Several hours later, I emerged from the cabin, slightly less tired but not anywhere close to well rested. At some point, the chill in the air gave way to mugginess, and the tiny room became an oven. I discarded Remiel's cloak halfway through the morning, but every so often, I would move and catch his scent. It lingered on my skin and in my hair.

"There's the sleepy head," Astreia called out when she spied me standing awkwardly on the deck. She and Yoko were chatting in the same place Remiel and I had stood before dawn.

"Where did you get those?" I asked, pointing to the tops they wore.

Slender straps clung to their elegant shoulders and attached to a strip of ruched yellow linen barely wide enough to cover their breasts. The bottom portion of the top was made of material that clung to their ribcage and stopped the top from riding up when they moved. Yoko had thrown a striped vest over hers but kept it unbuttoned, and she wore a pair of loose, wide legged trousers.

I wasn't the only one captivated by them. Sailors who wandered by stared openly. One even tripped because he wasn't paying attention to where he was going, but the princess and soldier paid them no heed.

"I have an outfit for you in our cabin," Astreia replied. "Bought them off a Joridorian girl the night we stayed at the inn. As you can tell, the summer heat holds on far longer here, and it will be sometime before we will need our cloaks and furs again. You will melt if you wear that the entire time."

I looked down at my tunic. It was long-sleeved and wool lined and already stuck to my skin where sweat and humidity pooled, but I couldn't imagine exposing my entire torso like that. My legs were covered from hip to ankle, and I still felt exposed. And I didn't want everyone to see my scars.

"I'm fine."

They both snorted. Yoko rolled her eyes and hopped up on the railing. "Told you she wouldn't go for it. She almost cried when she put on the trousers."

Astreia clasped her hands together and widened her silver gaze in mock pleading. "Oh, please put them on."

Hands on my hips, I replied, "I am not a doll, and this is hardly the time to care about what we wear." Then, a little less sternly, I added, "Besides, I'd burn to a crisp in something like that."

Yoko winced and then ran her finger along Astreia's shining black skin. When she spoke, her voice held a husky timbre that seemed inappropriate for the public. "She's not wrong."

Catching Yoko's wandering hand, Astreia pressed a kiss against her knuckles. I nearly backed away, feeling like I was intruding upon a private moment, but Astreia pinned me in place with a gaze filled with steely resolve.

"The sailors have a salve for that. Something you put on your skin to protect it from the sun. I'm sure they won't mind sharing."

"I'll let you know if it's needed." Changing the subject, I asked, "Where is Tievel?"

They shrugged in unison. Yoko answered, "Saw him talking to the captain earlier. Thought he might have gone back down to check on you. You slept very late."

I glared, hearing the suggestion in her voice. "I was up late—not like that."

They burst into gales of laughter, falling into one another as they fought to catch their breath. Astreia wiped her eyes. "Honey, neither of us would blame you... well, Yoko might, but that's because she's never been interested in men. Tievel, for all his flaws, is a beautiful man and," she gestured below her belt. "I've seen what he's working with. You would not be disappointed."

I slapped my hands over my ears. "Enough."

But she wasn't through.

"And Remiel," she purred his name and fanned herself. "He looks like the type to break your back and then kiss it and make it better."

Unable to help myself, I asked, "Do I want my back broken?"

"Oh gods, yes," she breathed. "Those two would be quite the pair in bed. Tievel would worship you. Remiel would ravage you. And if they will play with one another...Tievel does enjoy a little sword play now and again..."

"All right, all right," Yoko said, rescuing us both as my face blistered and Astreia's eyes glazed over with lust. "She gets the picture. We all do."

"Nothing like that happened last night. The only sword play Tievel is interested in where Remiel is concerned is one where he puts an actual sword through his heart."

"What a waste."

"It was cold, and my bed was hard. I came up to the deck to get some fresh air."

The three of us leaned against the railing and watched the bubbles form and burst on the ship's hull as it cut through the sea. Surreptitiously, I turned to the side and scanned the ship, hoping to glimpse either man, but found nothing but curious or glaring sailors.

Yoko glanced at me. "So that must have been you I heard last night."

"Probably."

"I thought we heard more than one person get up. I almost stuck my head outside because I was worried something had happened."

"You're right. A door opened at least three times. Maybe four," Astreia chimed in.

Yoko closed her eyes, and her lips moved as if she was counting. Then she said, "Definitely four. Three were almost back-to-back and then one was a while later."

Remiel accounted for at least one, and the later one would be me returning to the room. That meant someone else had been up late. I recalled the shimmer in the air and then dismissed it. The sailors were a mixture of nyad and water sprite. Neither of those species could become invisible, and Tievel had been sleeping soundly when I came back to the room. It had to be one of the crew moving about, and I said as much, leaving out the bit about Remiel.

"I suppose," Astreia conceded with a pout. "Here I was hoping something salacious happened last night."

"It did." Yoko bumped her hip against Astreia's. "In our room."

"Good grief."

"It's the sea air," Yoko confessed, inhaling deeply and lifting her face into the sun. "It makes me insatiable. I have missed it."

Desperate to be elsewhere, I took a step back and then stopped. Rushing back to the railing, I leaned over and pointed at a glittering iridescent ribbon twining through the dark blue waves. It was easy to think it was a trick of the sunlight, but it moved like a thing alive, no rhyme or reason to its movements. Within minutes, it was joined by a dozen others, all in varying shades.

"More atargats?" I asked.

Yoko shook her head, her tan skin going pale. "Merrow. We're getting close to the pearl gardens."

I knew only a little about Merrow—mostly what I'd read in books—but you couldn't trust everything you read. Tievel's books described Deathsingers as women with soulless eyes and rags for clothes.

"We should get to the middle of the ship," Yoko said, taking us by the arm and pulling. "If they see us watching, they might grow curious, and their curiosity often leads to singing."

"Singing?"

She glanced at me. "Yours is not the only dangerous voice. What do you know about the Merrow?"

"Not much. An offshoot of the water creatures. Cousin to the Nyads."

"Very distant cousin, and only because there has been some interbreeding. The first merrow was a High Elf. She threw herself into the sea when her lover chose another, but she could not die. Her lungs filled with water and the ocean's pressure crushed her, and rather than slip into limbo, she changed. Evolved into something that could live beneath the surface. Eventually, she decided she cared little for being alone, and she lured a Sea Court prince beneath the waves with her voice."

The story enthralled Astreia and me. This version was definitely not in any of the books I read. The High Elves seemed to write whatever version of history that best advanced their own fortunes.

Yoko stretched her neck from side to side and gulped. "They've supposedly figured out a way to transform others into Merrow now that the Blessed are so few. I lost a cousin to them several years ago. His mother was never quite the same, and one night, she snuck out of their home and rowed out to sea. We never found a body."

"Gods, Yoko," Astreia said as she tenderly embraced her lover. "I am sorry."

"It was a long time ago. I'm just feeling foolish for forgetting about this threat. You can find them anywhere, but they like the magic around the pearl gardens. Some say their capital is there. I should've brought wax for our ears."

Astreia lifted her chin, tugged down her blouse, and pushed up her breasts so they nearly spilled over the top. Waving at a sailor, she called, "Yoo-hoo. Do you have any wax? And maybe some sun salve."

I watched her go with a small smile. The sailor dropped what he was doing immediately and ran off to fetch the requested items. Yoko wrinkled her nose and sighed fondly.

"You really like her, don't you?"

"That's a silly thing to ask," she replied, a bit stiffly. Things were better between us, but without Astreia as a buffer, a bit of awkwardness blossomed. "Of course, I do."

"I didn't mean it that way." I searched for the right words. "It's just so natural and easy between you both."

She relaxed and her blue eyes softened. "I always thought love was losing yourself in someone, but with her...I think that's not it at all. It's finding yourself."

The rightness of what she said went straight to my soul. An uncomfortable sensation followed. I didn't yet know what that felt like. Being with Tievel had always felt like I was drowning, dragged down by the intensity of desire, but maybe love looked different for everyone.

"A storm is moving in." Remiel's voice sounded above our heads.

We looked up to find him sitting on the edge of a crow's nest. He peered at us through his spread thighs, his amber eyes unreadable from this distance. His shirt and hair whipped about in a sudden gust of wind, and I smelled the incoming rain.

"Well, I guess we will be doing strength training today," Yoko said, drawing her eyes down and over to the west, where bruised clouds massed on the horizon. "Not room for much else in the cabin."

"Strength training?" I didn't like the sound of that, but I followed her to the stairs as the crew began shouting at one another, readying the ship for the incoming weather. The space between my shoulders itched, and I knew Remiel watched me.

"Fancy footwork and moves matter little if you're weak," the soldier said, pushing open her cabin door as another one further down the hall opened.

Tievel stepped out, straightening the cuffs on his shirt. His hair was the color of sugared violets today, and in the stuffy space, the smell of Kanna smoke clinging to him nearly choked me. Yoko tsked in disapproval as she stepped around me to enter her room.

"What were you doing?" I asked, wishing I was brave enough to push him aside and look into the cabin he'd vacated. He could have been alone, helping himself to someone's stash, but that wasn't the way he operated.

"Talking strategy with the captain," he replied casually, even as wariness crept across his face. "I thought he might be able to drop us closer to the Estrellum coast and bypass Jorridor all together."

"Oh." It made sense. It really did, but something inside of me fractured. There would have been a price to pay for such a favor. "Okay. I'm going to spend some time with the girls."

"Morana." He reached for me, but I snatched my arm back.

Something inside me broke. I wanted to yell at him. To tell him what I was risking for him, but I couldn't because I wasn't sure it would matter. He would make me feel foolish for questioning his plans, because he would be certain his way was best.

"You could have talked to us first," I said at last and so quiet I wondered if he missed what I said.

His expression shifted, taking on the strange look he'd been giving me since the incident at the inn. Not quite pity, but something akin to it. Something a little crueler.

"Why do you look at me like that?"

"Because I forget sometimes."

"Forget what?"

"How sheltered you've been. It's a gift to watch you take the world in. You see beauty in things I've taken for granted for a long time. Sometimes, I feel guilty, but mostly, I just want to show you the world."

My heart caught in my throat. "What does that have to do with how you're looking at me now?

"Because you also don't know how the world works. What happened just now was business. That's it. Soon enough, you'll learn that too." His voice hardened. "Somehow, I think you'll be a natural."

"What on earth do you mean by that?"

Tievel didn't answer. He grabbed me by the shoulders, pressed a rough kiss to my lips, and released me. Then he walked up the stairs and into the storm. I touched my lips and blinked back tears, drowning in confusion.