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The mist thins. Not everywhere. Just in front of me, just over the sea, a gap that opens like a lens focusing. And I see.

Shapes under the surface. Too many. Too still. They are arranged in a pattern, a grid that stretches out toward the horizon, and they are not rocks. They are not wrecks. They are bodies. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Suspended in the grey-green water like flies in amber, and every one of them is facing the shore.

The mist closes. The vision is gone.

I am breathing hard. My hands are braced on the jetty rail, and I do not remember putting them there. The burn scar on my left arm is cold, not hot, a deep cold that goes all the way to the bone.

The fisherman is watching me from the harbour wall. He has not moved.

“You saw it,” he says. It is not a question.

“Yes.”

“What are they?”

I do not answer. Because I think I know, and I do not want to say it aloud. The forsaken are multiplying. And those shapes under the water are not floating. They are anchored. Placed. A grid of the dead.

The old fisherman comes down the jetty. His footsteps are slow, and the planks creak under him, and when he reaches me he does not look at the water. He looks at the sand, at the sigil Corin is still tracing, and then at my face.

“Quod sanguis oblivion est, sal memninit,” he says.

I have heard those words before. I did not know where.

“Where did you hear that?” My voice is steady. I make it steady.

He shrugs. “It's an old saying. Older than the village. Older than the fishing. The old folk used to say it when the catch was bad or the weather turned strange. I hadn't thought of it in years. Not until last night.”

“Last night?”

“When the boats didn't come back. I was standing here, on this jetty, looking at the water. And the words just came into my head. Like something was putting them there.”

Corin's stick scratches in the sand. Circle. Line. Circle. Line.

“I can try to help him, if you like? My magic is…. I might be able to help if you’d let me?”

He nods his head. I lean down, using the light to heal his visible wounds, and then I reach into his mind with light. Everything he knows is still remaining, playing with children, fishing on the boats, his mother making him tea with elderflower in the evenings to stop the sun-stroke—but I can’t see what happened. It is a thick static, so instead of trying to dig deeper I burn the past few days of memories from his mind, finding the threads of his mind and slowly burning them from existence.

Once I am done, I let him know what I did. He was sad but grateful—a few days gone for a lifetime of memories and the boy back is a blessing, considering the circumstances. He did not ask me any questions, with a grateful look in his eyes. I did not feel ashamed of my gifts.

The mare is where I left her. She shies when I approach, nostrils flaring, and I realize I am still carrying the little wolf. It takes the wolf effort. More effort than it should to peer his little eyes at me. I couldn’t leave him to die, not on my watch, I couldn’t save my family; I can save him.

I mount. The village is silent behind me. The smoke from the fisherman's cottage has died, and the only light is the grey glow of the mist diffusing the last of the dusk. I turn the mare's head toward the road.

The mist follows us for a long time. I do not look back as I travel back to the palace.

I do not rest, and the wolf curls up next to me for warmth.“Keyne, I will call you Keyne.”

The mare’s hooves ring hollow on the cobbles as I ride through the lower gate. The capital folds itself around me in the dusk, shutters closing, cook fires smoking, a child’s voice calling someone inside. I do not slow. The guards at the inner wall see my face and the spears part before I can draw rein.

The palace swallows me through the eastern door. No one stops me. No one asks me where I have been.

I am halfway up the winding stair before it lands.

No one asked at the lower gate… or the inner wall. The spears parted before I drew rein, and I told myself it was my face that did it, a princess’s face, but the Umbra guards at the eastern gate did not look at my face. They looked at the wall above my head, as if they were told they were not to see me.

Three checkpoints on the coast road. Not one of them slowed me.

I was permitted. In my own kingdom.