They crowned me with Rhona's wreath.
Well—attempted to. The ceremony was improvised: Soileen pressing dried lake-flowers into my palms, elders murmuring blessings under their breath, half the encampment gathering in a trembling circle. Their faces flickered between fear and hope. They needed a Vajda. They needed direction. They needed someone to blame or follow.
I stood at the center, hands still bloodstained from Rosum, the taste of smoke lingering in the air.
The Queen of Nereids—Salacia, newly legged and far too pleased with herself—lounged nude on a moss-covered stone near the edge of the circle. Her scaled skin had reformed into something smooth and luminescent; her hair fell in sleek black ropes down her back. She looked like a nightmare that decided to be beautiful only to be spiteful.
"Do go on," she purred, adjusting her posture so the moonlight hit her exactly the way she liked. "It's adorable that you people hold elections."
"Elections," Soileen hissed, glaring. "This is a rite. A sacred rite."
Salacia smirked. "Sacred? Nothing on land is sacred."
I ignored her. I had no time for her smugness or her sudden habit of breathing air. "Do you all swear," Soileen began, raising her voice over the murmurs, "to follow your new Vajda—"
She never finished.
A howl tore through the clearing.
Not human.
Not animal.
Somewhere in between.
Everyone froze.
The Hanisay trees shuddered as something barreled through the underbrush. Then he emerged—Nestor—the town drunk, stumbling into the firelight, his chest heaving, his face grey with panic. A man who usually smelled of fermented algae now smelled of terror.
"You need to RUN!" Nestor shouted, voice cracking. "Get to the woods—now—all of you!"
Edward was beside him in an instant. "Nestor, what the hell—"
"They're coming!" Nestor panted. "The mob. They're on the march. Torches, knives, anything they could grab."
My heart dropped. "Why?"
Nestor's eyes darted to me. "Because your siblings incited them!"
Ari stiffened. "Las and Cleo?"
I turned on him, heat rising to my face. "You knew they were here and didn't tell me?!"
Ari opened his mouth, shut it again.
"This is not a time to argue!" Nestor barked, grabbing Edward by the shoulder. "They'll be here any minute. Hundreds of them—no, thousands."
The Queen stood lazily, stretching her borrowed legs as though this were an inconvenience.
"Well," Salacia sighed, plucking the carved bone comb from her hair. "Let me handle the peasants."
The comb elongated, twisted, and with a screech of bone became a gleaming trident in her hand.
I snapped, "You will NOT kill them."
Salacia raised a brow. "Kill?" she laughed. "No, child. I'll…discourage them."
Ari stepped between her and the crowd. "You can't touch them! They're not themselves. My brother can manipulate emotion—he probably heightened their fear, their anger. They don't know what they're doing."
"Aww," Salacia cooed.
"Can you calm them?" I asked Ari—already knowing the answer.
His face tightened. "Not on Valorian. My power barely works here. And with this many people—absolutely not."
Edward turned back to Nestor. "How many?"
"All of Aazor," Nestor rasped. "Three thousand."
A silence fell on us like a stone.
Three thousand starving, terrified civilians.
Three thousand pushed into frenzy by a Sensitive's emotions.
Three thousand headed right for us.
I didn't hesitate.
"RUN. Everyone. Into the woods—scatter, hide, and regroup at the midnight stone." I pointed toward the north ridge. "If you stay here, you die."
Salacia rolled her eyes. "Mortals are so dramatic—"
"That is an order!" I barked. "If you're not helping, leave!"
The Queen of Nereids paused. She could not return to the ocean for a whole month lest the spell would dissipate. Her new legs needed fermenting.
Edward grabbed the nearest Vlachy child, lifting her onto his hip. "Move! Move!"
The Vlachy erupted into motion—the injured, the elderly, the children—all fleeing between trees as torches began to glow at the forest's edge.
Ari reached for me. "Mila—we have to go—"
"I know," I said, taking a final glance at the clearing where my ceremony had been interrupted before it ever truly began.
My coronation lasted sixty seconds.
My rule began with running for our lives.
***
They didn't stop running until the torches behind them became faint orange pricks between the trunks. Edward slowed only when he found a hollow between three leaning trees—shadowed, low visibility, a place where sound died before it traveled.
He pulled the smallest of Soileen's children tighter against his chest. The boy was still half-asleep, head lulled on Edward's shoulder, soft snores escaping him despite the danger. Edward eased down onto the damp ground, back pressed against a tree.
Nestor, smelling faintly of algae and cheap liquor, slid down beside him, wheezing.
Salacia paced.
Barefoot. Naked. Glowing faintly blue in the cold.
"This is barbaric," she snapped, rubbing her arms. "Air is a miserable invention. Whoever thought lungs were a good idea should be exiled."
Nestor sighed and shrugged off his jacket. "Here. Take it."
Edward choked on a laugh. "A gentleman? To her?"
Nestor frowned. "She looks cold."
"She looks like she deserves it," Edward muttered.
Salacia shot him a look that could curdle seawater. "I am tolerating you, Kinsley, because it was the deal made with the celestials. I can end that tolerance any time."
He smirked. "Which part of that deal said you got to kill Neptune?"
Her face tightened—but Edward kept going.
"Oh look, she's offended," he said.
Salacia's voice went icy. "He didn't choose you."
"He didn't choose you either," Edward fired back. "He loved you as a sister, not a queen."
"Ask your new celestial friends," she said sweetly, "if they think siblings are much of an obstacle."
Edward nearly lunged at her.
Nestor wedged himself between them, arms outstretched. "Enough. Enough! You two pining over the same dead man is pathetic. Let the king rest and find someone else to fight over!"
Edward and Salacia both froze… then looked at Nestor as if he were the crazy one.
"How dare you," Edward pinched him in the chest. "There will never be anyone else."
"Never," Salacia agreed.
They fell silent.
The torches in the far distance flickered like dying stars. The mob's angry murmur carried faintly through the trees. Soileen's child shifted in Edward's arms, nuzzling closer to his chest.
Edward stared down at the boy's curls. His jaw clenched.
Then, without looking up, he said quietly:
"How could you do it?"
Salacia stilled.
Edward's gaze lifted, sharp and wet around the edges. "How could you kill him, Salacia? He was an angel."
For a long moment, she said nothing.
The wind passed between them, thin and brittle.
"I didn't kill him because he loved someone else," she finally said, voice low and steady. "I killed him because he stopped loving me at all."
Edward swallowed.
"He was my king," Salacia continued, eyes on the darkness, voice trembling despite her pride. "Long before he was yours. Long before he discovered land, and men, and choices I couldn't compete with."
Her hands curled into fists. "He promised me the Twelve Seas. He promised me eternity. And then one day… he started making promises without me."
Nestor's breath hitched.
"He lied," she whispered. "He betrayed our bond. And I—" Her throat closed. "I didn't know how to exist with that betrayal in my face parading around on a ship protected with his spell across my realm."
Edward stared. Who could have known that a pair of human legs came with a pinch of human heart?
The child in his arms whimpered softly.
Salacia stepped back, hugging Nestor's jacket tighter around her shoulders.
"He wasn't an angel, Edward," she said. "He was a man. And men make stupid decisions. So do women. My killing him … was one of those."
The torchlight in the distance grew brighter.
***
They didn't stop until the roaring of the mob dulled into a distant scrape of metal and shouting. Ari finally slowed, chest heaving, one hand braced against a tree. The dragon—Bonnie—had grown again in the panic, now the size of a large hound. She pressed herself against Ari's leg, trembling.
Mila scanned the shadows. "This is far enough," she whispered.
Bonnie-the-pirate leaned her back against a tree trunk, muttering something about "bloody Celestials" under her breath as she tried to calm her nerves.
Ari turned sharply toward Mila.
"You knew," Mila said before he could speak. Her voice was low, shaking with exhaustion. "You knew Cleo and Las were here and you didn't tell me."
Ari's jaw clenched. "I didn't know how to tell you."
"You didn't tell me at all," she shot back. "You let them wander Aazor while the camp burned."
Ari flinched. "I didn't know Rosum would—"
"I'm not talking about Rosum," Mila hissed. "I'm talking about you hiding things from me. Again."
Ari's voice rose. "You do it too!"
Mila stared. "What exactly do I hide?"
"Your feelings," he snapped. "Your fear. The truth about what you are. You haven't said one word about the fact that you're not a 'creation' of the Assigner. Not one."
Mila's breath caught. Bonnie-the-pirate froze. Dragon Bonnie tucked herself closer into Ari's side, sensing the tension.
"You just ignored it," Ari said, pointing at her. "Like if you didn't say it out loud, it wouldn't be real."
Mila crossed her arms. "I didn't ignore anything."
"Yes, you did," Ari said. "You didn't even react. Mila, your whole identity shattered and you just—did nothing."
"I had to take care of you," she snapped. Silence fell.
Mila's eyes stung. "What do you want me to say? That I'm terrified? That maybe I'm not celestial at all? That I don't know what I am? You think that's easy to process while I'm bandaging burned fishermen and hauling water for witches?"
Ari ran a hand over his face.
Dragon Bonnie nudged Ari's hip, whimpering. He sank down to one knee and stroked her head. Bonnie-the-pirate stepped forward carefully. "You two need to breathe."
"Don't start," Mila warned.
But Bonnie held up a hand. "You're tearing each other apart. You love each other, this is nonsense."
Ari and Mila turned on her in perfect, furious unison.
"Oh, what do you know about love?" Mila demanded. "You've been pining after Edward, who's pining after a dead fish!"
Ari chimed in, exasperated. "Bonnie, you're in love with a man who's drowning himself in guilt."
Bonnie drew herself up, chin proud. "I know enough to see that whatever this is—" she jabbed a finger between them "—isn't what love should be."
Ari's anger dimmed first, like someone snuffed out a candle. Mila's followed, shoulders slumping.
Bonnie continued, softer now. "Love isn't supposed to be this ugly. Not all the time. Not this… bruising."
Dragon Bonnie rested her head on Ari's knee, letting out a small, plaintive sigh.
Mila's voice broke. "We don't know how to do anything else."
Ari swallowed. "We weren't made to know."
Bonnie shook her head. "Then you learn. Or you'll lose each other."
The night pressed around them, quiet except for the faint crackling of distant torches and dragon-Bonnie's slow, anxious breaths.
Mila finally sat beside Ari, not touching him, but close enough that the space between them no longer hurt as much.
Ari didn't look at her yet—but he didn't look away.
Bonnie the pirate folded her arms. "Now. Are either of you going to explain why Cleo and Las are manipulating mobs, or should I go fetch the Queen so she can drown them all?"
Ari groaned.
Mila exhaled.
Dragon Bonnie sneezed a tiny flame.
***
They sat alone in the hollow between two fallen Hanisay trees, far from the crackling torches and the roar of the mob. The night pressed close around them, thick and damp, but Volmira barely seemed to notice. She sat perfectly still, her knees drawn to her chest, her silver hair falling like a shroud over her vacant eyes.
She hadn't spoken a word since pulling Rosum's lifeless body into her lap.
Soileen knelt beside her, smoothing a blanket—someone's forgotten cloak—over Volmira's shoulders. "You're freezing," she whispered.
No reaction.
Volmira's gaze stayed fixed on the forest floor, at nothing, at everything. The same way Rosum looked, Soileen thought, just before—
She pushed the memory away. There was no use feeding grief with more grief.
Soileen shifted, sitting directly across from Volmira now. "When the Vlachy lose themselves like this," she said quietly, "I tell them stories. Not to distract them. To remind them they're alive."
Still nothing from Volmira.
Soileen inhaled, steadying herself. "I'll tell you one now. You listen or not—it doesn't matter. Your heart will hear it even if your mind is elsewhere."
She waited. Volmira didn't blink.
Soileen began.