I approached the water's edge, where Soileen was bent over the lake, her hands rhythmically plunging garments beneath the crystalline surface. The laughter of children at play wove through the encampment.
I rolled up my sleeves, eager to immerse my hands in the cool liquid that promised a brief escape from my troubles.
"Let me help you with that," I offered, reaching for a sodden shirt that lay on the grassy bank.
Soileen straightened up, wiping a strand of wet hair from her forehead as she eyed me with gruesome skepticism.
"My time is running out," I finally admitted, breaking my uncharacteristic quietude. "Salacia will not wait forever for my answer, and Edward..." I trailed off, my gaze lingering on the distant horizon as if I might find him there. "He could be plotting something."
"Edward is not a plotter," Soileen countered, shaking her head as she wrung out a tunic with force. "He has the heart of a lion and the brain of a sheep. He goes wherever his foolish love for Neptune leads him."
"Even now when he's dead?"
"Especially now that he's dead."
My brother always found easy camaraderie with the rest of the Sensitives. His non-combatant nature and easy confidence attracted my siblings.
I hated that word. Easy.
It was meaningless and incredibly grating. He was born to be the leader of men and I was born to do nothing but absorb the Diamond Storm that was so toxic he couldn't stand to be around me for several rotations.
Volmira was weaving a crown of leaves from the tall grass outside the encampment for Ros' horns. They were laughing, joking, being easy while Areilycus spun strings of sunshine with his fingers.
The rays fell upon the earthly soil of this world and Ari molded them like solid gold with his power, making them dance in flower patterns, interrupting the photosynthetic process for fun.
"Sister," Ros invited me to sit next to him in the grass, patting the place that contained no mud.
"What are you all up to?" I crossed my legs, reaching for the leaf crown Volmira had spun and putting it on my too small head.
"Catching up," Ari said. The sun bent to his will, the rays wrapping around my shoulders on his command. "Guessing when Edward comes back to town."
I was always cold on Tripolis. Not so much on this planet.
"Yes, the Captain that we are all eagerly awaiting to return, what do you make of him, Milada?" Mira asked.
I shrugged. What did I make of Edward Kinsley other than everything I saw in myself? He's chaotic, attached, a little insane.
"He is a man of action," I said instead. "I do not think that betraying him is something the guardians of life should entertain."
"We are not the guardians of this world, the oath does not bind us," Rosum said.
"Tell us what you really think," Ari said in that tone that would make me destroy three planets three times over if it meant pleasing him.
"Well," I stuttered. "If we give Salacia what she wants and grant her the legs she so yearns for, it is not a stretch to assume she will destroy the port city. This entire tribe with it, probably."
"But we get to keep Bonnie," Ros argued. "You have broken a dozen of Father's laws in order to save our brother's life, you're saying it was all for nothing?"
The corners of my mount twisted upwards. "Don't tell me you are determined to return to Tripolis with our brother alive. Surely, that was not the instruction the Assigner sent you here with?"
Rosum saw killing as preserving order if killing would restore order. 'Some mortals will not be told,' he said during the First Mountain War on Tripolis. Even when I offered to absorb the chaos of the war, Rosum ruled that killing the instigators of the conflict would return the planet to peace.
Our father sided with him instead of me.
"The only reason we are not dragging you back is to preserve Areilycus."
"The only reason you are not dragging me back is because you don't stand a chance against me in a fight."
Just when my siblings' mouths dropped open, Bonnie half-stumbled, half-flew towards us. She was still too small to make strides with her hind legs and too underdeveloped for her wings to take to the skies, so she did both, poorly.
I swear if I didn't hate that fucking dragon, we'd be best friends.
Everyone I met so far on this planet was like a mirror I would much rather smash than keep.
Bonnie nestled on Ari's lap as she did.
"What do you mean …" Rosum trailed off. It was a feat to catch him unawares. One empty point to me.
"Even with Volmira, Ari and I could take you," I reminded him. It seemed to be a surprise for him despite the fact that he had been raised a scholar with Vectra and Ari and I warriors with the Assigner.
"He would not …" Rosum stumbled over his words again.
Ari nuzzled Bonnie. "Who would not what, Ros?"
"What's going on, Ros?" I asked. I began to sniff out that his profound confusion was a realization in disguise.
A pretty important, Tripolis-shattering realization.
"If you know that I can't take you in a fight," Ros said, "and I know that I can't take you in a fight, why did Father send me and not Cleo? Or Bara to bring you home?"
Ari whispered something into Bonnie's mini ears upon which she hopped away, back to the encampment.
It dawned on me. "He's using you."
"To do what?" Mira asked, immediately moving closer to Ros.
I shuddered. "I don't know."
***
Volmira and Rosum retreated to the lake to talk, and I could not be happier they left us alone.
We needed to talk strategy. But instead of his brain snapping into fight mode, Ari's eyes welled up.
"I don't want you to die," he told me.
"I don't intend to die," I said to him.
"But you will. We all will," he said. "There is no defeating him. You have not felt what I felt when I was fluctuating. He put that sickness inside me. The Diamond Storm is his creation."
Something inside me broke in twelve different places.
Like a glass ceiling that cracks once you punch it with enough force.
"What?"
Areilycus buried his head in his hands. "He is the one crippling the planet with the storm. It is a product of his manipulation with the atmosphere of Tripolis."
I stood up. He followed.
"How could you not tell me?"
"I didn't know until I got better. I … felt it. It's his, it carries his … power."
The tall grass swayed gently around me, a sea of green undulating with the whims of the wind. And there he was, moving through it like a creature born from the very essence of nature. With each deliberate crawl, his presence seemed to command the elements, and I knew why — Areilycus was more than my mirror image; he was the sun god, the lord of light whose touch awakened the dormant life within the earth.
Within me.
His eyes, twin flames in the afternoon glow, found mine, and the world faded into the background.
He stripped away my clothes, all the trappings of mortality. When his fingers traced the curve of my breast, I felt the world reel, collapsing into that single point of contact. His breath found my throat, hot and unhurried. In that instant, I was no longer a being of starlight or storm. I was only a woman, fragile and burning, undone beneath the gaze of a god, and yet he looked at me as though I were the divine.
***
There was not much land on that planet Edward Kinsley called home. The twelve seas housed a sparse set of islands, all a terrible distance away from each other. This world was made for sailing and not much else.
Captain Kinsley often thought how awful it must have been for people of other trades; people who were born in Aazor City and could never be anything other than fishermen.
Sure, the city had uses for people of other talents.
But they were never respectable vocations. The people who were not sailors never amounted to anything.
Edward promised himself that he would not become one of those people. He aimed so high the oceans yielded him a king. For his pleasure, for his ambition, Neptune was his. He would have made him a Nereid and Edward would never again feel inferior, he'd never go hungry, he'd never feel the strain of not belonging inside his chest.
He would have a home. One of his crew, his Boatswain Heraldine, barely stitched the Lioness together after the ordeal with the sea witch before Edward decided to thrust it back into danger.
The cave looked exactly as Edward remembered it, but emptier somehow—quieter, as if the island itself was holding its breath.
He had returned to where Neptune's body lay hidden beneath the rock, guarded by the dragon they had stolen, and every step felt like trespass.
The emerald canopy above whispered in the wind, and beneath it his boots crunched on the damp undergrowth. Isla Rhea had always felt alive, and now that life pressed against his ribs like a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
They stole from here. And the island no longer felt welcoming.
"Captain," Heraldine called from behind him, the torchlight trembling in her grip. "This place gives me the crawls."
"It should," he said without turning. His voice was hoarse from the climb. "We're standing above a grave."
Heraldine's scarred mouth twisted. "Maybe it's Neptune's way of telling you to leave him be."
Edward stopped so suddenly she almost walked into him. "Don't say that."
He faced her then, eyes hollow from sleepless nights, the anger in him brittle rather than burning. "I didn't come here to disturb him. I came to call for Gorgo."
Heraldine frowned. "The monster?"
"The sister," he corrected. "She'll know what can be done with the dragon's heart."
They moved deeper into the cave, the torchlight catching the wet gleam of stone. Edward's pulse quickened with each step; part of him feared she wouldn't answer. Part of him feared she would.
After she lay her brother to rest and returned underwater to claim his crown, Salacia already turned the court against her. And with some clever Nereid curse … Edward's skin shriveled just thinking about what happened to Gorgo.
Last time he saw her, she was eating sailors off the coast of the Bileni in the Tenth Sea.
He stopped before the altar of coral and bone where the sea once flowed in and out with the tide.
He knelt. "Gorgo," he called quietly, the name echoing off the walls. "Sister. I need you. Please, come forth."
Nothing. Only the distant rumble of the ocean pounding against the island's edge.
He exhaled, lowering the torch. "Of course not," he muttered. "Even the damned won't come when I call."
A voice, dry and cold, drifted from behind him. "That's because I was already here."
Edward turned sharply.
She stood where the rock met the sea—a tall, broken figure half-shrouded in shadow. Her body bore the wreckage of once-nereid beauty: limbs crusted with coral, hair reduced to a crown of slick seaweed, that twitched with their own life. Yet her eyes were unmistakable—green, mournful, and sharp.
Her beautiful tail was gone. "Gorgo," he breathed. "I thought you couldn't leave the depths."
"I can't," she said simply. "Not without help." She stepped forward, the seaweed hissing at him.
"The sea's creatures carried me here. Salacia's creatures."
Edward's stomach turned. What did she have to give them to carry her to these shores?
"Neptune trusted more than one of us with his resurrection."
One of her legs was hobbled, the other unable to bend in the knee, like her joints refused to join.
"You were never meant to be alone," she said. "But you made yourself so."
He clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms. "He promised me—"
"He promised many things," she interrupted. "None of them included surviving his own ruin."
Silence fell between them, broken only by the slow drip of water from the cave ceiling. Edward looked past her toward the black pool that marked Neptune's resting place. "I found the dragon. But there's a dying Sensitive who needs it too. Tell me—can it be split?"
Gorgo regarded him for a long moment. "If you divide it, neither half will be whole. You'll save no one."
"I don't care," he said through his teeth. "If I can bring him back—even as a shadow—it will be enough."
Her expression softened, almost pitying. "You think love will call him back. But love is what drowned him, Edward."
The torch guttered, throwing her face into alternating bands of light and darkness.
She turned toward the pool, her voice low. "If you follow this path, the sea will take you too. And there will be no one left to mourn."
Then she stepped backward into the dark water, the surface closing over her without a sound.
Edward stood alone, the silence pressing in. Heraldine waited near the entrance, wary and pale, but he didn't look at her. He just stared at the place where Gorgo had vanished, his jaw set, his eyes rimmed with salt.
A year before his death, Neptune disappeared, leaving instructions for Edward where to find him if ever the word reached him that the sea king died. Edward thought it was a ploy to get rid of Salacia. He never expected to actually receive word from Gorgo that her brother was dead.
She told him where to go and what to do once he found the hatchling and went off to claim her crown.
Now, the dragon was gone, the sea king was gone, and Gorgo was gone, too.
Edward's limbs began to drift, turning into gelatine. It was Heraldine who caught him when he went down.
Once he regained his wits, he followed his sister-in-law into the cave where she hid. Where it would lead him eventually back to the place where the little dragon used to dwell.
The cave where he found the hatchling remained unchanged. The emerald canopy of Isla Rhea whispered secrets as Captain Edward Kinsley's boots crunched over the undergrowth. Gorgo must have planted the Jils, the moon flowers that bloomed in the dark.
Who else.
"Go home, Edward," Gorgo's voice echoed through the cave system.
"Where is that exactly?" he asked, genuinely perplexed. Yes, Gorgo's head had been once covered by her brother's jewels, now she's covered in seaweed, naked, abandoned, her beauty siphoned. He could only imagine what it was like to lose a throne, a birthright along with a brother who promised it.
Their scheme did not work, all the more important for someone to fight on.
"Cap," Heraldine held him by the elbow. The deeper they went, the less they saw, despite the Jills glowing and creating mosaics of constellations across the cave walls. The nausea rose in his esophagus, the bile clawing its way higher and higher.
"Gorgo, I beg you," Edward shouted. The Jil flowers were poisonous to mortals. Gorgo used to wear them in her gorgeous head of green hair, braided into her soft curls in case some fisherman or a pirate dared to touch her.
"Forgive me, Heraldine," Kinsley muttered, almost inaudible over the distant echo of subterranean rivers.
"Nothing to forgive, Captain," Heraldine replied, "We stand with you. To the very end."
For it was true - Kinsley had never turned his fury upon his crew, those brave souls who traversed the seas to follow him to Isla Rhea. Their allegiance was to him, as his was irrevocably tied to their well-being and freedom.
"Gorgo! Come forth, you bitch! You cannot still be mad we left ya!" Heraldine yelled.
'Leaving' was a very generous term Edward's crew used whenever they discussed the past so as to not offend him. Not many people knew just how a poor boy without a pot to piss in left Aazor only to return with a ship full of wonders and a crew of all female pirates loyal to him to a fault.
The only other being besides Neptune who knew was his sister. Then, Heraldine's foot stepped into something gooey and they sank. They heard Gorgo's cries.
***
The Vlachy encampment flickered at the edge of the bay, its fires trembling like fevered stars. Smoke, salt, and the faint reek of drying fish tangled in the wind. Edward slowed as the tents came into view—colorful rags whipped by gusts, laughter bleeding through the fabric like ghosts trying to remember joy.
And there she was.
Mila stood by a rack of wet clothes, the sleeves snapping in the wind like flags of surrender. Beside her, Areilycus wrapped his arms around her waist, his mouth brushing the curve of her neck. Her laugh—light, human—cut him open.
Then the wind shifted.
"What the fuck," Edward said, the words raw enough to flay. He strode forward, boots crunching over shells and bones. "You two are playing house while I'm out there clawing through goddamn tombs?"
Mila turned, unbothered, a single droplet sliding down her temple. "No one told you to leave," she said.
Edward's jaw twitched. "While I'm choking on salt and ghosts, you're taking comfort in witchcraft." His eyes flicked toward Areilycus, still close enough that his radiance warmed her back.
"Comfort?" Mila's tone cooled. "Hardly. The witch mother is brewing right now to protect the camp. We think the Assigner intends to–"
"Then good luck understanding her," Edward snapped, but his hand was already fumbling with the rucksack strap. "We found something—"
He didn't finish. A scream ripped through the camp—high, splitting, real. It came from Rhona's tent.
The three of them ran.
The smell hit first: copper and bile and something sweet like overripe fruit. The tent flap snapped open to reveal hell.
Rosum knelt over the witch's body, his huge frame convulsing as his jaw worked mechanically, animal-fast. Blood sluiced down his chin in ribbons. Rhona's eyes bulged wide, her mouth frozen mid-plea. When he looked up, his teeth were wrong—too many, too sharp, his gums split to make room for more.
Bonnie shrieked, wings thrashing, tiny sparks falling uselessly around the carnage. The dragonet's light only made it worse. Every detail stood out: the slick noise of chewing, the wet tremor of flesh being pulled apart.
"Oh," Edward whispered. His cutlass felt ornamental in his hand. Against this, steel was a joke.
Areilycus stepped forward. The air tightened. Light burst from his palms—pure, searing brilliance that painted every surface in false daylight. The radiance swallowed the tent, scorching the edges of the canvas.
For a moment, it worked. Rosum froze, back arched, skin blistering under his brother's divinity.
Then he laughed.
It was a sound no throat should make—half gurgle, half howl. His eyes, once storm-gray, had gone the color of curdled milk. Beneath the light, his shadow twisted like something separate, independent, writhing against the walls.
"That's impossible," Ari rasped. His glow flickered. The light recoiled as if burned by what it touched.
Mila's fingers caught his arm. "Ari. Look."
Rosum's veins pulsed black, his skin splitting in narrow seams. The flesh beneath was translucent, alive with movement. Something crawled there—something trying to hatch.
Edward swallowed hard. "We're fucked, aren't we."
Mila's command came sharp and clean. "Run!"
They bolted. Screams rose behind them—wet, choked, multiplying. Tents tore open like wounds. The Vlachy scattered; some didn't make it two steps before the darkness caught them. Rosum's laughter chased them through the camp, thick and wet and gleeful.
Mila's breath hitched as she saw Soileen—arms out, her three children pressed behind her. Rosum, or what wore him, barreled through the smoke toward them.
"No," Mila hissed.
Ari turned, light gathering around him like armor. Mila didn't answer. She was already changing. The air around her warped, static crawling over her skin. Her eyes went dark—no pupil, no white, just the deep pull of a storm's eye. She reached for the Anchor, for the endless hunger inside her, and the ground began to tremble.
Rosum lunged.
Mila met him mid-strike. Her hand touched his chest.
The noise was obscene. Like steam forced through bone.
Dark energy poured from her fingers, dragging the corruption out of him in long, shrieking strands—smoke shaped like veins, screaming faces trapped inside. Rosum's body convulsed, his ribs bowing out as if something inside him was trying to claw its way free.
He screamed until there was no voice left, only air leaving a body that was no longer his.
Then silence.
He collapsed. Empty.
Mila swayed, her mouth open on a soundless gasp. The darkness she had pulled into herself writhed beneath her skin, crawling toward her heart. For an instant, her veins glowed black instead of red.
Ari caught her before she hit the ground.
The baby dragon pressed against Mila's hand, keening softly. Ari's glow dimmed to a sorrowful halo. His voice broke. "Sweetheart."
Edward stood at the tent's edge, staring at the ruin, at Rosum's hollow shell. When he finally spoke, his tone was steady in a way that made it worse.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "That's what I came to tell you."
He sheathed his blade, eyes still on the body.
"Your father wants to kill you all."