Chapter 1

1

• YEMI •

The body was only a body in the sense that there was a belly button to keep it from being some other category of meat. There was a torso, bare and pale and waterlogged with shredded flesh at its ribs like so much fringe. What was left of the viscera that had once filled it was now a short trail just shy of the tide line. The remaining arm had been slashed in some places and nibbled in others and was without a hand altogether.

“Any way to tell if he’s one of ours? Crew of the Clodion?” Yemaya frowned. She stood over the body, rolling almonds in her hand before popping them into her mouth.

“Not likely. The half of him that’s left has seen better days,” Commander Hurand replied.

“Sharks?”

“Could be. Not really the type to play with their food, though.”

He looked at her pointedly, the way everyone looked at her when they didn’t want to say the word.

Mer.

“Hmph,” she grunted, neither confirming nor rejecting the idea.

“My Light. Commander,” someone called from behind them. Yemaya turned to see another one of her younger soldiers climbing the short hill. He presented her with the violet tatters of an Ixian flag.

“Found this washed up on the southern end of the beach. Stuck on some rocks.”

She inspected it. Torn, but nothing burned, none of it chewed.

“Anything else with it?”

“Nothing, My Light,” he replied.

Yemaya sighed, disappointed, and looked off toward the south as if answers were waving there, waiting to be noticed. “Right. Let’s get divers out before we lose the light. Look for wreckage. And, Hurand, collect this one for a proper send-off.”

Commander Hurand flinched. He was likely just fine leaving the body where it was.

“My Light, forgive me. Shouldn’t we take this… person back home?” the young soldier asked.

“He’s chum,” she replied. She didn’t mean to seem heartless, but it was a health hazard no one would have wanted to bear any distance in the first place. “No one’s making an identification off this, so no point traumatizing a family or more trying to figure it out. We’ll honor him all the same. Just get him to my ship. We’ll have Brother Lain do the rite.”

Her soldiers bowed and she left them to their tasks, heading down the grassy hill and back to the beach. Less than a week ago, legacy gunship the Clodion had disappeared at sea, and Yemi had been asked by her mother and the superstitious priests of the order known as the Kept to look out for it.

A small flotilla of her ships bobbed in the bay. She paused on the hill to sketch the scene quickly in her worn leather notebook. They’d been returning from a routine naval exercise in the southern seas when she’d spotted this island. And out of either curiosity or want of a reason not to go home just yet, she’d decided it was worth exploring. The body had been a surprise.

Her personal guard, Nova, waited on the beach, spear twirling in her hand. She was a lighter shade of brown, a warm sand to Yemaya’s cool clay, and her pompadour of white curls bobbed carelessly in the breeze.

“Lot of help you were protecting me from whatever maniac could be roaming the island, chopping people up and chewing on them,” Yemaya called.

Nova turned to her. “Nah, you were good.”

“What kind of guardian gets squeamish about dead bodies?”

“What kind of Qorrea are you to be so taken with them?”

“I’m royalty. I get to be eccentric,” Yemaya replied, tugging irritably at the royal collare of gold rings stacked around her neck. “Half your job’s hypothetically the killing part.”

“When I get to them, they’re still alive and probably pissed me off. I don’t like when they’re… in pieces already.” Nova made a show of scraping the taste of the idea from her tongue with her top teeth. “You make an ID?”

“Too far gone. Divers are headed out to look for wreckage. I think he’s from the Clodion.”

“Six ships missing this year,” Nova pondered aloud. “All Ixian, none of them found. Somebody’s fucking with you.”

“Hurand thinks it’s Mer.”

Nova raised an eyebrow. “He said that?”

“You know he didn’t. He did the wink-nudge thing.”

“I was about to say, bold of him.”

“I swear, first soldier to not treat my lineage like some dirty secret literally everyone knows gets a commendation,” Yemaya said, squinting into the soon-setting sun.

“They’re probably trying to forget as part of the Reconstruction,” Nova offered. “Hell, if it turns out you’re half what’s-eating-sailors, you’ll want them to forget.”

“You think it’s Mer?” Yemaya asked her.

“Do you think it’s Mer?”

She thought a moment. “Wouldn’t be unheard of. I mean, they used to, right? It was a whole thing.”

“Might be time to get Cerro to triple up on those tributes.”

“Ugh. Only if I have nothing to do with them,” Yemaya groaned. If one more of the Kept’s droning, pollen-drenched ceremonies was added to her schedule, she’d run screaming into the sea her damn self.

She crouched and ran damp black sand through her fingers. The island was lush and new, judging by the volcanic sulfur smell tingeing the breeze. It was too small and too far off to be of any strategic value to Ixia, but she enjoyed knowing an unknowable place. Still, this was one of her side adventures that might prove useful to someone other than herself—her fickle kingdom and increasingly-sick-of-her-shit mother, the queen, specifically.

They watched as the body was carried past them, suspended in a dark tarp, and on board a dinghy that would bear it to the ships.

“Qorrea!” Commander Hurand called, motioning toward the little boat.

Yemaya glanced at Nova, who shook her head almost violently. “Next one.”

“We’ll grab the next one,” Yemaya called back. “Come on, you big baby. I’ve got maybe twenty minutes before I’m summoned again. Chaperone me up this rock so I can get one last view of the coast.”

She had tried picking up her father’s journaling habit after his death. It didn’t take, but her sketching skills were passable and practicing gave her peace.

“Did you draw that guy? Or… what was left of him?”

“I’m not tasteless. I did think about it, though.”

They headed toward the northern end, Nova gesturing to the idle soldiers on the beach to stand down. A tall cliff face was sheer on one side but appeared to be gradual on the other, and Yemaya thought it would be an ideal vantage point to get what she could of the island in the little time she had. She paused as they angled upward, contorting herself on small, slick spots of dark rock to get shots of interesting tree formations or glimpses of rodents hiding in coves and crags.

“How did you get here?” she muttered cheerfully to a tawny mouse standing frozen in the grass. She stood to continue the climb but stopped when she noticed the small smile on Nova’s face.

“What is it? I sit in something?” Yemaya asked.

“No, I just like when you like things.”

Yemaya rolled her eyes.

“Really,” Nova continued. “You take your job so seriously, which is great, but your whole life is the job.”

“I’ve had to be ready for it every day for eight years,” Yemi sighed, hoisting herself over a fallen tree.

“You’re right. I just appreciate the moments you forget about it sometimes.”

“Are you bored? You’re sentimental today.”

“Yemi, I’m so bored,” Nova groaned at the sky. “So bored. I have never liked boat days, I never will like boat days, and I think you know that.”

“Good thing for you that we’ll be trapped on the Rock soon enough, then.”

“You don’t have to be trapped in a palace the rest of your life. When you’re queen, you can change any tradition you want.”

“Tell that to the Kept. The people are barely fine with Mer blood on the throne. They’re not going to be excited about one of us picking it apart.”

“You going to let them marry you to a Drake, too?”

“The father or the daughter?”

“Excuse me?” Nova scoffed.

“Joking. I’m still fun.”

“What if we eloped?”

Yemi almost tripped. “Sorry?”

“The queen’s Day of Days is close. After that, we take off for a day or three on some fictional diplomatic whatever, do the thing, and spend the rest of the time in bed sampling pastries with my not having to worry that someone might be on their way to kill you.”

“Did you drink the seawater?”

“Wasn’t thirsty.”

“I don’t think royals can take time off.”

“If we do it before you’re queen, no one will even miss us. We can stay close. Holicrane House, maybe.”

Yemi winced. Her family’s summer home. They hadn’t been back there since… Well, since there’d been family. “The current queen would kill us both. Give me a boost.”

“I think she’d see the romance in it.”

Yemi paused in her climb to shake her head and kiss Nova quickly. They’d been planning their wedding casually over the course of the fourteen years or so they’d known each other, twelve of which they’d spent together as royal and guardian. But holy law dictated no marriage before ascension as a gesture to the Old Gods, that no human union could come before a sacred one. It was one of many painfully absurd rules Yemi found herself forced to adhere to or risk a third war over her right to the throne.

“I do love you,” she assured Nova. “We will be married, and you will be my queen. But if we arrange anything my mother cannot be part of, she will kill you first, and quickly, just because she likes you more.”

“Could be worth it,” Nova replied and hoisted Yemi onto the rock.

The top of the rise gave way to cooler wind and a view of the entire leeward side of the island. Much of it was covered in long, soft grasses and tall, thin trees. Yemi snapped the pictures that would help her piece together its topography later. It was a shame the excursion was so brief. She wouldn’t get all of it. Each click of the shutter felt like a successfully passed moment. It was an earned breath, a bookmark in some page of her life she could return to when times inevitably got worse. She found herself delaying going home whenever she could now, because those times promised to find her soon. She’d been fortunate to stave them off this long.

She sighed and scanned the island for anything remarkable she may have missed, when she caught sight of the bubbling sea beyond the tops of a cluster of trees near the opposite end. She squinted and made out what appeared to be a wide spot of thrashing white among the waves.

“Come up here,” she told Nova. “West, between those trees and the mountain. What is that?”

It took Nova a moment to find the spot, but after some time, she shrugged. “Something spawning?”

Yemi adjusted her camera lens as best she could and was able to make out broad tail fins before a trio of ostensibly human heads attached to mottled human torsos appeared. They seemed to be talking. With any luck, it wasn’t about the Ixian fleet.

“No. Mer,” she said grimly.

“That’s… not ideal.” Nova frowned. “Hell of a coincidence, though. Do we notify the commanders?”

“No. If that rumor about the body has spread through the ranks already, they’ll be looking to hunt. We can’t fight an ocean.” She stowed her camera and hopped down from her perch. “We’ll say nothing and hope they’re minding their business. But we should leave before anyone notices them.”

“What if they strike first? And the body was to lure ships here?” Nova asked as they headed down the hill.

“Then I did my best. But that’d solve your boredom problem.”

“Heh.” Nova smirked. “You’re not wrong.”

The proper send-off for any Ixian was a burial at sea. A priest from the Kept cleaned the body of the deceased. They wrapped it in muslin soaked with cloying, aromatic oils and adorned it with bright floral wreaths meant to ward off the ocean’s predators and let its Old Gods—from whom the Mer were allegedly descended—know this was someone returning home.

They set the nameless remains afloat on a small raft made of driftwood from on board the Dulce Periculum just after sunset. It was the dead king’s ship, jewel of the fleet, and Yemi would sail on no other while her father’s ghost lived here.

Brother Lain, robed in white, uttered his prayers to the wind over the port beam while soldiers stood in silent, reverent rows on every deck of the flotilla. He poured anointing oil through Yemi’s open hands into an abalone shell and mingled it with seawater before tossing it overboard after the body.

“From the seas we came,” the collected masses echoed after him in a somber monotone. “And to the seas we return.”

A young page by the name of Aidin presented Yemi with a white rag to clean her hands while the assembled soldiers were dismissed to their evenings.

Lain was a relatively young priest and much less of a zealot than many of the others keeping residence at the palace. He was tall and lean, with a prominent brow and kind eyes framed by wire eyeglasses. And he was funny. He’d been charged as Yemi’s head tutor most of her life as well, and that job required a certain amount of wit and patience, neither of which he seemed to possess in the performance of his duties. So when Yemi jokingly (half jokingly, anyway) remarked that maybe he could go easy on the oil next time, he didn’t stop the rambling prayer that would continue until the body was out of sight. He did, however, cut his eyes at her in the familiar way that suggested the prayer was also a curse and that she should leave him alone before it bore fruit.

She took the hint and returned the rag to the page before heading to the captain’s quarters with Nova close on her heels as guardians tended to be. Sun-draught sails were stored, and the engines powered by the sunlight they drank were ordered ready as anchors retracted as they prepared for home. There was a lurching sound and the creaking of warming metal as they got underway.

“This has to be what a bee’s ass smells like,” Yemi groaned, holding her hands as far from her body as possible.

“So do I get you alone now? In the dark, away from prying eyes,” Nova mused, maddeningly close to Yemi’s ear.

“Calm down,” Yemi replied behind a grin. “I still have my briefing. I need you to find me resistible for at least another hour.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, gorgeous. I’m mostly looking forward to a nap and a shower.”

Yemi stopped to look at her, unsure if she was joking.

“What? I said mostly. And I did call you gorgeous.”

“You’re relieved of duty, then. Not like there’s an entire armada out here who can do your job or anything.”

Nova chuckled in a vaguely naughty way. “If by job, you mean—”

“I don’t. Go to bed!” Yemi said quickly, despite her laugh.

“As you wish. Come knock when you’re done.”

She continued up the stairs alone to where a soldier opened the door for her. The collected commanders and their assisting staff stood and bowed as she entered.

“As you were,” she said lazily.

Once the door was shut, the room was stifling with the scents of tobacco and hearth and of bergamot someone was wearing poorly.

“Who’s overdone the cologne? Less of it, please. We’re in tight quarters. A window, someone.” Yemaya frowned as she took her seat. Chuckles and mutterings of “Yes, My Light” fluttered about the room.

A window was opened and the commanders joined her around a large, square table covered in overlapping maps secured by brass weights and a grid of leather straps. Commander Hurand presented her with a leather portfolio stacked with training results from every vessel.

“Performance and inventory,” he started. He was a jovial man. His fingers were thick, and one of them was missing from his left hand as he pointed out line items on the documents she held. “Twenty-eight new cannon, salt bombs all maintained and operational. New pyrogel looks promising. We’ll be seeking other applications for it. There’s an inquiry into a riflery contingent—”

“No,” Yemaya snapped. “We’ve been over this. Who’s made the inquiry, Commander? You? Inquiries don’t just get made. Someone makes them, and I’d hate for it to be the same someone who’s been told at least a hundred times that we are not a nation of gunners and will not be at any point in the foreseeable future.”

Hurand cleared his throat to the small smiles and snickers of the others. “I’ll… relay that to the inquiring party, My Light.”

“Excellent. What else?” she asked, flicking through the other pages for anything remarkable.

The room went silent and somewhat more tense as eyes went to Commander Nasrin, an older brown woman with a severe silver bun and an interesting backstory for the trio of slash marks slanting upward on the side of her face. Yemaya liked that she spoke plainly.

“The divers returned no sign of wreckage,” said Nasrin. “That makes the sixth Ixian ship to vanish completely just this year. The five merchant vessels and now the Clodion. We’d previously considered expatriation, people seeking their fortunes elsewhere given the… prolonged state of things in our home. But we’ve got a body now, almost verifiably one of our own. This has become a situation. It’s time to consider more malicious alternatives.”

There it is, Yemaya thought, closing the brief. She sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, wanting to at least be comfortable for the onslaught of passive aggression.

“Such as?” she prodded.

“The obvious thought is that Kespia’s making a play. An angle into a new war. Our navy is superior. If they target it in a tenuous peacetime, that goes a long way toward leveling the future battlefield.”

“Hmm.” Yemaya nodded. “Stealing the ships would explain why there’s never any wreckage.”

“Yes, My Light,” said Nasrin.

Yemaya studied the maps on the table and the small brass pyramids that marked the places of last contact with the missing vessels. “But these target zones are farther from their shores than they are from ours. Do we think it’s practical for Kespia to come all this way to capture a few hundred bolts of silk or a ton of iron ore?”

“The iron, perhaps. For their armory.” Nasrin shrugged, the movement in itself an admission that the idea was far-fetched. That there was another option, perhaps more absurd, that she believed could be the case…

“There is another possibility,” Commander Mackey chimed in from across the table. He was older, squat, and bald, and was likely the bergamot offender to mask his penchant for dark liquors. His eyes were small but deathly serious, and he appeared to regret having spoken up at all.

Yemaya almost smiled. “Well, speak. No one’s raising hands.”

He gulped visibly. “The body. The way it was drowned, mangled, chewed up. Historically, it isn’t unheard of for the Mer to lure sailors to the depths…”

The groans and “For gods’ sakes” resounded in the little room.

“What would the Mer want with half a dozen ships?” an incredulous someone asked.

“Be still. Let him speak,” Yemaya demanded quietly.

“There are circumstances!” Mackey insisted. “The—the fish in the bay at Chairre. The catch has been dwindling for years. The waters fishmongers have to mine are now increasingly distant and more treacherous than they were before the Butterf—”

He choked to a stop and Yemaya felt the heat of anger rise from beneath her collare.

“Go on,” she insisted.

“Forgive me, My Light. I mean no disrespect.”

“Haven’t committed any out loud yet, only in your heart,” she purred.

“Perhaps if you were to convince the queen to take a more active role in the Kept’s communion processes? Lean on your… genealogical ties to the Favored. At worst, it does nothing, but at best… well, who knows?”

The room was thick with silence for a long moment, save for the crackling fire and creaking rock of the waves. Everyone knew the Qorrea had a temper. Its repression had been widely regarded as miraculous in the years after her mother’s attempted assassination, and seemed most successful when disparaging remarks and implications about her family were avoided.

“Countless battles over twenty-some-odd years,” she began, measuring her breaths and words carefully. “Two wars’ worth of explosive ordnance, of the drowning dead littering the waterways, might have an impact on the local fish population, would they not?”

“Of course, My Light,” Commander Mackey agreed in a petrified sort of whimper.

“The prolonged state of things.” Yemaya chewed the words, tapping a lacquered fingernail idly along the edge of the displayed map as she searched the eyes of every assembled commander in the room. “You all spent months entertaining these civilian disappearances as something voluntary. People were leaving, and you all found it justifiable, because who could bear the ravages of war and then be expected to rebuild for a queen who can’t be bothered to do more for you than bleed and then die?” The words escaped as a growl, and she stopped to take a breath. It wouldn’t do to fly into a rage here—not now, barely ever—if she hoped to be taken seriously as queen one day likely very soon.

“So you ignored it and, in doing so, allowed it to escalate into a military matter we must all now take very seriously. What else will we be blaming the queen for today? I’d like a list.”

“My Light, that was not my intent—” Commander Mackey started.

“Wasn’t it?” Yemaya snapped.

Another breath. You need these people, she calmed herself. If no one else.

“Is there any other business? I’m tired,” she said with a sigh.

“No, My Light,” Nasrin interjected. “We’ll prepare the final report for the generals by arrival tomorrow.”

“Good. I’ll relay all of your… concerns to Her Highness when we return. The Crown thanks you for your diligence.”

As she stood, so did everyone else, and they bowed as she exited. Night had fully descended, and all was dark but what the moon graced. The winds were high and cold; they caught Yemaya’s panting exhale and whisked it away just outside the closed door. The skeleton crew milled about the upper deck while the others caroused in the warmth below. Someone was whistling a shanty as she made her way to her own quarters, passing this or that small cluster of soldiers huddled over piping coffee and torch fires. So many of them were young and new, it was likely the war stories they exchanged belonged to someone else.

But what else is there ever to do at sea but callous your hands and trade make-believe?

Her father had said that once or twice, grinning as he did. For years he’d brought her along on naval training exercises, and she’d kept up with the practice even after he was gone.

Ixia’s relationship with the Old Gods saw its advancement guided by a divine hand, creating the world’s finest navy, its civil infrastructure in harmony with the land. The nation’s arsenal was laced with the Obé’s magic, once imbued by her armorers. The firearm was an aberration, unsanctioned and corrupting and doubtless introduced by somewhere godless. Which meant that the Butterfly Wars had marked a deviation from the Obé’s path. The Kept saw peacetime as a moment for course correction, if only to restore their own power. It was a hard sell. An exhausted populace had little energy to devote to a grand idea. They were finding that the worship of gods required too great a suspension of reality when people had seen the things war was capable of doing to even the most faithful bodies.

It had been a bullet that had stolen Yemi’s father from her. And she had seen it up close, worn his blood warm and cold on her hands. No, she would not make an asset to the Kept’s campaign.

She reached her door and paused, staring down the hallway to where she remembered Nova was waiting. She loved her—her spirit, her smile—and more than likely needed it tonight. But after the day’s events, Yemi felt somehow beyond the reach of Nova’s light. She often did. It seemed unfair to make her work for nothing.

She whispered a “Good night” to the dark hallway and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

“Evening, Daddy.” She kissed her fingers and pressed them to her father’s feet in the portrait that hung over the fireplace. She’d had it moved here when he died. The Bear King stood in immortal silence, studious, dimpled, and handsome in his favorite blue suit. His spear stood in one battle-gloved hand, the copper bear helmet of the royal animus tucked beneath the other arm. She’d inherited his brownness, his posture, his strong chin. His capacity for righteous anger.

“Found a body. No sign of the Clodion, though,” she said aloud to the painting as she unlaced her tall boots. She tossed the violet brocade jacket over the back of a chaise and dropped her collare unceremoniously onto the coffee table with the leather portfolio. “Exercise went well. Our soldiers are replenishing. Getting better. Hurand still has his head in the clouds half the time, but when he’s present, he’s efficient. And the new guard likes him. He’s still on about his guns, though. I hope it doesn’t become a problem. I want to like him.”

The portrait never responded. Not aloud, anyway.

She collapsed on the chaise in front of the roaring fire Nova had undoubtedly stoked for her, and tried but failed to lose herself in the minutiae of numbers from the training exercise.

It’s entirely possible that the Mer are responsible, she thought, chewing on her lip as she stared into the fire. Her grandmother, fool that she was, had been the sea’s heir before setting her sights on a love that brought her to land. Which made Yemi the second generation of Mer on her mother’s side to in fact not be a Mer at all. The wars that had been waged over that legacy on land had lasted decades and tainted everything about her world now. Wars that had killed her father and poisoned her mother. Who knew how the sea kingdoms had handled it.

If the Mer were killing Men and disappearing Ixian ships, there would be no way to convince Ixia that she—Yemaya—and more importantly, her mother, weren’t culpable in some way. Kespia to the west had started the first war. The nation had a primordial quality to it, sprawling and ancient but not revered, not beloved by whatever god had possessed it, if indeed one ever had. Arielle’s arrival had undone the long-sought promise of a union with Ixia that would bring Kespia into the light, and their bitter disappointment had manifested in a decade of violence that had decimated both nations. The second war had started at home over the illegitimacy of Mer blood on a land throne and Men bleeding for a Mer cause. The country was still years from shaking the shadow of that one. Roughly half of it hated the throne, but was just too depleted to fight about it anymore.

“Gods, I hope it’s Kespia,” she whispered to the fireplace.

She sat there awhile, staring at the fireplace, her discarded collare, and the moon and the ships outside her window.

• NOVA •

Nova chewed a sprig of mint as she stood patiently in the mouth of the dark hallway that led to the commanders’ quarters. It was an inactive space while they were ensconced with the Qorrea, and it gave her a clear line of sight to Yemi’s rooms. It wasn’t uncommon for her to wait like this, teeth brushed, hair rakishly flounced, body as refreshed as it could be given the combination of the infernal ships’ facilities and very little time.

Gods, she hated boats. There was never much for a queensguard to do on these exercises. The present military force was by default deputized into the Qorrea’s protection, rendering Nova’s position redundant by a factor of hundreds and allowing her mind to wander instead to the soft, wet mischief to be made in the nooks and crannies of the late Bear King’s ship, should she ever catch his daughter alone and in the proper mood.

Yemi appeared in the hallway, and Nova’s heart began to pound. This was also not uncommon. It was how she knew she loved her. But there was a weight about Yemi’s shoulders as she approached her own door, and she only paused there briefly before slipping inside her room. A soft click of the lock, and Nova huffed her disappointment and spit the mint pulp into a handkerchief.

“Well, time to figure out what that was about,” she muttered, re-buttoning her uniform blouse and stretching stress from her neck. There were few moments apart for a royal and their guardian. Almost all of those moments happened within the relatively safe presence of the military and centered almost exclusively on the hidden work of the guardian to ensure that safety continued. There were perks to the job, of course, among them being allowed to touch and taste her. Nova lived as much to make Yemi smile as to keep her safe, and there was great need of it with the suffering she’d already been forced to overcome in their shared lifetime. Nova admired her for that and often forgave her need for quiet and for privacy. There was always more to do while she waited for Yemi to need her.

Nova left the hallway for the upper deck, where all was quiet but for churning waves and the idle chatter of off-duty groups. She picked up snatches of conversation, listening for nefarious phrases one might utter when they suspected no one was paying attention. But this was the royal navy. The Bear King himself had served with these people, and Yemi had been raised either by or alongside most of the soldiers on these ships. Still, it was habit; it was a guardian’s business to know what was said, what sentiments were felt, anything that might place her charge in danger.

Nasrin and Hurand huddled together near the shuttle deck, a port where smaller boats whisked the other commanders to their own ships elsewhere in the flotilla.

“Balmy night,” Nova declared cheerfully by way of announcing herself.

“All’s well,” Nasrin sighed into the wind. The commanders were not new to Nova’s earnest fleecing for intelligence.

“Yeah? She seems a bit cranky,” Nova replied.

Hurand’s smile wrinkled his face as he leaned against the railing. “She blew you off.”

“Wild guess that I’ve got you to blame for that.”

Nasrin laughed. “You’re not wrong. He did bring up the guns again.”

Hurand waved her off.

Nova raised an eyebrow. “Not cuffed in the back of the head hard enough last time, were you?”

Hurand bristled and leaned into the space between them, whispering heavily. “I have a point. From a military perspective, we are capable and honorable, but we must evolve. The old magic can’t stand against the entirety of the future and we know nothing of the new magics—”

“Served you well so far, though, hasn’t it?” Nasrin interrupted.

“Alright, alright.” Nova raised her hand. The argument had been made before. And it was annoying, but not the root of the weight in Yemi’s mind. “Anything else? Suspicions I need to be made aware of?”

Hurand relented and gave Nasrin a look that suggested she should answer.

“There are questions, of course, but none that should trouble you,” Nasrin replied. “We know her future is coming fast. And she is loved with us.”

Nasrin held Nova’s gaze until she nodded her acceptance. Nova’s anxieties around the reality of her position were no secret to these closest members of Ixia’s fighting forces, determined as she was to downplay them. She would inherit ownership of the queensguard from General Cutter, her mentor, on Yemi’s ascension. And the truth of anything was that any word spoken by anyone had the potential to be a lie. But she’d never felt that concern with Nasrin. That small relief was invaluable.

“I appreciate you. Both of you,” Nova assured them.

“You’re doing good, kid,” Nasrin added with a bit of a smile. “We’ll be proud to see you up there.”

“Hey, who guards the Bulletproof Guardian, huh?” Hurand chuckled, prodding her in the arm.

“Alright, calm down.” Nova rolled her eyes. She’d earned the nickname through her remarkable shield work and the bullet-parrying technological advances afforded to her station by virtue of having been born at the right time to be the first to receive them. “I’m in for the night. I’ll leave you two to it.”

She bowed slightly and turned to head back to the warm underbelly of the ship.

“When Cutter checks in, we’ll make sure you get a good grade,” Hurand called after her.

“Oh, fuck off,” Nova said, laughing.