“Prepare your winds,” she roared at her officers while she called the waves to her. Up, up, a catapult ready to launch. Air gusted around her. Swirling, charged, and powered by three witches as eager and as powerful as she.

Almost as powerful, anyway.

Two heartbeats boomed, wild against her chest, and the wind-drum began. No one sang—this was not a sailing beat. It was a battle beat, and it thrummed in Vivia’s very bones. Boom-da-boom-da-boom. Faster, faster, while the winds around her churned stronger and the waves below her readied.

“Make way!”

The ship gave a groan to split ears. The Iris launched forward, an arrow from its bow, a dog from its kennel, a firepot erupting that flew over the harbor’s easy waves—waves that Vivia now commanded. Magic poured through her, swelling out from her fingertips and into every droplet of sea beneath, around, beside. She was a conduit for power, a vessel that nudged the water in ways it already wanted to move.

Yes, it seemed to tell her. Faster, faster, forward, faster.

“Warship ahead!” Sotar’s deep voice bellowed above the Iris’s creaking skeleton and Cam’s frantic drumbeat. Over the winds and ceaseless waves. “Cannons are aimed at us!”

Vivia did not respond. She couldn’t. She was the water, and it was up to Sotar to heave the tiller and guide the Iris where she needed to be. A cannon fired; Vivia heard its distant thunder, heard Sotar bark at Vaness to intervene.

Faster, she commanded the waves. Faster, faster—

An explosion blasted behind her. Noise and splinters slashed into her. Vivia slammed against the balustrade. Then she fell overboard entirely. She crashed into the water, headfirst. So fast, she couldn’t comprehend what had happened. So fast, she could not gather breath before she plummeted beneath the waves.

But the water welcomed her—it always welcomed her—and without fully realizing what she did, she gathered her tides to her and launched upward again. Toward the sky, out of the sea, then through the air, droplets shedding.

She hit the deck and found a hole splintered through the main deck. Vaness was sprinting toward it, her arms out, her eyes huge and hair wild. A second later, the cannonball roared upward from the hole. Vaness spun, a whirling dance, and the shot launched back toward the Lioness.

“It … did not … break through,” she panted, her gaze briefly catching Vivia’s. “We will not sink.”

Before Vivia could ask why it had hit them in the first place, Vaness was rushing toward the bow and cannon again. All the while, the wind-drum still pulsed ba-doom-ba-doom and the Windwitches still heaved their power into the sails.

The Iris flew.