The Golden Son bows his head as Zyphoro’s gaze sweeps over him, then he straightens. “I appreciate your… kindness, and you need not fear me.”
Zyphoro’s laughter breaks loose again, louder. She slaps her knee, nearly tipping over. “Oh, darling, I am neither kind nor afraid. But how deliciously naïve of you to think so much of yourself… and of me.”
She tilts her chin, eyes dragging over him, not just assessing, but devouring. A slow smile curves her mouth. “Perhaps I won’t return you to your army of traitors after all. Perhaps I’ll keep you for myself. Make you my pet.”
Her finger taps against her chin. “You can crawl at my feet, lick the mud from my boots. Hmm… yes. I think I’ll call you… Scratch.”
“My name is Ronin,” he replies. Calm. Unflinching. Not the usual reaction to Zyphoro’s teasing.
My eyes flash, eager for chaos to follow.
He squares his shoulders as Zyphoro circles, smoke curling between her fingers, a dagger materializing from the shadows in her hand.
They stand off for what feels like eternity, neither yielding, neither breaking eye contact, every breath thick with the possibility of violence or fucking, it could go either way with my sister.
“Ronin,” she says at last, voice a velvet whip. “Very well.”
The smoke swirls, then the dagger vanishes as if it had never existed.
“Not long to go now.”
Her wings snap from her back, catching the dawn light, and she ascends to the crow’s nest.
I turn to him. He does not relax. His chest broadens, fists clenched, body taut as a drawn bow, ready for whatever I might do and he should prepare. He should anticipate. Gygarth is not hunting me, and I am free to call the void. I could rend him into so many pieces there wouldn’t be enough for the birds to scavenge.
But Zyphoro is right. Somehow, impossibly, she is right. I will not kill him. It would bring me no pleasure.
“You’ve earned yourself a reprieve,” I say, voice edged with gravel. “But if you enjoy your head attached to your neck, don’t do anything stupid.”
“I want the same things you do,” he says, shoulders easing just enough to suggest a truce. “So, I will work with you until Amara is healed. But I will not bow. I am not yours to command. I have not forgotten.”
My jaw ticks, teeth grinding. A whisper of smoke unfurls from my back, wings stretching wide enough to blot out the rising sun as it paints the horizon in fire and shadow.
“Neither have I,” I rasp, each word heavy with warning and promise. “So on second thought, please… do something stupid.”
He doesn’t respond. Only takes a single step back, and the faintest sting of disappointment coils in my chest.
I lift from the deck, soaring upward before settling beside Zyphoro in the crow’s nest.
“Calm yourself, brother,” she says. “He has an army on land, which is more than we do. The thrall houses lie in ruins. Lords and ladies dead. The Blades’ ranks shattered. There may still be a use for him.”
I furrow my brow. “That is very fucking rational of you, sister.”
She exhales, a soft huff laced with amusement despite herself. “I may have lost fragments of my mind over the centuries, but I’m not a fool, brother.”
My gaze lingers on her, the eyes so like mine, the other half of the moonstone glinting at her throat, our mother’s moonstone. A reminder of blood and bond, of a past neither of us can escape. “Of course you’re not.”
Her frown severs the brief warmth between us. “Don’t get sentimental. Just help me move this ship faster, would you?”
I draw in a breath and let my fingers brush the frayed edges of the void. Smoke unfurls at my command, spilling into the waves until the sea itself blackens, alive with shadow. The ship surges forward, leaping as though the very currents bend to me.
My eyes cut to the horizon, the silhouette of the mainland sharpening with each beat of my heart. But the fate that awaits there is anything but clear.
***
It has been so long since I’ve worn my armor that it feels almost foreign now. The leathers and boots creak as they mold once more to my body, the harnesses biting into chest and thighs, blades nestled in their familiar sheaths. Iron plates rest on my shoulders, and the shrouded helm hangs heavy under my arm. Beside me, my sister conjures her own war-garb, boot braced on the railing, tapping her dagger against a bent knee while the rolling green of the mainland stretches before us.
“It’s quiet,” she mutters, scanning the shore.
