Lark scowls at the leather jerkin on General Dacre’s back as he dry-heaves into a sodden, moldy bucket. Anarah sits beside him with her hands entwined, chewing at her bottom lip.

  “I’m sure the mold makes it easier to keep things down,” Lark quips.

  The resulting wet belch from the general rips a chortle from her chest. She had hopped a ship before, when she was a small girl, having paid the captain off with pilfered coins. I want to see the world, she’d announced. The captain had laughed, but she knew he’d never turn down pay. Thumping her too-large leather boots onto the deck, she found that the ocean was not as fascinating as the old seafarers had claimed. A brazen, unremarkable expanse of blue. And birds. And blue. She spent most of her trip forcing the crew to teach her how to sail and how to fish, screaming that her father would hear of it should they refuse. She lost too many games of Liar’s Dice; her face was the unfortunate window into her mind. Her father, of course, sat fat and happy in his castle without a lick of knowledge as to where she may have imposed herself upon.

  Taeg had booked a ship to Tauris for them as soon as they hit the coast of Denand. The Denand ships were much smaller than those of the Larynthian fleet, but faster, with veteran crews that could teach you how to navigate using the stars. Lark had spent the first half of the day picking the boatswain’s head as he had picked his teeth.

  General Nathis slips his gray head through the doorway of the gunroom. “Captain says it will be another night, Tygoh.”

  A soft, affirmative grunt comes from the younger man.

  “Best get you something to drink that will stay down. Can’t have you shriveling away on us. The Tauran heat will kill you enough, let alone dehydration.”

  Tygoh clears his throat and looks up. “There are no damned horses to command on this rotting carcass of a ship anyhow.” A pause, and his back heaves again.

  Kelo, who had been pacing the deck of the ship for an hour, joins them, seating himself on the floor with his knees pulled up, a sigh ripping from his body.

  “What has you so worried, boy?” Nathis asks, leaning heavily against the wall of the gunroom, arms crossed over his torso, stripped of armor. There’s a ragged scar over his left shoulder, peering out from under the neck of his tunic.

  Kelo shakes his head. “You’re leading that woman to her death, sir.”

  A chuckle.

  “The King and I have discussed what will happen, Kelo. No harm will come to our assassin. However,” he waves a hand, “we do need her available in case things go south. I am sure the alchemists cannot overpower us all.”

  Kelo stutters, flailing. “They – you – overpower? They created every form of magic known to man, General. They are the most powerful beings we know.”

  The ship rocks, and a belch erupts from General Dacre, followed by an exasperated moan. Lark, intrigued, finds a seat at the rear of the room.

  “Father, what is he talking about?” Anarah asks, placing a light hand on her fiancé’s shoulder. “The alchemists have long disappeared, correct? The scrolls- “

  “The alchemists are very much a member of this convoluted plot we’ve all been dragged into. Kelo came to the King and I as we camped outside the Denand capital,” Nathis gestures at the frail being folded on the floor. “The alchemists are the creators of the Lynac, as they were the creators of our own magic.”

  Lark feels a tingle down her neck, thinking of the tattoo now permanently inked into her flesh.

  “Anarah, I’m sure you can confirm this, but alchemy relies on the exchange of energy. To create something from nothing is impossible.”

  Anarah nods.

  “Creating a power such as that of the Lynac requires a substantial amount of energy, and the calculations to do so are not precise. The alchemists miscalculated, according to our young friend here. That grievous miscalculation stripped the life energy from individuals such as Kelo—born whole, only to be spoiled by the greed of man. They succeeded in creating the Lynac; however, they created something more terrifying than they had anticipated. Living bodies devoid of life.”

  A cough racks his body and Lark flinches.

  “Of course, the first generation of these skeleton beings has long since been removed from this earth, I’m sure. How they continue to be created, I cannot say.”

  The silence that follows is palpable. Anarah is the first to recover.

  “Where does Drair come into this?”

  Lark had not seen the assassin since they boarded. She could only guess that the older woman had been skulking in the small hold below, tailed tucked between her legs.

  Nathis continues, holding his belly. “The alchemists determined that the only fix for their monstrous exchange of energy was to reverse it.”

  A small gasp comes from Anarah. “They’re sacrificing the Xelinites.”

  “Correct.”

  A choking sob erupts from Kelo.

  “Where is Drair now? And the King?” Lark speaks up, leaning forward onto her knees.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “The King elected to remain at the castle for the time being. The Grand Master is with him, as well as our armies. We are to face the alchemists alone. Drair is somewhere aboard, though I haven’t seen her in hours. She will resurface when we need her.”

  “She knows about this?” Anarah lifts the molding bucket to her fiancé’s chin as he spits.

  Nathis sits himself heavily in an empty chair. “She does.”

  The ship rocks gently. A whip of wind rips through the doorway and Nathis shivers. Lark studies him. His face has aged, cheeks sunken in, dark circles hanging under his sullen eyes. His once strong arms have begun to lose their structure. His skin is wrinkled with damage from the desert sun. There is a red scrape on his forearm where he had brushed against the doorframe. She eyes his sword, leaning against the gunroom wall. Its handle is worn. The leather wrappings about the hilt have frayed and faded with the sunlight, stained dark with the mark of his ever-familiar clammy hands. The blade dull, chipped, a far fetch from the weapon she had once cared for upon her arrival at the castle. Nathis had not brought it to her for months.

  She hears Tygoh clear his throat. A look in his direction reveals a pallid face framed with stray strands of black hair, hands struggling to remove the doublet from his shoulders.

  “The alchemists… incited the war against Xelinac.” His voice is like sand.

  Anarah shakes her head. “History writes that Roland was the instigator,.” She shoots a look at her fiancé, then another at her father. “He saw the Xelinites as a threat.”

  “No.”

  Kelo’s voice is firm. Lark had almost forgotten he was there.

  “It was the High Warlock. The man with the Leviathan tattoo.”

  Lark eyes him. “How do you know all this, Kelo?”

  Kelo’s eyes drift to hers, then shift back to the ground as quickly as they had come. He fidgets. “I once inquired into the procedure at my mother’s wishes. That’s how I know all of this. I was afraid you may condemn me for such a selfish act.”

  Lark laughs. “You are the opposite of selfish. Me, on the other hand,” she jests, flipping her falling braid off her shoulder with a roughened hand. “I’m sure Nathis already knows everything you’ve done. He has a knack for picking the morally questionable and the wayward. Don’t you, old man?”

  Nathis smiles weakly, and his silence wipes the grin from her face.

  “I attended a ceremony,” Kelo continues. “I didn’t stay long. The screams were…” He trails off, skeletal hands beginning to shake. A breath moves his shoulders. “My mother will be there. She will try to convince me to go to them, I know it.”

  “Then we will meet your mother.” Anarah lifts from her chair and grabs Tygoh’s bucket, excusing herself to the deck of the ship.

  Kelo lifts from the floor like a clumsy wraith and wobbles out the doorway himself, picking at the hem of his sleeve.

  “Do either of you fools have a plan for this heist we’re about to begin?” Lark says into the room, eyes bobbing from Tygoh to Nathis.

  Nathis clears his throat. “No, but we should know by the end of the journey. Follow Kelo. Speak to him. He knows Tauris in and out.”

  Lark nods, picking herself up off her wobbly chair, slipping through the doorway around Nathis to find the corpse boy. The night ocean air greets her with memories of the sea. She finds Kelo, surrounded by the dark with only the light of the stars shining off his cloak, leaning hard against the railing of the ship, face peering into the dark expanse. The air is tepid and balmy, smelling of salt and algae. She skulks down the deck to make herself at home beside the King’s brother, folding her arms across the railing.

  After a moment of silence, she speaks. “You’ve made this trip before.” She reaches back to fiddle with her braid, untying the cord and untangling the flaxen waves with her fingers.

  “I have,” he whispers.

  She looks at him. His hood is pulled back for the first time that she can remember. “Do you remember when it happened?” she looks away, into the waves. “Your change?”

  “Thankfully, no.” A small upturn of his lips. A wave crashes against the hull. Then another. “My mother does,” he says after a while. “She claims it looked as if I was rotting, that I might have returned to the earth. I try to be thankful that I did not, but there are times I wish I had.”

  Lark takes a deep breath of ocean air and twiddles her thumbs over the railing. It always surprised her how loud the ocean was, the roaring build and crash of water against the hull, seagulls circling the mast like carrion birds, cawing their lament for food, and the slap of the sailcloth in a spit of wind. In the depth of the darkness before them, a blast of spray erupts from the surface of the water, then a hulking dorsal fin the color of shale. Lark watches as Kelo stumbles from the railing with a soft shriek and a sharp inhale, ocean spray reaching his face. She chuckles.

  “A dolphin,” she hums. “They follow the ships.”

  Kelo tiptoes back to the railing, placing his skeletal fingers upon the worn wood. “I thought we were done for,” he breathes, staring wide-eyed at the blanket of ocean before him. He shoots Lark a glance, then a snort spasms through what is left of his nose. A frenzy of giggles shake his thin shoulders under the tattered cloak as Lark watches, bemused. When he is done, he speaks.

  “You are to be Queen, correct?”

  He manages to compose himself, leaning back over the railing, wiping spray from his cheeks. Lark’s heart spooks in her throat. She opens her lips and closes them again.

  She manages a nod.

  “To be royalty…” Kelo muses. “I would be terrified. Are you not?”

  “That I will become Queen?” Her eyes meet him. “Not as much as you are of dolphins and horses,” she scoffs, then grins. “I suppose it is the ultimate revenge of my father for my disappearance. He got what he wanted after all, while appeasing my need for independence.” She scowls into the dark. “But I have no intentions of marrying the king. He is more like an elder brother to me.”

  Kelo nods. “You would be the first Queen with a Mark, no?”

  “The Crown Mark? Yeah.” She blinks into the night, recalling the power she had conjured in the library. Was her fear of being Queen more than her fear of living under her father’s thumb? The two were one and the same. To become the Queen would befit the life her father had hoped for her, though not in quite the way he had imagined—sans the politics and the ladyship. She looks at Kelo, noticing the wistful, cautious gaze that graces his face.

  “Why would it scare you?” she asks.

  Kelo, jumping from his thoughts, squints. “I would be the one they look toward. The people, I mean. To be a monstrosity like myself, you get used to hiding away from people. All eyes would be on me to make the right decisions, to hold myself responsible, to save them from danger. I just don’t believe I am capable.”

  Lark nods. “My father believes that caution and apprehension are the traits of a good leader.” She lifts herself from the railing. “Look at me, quoting my father.” She looks across the ocean into the black.

  “You seem to hold contempt for him,” the corpse boy whispers, barely audible over a gushing wave. “Perhaps he feared losing you to his obligations as a noble, and letting you make your journey to the castle in your own way was his way of fulfilling both his duties as father and his burdens as a lord to the crown.” Lark hears him sigh. “Our parents do what they must to keep us safe, even if it means making a questionable decision.”

  Lark turns to eye the group of Guardsmen gathered in the gunroom. Soft candlelight peeks from the doorway, illuminating General Nathis leaning against the wall. He catches her eye and smiles.

  “Perhaps,” she says.