“If you think you’re facing a dragon without me, you are a fool.” Tavron’s mouth closed with a soft click. The map crinkled in his grip. Her steady gaze held no room for argument, only a stark, unyielding resolve. Her slate-colored irises had lost their edge over the past weeks, yet now an old defiance sharpened them. Her knuckles blanched where she held the quilt, sweat bead-strung at her hairline, while pale crystalline threads branched upward over her collarbone toward her throat. “Freyris,” he began, his voice a low rumble, “you are barely strong enough to stand. The Ember Isles are a boiling furnace, a place of searing winds and caustic geysers. This isn’t a stroll through a Star-Market.” She swung her boots over the edge of the mattress, hinges in her joints protesting. The leather tunic stretched taut across her shoulders. “And you, Lord Tavron, are no strategist when it comes to self-preservation. You’d charge a Sun-Drake with a butter knife if you thought it would save someone you cared for. Perhaps I should keep an eye on you.” A thin smirk pulled at her mouth, then broke on a dry rasp that coughed a glimmering blue petal onto her lower lip. She quickly wiped it away, her expression hardening. He stepped closer, watching the rise and fall of her ribs. “My lady,” he said, the honorific a balm and a barb, “you are dying.” Her gaze met his, unwavering. “Then let me die fighting. Or at least, let me die with some purpose, beside you.” Her hand reached for his, her fingers, cold and delicate, closing around his knuckles. Her skin felt like damp river stones in winter against his knuckles. “Don’t leave me alone again, Tavron. Not now.” The air in his throat turned sour. Under her steady stare lay a raw dread he recognized from his own mirror. He nodded, once. “Fine. But you follow my commands, without question.” “Always, my lord,” she said, tilting her chin up despite the tremor in her knees. He wrapped an arm around her ribs and guided her along the gangway to the moored skiff. Raldien stood beside the boarding net, brows drawn tight, and took her elbow to ease her onto the deck. The journey to the Ember Isles was a grueling one. The winds grew turbulent, hot and gritty, carrying the scent of sulfur. Freyris, huddled in a thick cloak, trembled despite the hot draft. Her skin grew unnaturally warm, a flush spreading across her cheeks that wasn't from the sun. The crystalline veins pulsed with a faint, internal light, like slow-burning embers under her skin. She drifted in and out of consciousness, muttering broken syllables. One afternoon, as the skiff cut through a plume of steam, she cried out, a sharp, piercing sound that made Tavron flinch. “No! Don’t go back to her!” Freyris arched against the bench, her gaze fixed on the empty rigging above. “She’ll poison you! Lysandra, please…” Her voice faded to a dry rasp. Tavron pressed a wet rag against her brow, listening as her throat rasped out names. “She made me promise… I promised I’d save you from Jorvia. You were so blind, so caught in her web. Lysandra, she chose… she chose to protect you, even then. I couldn’t let her sacrifice be for nothing. I had to stay, to fight Jorvia from the inside, to keep you safe.” Water gathered along her eyelashes, dripping down her temple. “I failed her. I failed you.” Tavron pressed his teeth together until the bone ached. A sudden, jarring klaxon blared through the oppressive air, rattling the skiff. Raldien, who had been scanning the horizon, yelled, “Lord Tavron! A war-galleon! Bearing Jorvia’s colors!” Tavron seized the tiller. The monstrous vessel, black as obsidian and bristling with cannons, loomed out of the haze, its sails emblazoned with the Vexing Asp crest. It was faster than he’d anticipated, and far too close. A booming voice, magnified by a comm-horn, ripped through the sky. “Lord Tavron! Surrender the traitor Raldien and the criminal Freyris now, or be incinerated!” Tavron’s hand instinctively went to his storm-blade, but the skiff was outmatched, outgunned. Freyris stirred, her eyes fluttering open, now clear but filled with a profound dread. “Jorvia,” she croaked, her voice barely a breath. Raldien, however, moved with a sudden, startling speed. He darted to the skiff’s small, auxiliary Grand Comm-Horn, usually reserved for emergency distress signals. Before Tavron could question him, Raldien flipped a series of switches, his fingers flying across the arcane controls. A moment later, the Comm-Horn crackled to life, not broadcasting their position, but *receiving*. “This is Raldien of the Hearth-Guard,” his voice, amplified by the Comm-Horn, boomed across the air, clear and resonant, aimed directly at Jorvia’s galleon. “To the crew of the Asp of Velantris! Your mistress, Jorvia, has engaged in treasonous blackmail, extortion, and attempted murder. I have here, on record, her signed contracts with the Shadow-Cove assassins and her instructions to poison Lady Freyris. I have also the sworn statements of witnesses she coerced, including her own sister’s indentured agreement, used to force me to her bidding.” A stunned silence fell across the oppressive air. Even the winds seemed to hold their breath. On Jorvia’s flagship, the booming voice of her captain faltered, then cut out entirely. The horn hissed, and Raldien continued, “She has used you, her crew, as shields for treason. These documents are now being broadcast on all public frequencies. Your loyalty, I assure you, is misplaced.” Below them, on Jorvia’s ship, a ripple of murmurs erupted, growing swiftly into a roar. Figures moved on the deck, not in formation, but in chaotic disarray. Tavron watched, incredulous, as a group of uniformed guards, their faces grim, converged on Jorvia, who stood on her command deck, her face a mask of furious disbelief. A struggle ensued, brief and violent. Jorvia, screaming obscenities, was forcibly disarmed and restrained. Her own guards, their faces etched with betrayal, clamped manacles on her wrists. Tavron let out a harsh laugh of relief. Jorvia, stripped of her power, humiliated by her own crew, was being dragged away. But as they led her, writhing, toward the brig, her eyes, burning with pure venom, locked onto Tavron’s skiff. With a guttural snarl, she wrenched one arm free, grabbing a nearby harpoon launcher. She aimed, a desperate, final act of malice, and fired. The barbed iron shaft whistled through the steam. It slammed into the skiff’s primary aileron with a sickening crunch, tearing through the reinforced sailcloth and sending splinters of bone-wood flying. The craft banked sideways, rudder cables snapping, and pitched into a dive. The searing heat of the Ember Isles rose to meet them with terrifying speed. Tavron grabbed Freyris, shielding her as the world spun. The thermal updraft slammed into the keel, tossing timber and iron into a violent spin. Freyris’s head hit the bulkhead with a dull thud. Her grip on him went slack. He reached down to pull her close. Her skin, already translucent, was now entirely encased in a shimmering, deadly sheath of solid ice, her eyes frozen open, unseeing. The skiff plummeted, spiraling out of control, toward the boiling caldera below.

Mutiny in the Sky