The cutters slipped out from the armada and into water that felt held. The sea looked smooth, but every swell carried weight. Even sound seemed muffled. Oars dipped without their usual slap. Voices died at the back of throats. The wind arrived and then thought better of it.
Rowan tasted tar on the air. Midg—the little minnow pulsing at his breastbone—tapped a fast, steady beat. Beside him, Lyra leaned forward with one palm on the rail. Her eyes were bright and far away. The dolphin kept pace with the bow in neat arcs, surfacing to breathe and vanishing again with a sharp flick.
"We're close," Mira said from the prow. A coil of line hung from her wrist. A knife sat easy in her hand. Todd, the tiny minnow soulkin, traced quick silver circles around her ankles like punctuation. "Half a minute. Maybe less."
Lyra winced. "It's young," she said softly. "Scared. Calling for anyone who might listen." She swallowed. "And the men on that ship are copying a chant they don't understand. It has rhythm but no heart. It makes the water want to get away."
Darin shifted his stance amidships. Tharos, the turtle soul, glowed along his shoulders in a calm green curve. "Then we cut them away from it," he said.
The ship grew out of the haze. Once, maybe, it had been an honest trader. Now plates of dark, uneven scale clung to its hull like rot. Tar and sinew pasted the seams. Long booms dragged nets down and away from the rail. Winches turned with a sick grinding sound. Thicker ropes dove into the deep, bone-weighted and slicked with tar. The sails drooped like mold. Figures moved on the deck—men, or things that had used to be men. Their eyes were pale and glassy. Their lips were stained black. Their chant came in heavy pulses, as if someone had taught them the shape of a prayer and nothing else.
Lyra pressed her fingers to her ears and then dropped them again, as if polite to the sea. "They've braced hooks under the keel," she said. "They're hauling something across barbs and teeth. It hurts."
Rowan looked back once. The armada had stopped. Islanders crowded rails two and three deep. Thalriss floated out from hulls in a wide ring, faces upturned. No horns called. No orders carried. The entire fleet watched and held its breath.
"Winches first," Rowan said. His voice stayed low but firm. "Break their hands before they can pull again. Thalriss—jam the drums. Mira—cut weights and knots. Darin—if a line looks clever, kill it fast."
Mira's grin showed no humor. "On your mark."
Rowan spared one heartbeat for Luna. She stood at the rail of their cutter, two fingers hooked in the rope, jaw set, eyes on him. She didn't call out. She did not need to. Come back lived plain in her face.
"Now," he said, and the cutters went in.
They hit the corrupted hull with a hard thud. Rowan vaulted the rail first, the harpoon balanced in both hands. Tar slicked the deck. Rot clung to the boards. A hook whistled past his ear. He ducked and drove his harpoon point through a sailor's forearm, pinning him to a timber before the man could think to scream.
Mira dashed by his shoulder, neat and fast, opening another man's wrist with one clean slice. The sailor stared at the blood like it had betrayed him. She kicked his knee out and kept moving. Todd flashed at her feet, then zipped ahead and chittered—a bright warning as two more lunged from behind a blocked capstan.
"Left winch!" Rowan barked.
A Thalriss launched out of the water, caught the spinning drum with both hands, and jammed a pried plank into the teeth. Wood shrieked. The spindle bucked. Darin arrived in the same breath. His axe fell once. The shaft cracked. The drum froze with a rattling groan.
"Port quarter," Lyra called, pointing. "That tar lump—bone inside. Break it, and the mesh will give."
The dolphin dove, butting the lump from below. Mira slammed the butt of her knife down twice. The bone weight split. The net jerked.
A man in a coat sewn with gray feathers spread his arms and softened his voice until it tried to become sweet. "Hush," he crooned. "Hush, hush—"
Mira's knife answered first, flipping end over end and taking him in the mouth. He gagged and folded. Darin's axe finished the lesson.
The deck tilted under them. Lines drew tight. Something deep below pulled hard. Midg rattled in Rowan's chest like a trapped coin.
"Hooks under the keel," Lyra gasped. "Braced into rock."
Rowan stripped his shirt off and looped the harpoon line twice around his forearm. "Hold the rails," he told Darin. "Cut anything that thinks it's smarter than you," he told Mira.
"Everything on this ship thinks it's smarter than me," she said, and bared her teeth. "Let's argue."
Rowan planted a foot on the rail and dove.
Cold hit him hard and then softened. Midg opened his lungs. The sting left the water. He arrowed down along the hanging mesh.
The geometry of the trap rose up to meet him. The net was doubled and trebled, with false knots that tightened if you cut the wrong place, and tar-slicked bone weights the size of fists. Below the keel, a cage hung open. Its mouth was a ring of barbs. Its hinge flexed with a patient, ugly click.
And there—the creature in the net.
Not a whale. A water dragon.
It was young, but not small. Its body ran long and sinuous, longer than three cutters end to end. Smooth scales shimmered pearl and blue. A mane of thin, translucent fins flowed down its spine and along its tail, glowing faintly as it moved. Soft horn nubs pushed from its brow. Whisker-like tendrils drifted from its jaw and trembled with every turn. Golden eyes burned steady in the dim.
Ropes cut into the tender edge of its right fin. Another line had slid behind one eye, threatening to blind it each time it struggled. Blood blurred in the water. Still it fought, body coiling like a river against too-narrow banks. When its gaze met Rowan's, the plea struck him without sound.
Help?
Rowan wedged the harpoon under a tar lump and twisted. The bone inside cracked. A rope slackened. Above, a winch rattled and then jammed hard. Someone swore. The cage hinge ticked once, eager.
"Pairs," Lyra's voice reached him like a thread down his spine. Calm. Clear. "Cut in pairs. If you loosen one side, the other bites deeper. Next weight—left. See the tar line that looks too perfect? Bone under it."
He moved left, cut, then counter-cut. The mesh sagged a fraction. The dragon flinched and nearly drove itself into the cage. The hinge clicked. Rowan dropped, and the teeth closed on bubbles where his throat had been.
On deck, he felt Darin through the rope—a heavy set, a held line, the strong hinge that kept a door from tearing free. Tharos's glow thickened at each impact and thinned when the danger passed, as if a shield must breathe too. He felt Mira's rhythm as a pulse—three beats, cut, three beats, cut—floating down through water the way a heartbeat floats through bone. The dolphin's quick mind mapped the weave in sharp flashes of where to bite next.
Another rope ran across the dragon's eye. Rowan braced one foot on the mesh and one on the keel, slid the harpoon under the rope, turned the barbs with the lay, and hauled. The fibers gave with a sound like a tight breath. The rope slipped off the scales. Light reached the eye. It blinked once, slow, and fixed on him again.
A thought pressed into him. Not words. A weighing. Are you mine?
Rowan didn't answer with speech. He kept working. He took another cut, then its twin. He held the harpoon in hands that had already split in three places and did not let it slip. He felt the burn in his shoulders and did not squander the air to complain. He thought one thing and meant it: Yes.
Something inside him stretched like a thin rope thrown across a gap. It hummed. The glowing lines along the dragon's spine flared and softened with the beat in his chest. Midg pulsed in steady answer.
The ship dragged again. The whole net jumped. A rope lashed across Rowan's shoulder. Heat flashed where skin opened. He locked his ankle deeper into the mesh and went on.
"Two more," Lyra said, voice tight with noise she was refusing. "The tar there isn't smooth—that's bone. Break both or it will cinch."
He broke both. The mesh sagged. The dragon rolled clumsily, shoved, and slipped the barbs of the cage. The mouth snapped again and caught only net.
For a heartbeat, everything went still. The wrong singing above became muffled thumps. The deep below held its breath. Relief washed up Rowan's spine.
The shadow came back.
The dragon charged.
Its long body undulated in clean, fast power. Its golden eyes blazed. The mane of fins flared. The pressure of its approach shook Rowan's jaw. Every old story about big mouths and quick deaths told him to flee. He didn't move. He didn't raise the harpoon. He looked back into that eye and held.
At the last instant the dragon veered. Its flank skimmed him, a hot push that spun him once in the water. It circled tight. Once. Twice. On the third pass it slowed and coiled around him, body a shimmering ribbon. The golden eye fixed on him again, close enough for him to see the thin dark line of its pupil change.
The weighing ended.
The dragon bumped him with its head. Not gentle. Not cruel. Deciding. The thread inside him went taut and then settled into a steady hum. A single image poured into him: a rush of open sky, spray burning in sunlight, breath without weight.
Come.
Rowan hooked the crook of his arm behind the base of the dragon's head, where fin met skull. His knees found ridges along the first third of the spine. He let the thread tell him where to sit so he would not slide.
The dragon turned and rose.
They went up like a thrown spear. The light grew quickly. Pressure eased until everything felt sharp.
The dragon burst out of the sea.
Water exploded skyward in a wide halo. Spray fell back in curtains. The dragon climbed higher anyway. Its long body arced, pearl-blue scales flashing. The mane of fins along its back glowed like liquid light. Rowan clung to the ridges, water streaming from his hair and beard, salt burning his eyes.
And the armada saw.
Gasps became shouts. Islanders dropped to their knees and struck their chests with both fists in the old rhythm. The sound rolled from deck to deck—two beats, then two beats—until it wrapped the wreck and came back again. Thalriss surfaced in a white-ringed circle, eyes wide and faces lifted. On the flagship the prince gripped the rail and rose a little without meaning to. Horns that had held their breath all morning finally blew. Their low notes rolled across the sea and made the skin prickle on every arm within hearing.
For a heartbeat the dragon seemed to swim through the sky. Rowan's silhouette rode it—small, soaked, steady.
Then the arc turned. They fell in a clean curve and hit. A wall of water rolled out. Cutters bucked. Longships pitched. Men staggered and grabbed for lines. Women shouted and then laughed, shocked and wild.
"Thalorin!" a Thalriss elder cried. She pressed two fingers to her lips, then brow, then sternum. "Thalorin!" The word leapt from boat to boat the way fire runs along dry rope. "Tha-lor-in! Tha-lor-in!" was the chant being heard.
The dragon surfaced again and circled the cutters. It stayed near Rowan's boat without needing to be asked. Its golden eyes glowed calm now. The faint lines along its sides pulsed as it breathed. It held its head high out of the water, whiskers trailing, horn nubs barely clearing the chop.
Rowan slid off and caught the gunwale. Darin hooked two fingers into the back of Rowan's belt and lifted with insulting ease. "Madman," he said, panting and grinning.
"Accurate," Rowan managed, coughing salt.
Mira leaned over the rail with her knife still in her hand. "Only you," she said, laughter bright under the shake in her voice. "Only you would ride a dragon on a work day."
"Jealous?" Rowan asked, because his mouth got stupid when it remembered it was alive.
"Deeply," she said. Todd zipped a circle of pure approval and hid under the thwart.
Luna arrived like a tide, quiet and unstoppable. She pressed a cloth against Rowan's bleeding shoulder. Her hands were steady even though her eyes shone. "Don't you ever do that to me again," she said, and then ruined the scold by smiling.
Lyra propped both hands on the rail and cried openly. "He says our boats are noisy but brave," she said, laughing through the tears. "He likes us. The dolphin thinks his whiskers tickle." The dolphin leapt beside the dragon as if to underline the point and then nudged the larger creature's cheek like a bold little sister.
Rowan met the dragon's gaze and felt the bond hum. The thought that arrived was simple and total. Mine. Not ownership. Belonging. Then, with blunt honesty that almost made him choke on the laugh: Hungry.
Rowan nodded. "Join the club."
The nearest crews burst into relieved laughter. It moved outward for three boat lengths like a ripple and then returned to work, because work never leaves.
"Lines down!" Mira yelled, turning from miracle to orders without losing a step. "Proper nets, not those cursed things. Hooks with honest bait. Move your hands like you want to eat tonight."
Thalriss slid off rails with knives to cut any last brace from the wreck. Men on the corrupted deck who could still run chose the water and disappeared. The ship itself groaned, split along a seam, and began to sink in two sulking halves. A last snarl of rope tried to catch a cutter's stern; Darin stamped it flat with Tharos's glow flaring around his ankles. The rope went still.
"Keep your feet," Darin called to the next boat as it kissed their rail. "Tie to me, not through me." He braced his shoulders under the rubbing posts and became, for three solid breaths, the beam they needed.
Fish came quick. The dragon ate with a young creature's joy—snapping schools whole, then taking the smaller ones delicately from the net with a twist of its jaws. Each time it swallowed, the glow along its sides flared and softened. Each time, Rowan felt a little pulse of thanks through the thread. Not words. The feeling of a door held for you when your hands are full.
Across the water the prince stood straight at last. Attendants hovered a step behind, hands ready and uncertain. He raised his chin and did not speak, but respect moved through the armada as if he had shouted it.
On a midline cutter two Islander women began a low chant, not the empty one from the corrupted deck but a work-song with a spine. It threaded itself into the beat of oars and the pound of chests. Thalriss tail-fins pressed and lifted in time, and the green water around their bodies went bright with air and motion.
The dragon eased closer to Rowan's boat and lowered its head. Its whiskers lifted, as if scenting him. Rowan put his palm to a broad scale near the eye. It was slick-warm, not cold. The eye narrowed a little and then widened again. The frill along its jaw rippled.
"Thank you," Rowan said quietly. He meant the life. He meant the trust. He meant the way it had chosen to come back rather than vanish into dark water.
The answer came down the bond like a clean, quick breath. Together.
Mira elbowed him. "Stop flirting with your new boyfriend," she said, voice low with relief. "Haul."
"I was being polite," Rowan said, but he took the rope she shoved into his hands and set his shoulders. Midg thumped once in agreement and then fell back into a steady drum.
They worked. Hooks arced. Buckets thumped. Someone tried the song about stew again and got shouted down to the verse about knives, which somehow fit better. The dragon kept eating until its glow softened to a steady pale. It didn't dive away. It stayed near the cutters, circling slow, whiskers lifting now and then as if tasting the boat's moods.
On the flagship the Thalriss elder who had first spoken laid her palm to her heart and bowed her head in Rowan's direction. "Thalorin," she said one more time, not as a shout now, but as a seal on a fact. A line of Thalriss on the water mimicked the bow. Islanders on a dozen decks thumped their chests in reply. Farther out, sailors who had only seen a white arc and a column of spray joined in because the horns and the drum said ours and that was enough.
Luna changed Rowan's bandage and tied it off with a firm tug that made him hiss. She kissed his temple for payment. "I'm not sorry it stings," she said. "You can kiss me back later if you behave."
"I will behave terribly and then kiss you anyway," Rowan said.
"Perfect," she said, and went to check a boy's bruised knee with the same tenderness she'd used on a king.
Lyra leaned on the rail, hair pasted to her cheeks, eyes still bright with too much listening. "He says we smell like bread," she said. "And thunder. And… home." She blinked, surprised by her own voice. "He's young. But not as young as he feels. He misses a… shape. Not a mother. Not exactly. Something large that never spoke in words."
"Family," Darin said. He tested a knot with his thumb, found it good, and let it be. "He has one now."
Rowan looked from face to face. His people. Mira's feral grin still refusing to fade. Darin's wide stance and tired eyes. Lyra's laugh struggling out even when tears kept trying to take its place. Luna's jaw set to keep her hands from shaking. The armada. The dragon. The quiet ring of Thalriss around them. The prince watching with his mouth hard and his eyes soft.
He set the butt of his harpoon on the deck, not as a banner but as a tool ready to work. "Cut the last wrong lines," he said, loud enough for the nearest boats without needing to shout. "Feed who needs feeding. Tow what floats. Sink what shouldn't. Then we go home."
"Aye," Mira answered, already throwing a coil to the next cutter.
"Aye," Darin said, shouldering two ropes at once.
Lyra nodded and smiled into the wind. "He agrees," she said. The dolphin chirped and smacked the water with its tail in petty triumph.
The corrupted ship's last half hissed and slipped under. The wrong chanting was gone. The only music left belonged to the fleet: the thud of chests, the scrape of rope, the soft slap of oars, and voices finding a key they could all sing in.
The dragon swam another slow circle, head up, nostrils flaring. It drifted nearer until Rowan could have hooked a finger in the corner of its jaw. He didn't. He kept his palm flat on the scale and let the bond hum.
"I'm here," he told it, out loud and down the thread.
The answer came back simple and absolute. Mine. A beat later, as if the honesty couldn't wait, Hungry.
Rowan snorted and shook his head. "You and me both."
Laughter rose again—lighter now, not the kind that shakes because it's done with crying, but the kind that makes room for the next breath.
The armada began to turn—slow, careful, practiced. Lines paid out. Tow ropes set. Men called to one another. Women corrected them without rancor. On far ships the word that had begun as a shock settled into simple speech. Thalorin. It threaded itself into sentences as if it had always belonged there.
Rowan took one last look at the horizon. It was a clean line today. Tomorrow it would not be. That didn't matter yet. He looked at the dragon, at the way its glow stayed easy now, at the way it kept one eye on him even when it dipped its head to eat. He looked at the fleet. He put his hand back to the rope. He pulled.
The dragon kept pace beside the cutters, a living river coiled into a guardian's shape, a promise the whole armada had seen and would not let the sea forget.