By the time Edward and Nestor made their way back toward the city, Valorian had already decided to forget itself.
The streets were busy again. Vendors shouted prices. Nets heavy with newly caught fish were hauled onto docks as if the sea itself had not been poisoned days earlier. A group of children ran past them, laughing, their feet splashing through shallow puddles left behind by the receding water veil. Torches were gone. No one carried clubs. No one looked afraid.
No one looked ashamed.
Edward slowed, unease crawling up his spine. "That was fast," he said.
Nestor hummed, hands tucked into the pockets of his threadbare coat. "Mobs are like storms," he replied mildly. "Very loud. Very dramatic. Then they pass."
"That's not how storms work," Edward muttered.
Nestor smiled at him, sideways. "Isn't it?"
They walked in silence for a few steps. Edward watched a butcher carefully lay out fresh cuts of meat, red and glistening, as if blood had not soaked the forest floor hours earlier. A woman he recognized from the outskirts waved at him cheerfully. He raised a hand in reflex, then let it fall.
"So," Edward said at last. "They burn a camp, hunt women and children, almost tear the world apart. And now they're… what. Going to supper?"
"They were hungry," Nestor said. "Now they're not."
Edward stopped walking.
"That's it?" His voice was low, dangerous. "That's all it takes? Someone winds them up, points them in a direction, and when it's over they just… go back?"
Nestor turned to face him fully. For a moment, something unreadable flickered behind his eyes.
"Lasicus is very powerful," he said. "Plus, people don't like living in the aftermath," he said. "They prefer the moment. The passion. The righteousness of it. After that comes accounting. Have you ever met anyone who enjoys accounting?"
Nestor's gaze drifted back toward the forest, toward the Rotunda hidden beyond sight. "Usually," he said, "not the ones who started it."
Edward exhaled sharply through his nose. "Funny how that works."
They resumed walking. The city gates loomed ahead, unguarded now, as if nothing worth protecting had ever stood beyond them.
Edward's jaw tightened. "What Areilycus did," he said, carefully. "To Salacia."
Nestor didn't slow. "Yes?"
"She was a queen," Edward pressed. "A tyrant, sure, but—" He searched for the word. "I know you've always held tenderness in your heart for her."
"Vacuum always fills," Nestor replied easily. Edward glanced at him, unsettled by the lack of heat in his voice.
"You're taking this well."
Nestor shrugged. "Salacia was always going to die, Edward. Gods like her don't survive their own bargains forever. If it hadn't been the Lord of Light, it would've been time. Or betrayal. Or herself."
Edward studied him more closely now. "You sure you're all right?"
For a fraction of a second, Nestor looked… tired. Not wounded. Not grieving. Just profoundly, impossibly tired.
"I think," he said slowly, "I might still be in shock."
Before Edward could answer, Nestor stepped closer and took his face in both hands. The kiss came sudden and fierce, all teeth and urgency, like a man trying to anchor himself to something warm and real before it slipped away. Edward stiffened in surprise, then laughed softly into the kiss and returned it, hands fisting in Nestor's coat.
"Well," Edward murmured when they broke apart, breathless. "That's one way to check on someone."
Nestor smiled, too quickly. "Come home," he said. "You look like you need a drink. And a place where nothing is on fire."
Edward snorted. "You promise?"
They walked the rest of the way in companionable silence.
Nestor's house was dark when they reached it. The door wasn't locked.
"That's new," Edward muttered, already reaching for the cutlass at his hip.
Nestor pushed the door open.
The room smelled wrong.
Cleo lay on the bed where Nestor's wife usually slept, her boots discarded on the floor. She cradled Lasicus's body against her chest, his skin waxen, his face unnaturally peaceful. At her feet, arranged with almost reverent care, lay the thin, glowing filament that had once been his spinal cord, its blue light pulsing faintly against the wooden boards.
Cleo looked up.
Her eyes were empty.
Edward stared.
"What," he said faintly, then louder, "the fuck."
***
They moved before dawn, when Valorian still pretended to sleep.
Edward carried Lasicus on his back, the dead weight of him settling deeper into his shoulders with every step. Gods, he was learning, did not grow lighter in death. If anything, they felt denser, as though the world itself were reluctant to let them go. Lasicus's head lolled against Edward's shoulder, his hair damp with salt, his mouth slack in a way that made Edward's stomach turn every time he adjusted his grip.
Cleo walked beside him, barefoot, silent, clutching the thin, luminous strand of her brother's spinal cord like a relic torn from a shrine. The light it gave off was faint now, pulsing irregularly, as if even magic could not decide whether to linger.
Ahead of them, Nestor led the way.
They moved before dawn, when Valorian still pretended to sleep.
Edward carried Lasicus on his back, the dead weight of him settling deeper into his shoulders with every step. Gods, he was learning, did not grow lighter in death. If anything, they felt denser, as though the world itself were reluctant to let them go. Lasicus's head lolled against Edward's shoulder, his hair damp with salt, his mouth slack in a way that made Edward's stomach turn every time he adjusted his grip.
Cleo walked beside him, barefoot, silent, clutching the thin, luminous strand of her brother's spinal cord like a relic torn from a shrine. The light it gave off was faint now, pulsing irregularly, as if even magic could not decide whether to linger.
Ahead of them, Nestor led the way. "I never told anyone. Why would I tell outsiders?"
Edward shifted Lasicus higher on his back, teeth gritting. "Just so we're clear," he said, voice rough, "we're hauling the corpse of your brother to a monster's cave. A monster who lost everything because of the queen you just let get vaporized. And I'm supposed to be fine with this because… what. Diplomacy?"
Cleo's mouth twitched. "Areilycus tore my brother's magic out of him and killed the Queen of the Twelve Seas," she said flatly. "There's a power vacuum now. One that will not remain empty."
Edward snorted. "Funny. That's usually when things get worse."
"If His Highness won't return to the throne," Cleo continued, pointedly, "then Gorgo is the next rightful ruler."
Edward frowned. "And what does crowning a sea-witch have to do with saving him?" He nodded back toward Lasicus.
This time, Nestor stopped.
He turned slowly, Tenebris cradled against his chest like a child. The early light caught his face just wrong, carving shadows where there shouldn't have been any.
"Good deeds," he said, "are repaid in time." His gaze slid to Cleo. "This will count toward the truce with your father. Can I have your word on that?"
Cleo hesitated only a fraction of a second.
Then she nodded. Once.
Nestor inclined his head, satisfied, and resumed walking.
Gorgo's cave lay half-swallowed by stone and sea, its entrance jagged and narrow, opening directly onto the surf. It was not a place meant for visitors. The rock bore scars where claws had torn into it, where acid and salt had fused the stone into warped, glassy ridges.
Edward understood, distantly, why she had chosen it.
Gorgo migrated between worlds now. Between the tomb of her brother on Isla Rhea and this hidden hollow near the Aazorian beaches. Though she had lost her tail, she had not lost her gills. She still breathed water as easily as air. When she traveled, she clung beneath the hulls of fishing boats, fingers dug into barnacle-crusted wood, letting mortals believe the extra drag was nothing more than bad luck. When the boats strayed too far, she slipped into the sea and swam the rest.
By the time they reached the cave, the tide was low.
They laid Lasicus out on the damp stone floor, Edward's hands shaking as he eased the body down. Cleo knelt immediately, arranging her brother with ritual care, placing the glowing filament beside him like an offering.
The shadows deepened.
Then Gorgo emerged.
Her eyes, once said to rival moonlight on water, were now dark and reflective, like the depths where light went to die.
She looked first at Lasicus.
Then at Tenebris, recognizing there were only two people in the universe who could call on it. Three, if she counted herself and she no longer could, losing her place in her brother's court.
Then, finally, at Nestor.
"Oh," she said dryly. "The witch is dead, then."
Nestor met her gaze without flinching. "The throne is yours," he said. "All you have to do is revive this poor lad."
Gorgo laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
"You do remember," she said, "that necromancy is not charity."
She crouched beside Lasicus, fingers hovering just above the ruined place where his spine had been torn away. "I can stitch him back together," she continued. "Bone. Nerve. Flesh. But magic is not thread. Whatever power he had may not return. His mind may not return. He is a god, yes, which means he cannot be erased the way a mortal can. But what remains…"
She glanced up at Cleo. "Will be fragments."
Cleo didn't hesitate.
"I'm fine with that," she said.
***
They sent Edward and Cleo outside.
Edward did not argue. He set his back against the cold stone near the cave mouth, arms folded, eyes fixed on the sea as though it might explain any of this if he stared long enough. Cleo remained standing, rigid, her hands empty now, her brother finally beyond even her watchful grasp.
Inside the cave, Gorgo worked.
She used what she had. Fish nets soaked in brine and old blood. Bone needles carved from the spines of creatures no longer remembered by name. Her fingers moved, remembering all the Nereid she stitched back together when Neptune simply couldn't let go. Cousins, court favorites … So many passed through her hands.
She was threading sinew and nerve together as if she were mending a torn sail rather than a god's ruined body. Each pull of the net tightened flesh to flesh. Each stitch glowed faintly blue, her Nereid magic seeping into the work whether she willed it or not.
Nestor watched from the shadows.
He leaned against the cave wall, arms crossed, posture loose, as if this were nothing more than a familiar ritual resumed after a long absence. His eyes never left her hands.
"Well," Gorgo said without looking up, voice dry, "little brother. You've come a long way since establishing rebel worlds and pretending you were done with us."
A corner of his mouth lifted. "What gave me away?"
She paused just long enough to tighten a knot with unnecessary force. "Your snake eyes." Then she glanced back at him, eyes sharp, ancient, knowing.
"Do you plan to occupy our brother's borrowed body forever?" she asked. "I must say, I knew he transmigrated, but I never knew he chose a town drunk."
Theron laughed softly. It echoed wrong in the cave, too light for the work being done. "Who knew that idiot child Areilycus would kill the bitch queen for me?" he said, almost fondly. "Might be the most useful thing he's ever done in his otherwise useless life."
Gorgo's hands stilled.
"I feel slighted," she said carefully, "and inclined to join you." Her gaze dropped back to the ruined spine she was coaxing into alignment. "But Neptune's greatest sin was dying by the hand of a queen who moved because you whispered into her ear."
Theron waved it off. "Gigi, please. She would have killed him without my help. That asshole is insufferable."
That earned him a look sharp enough to cut.
"Why can't you two ever work through your differences?" she snapped. "This petty war is destroying our home."
He straightened then, the humor draining from his face. "This is not my home."
The words landed heavy between them.
Gorgo swallowed, jaw tightening. "If I take the throne," she said, quieter now, "there's no telling Neptune won't depose me. Even dead and in a mortal body, he casts a long shadow. What if he suddenly decides that being with that mortal pirate is not enough?"
Theron stepped closer. Too close.
"Be a good, obedient sister," he murmured, pressing a brief kiss to her forehead. The gesture was intimate. Familiar. Poisoned. "That's all I ask."
For a moment, Gorgo closed her eyes.
Then she turned back to the body laid out before her and resumed stitching what remained of her younger brother together, needle flashing, magic bleeding into flesh.
Then, Nestor's body keeled over as he yelled in pain, Theron abandoning the mind and letting Neptune resume his sojourn.
And Edward, shivering despite the salt-heavy air, had no idea how much of the world's fate was being decided a few paces away from him.
***
The day the Assigner returned to his body and traveled to Hunat, the sky curdled.
It was not a storm in the traditional sense. No lightning, no thunder. Only a vast, wrong stillness.
The sun blinked once, as if in caution, and Hunat's great stone citadel—Veyron's Crown—shuddered in its roots. The Consul of Hunat, Calix Dravon, stood on the black marble dais carved into the spine of the capital, draped in the heavy bronze robes of his station. His face, once handsome, had the smooth, glassy exhaustion of a man who had spent too many decades trying to look unbothered by fear. His hair was silver, combed back like a soldier's, and his eyes were pale—a side effect of long exposure to the neural lathes that still throbbed beneath the citadel's foundations.
Hunat had changed.
No longer a world of invention, it had steeled itself into a weapon. The great minds had been pressed into uniform. The dreamers had been drafted. The planet's very air vibrated with the dull thrum of endless drills and the shriek of black-iron fleets tearing the skies.
The Orlionic Collar was no longer spoken of—not because it was mourned, but because Sibelle Orlion herself had destroyed every trace of it. She had scattered its schematics into coded ashes, buried the last living prototypes in vitrified tombs, and vanished before they could wrench the secrets from her hands.
Calix Dravon thought of her sometimes—The Witch of the Prism Hall, the last true engineer of Hunat. Now just a myth told by whisperers.
And then came the Assigner.
His armor was a simple gleaming black, bearing no crests, no house sigils—only a single silver ring around his left wrist, a sign known only to those who still remembered he used to be married.
(No one but him.)
"Hunat welcomes you with its full heart and service," the Consul said.
Theron—the Assigner—smiled. It was the kind of smile that made machines flinch.
"I have come," he said, voice deep and dry, "hoping to receive good news."
The Consul's back immediately straightened. A crackle of cold sweat trickled down his back beneath the ceremonial robes.
"Highness," he said, choosing each word like a man crossing a frozen lake, "I have been looking everywhere, but there are no signs of your wife's collar."
"You will find it," Theron interrupted, his voice velvet over steel. "You will search every archive, every dead zone, every bloodline. The Collar is still here. Hidden. Waiting. I can feel it."
The Consul bowed again. Not out of deference, but because it was the only way to hide his horror. To hide the sick, cold weight curling in his gut.
Because he had seen something when the Assigner smiled—something reptilian, something ancient, flickering behind those perfect features.
The King Below had returned.
And Hunat would be stripped to its marrow to feed his will.
The search began that night.
Across the planet, squads of black-armored searchers swept into abandoned labs, shattered archives, and sunken vaults. They dug through glass deserts and toxic jungles. They whispered through the ruins of the Prism Hall, where the last flicker of Sibelle's genius had once burned.
There was nothing.
Only the whisper of the Assigner's wife, mocking him.
***
Lasicus gasped.
It was not a triumphant sound. It was ugly and wet, dragged from a throat that no longer belonged to a god.
His back arched violently against the stone as air forced itself into his lungs, ribs shuddering like they had forgotten their purpose. The glow that once lived beneath his skin flickered once, weak as dying plankton, and then went out entirely.
Cleo sobbed his name.
She was already moving when his eyes opened. They were the same eyes. She would have known them anywhere. Too large, too soft, always reflecting the world back at itself. Memory was there. Recognition. Fear.
"Cleo," he said.
Her relief broke something in her chest. She laughed and cried at once, stumbling forward, arms already reaching for him.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the world pushed back.
There was no visible barrier. No light. No sound. Just force.
Cleo was thrown backward as if struck in the sternum, her feet leaving the sand. Lasicus screamed as something wrenched him in the opposite direction, his body snapping toward the mouth of the cave. The air between them shuddered, warping like heat over stone.
Their heads jerked violently.
Both cried out.
It was not pain as Cleo understood it.
It was invasion. A grinding pressure behind the eyes, as if their thoughts were being forced through a space too narrow to hold them. Cleo collapsed to her knees, clutching her skull. Lasicus convulsed, fingers clawing uselessly at the rock as a sound tore from him that no longer resembled language.
The waves recoiled.
It was invasion. A grinding pressure behind the eyes, as if their thoughts were being forced through a space too narrow to hold them. Cleo collapsed to her knees, clutching her skull. Lasicus convulsed, fingers clawing uselessly at the rock as a sound tore from him that no longer resembled language.
The waves recoiled.
The sea itself seemed to flinch, drawing back from the shoreline as their screams echoed across the beach.
"Enough," Gorgo snapped.
She moved with terrifying speed given her disability, seizing Lasicus by the shoulders and hauling him backward into the cave. The instant his body crossed the threshold, the pressure vanished.
Cleo collapsed fully into the sand, gasping, her vision swimming. The world steadied slowly, cruelly, as if nothing had happened at all.
Inside the cave, Lasicus lay shaking in Gorgo's grasp, tears streaming soundlessly down his face.
She held him there, one arm braced across his chest, the other cradling the back of his skull like she was afraid it might come apart in her hands.
"I told you," Gorgo said quietly, not unkindly. "I can stitch flesh. I can anchor what remains. But what your brother tore out was not just power."
She looked down at him, at the slackness already creeping into his limbs, at the absence where divinity used to hum.
"The Sun scorched the conduit," she continued. "The divine tendon still exists, but it no longer conducts. Whatever you were… it cannot flow through you anymore."
Cleo staggered to her feet outside the cave, sand clinging to her palms and knees. She stared at the dark mouth of the cavern like it had betrayed her personally.
"What in all of—" Her voice broke. She swallowed hard and tried again. "What did he do to us?"
Gorgo did not answer immediately. She wasn't sure the Forest Queen and her had the same person on their mind.
Cleo pressed a hand to her chest, right over her heart, as if she could hold herself together by force alone.
Cleo stood alone on the beach, staring at the brother she could no longer touch.
***
Gorgo did not look up when Salacia entered the cave.
She was grinding something dark and resinous into a shallow stone bowl, slow and methodical, as if the world had not just cracked open outside her threshold. The cave smelled of brine, rot, and medicinal bitterness.
"The Sun God went on a spree, didn't he?"
Salacia froze.
Gorgo's voice was mild, almost bored, as she continued to work. A crow with one leg hopped closer, its feathers dull and uneven, its missing limb wrapped in a crude band of twine. Gorgo reached down without looking and stroked its head. The bird leaned into the touch.
Salacia exhaled through her teeth. "That tends to happen," she said, limping farther inside, "when you spend a lifetime suppressing anger."
Gorgo finally glanced over her shoulder.
She took Salacia in all at once. The stagger in her gait. The way one hand pressed constantly against her abdomen. The faint shimmer missing from her skin. The absence where divinity should have rested.
"You seem remarkably calm," Gorgo observed, turning back to her potions, "for someone who has just been… emptied."
Salacia laughed, breathless and sharp. "That's because I know you can fix me."
The pestle stopped.
Gorgo set it down carefully.
"I'm afraid I can't."
Salacia took another step. Her knee buckled. She caught herself on the cave wall, smearing blood across stone. The hole in her stomach was ugly, burned clean through, edges still faintly glowing with residual light.
"Well," Salacia said lightly, as if they were old friends discussing weather, "bygones be bygones, am I right?"
Gorgo turned fully now.
Her expression did not soften.
"Even if I wanted to help you," she said, "which I don't, I can't. I just had a patient in a similar condition."
Her gaze flicked briefly toward the inner chamber, where Lasicus slept in fitful, mortal stillness.
"He fared much worse," Gorgo continued. "You should be grateful you're alive."
Something in Salacia snapped.
She screamed and swept her arm across the nearest shelf. Glass shattered. Liquids hissed as they spilled, eating into the stone. Dried herbs burst into dust. The crow shrieked and fluttered away, feathers scattering.
"You always were sanctimonious," Salacia snarled, tearing at bundles of seaweed and bone charms, ripping them free. Gorgo did not move.
"This temper," she said calmly, "is exactly why you've ended up this way."
Salacia wheeled on her, panting. "Don't you dare—"
"You wanted legs," Gorgo went on. "You begged for them. You schemed for them. You traded a sea for skin. Congratulations."
Her eyes dropped pointedly to Salacia's trembling, human stance.
"This," she said, "is what comes with them."
Salacia's breathing slowed. Her expression shifted. Calculated. Sharp.
She straightened as much as she could and smiled.
"Fine," she said. "Give me a tail. Your herbs, your little miracles. Make me what I was."
Gorgo raised an eyebrow.
"And in return?" she asked, already knowing.
"I restore your position at court," Salacia said smoothly. "Princess of the Seas. Your title. Your power. Your relevance …. Your beauty."
Gorgo laughed.
"You misunderstand," she said. "I don't want your court."
Salacia's smile faltered.
"And even if I did," Gorgo added, stepping closer now, close enough that Salacia could see the salt-cracks in her skin, the scars where beauty had been taken rather than lost, "I would never take back what was stolen by becoming what you are."
The cave fell quiet but for the distant churn of water.
Salacia stared at her, fury and fear twisting together.
Gorgo picked up her pestle again and returned to her work.
"You may stay," she said coolly. "Or you may crawl back to whatever scraps of power you think you still have."
She did not look up.
"But I will not remake you."
And for the first time since losing her divinity, Salacia understood something worse than pain.
She had come to the wrong monster.