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“Ah. I take it you couldn’t convince her to stay behind either?”

“No. My powers of persuasion are failing remarkably well today. I don’t know why you didn’t take after me a little more and have a bit less of your mother’s heroism. I think you’d be much more inclined to sit here in safety if you had.”

I chuckled. “I hate to tell you this, dear father, but you are not a man who sits back and does nothing. How many wars have you battled again?”

One corner of his mouth twisted. “Every bleeding fae war. I fear battle is rather attracted to me, not that I blame it, of course.” He used one knuckle to tilt my chin up. “And I’ve not fallen yet. Even after a few close calls. In fact, I’ve never lost a battle. I don’t plan to begin today. I want you to know, I will fight to bring him back to you.”

My heart swelled. “You’ve overcome your qualms, I see.”

“I’ve only had said qualms because our paths kept crossing. I was not ready to accept there was a chance he might have a connected fate that wound around my daughter’s.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Much the same as Valen felt about Bloodsinger and Livia, I could not deny our house kept entangling with the house of Harald and his son. I accept it now, of course. I wish for your happiness more than my selfish wants to keep you as only my girl the rest of your life.”

“You and Maj have shown me what a true, unbreakable love means. I feel that with Tait, but it only means our house has grown by one. We’ve not lost anything.”

“I know, Starlight. Still, I would be much more inclined if all of you damn heirs to thrones would stop finding lovers that required a battle to keep them. First Livia, then the alvers had to retrieve Skadi, and now you. If Sander and Aleksi can break the tradition, we’ll all rest a little easier at night.”

I chuckled, but it died swiftly.

Shouts roared over the deck. Wind whipped my hair around my face when I leaned over the rail.

“Eilifur.” The word was a ghost of a whisper over my tongue.

Tavish kept one foot propped on a cask. His face pinched in concentration. One hand extended, the man kept gasping short breaths to keep his song flowing.

The final sheet of mist pulled away, revealing the wooden docks, the sod rooftops, the treacherous staircase climbing the cliffside to the main house.

“Ready the spears, me boys!” Swordeater shouted from the quarterdeck.

Erik handed the helm over to a man I knew as Hans Skulleater, then put his hand in Livia’s and strode down the steps. “Make ready to storm their shores, you sods.”

Conch shells echoed down the shoreline. Let them sound their alarms. Let them draw their blades.

We would take them. We would ruin them.

My mother joined me and my father on the deck. As Daj described, she was sturdier and clad in tight trousers and boots, knives lining her belt. A warrior queen. A war ender.

“House Sekundär takes the shore with three of us, my loves,” Daj said. “But we will be leaving with one more, no less. Understand me?”

Maj took his hand, but she turned her gaze to me. “We fight for our house tonight.”

I straightened my spine. All my life, I admired my parents for their boldness, their bravery, their violence. But here, in this moment, they stood one pace behind me.

They stood in the shadow of their daughter.

Heavy wheels pounded over the deck as crewmen aligned the barrels of the spears with the gaps in the rail. Fire sticks ignited. The men looked to the Ever King.

“Fire!” Erik bellowed.

For half a breath, barely a heartbeat, there was a haunting silence. Then, the ember spears burst in ash and flame. The air filled with a thunderous boom, boom, boom.

The flames caught the dock, the outer walls. Fire clawed up the shoreline like a demon from the hells. When the first screams rose from the village, Erik lifted a palm to draw the seas up to catch us.

One after another, we leapt over the rails and into the water.

I stumbled off the plank. My father was there to lift me back to my feet. He did not question if I was ready and ran for the shore, my mother and me at his shoulder.