Alexia sat on her stool, leaning on the bowsprit. Her eyelids felt as heavy as castle gates. She channeled the flowing waters of Dalis, shifting the sea currents around her. She didn't have time to rest. Every turn she wasted was another Mahagan dead.

The harrowing memories of the last span chased her. Constantly.

The first day, after the battle on the water was won, she'd been called on to cleanse toxins, mend appendages that had been lacerated or severed, siphon water from the ribaia wave, and to apply all the marvels Leverith's spirit was capable of. The hardest part of that day was turning over Zadeki's Pride, the Mahagan ship that had capsized. No one had survived. Even the Waterrunners aboard had fallen victim to the kalagoth. Alexia drew the water from the boat and dispersed it back into the sea. Zadeki's Pride lived on, now operated by a mixed crew from a Sapphire ship that had been too damaged to sail again and Islanders who had been rescued since.

It took time for the armada to reassemble, but the boats had found each other off the shore of Haaia. The twenty-two ships gathered together, the captains joining on Sea Lion before the first landing. Alexia still took strength from that memory. Leoquo's speech had moved her. Admiral Kalos Bluvein of The Blue Lance honored Zadeki's Pride and the privilege it was to serve beside the brave people of five nations to cleanse a scourge that threatened all. Captain Undaxa—the willowy Fire Volqori warrior who had leapt from her ship and killed a kalagoth—announced a declaration of war between the crew of Syra's Glory and the Celegan Empire. Therix, The Sea Drake's captain, a gorgeous blue-haired, blue-eyed, muscle-bound Ice Tribe man of men proclaimed more loudly that his crew would kill twice as many tamers as any Fire Tribe crew.

Alexia witnessed firsthand the astounding sexual tension between those two beautiful and intimidating dragon warriors as Undaxa's smoldering hot snarl collided with Therix's chilly charismatic side-eye. She had shared a knowing smile with both Leoquo and Azi at that display. Theos Stormkin, dressed in his blue coconut shirt and pink swimming trunks, then boasted that he would kill half as many as either of their crews divided by two! Both Volqori captains were momentarily united, laughing at Theos. Alexia saw the first thread of their tension snap, as they shared a brief smile before reverting to their glares.

But it was Azi's declaration she remembered the most now, that had struck the deepest chord. The princess declared that the ribaia was her friend and would follow the armada, killing any Tamed in the sea. As she spoke, the fin appeared in the waters beside twenty-two ships. Panic had swept over the decks like a tidal wave.

Leoquo soothed the panic with Dalis's own touch. He gripped Azi's hand and announced that Azurianna Sapphire could break the chains the tamers placed on the Tamed and that she had befriended the ribaia by freeing it from the captivity of the Shadow.

From then on, the power in the armada shifted. Leoquo went from a man begging for aid to a man in charge while Azi became his de facto queen. Even the Mahagans that had formerly whispered about the unnatural connection Leoquo developed with the Sapphire girl, ceased the scuttlebutt and recognized Azi as the hero that would bring thousands of Mahagans to her shores. Instead of a point of taboo and doom, the friendship between the Mahagan emir and the Sapphire princess became a rallying point that bonded the Sapphire and the Mahagan fleets into one indistinguishable armada tempered by the dangers of their foe and the love blossoming between their royalty.

Alexia wasn't just happy that the attention was diverted from her. Her friend thrived on the center of the stage, and her love-starved heart deserved all the affection, especially from a man as good as Leoquo who would treat her like a queen. It helped that Azi and her were speaking again too. Per Azi's request, Alexia was moved into her small cabin and things were back to the way they'd always been.

Alexia sighed on the prow of Sea Lion. All it took was thoughts of being at peace with Azi to keep her focus on Dalis. She didn't have to look forward to the horrors that awaited them on the ninth isle, on Caleel, where the Shadow and the Chimaera awaited. She wasn't speeding them to their deaths, but every moment she channeled the currents saved lives. So far.

Waterruners swam to shore the first day. They scouted Haaia, fighting Tamed and rallying survivors to their extraction points. Aboard the ship, Alexia merged Celegana and Leverith, massaging Azi's back with the Divine of the Leverians and the Divine of the Wilders. Azi broke tamer links, first freeing the birds that spied on them, then those that watched from Haaia or fought against the Mahagans ashore. With Alexia's magical infusions, Azi dominated. She heard the cries of the Tamed, begging for freedom. She was good, and getting better, as she severed hundreds of binds an angle.

With Azi's help, and the bravery of Leoquo and his Waterrunners ashore, thousands of Mahagans were gathered in the night and led to the beaches where the boats awaited them. Windjumpers leaping from shore to decks, sailors rowing boats to and from the beach, scared Mahagan civilians were brought to the transport boats.

But the Tamed came. Too many for Azi to liberate at once.

Spears, swords, arrows, and spells kept the Tamed at bay while survivors flocked to the ships, usually carrying nothing more than their lives.

Alexia didn't want to think about those extractions. She looked away, leaning on the bowsprit for support, seeking solace from the sorrow in Dalis's serene embrace. Held by the Divine of Water, she could pretend she felt something other than pain.

By the end of the second night, their ships had overflowed with life. Alexia didn't sleep, carrying them over the water toward Cherin's Point on the southeastern edge of Leveria. By sunrise, she'd delivered them to their new homes. Exhausted, physically, emotionally, spiritually, she avoided the refugee landings where she wasn't needed. Instead, she tried to find the Hall of Dreams, usually reliving nightmares of lions tearing into flesh, of mothers screaming for their children, of orphans on deck looking for parents who'd never hold them again.

In the days since, the coalition armada landed on the beaches of eight of the nine Mahogany Isles. Estimates were rough, but Leoquo believed that over eighty thousand of his people had made it to Cherin's Point. Less than half of the two hundred thousand who called the Isles their home. They were greeted by Eckhard Seekers, soldiers of the archlord of the hold, and traders hired by Eron Bluerose to help them establish their new settlement. Each time Alexia returned with twenty-two ships stocked with the most precious cargo, more forest was cleared, more tents erected, more shanties built in the style of the Mahogany Isles sprouted along the water.

Their pain was easy to feel. The Mahagan were an expressive people, not withholding their hearts and emotions as much as any other culture in the world. Every time she closed her eyes, scenes of the past few days returned to her, of indelible suffering.

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A little boy rescued from Jarahi asking when he would see his mother again, not able to comprehend when his older sister told him that their mother was crushed by an empagong.

An old woman who had witnessed her children and grandchildren die in their flight, vocalizing how she would trade her life for even one of those pearls.

A Windjumper whose spearmate died relaying the extraction point to survivors and rushed off into the jungle to lure away the Tamed. It speared Alexia in the heart when she learned that Mahagan bondpairs could sense the moment their spearmate died. The Mahagan were a most expressive people, heartbreak and grief ever the most agonizing of pains one could suffer.

Though she tried not to, Alexia felt that each orphaned child, each grandmother who couldn't even bury her grandchildren, each bereaved spearmate, was somehow her fault. If she'd been faster, if she'd known to focus her spells here instead of there, maybe they wouldn't suffer so much.

Her failure brought her back to Ferrickton, to The Rusty Pickaxe, where she had destroyed a wonderful child's life. Those same emotions welled up within her like a wound that couldn't close. Alexia donned her mask, and channeled Dalis, trying to patch the holes in herself. But she was tired. So very tired.

The sights she saw on the Isles were just as heartrending and far more visceral. Lions tore apart children as they fled while their mothers and fathers failed to fend off the Tamed prides. The all-female Fire and all-male Ice Volqori crews teamed up to thwart the empagong, massive tortoises that stood on legs ten-feet high and had shells too thick for either weapons or spells to pierce, and many of those mightiest of warriors were slammed into the mud and left pulverized. Leoquo, always the last one to leave an Isle, cried tears of agony and joy as he escorted his people aboard the fleet. Mahagan women leapt into the air, dozens of feet high, carrying crying babies out of harm's way. The villages were all ruins, stamped on by the empagong. Bodies were visible everywhere as they traveled inland, looking for survivors. In the end, they were overrun and had to flee the isle, leaving people behind. Stragglers ran to shore as the fleet pulled away. The sight of them being overtaken by the Tamed, reaching for salvation that had been so close, made Alexia wish that she had been born in a better world than this one. Even more, she wished she had the power to hold off the Tamed a little longer.

Azi's flourishing was the precious fruit that bloomed on this tree of death and decay. She seemed unstoppable, driving Celegans out of the minds of beasts at an ever-accelerating pace as she gained more familiarity with her abilities. Azi described the minds of the Tamers, but especially of the Shadow, as toxic cesspits full of hatred and the thirst to kill anyone who was different from them. The Tamers believed themselves to be divine warriors while Azi was an evil khorota, the vilest creature the world could produce. Their twisted beliefs were beyond even Alexia's reckoning and she didn't attempt to grasp them.

Azi didn't venture into Mahagan territory without Alexia. That was the only stipulation the brave princess made. If she was going into battle, it was with her hero guarding her. Thus, Alexia protected Azi while Garrond and the Redeemed Men protected her.

Wherever they went was always where the Celegans struck hardest. While her ability to channel spells against the Tamed improved, watching soldiers die didn't get easier with experience. She tried to tell herself it wasn't her fault. But she knew that she brought them here, and the pressure they faced was a product of Daichin ezen Celegan seeking her.

The Tamed were endless. Azi couldn't break hundreds of links in an instant as swarms of creatures fell upon their extraction points. Azi had to prioritize the mightiest of the Tamed. Without her best friend's wilder abilities, Alexia had no doubts that empagong would have overtaken their extractions much faster and with much more fatality. Azi snapped the invisible connections that linked tamer to the nigh invincible behemoth tortoises. Then the freed empagong plodded into the jungles making an otherworldly moan, a knowing lament for all the death they brought upon the Islanders they were sworn to protect.

Alexia wanted to cry beside them. Watching a stranger die was heartbreaking enough. When it was people who trusted her to lead them to a better future who died upon foreign shores, Alexia felt like the world's biggest fraud and that sometimes made her wish she could've died with them. Redeemed Men continued to meet their demise on the Mahagan beaches. Six of the original thirteen had perished. Each time they lost a member, Erlos gathered the survivors at the prow. They memorialized their brother as they sailed away, leaving his body behind. Each time they performed the Guiding, Erlos ended it the same.

His words were the echoes of a nightmare that she couldn't wake from. And now he has been redeemed, but we must go on, following the hard path in their stead.

She'd cared for the Redeemed Men, like Jem who had been the first to join Erlos in pledging himself to her. But the hardest death of all was Bam. Little Byron had lived true to his stories. On Zadeki, Bam broke free of their formation to rescue a Mahagan girl that had been cornered by a pride of lions. He slew two before the others pounced on him.

Alexia relived his final moments in her mind several times each day, wishing she had looked the other way at the time she was supposed to. Bam was torn apart, past the point of even her magic's mending when Jonah carried him to Alexia, the little girl he rescued held Bam's hand, weeping for him. Bam's blood all over her, his blue eyes staring into eternity.

No, Alexia didn't like this world. But thinking on her failures made it hard to like herself.

While Sea Lion sailed to Cherin's Point, the Redeemed Men, Leoquo, Azi, Theos, Captain Makeba, First Mate Chikondi, and the four survivors of Calden's Caravan paid tribute to the small-framed orphan. Sein, his fast friend from the Redeemed Men, said it best. His life has ended. His story shall live on forever. A Leverian legend. BAM!

Tears were no stranger to her face. Again, they crawled down her cheeks as she sat her stool, resting her weary bones on the bowsprit. She couldn't look back any more. Neither could she look forward, knowing that the Celegans would be strongest on Caleel, and her failures would mount even higher than Celegana's Spire. The present moment was no sanctuary. Her exhaustion and her agony pushed down on her, making it hard to sit up straight and feel the beauty around her. The ocean beneath a clear sky, the sight of Azi walking the deck, her hand in Leoquo's, or the intermingling of nations didn't stir her heart as much as she knew it should.

Therix and Undaxa had snapped all the threads of tension, everybody knowing that they, and many of their crew, were sharing beds. Their boats sailed beside each other, their crews conjoined despite the war between their tribes back home. That should have sparked a love of life in her romantic heart. It barely registered.

Several more Kavovan ships had joined the fleet after seeing what was happening at Cherin's Point. Their momentary generosity felt hollow to Alexia. Even a vessel captained by an Isihlan refugee volunteered to carry Mahagans to Leveria, one survivor helping others driven from their homes. Several of the Sapphire ship captains in Cherin's Point and in neighboring areas followed her to the Isles, offering whatever space they could, often mentioning Alexia specifically as their reason for doing so.

Wayward Mahagans, survivors of the initial Tamed attacks, joined their fleet too. Even a Ruby mercantile vessel they'd intercepted along the way to Shalgel joined Leoquo's cause. A fleet of twenty-three now number fifty-four. A part of Alexia knew she should be inspired. That this was a sign that this world was a far better place than the Celegans made it out to be. But she couldn't look at any of these ships without being aware that she would let some of them down, and that no matter how much they filled their hulls, people would be left behind.

So, Alexia Bluerose closed her eyes, all three of them, as she channeled the currents, speeding them all toward Caleel. The first eight isles would be nothing like the carnage they'd find here. She hadn't even seen Daichin's silver eyes in the past days. But she would soon, staring at her from the three heads of the Chimaera.

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