Cam and Vaness followed, but Vivia scarcely noticed. Her eyes were scanning the deck for her first mate … There. Broad-shouldered and broader-chested, he too wore the warm coral red of his family’s livery.

It had become the color of Vivia’s cause. The color of her small but loyal crew.

Vizer Erril Sotar hurried toward Vivia. He did not ask how the meeting had gone, and Vivia could see in his dark eyes that he too had not expected any progress. There came the knots again.

“Sotar,” she said, aiming for her main quarters. “I want to make way tonight. If we are lucky, we might escape this cursed place before the moon reaches her peak.”

“Where will we go?” His voice was a warm baritone. Familiar and kind.

“Away. Far away.” It was a nonanswer, but the best she could give. Nubrevna was not an option. Marstok even less so. The only harbor they might safely lay anchor in was the Pirate Republic of Saldonica, and though Vivia had been willing to dabble in piracy in the past—given the right target—she’d also seen Lovats almost destroyed by Red Sails and Baedyeds. Twice.

She had no interest in allying herself with true raiders.

“Then away it is, Captain.” Sotar pressed his fist to his chest before striding ahead to open her cabin door. Though Vivia had told him over and over and over again that he didn’t need to open doors, he still did it. Every time.

And every time, it made the little rip in Vivia’s heart stretch wider. It used to be Stix opening that door for her. And Stix taking her commands. But Stix had disappeared a month and a half ago, and though Cam had explained a hundred times—backward and forward and every direction Vivia had demanded—that her former first mate and Threadsister was inside a mountain in the Sirmayans … that she’d had memories that were not her own and was now with a Sightwitch named Ryber …

None of it had ever made any sense.

Then again, nothing ever made sense anymore. Vivia’s brother, Merik, had been declared dead, but then he’d appeared in Lovats quite alive. Her father, whom she’d spent her entire life trying to appease and prove herself to, had betrayed her and claimed the throne she had worked so hard for. And then magic doors had mysteriously opened inside the under-city of Lovats, and raiders had poured through, followed by the Empress of Marstok, dethroned but not broken.

No. Nothing in this world made sense, and come floods or hell-waters, Vivia had to make peace with that. Stix wasn’t coming back. Merik wasn’t coming back. Her title was gone. This was her life, salmon-suited and rejected at every turn.