“Spirits save us—valkerax. My grandpa’d be rollin’ in his grave if he could see this.”

“There’s none left to see. None but corpses in Vetris now, I reckon.”

“Ach, shhh! Don’t ya know that black-clad one’s the prince of Cavanos?”

“And I’m a sage-duke. A prince wouldn’t be up here bumming with us. He’d be down there, fighting or fleeing or whatever it is royals do during war.”

“We’ve still got the whole armada, don’t we?”

“The valkerax keep in Cavanos, there’s nothing to worry about. Let ’em rampage, long as they stay away from my wee ones cross the mountains.”

I feel it suddenly, like a latch clicking into place. My limbs go numb, zinging as if asleep, and Lucien seems suddenly…bigger. Taller at the railing. He’s a vacuum pulling my eyes in, my body in.

Magic.

“Lucien!” I stagger as the airship gives a massive heave. The crew crows about turbulence, and I manage to scramble off my knees and toward the prince. “Lucien! What are you doing?”

He won’t turn to face me, but his hands on the railing are already pitch-black up to the wrists. The wind whips his hair back and forth, erratic. I know that wind. The wind before teleportation.

“Don’t!” I shout over the howling. “Lucien, it’s too far away; you’ll hurt yourself again—”

“Again?” Malachite catches my arm as the ship gives another heave.

“He’s—” I gesture wildly at the prince’s back. “His right eye, it’s gone! Using magic beyond your physical limit is— He’s going to teleport down there—”

Malachite snarls a beneather swear and launches himself forward, grabbing the railing and Lucien’s shoulder all at once.

“Luc, look at me—”

And he does. He tilts his dark-haired head over to his bodyguard, his friend, and the hawk-eyes I know so well are eclipsed, no whites to be seen. Black and only black, deep and endless.

“There’s no time.” Lucien’s voice comes out even, still as water. “We go.”

“Mal!” I reach for his hand, grabbing Fione’s and pulling her toward Lucien. Fione’s moment of confusion, Malachite’s tense brow of realization, and then the feeling of being pulled inexorably somewhere, in one arrow-direction by the guts, the sounds of the howling wind and the uneasy crew and the creaking airship evaporating into total silence. Blue sky, white sky, and then black. Nothing but black.

With the faintest pop, color flicks on again—crimson flames licking old wood buildings. Sound crashes down on my ears all at once: screaming, crying, hysterical shouting, and the crackly eating noises of fire. A village. We all stagger forward into a village on fire, Lucien clutching his left hand to his chest and panting.

“Luc!” Malachite turns to him. “What’s wrong?”

“Help…them.” He points with his right hand at the village. “Go.”

“Lucien—” Fione starts forward.