My heart leapt a little before becoming a weight atop my stomach. Finding him poking around in the hold had brought up unpleasant memories of him following me into the caves below the palace. He was too clever, too curious, too eager to bend the rules of propriety. I wasn’t sure how to act around him, how much I could be myself, how much I was supposed to be the Emperor. And then there was the magic that we both shared.

He was right, though. I’d locked all the things I’d wanted hidden in my room. The white-bladed sword, the bone shard magic books, the memory machine. The cloudtree berries I’d harvested before we left lay inside my sash pocket. My father’s legacy, and I was carrying it with me.

I tried to shake the thoughts loose. “It does feel good.” The palace was my home, had been my home for as long as I’d been alive. But ruling an Empire meant knowing it, and even my glimpses of Imperial City had broadened my horizons. We were fast approaching Riya, and I was desperate to walk among its streets, see its people, smell and taste its food. “I’m supposed to rule these people; I should know what they’re like.”

Jovis raised an eyebrow. “All about duty? Are you really this boring, Eminence?”

“I should have your head lopped off for that,” I said casually. “The Emperor is never boring.”

He squinted at the harbor. “Should have done that before they wrote a song about me. The Empire is stuck with me now.”

“A song isn’t impenetrable armor. They write songs about dead people too, you know.”

“But are they quite so catchy?”

I looked back to the cloudy skies, the Endless Sea and the lush green land beyond. I breathed in the scent of the salty spray and smiled. “Fine. Any trips away from Imperial were taken when I was too young to remember. My father kept me inside the palace walls. I’ve barely been into the city. Of course it feels good to leave.”

Nails scratched against wood behind us. I turned to see Mephi and Thrana scrambling up a net and back onto the deck. Both were soaked through. Thrana looked better out here. It wasn’t just that she seemed happier and more at ease. Her coat had thickened as she ate food fresh from the sea. Her eyes were brighter. Even her black horns seemed less flaky and dry and had more of a sheen to them.

“You’re lighter on your feet on the ocean than most first-time sailors,” Jovis said, his gaze on the sea, a corner of his lip quirked. “Maybe you should have been a smuggler.”