“I wonder what that’s like,” Coco mused bitterly, still watching the golden fish. “Wanting an explanation and never receiving one. It’d be horribly frustrating, don’t you think?”

Angelica didn’t force any more horrendously awkward conversation after that.

As for myself, I tried not to think. Angelica had said Reid’s injuries weren’t fatal. She said he would wake. And Isla—though I knew little about the mysterious woman they called the Oracle, she would make a powerful ally against Morgane and Josephine. With our other allies occupied, it made sense to indulge Isla. Josephine clearly feared her.

I didn’t know how much time passed before my heels began to ache. It could’ve been moments. It could’ve been hours. One second, the moon shone directly overhead, limning Reid’s silhouette in silver, and the next, it had dipped below a wall of water, bathing us all in shadow. Only then did I notice the strange phosphorescent glow emanating from the waters.

“What is that?” I whispered.

“A special kind of plankton,” Angelica said, her voice equally soft. “Though here we call them sea stars. They light the waters around the city.”

The bluish glow reflected in Célie’s wide eyes. She reached out to the wall nearest us, where thousands of nearly indiscernible specks of light swirled together to form one bright, pulsing wave. “They’re like fireflies.”

Angelica smiled and nodded, lifting her chin for us to look down the footpath. What appeared to be a golden gate bisected it, colossal and ornate, expanding into the empty plains of water on either side and rising to the sky. If not for the algae growing along its whorls and spikes, it could’ve been the gate to Heaven.

Beyond it, there seemed to be no water at all.

“Behold—Le Présage.” Angelica’s smile widened as we drew to a unanimous halt. “And there, in the center, Le Palais de Cristal.”

We all stared, necks craned, at the orb of dry, mountainous terrain in the heart of L’Eau Mélancolique. Huts had been carved into the rock along the city’s edge, into the very mountainside, as the seafloor rose to one tumultuous peak. At the top of that peak, spires of sea glass rose—cruel and sharp and beautiful—from the ruins of an enormous sunken ship. Its broken masts and shredded sails glowed blue in the light of the sea stars.

“Is it—is that dry land?” Beau glanced from Coco to me and back again in search of an explanation, but Coco didn’t seem to notice; her mouth had parted slightly as she gazed up at the city, and her free hand had risen to grasp her locket once more.