By some combined miracle of our strength and the captain’s precise maneuvering, the airship starts to move, drifting away from the Breych docks and floating with generous creaks out of the mountain’s shadow and into the pale sunlight of Cavanos, the green of its grasslands beckoning us home.

I don’t get any time to breathe, though, because the captain has me running water and rations to the crew. They’re heading for Avel, passing over Cavanos to the south and only to the south, considering the news about the valkerax has quickly broken on Breych’s shore. They’re willing to stop for a bare few hours at a hilltop village in Cavanos called Trillmarc, and that’s when we’ll get off.

We agreed, in the sage’s tower, that Y’shennria’s letter was our best bet, and so we’re heading to Ravenshaunt, where Y’shennria said to visit when I’m free. I’m free now, in a manner of speaking. Freer, at least, than when I was chained to the idea of my heart and the guilt of killing.

But guilt never really goes. I made the graves for the fourteen men, but they aren’t gone. Just quieter. Maybe the guilt will never be gone, not completely. Maybe you just live with it, until it becomes as natural as part of your body, another limb you move through the world with.

Maybe guilt isn’t about mourning people but about making them a part of you as you go forward.

As the ship cuts to the right, Cavanos grows closer. Y’shennria grows closer. I try and fail to tame the constant pangs of giddiness that run through me at the idea of meeting her again. The hum and whir of the thrusters gets stronger toward the back of the ship, a lullaby that, in the quiet moments, nearly puts me to sleep. Fione, on the other hand, is having a far less soothing time. Her retches are so loud, they echo among the mountain ridges like queasy thunder. At some point, Malachite takes over my job of watching her and rubbing her back supportively, and Lucien finds me staring out at the view on the deck, lacing his hands around my waist like a quiet assurance.

“Busy?” he asks.

“Not anymore,” I say, leaning back into his chest. The wind whips his dark hair around his eyes. I rub a strand of it between my fingers. “Not as short as I remember it.”

“I’ll cut it again, if you like.”

“Absolutely not. Granted, the revolutionary gesture did make me fall for you harder, but your best look is long and shiny.”

“It’s a pain to wash,” he admits.

“As if you washed it yourself,” I scoff. “You had servants.”

“I wouldn’t let them touch my hair,” he insists. “The nursemaids loved calling me difficult for it.”