All of this—the battle, the alliance with Tassos, their losses at Cloudbreak—would be for nothing if she didn’t capture Lir. If she didn’t find a way to stop this cycle of running and fighting and dying.

“Target that barricade!” Caledonia called out to her crew. “Keep your eyes peeled for the Bale Blossom! When it lands in our sights, fire everything you have!”

“Yes, Captain!” the crew shouted.

“Approaching the breakers,” Nettle announced when Caledonia stepped onto the bridge once more.

Moments ago, the breakers had been clogged with Lir’s fleet. Now they were nearly clear. The Luminous Wake shot between them, her deck rumbling with a sudden surge of power. On either side, the rest of her fleet did the same, shooting into the harbor and turning hard to north. They aimed their guns at the barricade, firing relentlessly. Above, the gun towers provided cover, taking out barricade ships one by one.

Caledonia’s focus narrowed. Every minute of the past turn had brought her to this point. She and her crew had grown strong together, they had lost together, they had survived and decided to keep fighting together. And now they were here, on the very brink of the victory they had yearned for and bled for and endured for.

They were nearly upon the barricade when a gun tower missile demolished the ship directly ahead. Smoke clouded the sea, dense and billowing, but as it thinned in the breeze, the silhouette of a familiar ship appeared inside.

Caledonia and her entire crew stopped in their tracks.

The elegant sweep of the hull, the line of four mast blocks studding the centerline, the way it seemed to glide atop the water as though nothing could hold it back. They would know that ship anywhere.

“The Mors Navis.” Caledonia almost couldn’t breathe as she said the words.

And then she knew, without a doubt, that Lir was sailing her ship. Lir was sailing the Mors Navis.

Before any of her crew could gather their wits again, the ship was gone, vanished beyond the barricade and heading out to sea.

Caledonia heard a faint ringing in her ears as she searched in vain for another glimpse of that familiar vessel. But it was gone. The barricade was failing. More of Lir’s fleet was peeling off, racing away from the harbor and the onslaught of the gun towers. The day was hers.

But Lir was getting away.

“We have to pursue,” she said.

A hand caught hers as she spun toward the bridge. Pisces pulled her to a stop, forcing their foreheads together as the cacophony of gunfire faded from a constant, overlapping barrage into occasional bursts.

“Cala.” She breathed her sister’s name. “We cannot pursue. Not like this. We have to take the win. And let him go.”

Caledonia ground her forehead into Pisces’s. “We can still get him,” she protested. “We can still end this.”