She glanced over and held his gaze. The wind was whipping her blond hair all about her face, forming a kind of shifting veil. She looked so ravishing it was all he could do to keep his thoughts together.

“Maybe I didn’t want my father’s sailors with me as much as I wanted you. Maybe I don’t want him to know everything I do on this trip.” Her laugh was slow and rolling. “Or maybe it was a whim and nothing more. What do you think?”

He grimaced. “I think maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, no, you can always ask, Redden. But you can’t always expect to get the answer you’d like.” She was working hard to make herself heard over gusts of wind that nearly knocked him backward from his perch. Only his handhold on the cockpit railing prevented him from being toppled. Mirai, on the other hand, barely moved. “Windy, isn’t it? Don’t you love days like this?”

In truth, he did. Wild and windy, no clouds, all sunshine and blue skies—perfect flying weather. He loved them as much as he loved cold ale in summer and his mother’s warm bread in winter. He grinned in spite of himself.

“There, you see?” She laughed and gave him a playful shove. “I like it so much better when you smile!”

He felt himself blushing and turned away, pretending to study something down by the ship’s railing. “I smile enough.”

She shoved him again. “Get out of my cockpit, Troll boy! Go talk to your brother. Ask him to tell you what I told him. That should give you something to think about.”

He hesitated a moment to see if she was serious, but when she pushed him again he did as she said and headed downship toward Railing, who was still at the bow. Before him and to either side, the vast green canopy of the Duln spread away in a rippling blanket of leaves and tiny branches, giving the landscape the look of a vast emerald ocean. To the north, Rainbow Lake shimmered in clips of silvery light, and beyond its bright reflective surface you could just see the dark smudge of the Dragon’s Teeth through a haze of mountain brume.

“Mirai told me to ask you what she said when she spoke to you,” he said grudgingly, positioning himself next to his brother, both of them leaning on the worn surface of the ship’s railing.

“Did she?” Railing gave him a surprised look.

“Yes, actually, she did. But you keep it to yourself if you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Glad to hear it. I’d tell you if it was important to you that I did, but not otherwise. It isn’t important, is it?”

Redden clenched his teeth. “Not in the least.”

“Good. Because it was kind of private. Personal, really.”