Shade jumps among the trees, his form flickering in and out of being like starlight through clouds. He keeps close, never appearing out of eyesight, and is careful to pace his teleporting. Once or twice he whispers, pointing out a twist in the deer trail or a hidden ravine, mostly for Cal’s benefit. While Kilorn, Shade, and I were raised in the woods, he grew up in palaces and military barracks. Neither prepared him for traversing a forest at night, as evidenced by the loud snapping of branches and his occasional stumbling. He’s used to burning a path, forcing his way through obstacles and enemies with strength and strength alone.

Kilorn’s teeth gleam every time the prince trips, forming a pointed smile.

“Careful there,” he says, yanking Cal away from a boulder hidden in shadow. Cal easily wrenches out of the fish boy’s grip, but that’s all he does, thankfully. Until we reach the stream.

Branches arc overhead from the trees on either bank, their leaves brushing against one another across the gap of water. Starlight winks through, illuminating the stream as it winds through the forest to join the Regent. It’s narrow, but there’s no telling how deep it might be. At least the current looks gentle.

Kilorn is probably more comfortable on water than land, and jumps nimbly into the shallows. He tosses a single stone into the middle of the stream, listening to the plop of rock on water. “Six feet, maybe seven,” he says after a moment. Well over my head. “Should we make you a raft?” he adds, grinning my way.

I first swam the Capital, a true river more than three times as deep and ten times as wide, when I was fourteen. So it’s nothing to plunge right into the stream, dipping my head beneath the dark, cold water. This close to the ocean, it tastes faintly of salt.

Kilorn follows without question, his long-practiced strokes taking him across the stream in seconds. I’m surprised he doesn’t show off more, turning flips or holding his breath for minutes at a time. When I reach the opposite shore, I realize why.

Shade and Farley perch on the distant bank, eyeing the water below. Both their faces twitch, fighting smirks or smiles as they watch the prince in the shallows. The stream breaks neatly around Cal’s ankles, gentle as a mother’s touch, but his face goes pale in the moonlight. He rapidly crosses his arms, trying to hide his shaking hands.

“Cal?” I ask aloud, careful to keep my voice low. “What’s wrong?”

Already lounging against a tree trunk, Kilorn snorts in the darkness. He zips off his jacket, ringing out the waterlogged material with practiced efficiency. “Come on, Calore, you can fly a jet but you can’t swim?” he says.

“I can swim,” Cal replies hotly. He forces another step into the stream, now up to his knees. “I just don’t care for it.”

Of course he wouldn’t. Cal is a burner, a controller of flame, and nothing weakens him more than water. It makes him helpless, powerless, everything he’s been taught to hate, fear, and fight. I remember him in the arena, how he almost died. Trapped by Lord Osanos, surrounded by a floating orb of water even he could not burn away. It must have felt like a coffin, a watery grave.

I wonder if he thinks of it too, if the memory makes the quiet stream look more like a churning, endless ocean.

My first instinct is to swim back, to help him across with my own two hands, but that would send Kilorn into a laughing fit even Cal wouldn’t be able to stomach. And a brawl in the middle of the woods is the last thing we need.

“In through the nose, Cal.” When he looks up, our eyes locking across the stream, I give him a tiny, supporting nod. Out through the mouth. It’s just his own advice repeated back, but it soothes him all the same.

He takes another step forward, then another and another, chest heaving with each steadying breath. And then he’s swimming, paddling across the stream like a massive dog. Kilorn shakes with silent laughter, one hand over his mouth. I toss a few stones his way. It shuts him up long enough for Cal to reach the shallows again, and he eagerly sprints out of the water. A bit of steam rises from his skin, driven by the heat of his own embarrassment.

“S’cold,” he mumbles, shaking his head so he doesn’t have to look at us. His black hair sticks, plastered to one side of his silver-flushed face. Without thought, I brush it away, smoothing his hair back into a more dignified style. He holds my gaze all the while, looking pleasantly surprised by the action.

Then it’s my turn to blush. We said no distractions.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of water too?” Kilorn calls across the stream, his voice too loud and gruff. Farley only laughs in reply, grabbing my brother’s wrist. A split second later, they stand next to us, smirking and dry.

They jumped. Of course.

Shade scoffs, squeezing my tail of wet hair. “Idiots,” he says kindly.

But for the crutch, I’d push him squarely into the stream.

My hair has almost dried by the time we reach the rise above Coraunt. Clouds roll in, covering the moon and stars, but the lights of the village are enough to see by. From our vantage point, Coraunt looks like the Stilts, built at the mouth of the Regent’s River, centered on a crossroads. One, neatly paved and slightly raised above the salt marsh, is clearly the Port Road. The other runs east to west, and turns into a packed dirt road beyond the village. A watchtower on the riverbank points toward the sky, its crown illuminated by a revolving beacon of light. I flinch when it passes over us.

“Think he’s down there?” Kilorn breathes, meaning Nix. He eyes the number of squat houses below, huddled in the shadow of the watchtower.