His arms finally dare to snake around my waist, pulling me close to his chest.

“So dramatic. What do you think about talking less about death, hmm? How about you be with me in life?”

My laugh is small, but the bloom in my chest is sweet. “I can give it a shot.”

It isn’t easy to peel myself out of Lucien’s arms in the morning. And, looking back at his peacefully sleeping face that cracks one eye open to find me and smile, I hope it never is.

Dolyer comes into view around lunchtime, and all four of us couldn’t be happier to see smokestacks, buildings, wells full with water, and an inn bustling with an open hearth. The idea of a bath might be the most distracting, but the docks are what’s most impressive about the town—sprawling and webbed over the water in pale gray salt-soaked and barnacle-encrusted wood. Everything in the village is made with gray—gray skies meeting furious gray sea, gray sands meeting gray grasses, gray buildings, and grayer horses.

But the gray only makes the splashes of color stand out more—the red of the fish gutting, the blue of the westbound ship sails and the maroon of the southbound sails, the jade green of Cavanos lawguard uniforms dotting the browns and golds of the sailors and merchants and stray dogs. The town moves and breathes in boxes—boxes being made by old men with chisels, boxes being loaded by women with arms as big as my thighs, boxes being moved by even bigger men, boxes clogging the docks of nearby ships only to vanish inside with much sweat and labor.

It’s a bit of relieving normality after lurking in so much destruction—that village on fire, Vetris turned to rubble, Windonhigh attacked.

“We don’t have time for the inn.” Lucien sees Fione’s longing look at the inn’s sign.

“Where else are we going to secure a boat?” Fione argues. “In the time it takes you to find a captain willing to take us for that paltry sum, I could take three baths.”

“If we don’t dry our shoes, the fungus is gonna start soon,” Malachite helpfully adds. Lucien looks to me to be the last bastion of reason, but I bat my lashes playfully at him.

“Just a half? Please?”

“Do you know where she is now?” he asks. She. Varia.

“No. But I could know. If, say, I lie down for a nap.”

The prince heaves a sigh. “Fine. The inn it is. But the moment we find a captain, we’re out the door.”

Malachite gives a little fist pump, and Fione and I make instantly through the gray grass to the swinging salt-spray sign of the inn. We’re greeted by the stench of old beer and fried bread—a perfectly familiar smell. As we’re wiping off our boots on the mat, it comes to me.