Lucien smugly takes a sip of his tea. “Nothing wrong, I can assure you.”

“Land ho!”

The cry is exactly the one we’ve all been waiting for. Our eyes flash up at one another in a suspended second of disbelief, and then everyone bursts from the table and we make one mad dash together up the stairs, crowding the railing for a better look.

“Ow! Stop stepping on my tail!” Yorl yelps.

“Quit putting your tail under my boot, then!” Malachite snaps.

Fione stamps her foot. “Both of you, behave, or I’ll put my heel in the two of you!”

“Heel time, heel time, heel time!” I chant. Lucien’s the only one not taking part in the cabin-fevered fight, his onyx eyes focused on the strip of green in the distance, his whole face washed by relief.

“Cavanos,” he breathes.

I watch it grow closer with him, my hand intertwining his on the railing as if to silently say, I know how much you missed it, how every day away from it has been eating you up. Because it has. How could it not? He’s its prince, and he’s always longed to protect it. To protect everyone. Varia destroyed Vetris, but his people are still in Cavanos, and his heart belongs with them.

And to me, too, I think with a wry smile. We can share it.

“The Sea Gate is the main entrance to Pala Amna—” Malachite clears his throat and points. There, not far from the beach is a dirt road utterly packed with people, so many they overflow onto the beach, into the thin gray forest bordering it.

“New God’s throat,” I mutter. “Look at them all.”

“Refugees from Cavanos,” Lucien says, black iron in his voice. “Perhaps even Helkyris. They think the beneathers can save them from the valkerax.”

“And we can,” Malachite insists. “Just slowly. With periods to repopulate.”

“We don’t have that time,” the prince insists.

Mal sighs. “I know, Luc. It’s called a joke.”

“How will we get through that crowd?” Fione frowns. “They must be backing up the entire road into Pala Amna!”

“The Fog Road is the ancestral council’s special entrance and a more direct line to them,” Yorl offers. “It’s highly guarded, but when we announce who we are, I’m sure we’ll have no trouble.”

“No trouble?” Malachite’s white brows knit hard. “Yeah, no trouble getting past the guards at the entrance. But there are no guards inside. There’s nobody inside but the bones of thieves and assassins, because it’s booby-trapped to the afterlife and back!”

“Why?” I wrinkle my nose.

“Well, I’m glad you asked, and the answer is because it’s less of a gate and more of a maze designed to destroy anyone who doesn’t know the specific route.”