made it worse.
Because Entanglement did not explain the heat.
Nor the way his body had moved.
Nor why, for one breath, Jasco's instincts had screamed at him like a child warned not to reach into fire.
"If you think this is enough," Jasco said, settling back into stance, "then you will be sorry—"
"No, Jasco."
The voice did not come from the pit.
It came from somewhere deeper.
Somewhere Roc had buried and failed to bury well enough.
"I think it is time you shut up."
The crowd vanished.
The pit vanished.
The Glass Sea's light bent into the pale glow of a castle courtyard.
Roc blinked.
He was younger.
Smaller.
The moment had stolen his mind, and dropped it into a shunted memory. To a time when the flames that spurned his path to becoming a Guardian were only fledgling embers.
Roc, like many young men raised near the Glass Sea, lived for it and its people. Some as fishermen, others as sailors of every creed. He was like a numbered few, those that waters the waters from the Greyguard Castles.
Atop fortresses of alabaster stone, they lived to halt the dangers that tried to cross the sea, no matter the shape they took.
His limbs burned from training, his knuckles raw, his throat dry, the old grey walls of the coastal fortress rising around him like the ribs of some dead giant left standing against the sea.
Before him stood a sailor. Someone new, but carrying the same desire, or so he thought.
Roc wouldn't know it yet. How blood-handed he would be. The memory of his meeting was hazy but its shape still held, flickering with the truth of a forgotten past, painfully buried only to be ripped out by the neck.
That sailor, and the hell he created when he first arrived.
Only a superior. A recruit elevated too quickly, given command over others because cruelty, when useful, was too often mistaken for strength.
Around them, other young recruits stood silent.
Some were amused.
More were afraid.
And the rest simply chose to look away. Except for her.
Roc remembered the girl.
Maiya.
He remembered her laughter at supper. The way she tied her hair with a blue cord. The way she had looked at the sea whenever the instructors shouted too long, as though somewhere beyond the walls there was a place no rank could follow.
He remembered the door shutting.
And her muffled cry.
The weak, broken way she begged for help while the sailor held her inside a room that should never have been locked.
Roc had moved.
He had not thought.
He had simply moved.
Only for the castle guards to drag him back, their hands tight on his arms, their words sharp in his ears.
Orders.
Rank.
Discipline.
Authority.
The door remained closed.
When it opened, the laughter was gone from Maiya's face.
The memory shifted.
Roc stood in the courtyard before the sailor, rage wrapped around him so tightly it might have been a second body.
From the crowd emerged a towering figure in an ashen coat detailed with silver, white tufts of fur lining the collar. Each step he took echoed over the stone. The recruits parted before him as though he carried a storm beneath his skin.
Commander Dreyr.
He removed his hood.
Piercing blue eyes pinned the courtyard in place, but it was not his gaze that silenced them.
It was his presence.
Like a crushing waterfall made flesh.
He raised one finger into the air.
No one spoke.
"Those who started this, stay. Everyone else, return to your rooms."
He lowered his hand and pointed to the ground.
The shockwave that followed rippled through the courtyard, throwing the watching recruits back against the walls hard enough to tear cries from them.
Only Roc and the sailor remained standing.
Barely.
The commander turned to Roc.
"You, boy. What is your name?"
"Roc."
"Now, Roc," the commander said, his tone oddly casual beneath the weight of his aura, "did you think it wise to fight your superior?"
"He is no superior of mine."
Roc spat at the ground.
The sailor smiled through the blood on his lip.
The commander sighed.
"Oh, so you have a problem with authority."
"I have a problem with him."
"As long as you are ranked beneath him, you had better get used to the idea."
The words were firm and unshaking despite the unserious tone in which they were delivered.
But they did not sit right with Roc.
The image returned.
The door.
Maiya.
Her weak whimpers beneath the sailor's forceful grasp, begging for someone to help as he shut the world away from her.
Roc's hands curled.
"Fuck this."
Mist gathered around his fingers.
Evanescent strings wrapped themselves taut around his hand, the tension sharp enough to be heard as he clenched his fist.
He charged toward the sailor.
The commander's aura held the courtyard still, but Roc moved anyway.
For the first time, the sailor's expression changed.
Panic stormed through his eyes.
How is he moving?
The commander turned.
"How about we all calm down a little bit."
Roc's perception slowed.
The courtyard froze.
Dust hung in the air.
The sailor remained kneeling, squinting against the incoming blow that would never land.
To the commander, Roc became a statue carved from hatred.
The commander looked toward the edge of the courtyard.
"Would the young lady who came to find me please escort your friend to his room. I will deal with them in the morning."
Maiya stepped forward.
Pale.
Silent.
Alive.
Roc's frozen eyes found her.
For a moment, the rage faltered.
Commander Dreyr grabbed the sailor by the collar with one hand and Roc's frozen body by the back of his shirt with the other.
"I would have a word with both of you."
The memory cracked.
The pit returned.
The Glass Sea returned.
But the hatred did not leave.
It had only found air.
Jasco stared at Roc as if he, too, had tasted a ghost.
Roc's misting threads drew tighter around his hands.
"You," Jasco whispered.
Roc's face remained calm.
But his eyes burned.
Before either could move, Seleste's voice tore through the pit.
"Roc!"
Her voice struck him with such force that the world seemed to shudder.
No.
Not voice.
A tune.
For less time than a single breath, Roc grasped not her words, but the melody beneath them. The same one he had heard when they first met. The same one that made his body feel lighter whenever he was lost in thought. The same one that had guided silver etches across his pages in the dark.
The silver returned to his eyes.
Roc coughed as though learning to breathe for the first time.
Jasco moved.
Too late.
Roc twisted his leg.
The movement was small.
Almost careless.
Yet Jasco's footing vanished beneath him, and the captain slammed into the sand hard enough to split the pit floor beneath his shoulder.
Roc stood over him, swaying.
Blood dripped from his mouth.
His chest rose and fell in uneven pulls.
"Now," he said, wiping the blood from his chin, "where were we?"
He nearly fell on his face.
Seleste moved without thinking.
"Look out!"
Several pirates leapt into the pit.
They came from three sides, blades drawn, boots tearing through the sand.
Roc did not turn.
"Do not lose your head, miss."
The air paused.
For a single heartbeat, silence held everything.
Then the bodies dropped.
Headless.
One after another, the pirates toppled into the sand as dark blood sprayed across the pit walls. Their heads struck the ground a moment later, rolling through the sand with expressions still fixed in surprise.
The deck above fell dead quiet.
Seleste froze at the railing.
Roc looked back at her, his expression strangely gentle beneath the blood and steam.
"Please be patient, Seleste."
The air around him shifted.
Threads danced into sight, wrapping around his wounded body like mist given purpose.
"As you can see…"
The deck cracked beneath his feet.
The sand trembled.
Jasco groaned beneath him, trying to move.
Roc turned his burning gaze back down to the captain.
"…we are not finished yet."
The Misting Threads pulled taut.
The ferry groaned.
The red sails snapped in the wind.
And Roc smiled without warmth.
"Right, Captain Jasco?"