Part One
Arbaz, Island of Thaetus, Pelago
1
Sera
SERA WAS PERCHED IN THE CROW’S NEST OF THE MAIDEN’S Wail when the Pelagan coastline came into view.
She liked it here best, where she was high up and could see for miles. They had been at sea for fifteen days since fleeing Kaolin and Xavier McLellan. Sera still shivered remembering that night—the theater with all those people staring at her, the way the sprites had burst forth from beneath her dear Arboreal friend Boris, Errol the mertag clinging to her back as he shattered the glass ceiling, running across the rooftops of Old Port City until they reached the Seaport. She could still see Boris’s beautiful silvery bark charring as the sprites lit her leaves and branches aflame, still feel the twist of anguish that the gentle tree had sacrificed herself to give Sera and Errol the chance to escape.
But the only thing Sera could do to honor that sacrifice was to be free, as Boris had wanted. To find the tether that connected this planet to the City Above the Sky and return home.
“Land, Sera Lighthaven!” Errol cried out as he erupted from the water, his filaments flashing in shades of pearl pink and lilac. Then he vanished beneath the waves.
Sera swung over the rail and climbed down the rigging to join Leo McLellan where he stood alone on the deck. His sister, Agnes, had been welcomed warmly by the sailors, but not Leo. Violetta had made it clear at the very start that if he gave her crew any of that “patriarchal Kaolin horseshit,” he would promptly be thrown overboard. They tolerated his presence because he was a guest of hers—the Pelagans thought Sera was Saifa, the goddess of life. Sera did not know how to explain to them how wrong they were.
“Pelago,” she said eagerly, jumping the last few feet and landing lightly on the deck. “We’re almost there, Leo.”
“I never thought I’d see it,” Leo confessed as he tied back his thick black curls with a leather thong. His hair had grown long and unruly over the course of the voyage. He’d complained about it for days until Sera told him she thought it suited him quite nicely. It made him look freer, somehow, and different from the person she had met back in Kaolin. He never mentioned cutting it again after that.
“I wonder what it’s like,” Sera said. She hadn’t realized how uncertain she’d been that they would ever reach the country at all. But even now that they had, the island of Braxos where the tether was planted was still miles away, far to the north. There was a lot more journey left to go.
“Did you see?” Agnes came running up to them, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. “It’s Pelago! We made it!”
“You will love the city of Arbaz, I am thinking,” Vada said, sauntering up behind Agnes. “It has the largest market in all of Pelago. Even the one in Ithilia cannot compare. Though don’t tell the Ithilians I said that.”
Vada was the only sailor who treated Sera like a normal person, the only one who actually called her Sera and not Saifa. Sera had a suspicion that Agnes had much to do with that—the two girls were very close and had grown closer over the voyage.
“I can’t wait to see it,” Agnes gushed. “And Leo, Eneas said his sister works in the market; perhaps we’ll be able to meet her.”
“Sure,” Leo said, tugging at his shirt, “we can meet whoever you want, as long as I can get some new clothes.”
Vada grinned. “You are not enjoying Jacoba’s leftover things?”
Agnes choked on her laugh. Leo had been wearing one of the tallest sailor’s hand-me-downs, since his fancy clothes from the theater were entirely inappropriate for life on a ship.
“Surprisingly, no,” Leo said dryly. “At least, not after two weeks in them.”
“You know, I think you will be looking very fine in Pelagan clothes,” Vada said. “You have the figure for them.”
“Fashion is the least of our concern,” Agnes said, tucking a loose strand of hair up into her bun. “And it’s Ithilia we need to get to, not Arbaz.”
Ithilia was the capital city of Pelago, on a different island called Cairan. Pelago was nothing but islands, and even though Sera had been looking at maps of it for two weeks, she still felt disoriented by them all. When she had gazed down at this planet from the City Above the Sky, Pelago had seemed so small, a collection of misshapen brown-and-green dots. But now she was realizing just how big this world was.
“Actually, it’s Braxos we need to get to,” Leo reminded her.
“But our grandmother is in Ithilia,” Agnes said. “She’s expecting me. And I know she can help us.”
“If there is anyone in Pelago who can be helping you besides the Triumvirate itself,” Vada said, “it is Ambrosine Byrne.”
Sera hoped Ambrosine was a kinder person than Agnes and Leo’s father. She did not have an ounce of pity for the man who had imprisoned her, but however cruel and callous, he was still the twins’ only living parent. They knew almost nothing of their mother, Alethea Byrne, or her family, except that the Byrnes were very powerful and influential in Pelago. Agnes clung to the idea of Ambrosine the way Sera clung to her star pendant at night, the one her best friend, Leela, had given her.
She pulled the moonstone necklace out from beneath her shirt and rubbed it with her thumb, grateful that she had this one tangible reminder of her City. The stone was cold today—it seemed to have a mind of its own when it came to temperature, rarely reflecting the air around it or even the warmth of Sera’s body. She wondered if it had always been like that when it had sat hidden in Leela’s bedroom in the City Above the Sky. And the other night, Agnes said she had woken abruptly in the room they shared and swore she heard it humming from around Sera’s neck.
“I’m coming, Leela,” she murmured. “I’m coming, mothers.”
Leo squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll get you back to them.”
But he didn’t know that for sure, not really.
“What did she say?” Vada asked.
Sera felt a familiar surge of frustration. She was convinced there must be a way for her to communicate—not just understand, but speak and be understood—with the humans on this planet, whether they spoke Pelagan or Kaolish. She could not believe that the Cerulean of old would have gone down to a planet and blood bonded with perfect strangers, or given their blood away, willingly or not. So far those were the only two ways Sera had managed to make first Agnes and then Leo understand her. There had to be a way of communicating without her having to sacrifice quite so much. Especially now that she knew blood bonding with humans meant sharing memories.
She kept thinking back to that night when she had accidentally blood bonded with Leo while she was trapped in the crate. She hadn’t been touching him, yet she had seen into his mind and he into hers. He had had her magic inside him already, of course, but Sera was certain there was some way for her to speak to everyone on this planet as naturally as she had spoken to Errol that first night when she woke up in the theater.
Leo translated for her now and Vada gave her a sympathetic look.
“I am still not quite understanding where it is you are coming from,” she said. “But I am hoping you can return there safely.”
Sera smiled at her in thanks.