~THE PEARL~

I swallow as Sal’s words form an image in my mind. The beautiful Corals crumble, and the Sea Swine shrivel within their shells. Without Mare, will those she created perish?

“Why?” I whisper.

His grip tightens on my shoulders, too warm now. I am the night, and he is a fire, his voice cracking like embers. “Creatures of Essence are conceived by their Essence’s desire for companionship. If the Essence dies, then those Creatures no longer have a purpose.”

I take in the idea and test its weight. I spawned in the sea, supposedly a creature of Mare, though she had no need of my companionship. Forgotten by her, I found a new purpose with an Essence that needed me.

Yet, this does not explain Sal’s desperation, the sparks of fear in his eyes like a thousand stars sputtering out. Green eyes—not the green of Pike’s or Beau’s or Mare’s, but still green. Past moments flash—how he spoke of Jun’s ancestors as if he had known them, all the many things that he and he alone seems to know.

My voice, when I find it, is a blend of breeze and distant thunder. “Sal, are you the Swine?”

“The what?” His brows twist, and his grip loosens.

“The Swine, the one sent to sabotage me, is it you?”

He draws back as if I am now the fire. “You mean Sea Swine, then. This contract you have to fulfill, it’s with Mare?”

I nod, and with the deepest of breaths, I lean forward to repeat my stance. “I am not a Creature of the Sea, and if you want me to believe you are not, you will tell me right now why you have come here.”

The bag of shells drops onto the bolder with the cry of shattering glass. He pivots back onto his rear, eyes wide, but there is a hard set to his jaw. “First, I don’t believe you. Second, my past is none of your business.”

If he is the Swine, that is absolutely my business. He knows it, but we will get nowhere with words alone.

I snatch the bag and pull out a broken shell. It no longer glows, but in the slanted light of young morning, its edges glint like a blade as I thrust it beneath his chin. “Then I must assume you are my enemy, and I cannot allow you to live.”

“Whoa, Pearl—” He grips my wrist, but I sit atop him and press the shard against the pulse in his neck.

“Well?”

A chime-like laugh bubbles from his core, and he utterly fails to hold it in. “This isn’t at all convincing me you’re not a Creature of the Sea. You look just like her.”

“Like whom?”

“Whom else? I’ve met Mare. Is that what you want me to say?” His hold on my arm adjusts, gentler, gloved thumb caressing the tender underside of my wrist. “I’ve met Caelus, too, and barely survived. Like I said, beautiful things are dangerous.”

I scowl. “I do not look like Mare.”

“Physically, no. You’re even more beautiful.” He tries to rise, but the shell digs into his neck, and he stills with a wince, eyes flicking toward my hand.

I keep my weapon where it is and shift my weight to push him back onto the sand. “Tell me how you met them.”

He stares into me, not just at my eyes but beyond them, to what in me makes me who and what I am. “That’s two stories. You get one.”

“Then tell me how you met Mare.”

A smirk quirks his lips. “Interesting choice for one so adamant she’s not a Creature of the Sea.” He lets the taunt linger, but I wait for the tale, counting a hundred heartbeats between every crash of the waves. “It was on a beach much like this one, but much colder. Caelus keeps the gulf at the base of his mountain frozen to keep Mare out of it, but she comes anyway if the prize is good enough.”

“Were you the prize?”

This time, his laugh is a snort, and he looks everywhere but at me. “I was a child, and an ugly one at that. And poor and stupid enough to think I could steal from pirates, but that’s another story. You want to hear about Mare.”

I lean forward to catch his eye again, weight on my forearm across his chest. “I want to hear everything, Sal.”

His heart skips, but he still does not look at me. “She destroyed that pirate ship, tortured its crew. I helped one man escape and brought him back to my mother, hoping he would show us where their treasure was if we healed him up. We couldn’t save him, and all he talked about was his home on the southern shore, how paradisaic it was. I—” His lips tremble, and he swallows. “That’s why I travel, Pearl. I’m looking for what he told me is out here.”

I hum a noncommittal sound between skeptical and accepting.

His gaze slides back to mine. “Do you believe me?”

“I want to, but you have not actually said that you are not the Swine.”

“Do I have to?” He releases my wrist and reaches for my face, fingers brushing my fallen hair back and hovering just shy of my cheek. “You could just cut me. Creatures of Essence bleed gold, you know.”

“I do not want to cut you, Sal,” I say, resting my head against his palm. “I want to be able to trust you.”

“Then slice all the doubt from your heart.” Closing his eyes, he mouths, “I am not Mare’s Sea Swine.”

He places his life in my hands. Dare I show so little faith in return? He believes me a Creature of the Sea. He says I resemble Mare, not because I share her shapes and coloring. That, I can rightfully deny. He accuses me of acting like her, and how can I dispute that while I hold a weapon to his throat? He has given no resistance, though he could have.

It will be just a little cut, not lethal, just enough to glimpse the color of his blood.

Yet, no matter how small, it will sever this trust between us, and I need him. He knows more about the Essences than anyone. If he is not the Swine, he can tell me who is.

What if he is the Swine, though? All it will take to know for sure is one tiny prick. He has given his permission.

My grip tightens on the shell as I angle its sharpest point toward him.

I fling it away and slap my hands down on either side of his head.

After a moment, he peeks at me through one barely-open eye. “You should be a surgeon. I didn’t feel that at all.”

“I have decided to request something else.”

“Oh?” Both eyes open, reflecting the brightening gray of the sky. Is he late for class? Will someone come looking for us?

“Will you,” I start, trailing off when the fluttering in my stomach escapes my throat as a squeak. “Will you teach me how to kiss?”

His chuckle possesses the undertones of a growl. “For that, you’ll have to get off me. It’s hard enough to breathe as is.”

Filled with flames and insects, I roll aside to let him sit up. Though the sand looks like snow against his dark poncho, it darkens the white of his hair and refuses to leave no matter how he swipes at it.

He gives up on the sand, folds his legs beneath him, and faces me with a sound part sigh, part low whistle. “So, to begin this…”

I scoot closer on my knees, forehead aimed at him. He leans above me, one curled finger lifting my chin as his breaths wash over my cheeks, a refreshing chill against the inferno within. Yet, he hovers there, teetering on the edge of a cliff, gaze alighting on my lips.

“The secret to a good kiss,” he murmurs, “is suspense and consent. You offer by getting close, then you wait for your partner to close that gap.”

A smile dawns across me. He waits for my move next, for me to come to him, and like an explosion, I duck my forehead to his lips.

A thud rings just louder than the waves, and he rocks back, sleeve pressed to his mouth as he hisses in a breath.

“I’m sorry!” I pry his arm away to assess the damage. The corner of his lip is puffy, not enough to require healing.

With a slow inhale, he straightens, hands on my shoulders guiding me back to where I was. “I bet your lips are softer than your forehead. Let’s try that.”

I nod and conjure thoughts of softness, sight affixed to his mouth as he leans in again. I cannot be stone. I am branches swaying at the behest of his breath. No, softer, I am a flower’s petals waiting for a bee to touch down.

It is the gentlest landing in all of history, bouncing back immediately, and I pursue it, but his palm cups my cheek.

“Slow,” the touch says. “Gentle.”

When I oblige, he returns to me, a peck at the very edge of my lips, then another, gliding sideways, each in sequence firmer and lingering longer. My heart hammers on the same frequency.

“What you do,” he breathes, “is not as important as how you do it.”

I press into every point of contact, hand rising to hold his against my face as I shimmy closer.

He pulls back with a gasp. “Do you hear that?”

I fall against his chest. Have the auroras returned? I can’t waste this opportunity to try to speak with them.

Yet, it is not their voice that rides the morning wind. This is a flute, breathy and low, played by fast fingers.

I scan the site for its source but see no one. “I know this song.”

“Me, too,” Sal agrees, but where glee filled my words, something darker and almost desperate coats his.

As it did in Terra’s forest, the music hooks into my heart and reels me in. I stand, take one step, but Sal grabs my hand.

“Pearl.”

“I know him,” I say, yet the warning reinfuses me with caution. No matter how alluring his melody, Pike may still be the Swine. His music may even be a sign of that. He also might not be. Instead of running and hiding and dodging potential friendships forever, I want to give him a chance to prove it either way.

“Do you?” Sal’s grip tightens on my hand. “That song is meant to summon Mare when one has a gift for her.”

“Are you certain?” I retreat behind him, but it is not enough. Pike spots me, and the song ends in deference to an enthusiastic wave as he hooks the flute through a belt loop and trots over.

Sal remains crouched, not within his view yet. “The first two lines are: Come, Lady of the Sea. I have a gift for thee.”

“Do you bring a gift for Mare?” I call as Pike reaches the base of our boulder.

He pauses with a shake of his head and the faintest of laughs. “No? That a requirement?”

“That is not why you play a song to summon her?”

He climbs but stops when he’s high enough to see Sal. His green-blue eyes flit between the two of us before he rolls them. “I’ve lived my entire life on or around the ocean, and I’ve never seen Mare or any evidence she exists.”

“Sal has seen her.”

“Good for him. Mind helping me up, Sal is it?” He extends a bandaged hand.

I drop to my knees and cradle it. “What happened?”

“N-nothing.” He jerks his arm back, loses his grip, and flounders mid-air.

Faster than a striking snake, Sal is beside me, fingers tangled in the collar of Pike’s jacket as he hauls him onto the boulder.

“If it were nothing, it would not require a bandage,” I say, reaching for his hand again as Sal sets him down.

Pike scratches the back of his head. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“For that, you hurt yourself?”

“Not on purpose,” he mumbles and lets his hands fall to his lap. His gaze drops with them. “I was working on a secret project for you, hoping you’d forgive me.”

“I do not.”

He looks up, a shine in his eyes like the grandest glitter of the sea, and his lower lip wobbles as he draws a deep breath. “Oh. I thought…”

The end of the sentence dangles, too afraid to venture beyond him and discover our ears. What does he think? If I touch him, can I build a bridge between our minds like that instant with Sal? Will the answers I seek come to me, or will they only confuse me more?

“Want me to toss him off the rock?” Sal asks, already gripping the back of Pike’s jacket.

“No!” we both say.

As if to hold him here, I grab his bandaged hand. He flinches, winces, but I push back his sleeve to reveal freckled skin. The wound must not extend beyond his palm, then. I switch my grip to his wrist, wishing for some connection. Only his faint warmth greets me, weaker than the sun shining on my front. Light streams through his beach-colored hair, leaving his face in shadow.

He shivers. “At least we agree on that.”

I tilt my head. “The centipede was more precious to me than you could know. I will not forgive you for killing it, but I will move forward.”

Slowly, he nods. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll forgive you for standing me up when I offered you a private concert, and again for avoiding me yesterday. Beyond that, I can’t un-kill a bug, but I promise I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

Sal plops close enough, he could cut between us at any moment. “You’re mad at him for squashing a bug?”

“It was about to tell me who the Swine is.”

Sal’s brows lift, mouth open in a silent, “Oh,” as he turns toward the suspect. Can he tell whether Pike is a Creature of Essence, a Creature of the Sea? Will he tell me? What will the Swine do if he knows Sal gave him away?

“Okay.” Pike stretches out the word, scratching the back of his neck this time. “That statement’s kind of a lot to unpack. What are you two doing out here anyway?”

Sal snatches up the bag of shells and ties it closed. “We were talking about the auroras. Any ideas, Science Student?”

“They’re dangerous. That’s all I know.” Pike shrugs, then looks up suddenly. “Hey, are you the guy they almost killed?”

“Pearl thinks they’re a new Essence.”

Pike chuckles. “No offense, but they’re probably just someone’s experimental weapon. Too many of those around here, in my opinion.”

Sal’s gaze narrows. “We think some of those experimental weapons are meant to kill the Essences. Know anything about that?”

“If I did, it’d still be fiction. The Essences are just stories to entertain board sailors, comfort grieving mothers, or warn children to behave.” All laughter dies in his tone, impaled upon the blade of Sal’s gaze. “You don’t seriously believe in them? There’s no evidence—”

At Sal’s shove, Pike tumbles backward off the rock and hits the lumpy sand with a thud.

I am on my feet. “Sal!”

“He’s fine.”

With a growl, Pike hops up, and even before brushing himself off, he checks his flute. “You’d better be glad this is fine, too.”

Sal leans over the boulder’s edge and glares down at him. “Meet one of the auroras, then tell me they’re something made in a lab. While you’re at it, keep playing that song. You can meet Mare, too, and we’ll see how quickly you change your tune about her not existing.”

“What’s it matter to you anyway, huh?”

Pike is so much smaller than Sal, a fact exaggerated by their relative positions. He is a sapling barely peeking out of the soil, glowering up at a mighty sequoia.

Sal stands, leaps, and lands on the slanted dune beyond Pike’s valley. “Pearl, I’m going inside.”

“Wait, Sal.” I slide down the rock and stand beside Pike. “I want to hear the answer, too.”

He hesitates, then shoves the shells and his hands into his jacket’s waist pockets. Three large strides carry him to the dune’s summit.

“I do not believe they would die.”

As my declaration echoes, Sal stops, boots sinking in the sand.

Pike’s hand hovers just shy of my arm. “Who wouldn’t die?”

“Sal, you asked if an Essence died, would their Creatures die with them, and I say they would not. An infant Essence would need them.”

He truly has become a tree planted in the dune’s peak, and every moment he does not turn to face me, my stomach churns faster. Agree or disagree. I just need him to say something, to give me permission to explain. My thoughts run like melted wax, and I cannot keep them within my cupped hands.

Can I nurture a new Essence like Terra nurtured me? Can I protect them, help them grow strong enough to survive what their predecessors could not?

Yet, if it means losing Terra…

It stings and tears, a flame upon my skin. Can I throw even this emotion into serving someone new? Can I use it to ensure I never lose anyone again?

Can I use it now, to prevent loss in the first place?

“Please, Sal, tell me what I have to do.”

“Wait, wait!” Pike steps between us, arms waving. “For the sake of argument, let’s say Essences exist. Why does a new one have to be a replacement? Maybe it’s supposed to protect a new realm.”

Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but his theory wraps around my heart as firmly as his song always does.

“They are made of light and energy,” I whisper, “nothing so easily associated with the sea. Pike, you are a genius!” I throw my arms around him, Swine or not. He can be my ally in this if nothing else.

Sal’s voice rains from above like shattered glass. “Land, Sea, and Sky. What else?”

Pike hugs me back, chin tilting atop my head as he thinks. He smells of sand and sun and only a tiny hint of Mare. “Light?”

I snicker. “How can light be a realm?”

“Electric lights.” Sal takes my hand and tows me from Pike’s embrace, tangling his fingers with mine to keep me facing him. His face is dawn, full of color, wonder, and excitement despite a suspicious shine in his eyes. “They let us stay up all through the night as if it were day. A new place for humans, a new Essence to counterbalance them.”

Despite our interlocked hands, no bridge connects our minds. Yet, there is something, like smoke drifting across a river. His thrill surrounds and fills me entirely.

“Land, Sea, and Sky all have a period of darkness. Night will be a powerful realm.” A smile spawns, so broad, I can barely form my words correctly. “What would you name its Essence?”

Sal flushes and drops my hands. “It’ll name itself. Or Caelus will name it. What we think doesn’t matter.”

Pike huffs, standing alongside me with an amused smirk. “We have to call it something. Everyone good with Aurora?”

“It’s not here to vote on the name.” Head shaking, Sal retreats another pace back up the dune.

Yet, the name is perfect, and further plans fit into place within my mind, a puzzle, a million snowflakes blanketing all in beautiful white.

I step toward him, reaching for his hands but not taking them. The gesture plays by his own rules—suspense and consent. I offer, waiting for him to close the gap. “What if we capture Aurora? We protect her, ensure she grows up right.”

He blinks, hands motionless, not accepting mine but not fleeing either. “Are you insane? It’s not a puppy. We can’t play mommy and daddy to an Essence.”

I inch my fingers closer. “We could teach her to care about humans, even to protect Jun’s people from Mare.”

His eye twitches, as do his thumbs, and eternity folds into a moment, then disappears. Shoulders stiff, he whirls and stomps up the dune. “Insane girl wants to raise the Essence of the Night.”

Yes, that is exactly what I want. As Pike and I jog after him, I watch my shadow play across the sparkle of sand. Light is beautiful, and mixing it with shadow only makes it more so. The Essence of the Night will be the shadow to balance the light of the other three realms.

Continued in chapter 19

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Beyond the beach and the dunes, a mosaic of stones winds through the forest to return to the university’s main building. As its last curve comes into our sight, Beau rounds the turn, halts, and crosses his arms. Morning’s rays streak between the trees and pool in his eyes like molten electrum, as luminous as the electric lights that have brought the need for a new Essence.

Those eyes narrow and settle on Sal. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Sal stops, too, a hand on my shoulder. “Why?”

“You know what happened to that islander last night?”

“No?” A mote of panic sharpens Sal’s question as he passes me.

I share the feeling. I want to sprint past him and find Jun, but my legs transform into branches lacking knees. I no longer feel my toes.

“As soon as we heard, Vidal told me you’d switched with Oakson for rock collecting duty this morning. You should have been back at least half an hour ago.” Beau covers the distance between us with long strides. “So, I rushed out here, sure there wouldn’t be anything left of you to find.”

His gaze falls on me like twin hammers, and Sal’s hand slides down my arm to lock around my wrist, pulling me further behind him.

Pike rolls his eyes. “Beau Smythe, I thought you were a man of science. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the sea, too.”

Beau pivots to tower over his fellow science student. “At least I’m not the weirdo who said the sea when asked for his greatest love.”

Sal tilts his head at Pike, then shakes away the tangent. “Do you know what attacked Jun?”

“You do.” Beau lifts his brows, and in Sal’s shadow, his eyes no longer glow.

Sal’s shoulders form a straight plain. He is a wall, yet his voice is quiet and jagged like broken pebbles grinding beneath a boot. “Please tell me he lives.”

I need that answer, too. It is air, and without it, my lungs might as well be stone.

“Can we be modern men here, please?” Hands raised, Pike stomps between the two other boys. “There is no such thing as Essences or Creatures of the Sea. If someone hurt Jun, it’s because we keep repeating these lies and superstitions meant to divide us.”

How have they hurt him, though? Is it as Beau said last night? Has someone given Jun to Mare, pinned him on the shore and poured his blood into the sea?

If there is any life left in my blue-eyed human, I can heal him. I have to try.

I curl my fingers around Sal’s forearm. “I want to see him.”

Sal is stiffer than any golem, skin prickled and cold. “Beau, why aren’t you answering me?”

“You think you deserve an answer?” Pushing past Pike, he jabs a finger into Sal’s chest. “You know it’s not safe out here, but you dragged Pearl along. You disappearing would be one thing, but if you both vanished—” He cuts off with a growl and shoves at Sal, but he might as well shove at a cliff.

Sal knows the sea is dangerous. He believes anything beautiful is. He has not known me for long, yet he intuits enough to understand that I would cherish the beauty of the pre-dawn beach over insipid safety. I suspect, too, that bringing me to the sea was a test. He believes me one of Mare’s creatures, and I do not believe I have managed to convince him otherwise.

Grip still firm on my wrist, he charges forward, knocking Beau out of the way. “We’d better get inside before we miss breakfast.”

Stumbling behind him, I repeat my wish. “I need to see Jun.”

Pike falls into step beside me with a sympathetic look. “I’m sure he’s fine, Pearl. He survived that bear.”

He did, but only with my help. His blood coats my hands anew, sticky, thick, warm, and unseen.

“Sal,” I whisper. “Sal, after everything that was said last night, do you think it was Creatures of the Sea? The Swine?” My focus cuts briefly to Pike, then jumps back to Sal. “Or did Aurora…” The sentence sticks in my throat, and I swallow it. “If you had let me follow him last night, would he…” I cannot finish this sentence either.

Sal walks faster.

“Who’s not answering now?” Beau calls, jogging to pass us.

Finally, my legs understand that I must move. Slipping my wrist free, I swing around Sal and fix a challenging stare on Beau. “We were working out a theory about the auroras. They are a new Creature of Essence, the Essence of the Night.”

Now his legs become stiff branches, and he nearly topples over, but I cannot stop. I have to get to Jun.

***

“Welcome to Great Minds Think Café. Vidal feels awful today. How can I help you?”

I squint at his badge, and though it remains in a script I do not know, I am still fairly certain it says Vidal.

“Do you and your boss have the same name?”

“Answering questions of that nature is not in my job description. Please pick a meal option.”

With a sigh, I swivel toward Beau. “Are you certain Jun is in the café?”

“You need food.” Sal’s hands on my shoulders realign me with the counter. Yet, when I lean my head back to look up at him, he is scanning the seating area far behind Vidal—an advantage his height allows that mine does not. “We all need to eat. Give her the same thing she had yesterday, Vidal. Me, too, and charge it to Beau.”

“Add a veggie plate,” Pike throws in with a small wave and a lopsided grin.

Beau scoffs. “Are you sure you don’t want to add some centipede guts to that? If I’m paying for it, why not go all out?”

“Tease me all you want.” Nose in the air, Pike snakes his arm around my shoulders. “Pearl and I already worked that out, and I don’t care diddly squat about your opinion.”

Vidal clears his throat. “Centipede is not on the menu, though Vidal could probably find some cockroaches for you.”

My ears perk at the suggestion. As much as I want to find Jun, Sal is right. If I do need to heal him, it will take energy I cannot spare if I do not eat, and if Vidal recommends cockroaches for a more interesting meal, then I want to try it.

“Can you add cockroaches to my plate, too?”

“It would make my day.” He is a sketch of straight lines—brows, lips, eyes—yet this request begets the slightest curve of a smile.

“Disgusting! Don’t you dare add that, Vidal.” Pike tows me away, arm still draped over my shoulder.

Sal grabs his jacket’s collar and lugs him back.

Twisting free, Pike lifts both hands as if warding off blows that do not come. “You think I’m some sort of teapot with a handle you can just carry around and set wherever you like?”

“You said you were going to make it up to Pearl for killing her centipede friend. Why don’t you start by picking up her food at the counter for her?”

Pike nods firmly, face scrunching. “That’s a good idea, actually, though it’ll seem disingenuous now that you told me to do it.” Rocking back on his heels, he lobs a glance at the front corner of the balcony, where smoke and steam waltz above a loitering crowd. “A centipede friend though? Is that an accurate description?”

“It was a gift from…” How do I explain my relationship to Terra? I cannot tell him the whole truth, and that realization is a rope of thorns crawling up my spine. My arms hold each other, and my gaze falls to our toes. “My father sent it because he worries for me.”

“Now I’m ten times more sorry.” Short as he is, Pike does not have to duck far to reenter my line of sight. “There was a pit in my stomach before, but now it’s like the Great Swallowing all over again, turning me inside out.”

The corner of my mouth twitches in a rebellious smirk. “For someone who hates words, that is very poetic.”

“Really? I’m no poet though.” He winks, pulls his beret from his pocket, and sets it crookedly atop his sandy hair as he straightens. “I’m going to go get our food now, okay? Do not disappear on me.”

At my nod, he takes off, and I turn to whisper to Sal. “Is he the Swine? Or…”

My gaze rakes our surroundings. Vidal takes requests from the next students queued before his podium, but our other companion has vanished.

My volume drops even lower. “Or is it Beau?”

Sal sighs. “Do you still want to see Jun?”

“You found him?” Whirling, I dash through the doors and beyond the half wall that blocks most of the balcony from my sight. Unfamiliar faces occupy most of the chairs, but at last I spy midnight hair fanned over the back of a charcoal jacket.

“Jun!”

Sal’s grip returns to my shoulders, holding me back. His words are for me alone, hissed into my ear. “Wait. Think. You say you’re not a Creature of the Sea, but you do have ties to Mare.”

I keep my eyes pinned to Jun’s back. “Is it true what you said when we first met? That you study the transference of energy like when an Essence heals someone?”

In the elongated moment while I await Sal’s reply, I inspect my blue-eyed human. Facing the rising sun, he sits alone at the same table where we studied last night. His head and arms move as he partakes of whatever his plate offers, and the motions are as graceful as what I have come to expect from him. At this angle and distance, I cannot tell that anything is amiss.

Though a soft breeze, Sal’s voice possesses winter’s bite. “You’re saying you can heal him. It doesn’t matter what happens to him because you can undo it?”

No, that is not what I mean at all. What is this feeling, this tightness in my chest and emptiness in my core at the thought of his smile’s absence in the world?

“I will protect him.”

“What are you, Pearl?”

Head tilted, I look at Sal and try to squirm free. His grip slides to my wrists—a vice, a chain, a leash.

“It’s a serious question. What are you that you think you can protect a Koa from Mare?” The words are less than a breath. If they catch in any of the ears that surround us, they swirl through that maze and slip free without any impact. Yet, they crash into me, each echo heavier.

Because it is true. I cannot even protect myself from Mare.

Unless I win the bet.

Ice crawls through my veins and bursts in tiny explosions as if I sit between massive jaws. Any moment, those teeth will meet and rip me asunder. No, not me, Jun, and I cannot stand it.

I tear free and rush to him. His small smile melts my fear. If I kiss him as Sal taught me, will that smile grow? Will he think of me as one who ignites his heart instead of one who remained silent while Beau voiced those awful words yesterday?

Last night, I told Tulip what happened on the balcony. Her words waft again through my head. “Beau’s a spoiled brat used to getting away with everything. Doesn’t help that he’s new here and he’s the dean’s nephew. You should stay away from him and Jun both, probably.”

I do not want to stay away from Jun. I do not know how, but I will not let those horrid things happen to him.

“They have happened,” Tulip argued, “not to him, but to his family.”

“He never knew them.”

Tulip had an answer for that, too. “He still loves them.”

The notion confused me, and I set it aside so I could sleep. Now, with Jun so near, my thoughts are a swirling sea beneath a tempest. How can humans love someone they have never met? Those Koa men died long before Jun existed. Even had they lived their lives out in peace, he would never have seen their smiles.

Does Jun regret being born too late? He had no control over that, yet I understand. No other sea stones like me existed while I lay on the ocean floor, but that did not make me less lonely. It seems foolish to blame something that does not exist for its own non-existence, but a part of me does.

If I win the bet, I can stay with Terra. I can ask Terra for the power to protect Jun. Maybe we can move to his island and protect all those he loves.

His smile sags. “This might be considered weird on the mainland, but I find it unnerving when someone just stares at me like they’re watching the world burn.”

With a silent, “Oh,” I straighten, but I cannot look away. “You are as beautiful as any fire. May I sit with you to dine?”

His mouth hangs ajar, and his brows rise, but after a moment, he swivels back to his plate. “Why not? No one else will.”

I pull out the chair alongside him, but Halcyon slides into it with a mumbled, “Thank you.”

A squeak of surprise and protest escapes me, but before I can tell the dragon to move, Sal approaches from Jun’s other side, meeting my gaze and shaking his head. The shadow of the upper balcony leeches all the green from his eyes, leaving them the gray of a steel chain. Solemnity weights the look, and the floor groans beneath my feet.

With a deep breath, I circle the table and sit across from Jun, trying not to look at Sal as he claims a chair. Jun peers askance at Halcyon as if expecting him to announce why he suddenly appeared. The dragon’s face is again buried in a book, and he lacks a plate. Has he already finished his breakfast? Would the humans approve of his diet? Hopefully, he does not eat any of their relatives.

I do not allow these wisps of wonder to launch into the world as Jun sips from a half sphere, gazing over its rim at me. The drink’s sweet, milky scent fills the air.

“Can I try some?”

Jun offers me the cup—a fruit sliced in half. A coconut. As its fragrance grows, so does my smile. I sample the creamy contents, and the rough, fuzzy shell scours my lower lip. My teeth scratch against the coconut’s flesh, and some peels off, sliding onto my tongue. While saccharine, it is not as sweet as its scent promises.

Jun’s eyes are wide, the corner of his lips trapped between his molars. “Do you like it?”

I nod, nibbling off more.

“Good. I’d have cried if you said it was gross.” He leans back, deflating with a sigh. “To me, this fruit represents my home.”

“It’s good for you, too,” Pike says with another wink as he sets my plate before me. Like yesterday, a mountain of yellow fluff occupies the center. “Coconut keeps you regular.”

My face twists. “Would one not wish to be special?”

Pike laughs. The sound is sunshine and waves crashing against the shore. “That’s not what that means. It keeps, well, you know, your insides…Jun, help me out here with a table-appropriate explanation.”

“You got yourself into this mess.”

Pike’s cheeks contort and redden, and he speaks too loudly. “What I mean to say, Jun, is I approve of your dietary choices this morning.”

With a shrug, Jun stabs the last berry on his plate. “I already finished all the things you wouldn’t approve of.”

Chuckling quietly, I lift the coconut for a second sample, but as Jun raises his fork to his mouth, his sleeve slips, and I freeze, a blizzard raging within. Not only does white gauze attempt to conceal an injury on his arm, fresh, scarlet blood seeps through it.

I drop the fruit and snatch his hand. “They did hurt you.”

“Nobody tell the dean, or the healers will tie me up in bandages.” He slips his fingers free of mine, blue eyes narrowed and darting everywhere.

“What attacked you last night?” Sal asks, low voice like the grind of river rocks. “Another aurora?”

Jun stills. “It was different. More solid. And it was singing.”

Sal glances at me, but after an obese pause, the straight line of his lips quirks up on one side. His tone overflows with syrup. “Were you bewitched?”

Jun scowls. “It was the same song Pike played before the bear attack, so I thought it was him at first playing some joke. Then, it chomped down on my arm, and Great Tempest, its teeth…”

His eyes pin his wrist, yet it rolls with a slow, jolted movement reminiscent of the golems, as if beneath his wrinkled sleeve, his skin has become a plain of stone. My lungs are just as rigid, though they are ice and fragile. I dare not move.

“I’d left a partially disassembled Baker Arrow on the nightstand, and I stabbed it into the beast’s side. It fled, the coward.”

I still cannot breathe. Pike draws in a slow breath and holds it. Halcyon flips the page of his book.

As swift and strong as a riptide, Sal grabs Jun’s arm and pushes his sleeve back to his elbow. The gauze wraps his entire forearm, lined by crimson pools.

“It’s still bleeding after how many hours? The healers need to clean and sew this.”

“They’ll tell the dean, and he’ll overreact.” Jun attempts to break free, but Sal is stronger.

“When something literally tries to eat you, it’s not overreacting to seek medical attention and post a guard.”

“I don’t need a guard. I need—”

Jun quiets as my lips touch his forehead. My hips support my weight atop the table, though I do lean on him a bit, one hand tangled in his hair to sweep it out of his face. The other digs between the folds of gauze until my fingertips reach warm, sticky skin. The ice within me shatters, replaced with lightning.

He pivots back, chair balanced on only two legs and hands around my wrists as he studies my face. A smile crawls across him, slow at first and shaky, but inevitable as dawn. “When Pike said you were a wild warrior woman, this isn’t what I pictured.”

“Pike called me a wild warrior woman?” I tilt my head and pull my knees beneath me. Yellow fluff sticks to the front of my jacket. The thinnest tendrils of steam waft from every point of contact between us, but Jun does not notice.

He smirks. “That, among other things.”

I turn to Pike, who is on his feet, eyes like deep, circular lagoons.

His voice is just as liquid. “What’s the knife for, bookworm?”

Continued in chapter 20

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

The knife glitters, golden-white like daylight, but Halcyon does not just hold it. The blade is one of his fingers grown longer, flatter, sharper. A Dragon’s claw.

His eyes, metallic slivers of the sky, point at Jun’s hands on my wrists. “Do not touch.”

“No one’s touching you.” Pike leans across the table, palms hovering low over it as if to keep it from leaping, and his voice wavers beneath a forced buoyancy. “Seriously, Roomie, we’ve talked about being weird like this.”

Instinct wills me to place myself between the Dragon and the islander, but I lack the strength. Beneath my fingers, Jun’s blood dries and flakes. His skin seals, new and soft. I lent his body the energy to heal, but now I am empty. His grip is all that keeps me upright.

Warmth grows alongside Jun’s touch—a second set of hands. Sal’s hands. My vision swims, but for an instant, he fills my view. He stands where I should be, between Jun and Halcyon. Light plays with darkness, trailing streaks of color—the blue of Jun’s eyes, the rich brown of my hands. Sound and silence perform the same dance—Sal’s voice, Pike’s.

Jun’s grip tightens, though it feels so far away, as if these are not my wrists he holds. As if these arms belong to a fish at the very edge of my perceptions back when I would sink into another’s mind.

“Pearl, are you okay?”

Jun, do not let go. I am falling.

Sal’s salty scent surrounds me. His arms catch me, the crook of his neck cradling my face. My fingers tangle in his jacket, and I pull him closer. His warmth is energy. Perhaps he will not mind if I take just a little of it.

~THE SWINE~

He smells of death, and it takes everything in me to keep my face from twisting in disgust or pity. Every moment I’m even remotely near the islander, my gut turns in tighter knots. I take the first excuse to get away.

At least the Sky worm seems to be trying to hold up his end of the bargain. He keeps the Pearl from sitting next to Jun. So, when I spot Issoria, I go after her. In the hallway, she navigates the crowds. Her pixie wings bulge oddly beneath her jacket, though she tries to disguise it with a backpack.

Like me, she’s not old or strong enough to shapeshift on her own, and without her Essence’s support, her transformation’s coming undone. Does she miss flying at all? Much as I don’t want to admit it, I miss the freedom of swimming. This crowd wouldn’t be such a problem then. I could swerve over or under, not just around. The ocean regulates space much better than the land.

Maybe someday I’ll bring the humans there and teach them to make a home in the open waters. Mare will never allow it, but maybe her rule won’t last forever.

The thought is a tide, coming and going but never really gone. The humans are trying to kill her, and even if they don’t succeed, she has a new sibling. The Essence of the Night, a sister she’ll have to share her realm with part of the time.

She’ll hate it.

I’ve lost Issoria. I’ve lost myself, actually. From the pale blue tint of the lights set in the center of the wall’s cogs, I must be somewhere in the science wing, but beyond that—and how to get out—I have no idea. The corridor is narrow and tall. The lighting tricks the eye into believing the walls are purely vertical, but slight discrepancies in proportion give away the existence of higher walkways. This is an inverted pyramid. If Issoria can fly, she’s at an advantage here.

The further I walk, the less people there are, until I am alone. A thousand embers crackle at once, and I’m hurled into the wall. Fire crawls across me, burning into every seam in the weave of my skin. Tiny hands squeeze every organ. I can’t breathe.

Issoria alights in front of me, butterfly wings flashing gold and silver as they flutter. “Tell Halcyon to leave. If he doesn’t, I’ll kill you.”

I lift my chin, shoulder pressed against a spinning cog. It helps me straighten, but I don’t have the breath to speak yet. In lieu of words, my lip curls.

She points a long, black cylinder at me. “This is only a prototype, not nearly as strong as a Baker Arrow yet, but it’ll do the trick if I hit you enough times.”

“Halcyon doesn’t give a worm’s behind about me.” I swat at the black pipe. It’s nowhere near within my range, but the action makes me feel as if I have some control here.

Her needle teeth flash the same silver-gold as her wings as she grins. “Perhaps I should kill you in the name of research, then.” She twists and primes the weapon, each click louder than the one before, like footsteps drawing too close.

I shove off the wall, both hands splayed in front of my chest. “Wait, please? What even is that thing?”

“The wisdom of humankind. I’ve seen what they can do, Swine. Whether they belong here or not, they will rule this world.”

“That’s why you side with them? You’ll help them kill Caelus?”

She flinches, then steps forward and presses the pipe into my breastbone. “Think it’ll kill you faster this way?”

“How many of them know what you are?” My chest heaves, pressing the circle further into my flesh with every spasm. I’m about to lose my breakfast.

“I don’t want them to kill Caelus.” A sheen comes over her blue eyes. How alike they are to a Koa’s, but hers are so much paler, larger, shallower. “I belong to Caelus, but I want to continue seeing what the humans can make, even the things Caelus won’t like. He’ll stop them, or try, and I won’t let him. So, I can’t tell him.”

“Tell Caelus that.” My hand cups the pipe and forces it down one thread’s width at a time. “Not the last part. Tell him what you find so curious and how much you want more. He’s an airhead just like you. He’s bound to find it just as fascinating.”

She shakes her head, silver curls flying. “He won’t like them having something that can hurt him.”

“Does anybody?” I look pointedly at the prototype weapon she holds against my chest.

She fires.

~THE PEARL~

It is music, the rhythmic thrum against my cheek as energy seeps into me. It possesses a cold and hollow cadence, liquid yet crisp and heavy. How long have I been siphoning Sal’s life force?

I only meant to take a little. I must stop.

My palms flatten against his chest, and I push away, but it is not the green or gray of Sal’s eyes that meet mine. These are fragments of the sky, framed in bronze curls.

“You have no connection to an Essence,” he murmurs.

“Halcyon, what—” I try to pull away, but his arms form an iron cage around me. The thin metal chair bows beneath our combined weight. A struggle will likely snap it. Even if it survives, glass vials array on counters all around us, filled with liquids set aglow by the blue-tinted electric lights strung above.

I calm, though I do not lean into him again. “Thank you, Dragon, for sharing your energy.”

“Even from far away, I draw strength from Caelus, but Mare does not feed you. Eventually, that will kill you. You should not accelerate that by giving away the little you have.” He releases me and pulls a strip of meat from his satchel. “From the deer I had for breakfast.”

I accept it and chew greedily as I slide off his lap and stand. Steam cloaks the sight of the distant walls but not the sound. Gears churn. So do my intestines. “Does physical food not grant you energy?”

“Some. Yesterday, you said the dragon eats the deer if the dragon can, so today I decided to try one. Or five.”

“And?” I finish off my piece and peer hopefully at his satchel.

He hands me another. “The taste is pleasurable, but it takes a lot to fuel a Creature of Essence. Even a hundred deer would not replace what I get from Caelus.”

The Essence of the Sky has many Creatures in his Company, as does the Essence of the Sea. How powerful must Caelus and Mare be that they can give so much of themselves away.

Halcyon rises. He is a cliff, wily and serpentine. His pointed face pivots to keep his eyes locked on mine. They are narrow and almost entirely filled with metallic blue surrounding a pupil that is not quite round. “Why does she not feed you?”

I fight instinct and do not retreat from this mighty predator. The deer in my mouth bitters. “Mare has never fed me. I belong to Terra.”

“A Swine once wanted to belong to Caelus, so Mare killed him.” He swerves around me, scooping up a pair of vials. One contains a barely living flame. The other holds liquid shadow.

“She has granted me the chance to win my freedom.”

“Then why would she send a Swine here to fetch you?” He tilts a vial, and the shadow slides into the second tube. As it meets the flame, bubbles form, then foam. It has a certain beauty, yet it reeks with a dull, pulsing musk. “She wants you home. It is not safe here with humans.”

“Who is the Swine?”

He fidgets, voice so quiet, it may only be the breath of my imagination. “If he has not told you, then I should not either.”

“Where are Jun, Sal, and Pike? What is this place? Why have you brought me here?”

“Whatever you did to Jun made him lose his breakfast, and he went to the healers. Sal refused to share his energy with you, so I did.” He lifts the foaming tube. It is about to overflow. “I am not very good at science, but it is interesting.” He gulps the bubbling shadow, eyes shifting as he evaluates its taste.

I grab his wrist as if that can prevent him from doing what he already has. “I do not think you should ingest the humans’ experiments.”

He hiccups, and flames dance on his tongue.

I duck for fear they will leap out. “You failed to say what became of Pike.”

“Because I do not know what became of Pike. He is missing.”

Missing. My mouth forms the word with no voice. Ghostly fingers trail across the backs of my knees, and they threaten to buckle. A monster attacked Jun last night, and when I healed him, I made him sick. Now, something may have taken Pike.

A door squeals, and Beau saunters in. “You think they built it like that on purpose to prevent sneaking around?” His question does not appear to be directed at anyone until his eyes fall upon me. His brows rise, and his smile swells like a river gorging a monsoon. “Didn’t expect to find you in the Science Wing Study Hall, but I’m glad to have done so.”

“Have you been searching for Pike?”

“Why would I—” His smile withers as he traces my grip on Halcyon to the Dragon’s face. “You alright there? You haven’t been drinking this stuff again, have you?” He takes the vials from Halcyon and squints at the flames struggling to escape the Dragon’s lips. “Didn’t I tell you not to do stuff like this when you’re alone?”

“Pearl was here.”

A pillar of fire spears from Halcyon’s mouth, and we dive aside.

Beau is at my back, a hand on either elbow, though from our angle to the danger, it is not clear whether he would shield me or have me shield him. He smells of iron and something sharper.

“Pearl doesn’t—” He faces me with a renewed smile. “Glad to see you up, by the way. Our resident weirdo said you would be fine in a couple of hours, but...” He shrugs, and I turn toward him, trying to squirm out of his hold. “Professor Pi told Halcyon he couldn’t keep you on his lap like that, but he called you a dumb infant and insisted you would die if he left you. She eventually gave up arguing with him.”

“She banished me here,” Halcyon says with another plume of flame.

We duck.

“Yeah, I remember that now. This thing with Issoria just had me distracted—”

“What happened with Issoria?” Halcyon’s long, slender hands grip Beau’s shoulders, pale spiderwebs against the deep blue of his jacket. He is huge for a human, a head and shoulders taller than even Jun and with Sal’s breadth.

Fire licks at Beau’s hair, and he swats it out. “You need to keep your mouth shut for a while.”

I tug him free from the Dragon’s grip. “Was this before Pike went missing?”

“Weirdo number two is still gone?” Beau grimaces, and his hands drop. “I thought he was just ditching Professor Pi’s class since they have a lot of differing opinions.”

I shake him. “Did you not even search?”

“I have better—”

The door squeaks again, and as if summoned by my worry, Pike appears in its frame.

“Excuse me.” He bumps Beau aside and stops, a package held on upturned palms as he bows. “For you, Milady.”

The scent of fire and all things burnt clings to him even more than Halcyon. I gingerly take the cloth-wrapped item, though it is heavier than I assumed and my grip must stiffen to keep from dropping it. The wrappings flap open to reveal a plaque. An inscription darkens the wood in the most elegant script I have ever encountered, so fresh, smoke and heat linger.

Your ire turns me inside out

I might as well be a trout

Won’t you please forgive me

Let our friendship be as eternal as the sea

The flow is crude, nothing like Terra’s poetry, yet it owns a sincerity and quaintness that reminds me of the golems’ thought patterns. A silly grin leaps upon my face, and my heart pinches. This must be what he was working on when he hurt his hand this morning.

He points below the final line, where his name is scrawled in crimson. “I signed it in red, like blood, but symbolic blood. It’s not real blood, I promise.”

“Why so morbid, Pike?” Beau slaps him on the back.

At the same moment, a fiery belch escapes Halcyon, rattling the vials.

Eyes wide, Beau turns to him. “What are you, a pig?”

My ears perk. Are not a pig and a swine the same?

Pike’s cheeks flush, but with a long blink, he straightens, and his voice emerges evenly. “That shouldn’t be an insult. Pigs appreciate the finer things in life, probably more than you.”

“I appreciate pigs.” With a wicked grin, Beau folds his hands behind his head and closes his eyes as if he dreams of a better locale. “Bacon is delicious.”

Pike resembles a porcupine—a million disjointed angles. “Would you say that to a pig’s face?”

“Yes.” Beau peeks sideways at him. “The pig wouldn’t understand me.”

“Some would,” Halcyon whispers. More vials occupy his hands.

Beau snatches them away. “You mean the mythical Swine? It’s a cruel world. Not even Mare’s Sea Swine are safe from predators.” He pauses in deathly silence, and the non-sound pounds in my ears. Then his seriousness breaks into a toothy smirk. “If they’re even real.”

“They aren’t,” Pike insists.

Halcyon performs something between a cough and a grunt.

Pike swivels to him. “You have something to say?”

“I…also like the taste of bacon.”

“Funny.” Pike glares. In this lighting, his eyes appear almost as blue as Jun’s. “Anyone want to hear the mess this dragon left me yesterday?”

Halcyon stills, and my breath hitches. Does Pike know what Halcyon is? Because Pike is the Swine?

He hooks a thumb in the direction of the Creature of the Sky. “I get back to my room after a long day to catch this guy slinking out the door, and something smells off, you know, so I ask him what he’s been up to.”

“Cleaning.” Halcyon hunches his shoulders.

“Which is what you called it then, too, and I thought, ‘Okay, cool. How nice of you. I’m lucky to have at least one roommate who knows the meaning of the word hygiene.’ But.” He pauses, and every line of his face flattens. “Setting the bathroom on fire is not cleaning.”

“It does kill germs, though.” Beau chuckles and throws an arm over Pike’s shoulders. “Or are you against killing germs, too?”

With a scoff, Pike spins on his heel and heads for the door.

Before he passes the counter, Halcyon blocks his path and stands like a monolith. “Why do you say you do not believe in the Essences?”

“I came here to be a man of science.” His eyes glitter. I could believe them stone like the golems’.

A slow smile crawls over Halcyon’s thin lips. “Why do you want the Pearl?”

My breath stills. How does he mean this question? As a Creature of the Sky asking the Creature of the Sea what he wants with me? Or as someone who cannot feel love asking a human if that is at play here?

Pike squints at him.

Halcyon glides closer. Grace and power ride in every curved line, promising a strike at any moment, and I open my mouth to remind him that Pike is not a deer.

Halcyon speaks first. “The dean wants her here because the scientists do. Same with Issoria. Same with me. Yet, she is more relevant to your project than we are.”

“What does he mean, Pike?” I say instead, and my musical human glances back at me.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, I—”

“He’s obsessed with the sea.” Beau approaches me from behind again and rests his hands on my upper arms.

I want to pull free, but that would mean stepping closer to Pike, and I am not certain I should. The gears of the walls still groan as they spin, but my insides turn faster, coiled in impossibly small, painful whirlpools. “Pike?”

“Look, I grew up on the sea.” Each word lolls on the tip of his tongue, not quite in song. Each word slows my heart. “My mother and her armada do what they want out there with impunity, a queen of the sea uncontested by some ethereal rival.” A chuckle shakes his shoulders, but it bears a deadly edge. “Or maybe my mom is Mare. Aren’t I lucky? The Essence of the Sea dotes on me.”

Continued in chapter 21

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Pike leaves.

I sink to my knees, four words on my tongue. They are vaporous yet heavier than any stone. “He is the Swine.”

By his own admission, Pike is the child of Mare. The Essence of the Sea dotes on him. Yet, no mirth wraps the sentiment. Even as it softens with each echo off the inside of my skull, the phrase is flat, dry, and wrinkled.

His song waltzes between my ears, staccato claws curling into my heart, and no wonder. It is a melody meant to summon those of the sea performed by a being for whom music is as integral as breathing. He would trap me. He would have me dangle forevermore from Mare’s necklace, motionless except for at the will of others. Less than a puppet on a string.

How could Pike want that? He was the only one who waited for me to awaken when I first arrived here and greeted me with such a friendly smile.

Of course he did. I was a valuable prize.

Outside the dean’s office when he told me of the bear’s demise, he held me, and we cried together. It was not just to get close to me, though. He could not have faked the depth of his sorrow.

He argued so adamantly against the death of prey.

He killed Terra’s messenger, and his regret rang genuine—not only because he had angered me. I feel this, though I cannot explain how. There is something in the way Pike holds himself that speaks to his truth. He keeps claiming not to believe in the Essences. It must be a deception meant to confuse me—a deception worthy of a villain—yet I cannot reconcile my concept of evil with this caring, music-infused boy.

How I wish I could touch his mind.

When I first tried to walk, my knees knocked against stone. Its echo shoots through my bones now. In its wake, the laughter of the Sea Swine trickles, just as painful. They found my misfortune amusing—all but one. He stared at me as if something wondrous had happened and as if he wished it had happened to him.

Has it? Is this the Swine that Mare chose to disguise as human? Pike? There must be a reason for that look back in the cave. Can Pike be an ally, even as the Swine?

I surge to my feet, but Beau clamps a hand on my elbow.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you.”

This bait is too vague to snare my attention, and I tear free. Yet, as I reach the open doorway, he throws out another lure.

“The new Essence’s realm isn’t Night.”

My stride hitches. How does he know? And if it is not Night, then what?

My foot lowers. My head turns. “I do not want him as my enemy.”

Beau’s brows draw a V, but if he verbally objects, the words become lost in the distance between us. I dash through the corridor. Steam limits visibility, while the moving, metallic walls wink and flash like distant stars. The warm air sticks in my throat.

A shadow, a figure, grows before me.

“Pike?”

He stops, fists clenched. The closer I come, the more details fill in. His jaw locks. His eyes cut sideways, the color of a lagoon beneath a midnight sky. “Got tired of standing me up or just bored of that nitwit’s company?”

A grin tugs at my lips. “Which nitwit: Halcyon or Beau?”

The smile is contagious until he closes his eyes and sighs. “I don’t know how Halcy got into this school. I know exactly how Beau Smythe did, and that’s the problem.”

His face is a maze of squiggly lines, but much as I would delight in exploring it, I did not come here to discuss the dragon or the scientist.

I reach toward him. “Pike, what are your goals? Besides trapping me, I mean.”

“I’m not trying to trap you, Pearl.” He whirls toward me to take my offered hand, then hesitates, fingers hovering above mine as his eyes sink to the fog-concealed floor. “Sorry if I gave that impression, if I came on a little strong. Most avoid me at home, so I thought of this as a fresh start, but I guess I’ve gone and messed it up already, and I’m so, so sorry.” The words pour from him, a river of delicate notes, babbling up and down and around the stones of sharper consonants.

“Then do not do it, Pike. Tulip told me love is sharing and helping one another. We cannot love each other, but…” I trail off as his eyes widen.

“That—that’s okay.” It is a stutter with a hint of a squeak. His hand retreats, then his feet. “I—I don’t need the distraction.”

Tulip’s line finishes only in my head. If you want them to help you with your goal, try asking about theirs. Then do what you can to help them reach it.

Pike is a Sea Swine, a Creature of Essence incapable of love, but I want to believe the principle still applies to making allies. Even friends.

I step into the growing space between us, chopping it shorter, little by little. “I do not know what Mare has offered you—”

“Don’t you think that joke has gone a bit far?” He rubs his eyes, his temples. “My relationship with the sea is…” The word stretches into infinity, still going even as silence fades in.

“I will offer you one dream come true, whatever it is.” Another step closer, but as that final syllable squeezes between my teeth, Halcyon’s warning leaps from the depths of my thoughts. A Swine once wanted to belong to another, and Mare killed him. A beat late, I add, “As long as it is within my power to give.”

“It’s not.” His backward steps stretch the gap between us again until his shoulder hits a wall with a thunk. “I have to make my own dreams come true. If you do it for me, then what use am I to the world?”

I understand. I would feel the same if Terra interfered so I could win the bet. It would deny me the chance to prove my worth and intelligence. It would mean he did not believe I had enough of either to complete the task on my own.

“Then I offer support. Whatever you need, ask.”

He opens his eyes. Tears gloss them. “I don’t think I understand. What are you asking of me?”

“Friendship.” My arms wrap him and draw him closer.

His chuckle tumbles like a hundred soft things hitting the ground. “This probably isn’t something someone who just got friend zoned should say, but your hugs are incredible, like reaching for a star and actually touching it, holding it.”

I place my chin upon his shoulder, voice as mellifluous as the slosh of waves. “Finish the sentence, Pike. Your relationship with the sea is…”

“I’m a child of the sea. Taken by it. Given to it. However you want to define it.”

My face crumples. “You have not always been a Swine, then.”

“I have never been a Swine, and I don’t appreciate the joke.” He pulls free, turns, and sets a pace that could rival an avalanche. “I’ve got a lot of stuff due tomorrow.”

I am his shadow, swift as darkness and deterred by no obstacle. “Pike, you saw what I wrote for my greatest fear.”

“I already said I’m not out to trap you, Pearl.” He stops as the corridor spills into the hub with the waterfall and the chasm where Sal and I encountered Aurora last night. Though he faces me, he walks backward.

Shadows do not flee from austere squints, and neither do I. “Tell me your goal, then. What do you mean you are a child of the sea?”

“So you can laugh at and shun me, too?” His mid back bumps against the rail around the chasm, and he grips the round top bar.

Afraid he would rather dive in than answer, I grab the front of his jacket. “One’s lack of freedom is never a cause for laughter.”

He sighs, then glances at every spiraling column of gold, every bronze gear, every shining balcony and dark tunnel before his liquid eyes settle on me. “I’ve always been full of questions, most starting with ‘why’ and ‘what if,’ and water fascinated me most of all. I’d stare out the drain slits under the ship rails and over the edge of skiffs, picturing myself beneath those waves. Then, one day, I fell in.”

“Does the sea return those it catches?”

“Usually not.” His gaze alights on my hands tangled in his jacket, and Sal’s words course through me.

You look just like her.

Does Pike also think I resemble Mare, holding him to me like this? Perhaps the thought should loosen my fingers. Instead, it tightens them.

His bandaged hand rises and curls atop mine. “If you don’t know how to swim, you sink. You drown, but I spent a lifetime watching sea creatures, so I copied how they moved. It was enough to keep my head above the water until I could grab the small boat. Crew said I’d been cursed by the fishies, though. If my mom wasn’t the pirate queen, they’d have thrown me back.”

I tilt my head as if this physical movement can shine rays of sunlight on the story from angles he might not have thought to conceal. Is it truth? Or how much of it is a lie meant to confuse me, woven from slivers of truth?

“So you, Child Claimed by the Sea, came here to escape it?”

His lips slant and his brows rise. “The opposite, actually.”

I mirror the expression until the coyest of grins cracks his.

“Look, you wouldn’t have seen it in the E’er Wild Forest, but the world has an overpopulation problem. They’re paving over the crops needed to feed us all. That’s the reason the politicians want to unite everyone, though getting the Koa’s little dots of land won’t help in the long run. They want to undo the Great Swallowing, but me? Eighty percent of the world is ocean, and if we could live in it, farm in it, thrive in it…”

“You want humans to live in the sea.” I pivot onto my toes, my weight pressing against him as if with enough physical contact, I can steal him from the sea. “Mare would never allow it.”

He gives against my steady push, muscles tightening just in time to stop a plunge over the rail. Our feet remain on the metal floor, yet in a way, we still plummet headlong together. This understanding is viscous, too soft to walk on and too thick to swim in.

His eyes narrow, a pair of waning moons tinted beneath calm waters. “The only thing real about Mare is our fear of her.”

***

When I find my way outside, late afternoon paints the sky a hazy blue cottoned with wisps of yellowed white. Pike remains at my side. He tried to convince me not to come out here, and failing that, he refused to let me come alone.

“I will not be alone once I locate Professor Baker,” I state, chin high. “I wish her to teach me to fight.”

Pike scoffs. “I saw you against that bear. You don’t need a fighting teacher.”

“That was instinct. I want honed skill.”

Calling that bluff, the wind laughs through the brittle leaves above our heads. Several rain around us—scarlet, orange and yellow sparks against the brown carpet of pine needles. A sweet and musky scent coats my tongue with every breath.

I lock my jaw before I can tell the Swine that I hope to find Jun out here as well. I want to make sure he is alright. More than that, I want his company, even as Sal’s warnings cut at me from the inside. I should not bring the Swine to an islander, but Pike and Jun were together when I first met them. Pike will not hurt him, and I do not want to miss a single one of Jun’s smiles.

I stuff my mouth with words in support of my disclosed reason. “An iron rod can smash and stab, but only when crafted into a blade can we term it elegant.”

Pike puffs his cheeks and fingers the latch on his flute’s sheath, but he gives no further argument.

Soon, clashing swords and occasional shouts form a trail of sound, and I dart ahead. When I emerge into the clearing, Jun stands alone in the fighter’s ring, firing arrows and flicking knives at targets tossed by Professor Baker. He is a storm and a deluge, every movement a work of art.

Motion—dance—is the chosen art of the Sky. I have never seen Caelus, though I imagine his eyes must be blue like Halcyon’s and Issoria’s. They cannot be any more stunning than this human boy’s, and I wonder if the islanders might have some connection to the Sky. If so, why has Caelus done nothing to protect them?

I must ask him when I meet him someday. Instinct says that we will meet. We must, though I do not know how or why. Instinct is elusive like that, whispering things we would not figure out otherwise.

Another instinct draws me toward the ring, calling for my arms to rise and encase Jun. Kiss him again, but do it better this time so that he will not flinch away from me.

I should not waste time. Nearly all the hours have leaked out of my third day. I am a danger to Jun. Tulip tells me to avoid him. So does Sal, but I do not hate him, and that proves I am not a Creature of the Sea. Jun blushes so easily, and his stuttering answers to my myriad of questions are windows into his soul, however brief. It is deeper than one might assume of a being so young. I doubt even he has explored its depths and corners. Yet, from what I have seen, it is just as beautiful as he is on the outside.

The bet says nothing in regard to the appearance of the human whose love I acquire, but a part of me considers the desirableness of this human to be a reflection of my own worth. Is it petty if I want to make Mare jealous?

I stop as if my foot has been pinned to the ground by an arrow. My eyes trace an invisible cord to one sitting beneath a tree—not on a log bench like the other students but further away—alone, golden uniform blending into a wave of faded grass, eyes reflecting that same wan color as he glares at me.

As soon as our gazes meet, Sal looks down, and the gesture pulls me to him as surely as the tide chases after the moon. With an intense frown, he reads a tiny book, though he does not turn a page in all the time it takes me to get to him.

I fold my legs and sit beside him. The ground is cool and dry, dirt powdery beneath the grass. It smells of herbs and citrus and, of course with Sal here, salt.

He barely moves, even to breathe. A faint whine accompanies each inhale.

I squint at his book, but very little of it makes sense. “What is that?”

His mouth presses in a tighter line, but he does not deign to look at me. A hollow darkness caresses his cheeks, deepest beneath his eyes. Dirt speckles his white hair, and wildness dictates its angles.

“Sal, did something attack you? Are you hurt?” I lean between him and his pages.

He pierces me with a scowl. “You took from me, Pearl, without even asking.”

Continued in chapter 22

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

I pull back as a chilled tightness seeps through my body. I am a pool of shame glazed over by the ice of regret. I did this to Sal. His exhausted glare lacks sharpness like an ember lacks flame. Ashes form his skin, the faintest celadon lurking about his lips, while his eyes reflect the gold of the grass. Beauty hides in that glitter, yet instinct knows they would not do that if he were not in great pain.

Only villains find art in pain.

The barest excuse slips away with my voice. “I only meant to take a little.”

“You didn’t ask at all.”

More excuses line up to spill. “I had nothing left.”

“Jun would have healed on his own.” His gaze returns to his book, but his whisper is twice as fierce. “Remember that next time.”

My nails sink into the soil. Land. If only I were a Creature of the Land, none of this would have happened. Mare would not want me, and I would be a golem—Terra has nothing more complex. I would live in blissful ignorance.

My voice is softer than the tear of grass beneath my fingers. “I could not stand to see Jun in pain. I want him to like me.”

Sal’s eyes leap back to me, narrowed and pale like the white peaks of rough seas. “Because of your bet with Mare?”

“No.”

Yet, the words to describe why I want Jun to like me will not come, as do any that would define my feelings toward Sal. With him, it is like looking at a circle, then realizing it is a square with all the corners in shadow. The longer I stare, the more I notice, every shape contained within the first in some trick of the light. He does not find me worthy, and I want him to. I want Sal to raise his brows and smile at me accomplishing the impossible. I want him to tell me I have done well.

Instead, he looks at me like I possess a Swine’s tusks and threaten to devour him.

I lower my face to the ground. “My regret is as fierce as fire from the sun, and I apologize. I should have waited for you to realize what I needed and allowed you to give it.”

He sighs. “It’s fine.”

But it is not. As I lift my head, a bruise stands out on the underside of his jaw, a dark, grayish-greenish stain against his tan skin. Halcyon said Sal refused to share his energy with me. Did he fight my hold, and did I force him to stay?

“Sal—”

“I said it’s fine.” He rubs a gloved hand down his face.

“Then why are you still angry?”

“You’re not the only one I’m mad at.”

“Sal!” Professor Baker calls. “Your turn.”

A tree grows faster than he gets to his feet, every movement evicting a wince. His step wobbles, and I catch him. He flinches away with a hiss.

“Hurry it up, Slowpoke! If you’re still moping because Jun kicked your butt in the warmup spar, you’ve got to be more resilient than that.”

Pike arrives at the ring just in time to hear the professor’s shout. He crosses his arms and scowls. “There are actual monsters around here, and you’re hurting each other?”

Wiping his brow with a towel, Jun sits on the log closest to Pike. “I’d rather learn at the end of a friend’s blade than have an enemy skewer me before I figured out what to do.”

With a huff, Pike plops alongside Jun, and a spark sprints along my spine. My attention slides to Sal, expecting him to say something about the Swine sitting so close to the islander, but he steps onto the sand in silence. A hardness captures his eyes, a distance, like an island blurred through a haze, as if he sees nothing beyond the weapons the teacher hands him.

I should insinuate myself between Jun and Pike just as I should have been between Jun and Halcyon. Instead, I am caught in Sal’s riptide. As he takes a ready stance, the blade of his throwing knife flashes with his trembles.

“The monsters probably come because of your violence out here anyway.” Pike unpockets his flute.

“Do not play that,” Jun growls.

Pike sticks out his tongue.

The first target flies—a disc striped black and red—and Sal’s breaths pause. His gaze jumps from blade to disc, then back. His arm coils, readying the throw, then pitches forward, but the knife stays as if glued in his grip. His hand shakes even more visibly now, his wide eyes reflecting the pines and sky, almost as aqua-emerald as Pike’s.

“What’s wrong?” Professor Baker barks as she releases more targets.

Sal swallows hard and lowers his stance. As his eyes count the new discs, he reaches for a second knife sheathed at his belt. He drops it.

I wrap my arms around him from behind. After a jolt, his tremors still, and he looks over his shoulder at me, one brow curled.

“When I was afraid, you held me. This seems fair,” I explain.

“Except, you had reason to be afraid.” He faces forward, colors climbing his cheeks.

Barely loosening my grip, I slide around him and look up beseechingly. “Teach me to move like Jun?”

Every line of his face flattens. “Maybe you should ask him.”

I shake my head. “I have seen you move when you had to, and I want to see you do this now. Maybe you are better than him.”

Murmurs race between the spectating students, but I do not bother to catch any of them. Sal commands my full attention, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “Did you see him? Like a shower of shooting stars? That quickness was because of you, because of the energy you gave him. Without that, I am better than him.” In the same exhale, he turns to the professor. “She wants me to teach her?”

“As long as it gets you to throw something.”

Sal spins me around, and everywhere the heat of his fingers seeps through my clothes, my skin tingles.

“They’re flying targets,” he says, breath fanning across the side of my neck. “They can move in any direction, so watch their shape, how it cuts the air, how it directs their course.”

I nod, chewing the inside of my lip as the knife drops from his hand to mine. It is warm, even warmer than him, with a sizzle of its own like a frantic heartbeat.

It distracts me, and I pull it closer for inspection. Gears spin within the skeletal handle, mirroring the row of dials where it meets the blade. “This is not simply metal.”

“Pay attention.” Sal takes my wrists and straightens my arm as the first target launches.

We flow together. I obey his whispers, hands curling or releasing as he instructs while limbs bend at his silent orders. With the sound of shattering clay, a disc explodes into dust, then the next. Another, then three at once. A laugh bubbles through my throat, a smile in its wake. We dance like light and shadow, wind and trees, sky and sea. Our footsteps make no sound, nor do the straightening of knees and elbows or our gazes as they capture the next target, yet they all form a pulse, unheard but just as real as the patter of rain.

Between the beats, a high, clear tone strings the moments together, leading one to its successor. Several measures pass before I realize it exists beyond my own mind.

“Pike, I told you not to play that thing,” Jun snaps.

As the flute lowers from Pike’s lips and the music stops, so do we. So does everything.

“Sal and Pearl did much better once I started playing,” Pike excuses.

“I’m used to music—to dance—in the mountains.” Open wonder scrawls in every angle of Sal’s expression. He has met Mare, but has he ever heard a song performed by a Creature of the Sea? Does it hook into his heart like it does mine? “Jun is right, though. Don’t play that song.”

“I’ll play whatever I want.”

Sal’s gaze flicks to Jun, and he abandons the ring, eyes a shadow beneath his lowered brows. As I follow, Professor Baker calls for the next student.

“I told you what that song is.” Toe to toe with the sitting Pike, Sal towers over him. Targets shatter as a backdrop to his words. “I wouldn’t want you to accidently summon anybody.”

“It’s just a lullaby my mother used to sing to me.” The flute returns to Pike’s lips.

Jun pushes it down. “Music belongs to Mare, and if you take what belongs to her, she’ll make you pay for it.”

Behind Sal, I swallow. I belong to Mare, she thinks, but not for long. If Sal or Jun knew they could help me break free, would they?

Pike rips the pipe loose, but before he can lift it again, Sal grabs it.

“He told you not to. Respect that.”

Pike’s glare is a tempest coiling his every muscle. Art, or at least the promise of it, lurks there, too, just as it did in the glitter of Sal’s pain. Music—sound—is the chosen art of the Sea, yet curiosity slithers between the stories told to me. Do Creatures of the Sea dance? What beautiful masterpiece would result if the Land, Sea, and Sky combined their arts?

With the eyes of my fancy, I picture Pike playing his flute. Sal whistles, and Issoria twirls alongside him. Jun claps along, adding his laughter to the melody.

Movement yanks me back from the imagined scene. Pike retreats, flute set at his mouth. It produces a single note before Sal again jerks it away. As if tied to it with invisible string, Pike follows and leaps on him. Sal throws an arm as a shield, but Pike is a stream flowing around all obstacles. They fall, exchanging swift blows. They still, and Sal lies flat, chest against the ground, both arms wrenched behind him and Pike’s knee on his spine.

“I don’t approve of violence, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fight.” Pike releases Sal’s arms, pulls the flute from his crushing grip, and stands.

Sal’s eyes are wide yet hard at the edges, his mouth ajar, corners downturned.

I go to him.

“He’s not hurt,” Pike assures me.

Sal turns away, limbs too rigid as he rolls and sits facing the trees.

Professor Baker slinks up behind us. “Nice moves, Science Blue. You want to take Sal’s place in my class?”

“He resents me enough already.” After a facetious bow, Pike places a hand on my arm. “Pearl, please, let’s go inside.”

Though the warmth on my skin is comforting and persuasive, I do not move. The sun still hangs high, but the shadows of the trees stretch toward us like jagged teeth. Sal sits on that line, pale hair ruffling in the cold breeze. Leaves swirl around him, dotting the gray ground with droplets of crimson and gold like human and Essence blood.

“I will stay.”

“Pearl, please, this place is—”

Jun pushes him back. “Go inside yourself, Pike.”

“And leave her here with you crazies? What kind of gentleman do you think I am? Pearl, let’s go to the café. My less weird roommate is the manager there, and I’ll play any song you want.”

Slowly, Sal turns and pins Pike with a stare of steel gray. His frown sinks deeper than a stone dropped into the sea. “Where exactly are you from, Pike?”

“Where is a bit of a misnomer. I’m a sea nomad.”

“A pirate?” Stepping back, Jun looks at his hands as if invisible dirt now coats them.

Pike rubs the back of his head. “We prefer to think of it as charging for safe passage through our territory.”

As Jun continues to retreat, he flips a throwing knife from his belt and holds it, blade down and out, in front of his chest.

“Oh, seriously, Jun? You know I’m a passivist. I’ve never killed anyone.”

Jun shakes his head. A lock of hair has escaped its tie and hangs in his face.

I jump between them, the Swine and my islander, a lump in my throat too large to speak around. Pike grabs me, and Jun lunges, but Sal is faster. While not taller than Jun, he may be stronger, and seeing him pull Jun down, I believe what he whispered in the ring. He holds my blue-eyed human in a headlock, blade buried in the dirt, both their faces snarled.

“Drop it.”

Jun shakes his head, sightline locked on Pike with his arms around me. “I have four more knives.”

“And you’ll leave them sheathed.” Sal’s expression relaxes, and his voice softens. “Jun, please. I don’t want—”

If he finishes the sentence, I cannot hear it over Professor Baker’s shouts as she and the class surround us.

Jun tears free and darts into the shadows between the trees.

Calling after him, I twist away from Pike, but Sal catches me around the middle. My feet cannot reach the ground, and my kicks have no effect.

“Let me go, Sal! Let me follow him, please. Not like last night.”

“I know.” Perhaps he does feel my blows. Tears spill over his lashes, but his hold does not loosen.

“Pike,” I appeal, but the Swine will not look at me. Of course not, but at least he does not follow Jun either.

As always, it is Sal who explains, a whisper meant only for me. “Some consider the pirates brave to live on the sea, but the understanding they have with Mare was bought with Koa blood.” His voice snags, but it is my heart that rips. “The sea nomads have killed more of Jun’s family than anyone.”

Continued in chapter 23

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

I fly, feet barely contacting the ground.

In the distance, Sal tells Pike to stay.

“But I—”

“I said stay.”

The forest’s shadow engulfs me. Ivy tears at my ankles, and branches rip my sleeves. Tree trunks of all sizes stripe my path, and I weave but never slow, not until I spy Jun.

He sinks into the gnarled roots of an ancient maple, knees curled to his chest and forehead pressed to his wrists. Several strands of his midnight hair have fallen from their tie and hang alongside his face, but they are not enough to conceal his scrunched eyes or that he breathes through shivering lips. “Leave me alone. Please.”

“No.”

His eyes snap open, their blue in this gloom like the ocean’s deepest parts.

I sit, legs folded beneath me, knees almost touching his toes. “Tell me what, if anything, is worse than loneliness.”

“Being tortured to death.”

“At least that has an end. Loneliness just goes on and on.”

He lifts his head, chin tilted, and it makes the slight crookedness of his nose more apparent. “You’ve experienced this never-ending loneliness?” At my nod, his shoulders hunch closer to his ears, and he hides that lovely face behind his hands again. “Look, I’ll come back eventually. Just, Pike—”

“Pike is not a pirate.” I bite off the end of the sentence so as not to reveal what Pike is: a Creature of the Sea. His presence here has nothing to do with Jun and everything to do with me.

Yet, was it Pike who attacked him last night? Why would he do that?

When we first met, I compared Jun’s eyes to arrows. Now, they are ravines, their crumbling edges devouring the landscape.

About to fall in, I repeat what so many have said to me. “He is not a pirate, but you should avoid him.”

“If he’s not a pirate, then why did he say he was? And how would you…” He swallows and looks away. “Why did you save me from that bear?”

“Because I did not want you to die.” Rising onto my knees, I reach toward his profile. I want him to look at me, to smile, to be safe. I want him, all of him. “I did not know you then, but now, if anyone hurt you—”

“Pearl!” Sal catches up. Branches break beneath his steps, less sharp than his tone. “Stop harassing him.”

My fingers halt just shy of Jun’s cheek, curling back into a caricature of a fist. “Am I harassing you, Jun?”

“I—” He turns, but his gaze focuses beyond me, beyond Sal, and he is on his feet, knife in hand. Green tints his cheeks and the trees’ grayish-brown bark. “It’s back.”

I pivot, spine touching Jun’s arm, heedless of his weapons. He will not hurt me, and I must not let Aurora hurt him. Her serpentine glow meanders through the fork of every trunk, smoke and a rain of shriveled leaves in her wake. Aqua and the faintest cyan ripple along her sides, dotted by the occasional flash of magenta.

Sal appears at my side, and a smile bursts across me like spring flowers on a hill. This is our third instance meeting Aurora. We will understand her this time, show her that we want to help her, and we will both protect Jun.

As she sashays closer, her kaleidoscope colors reflect in Sal’s steel eyes, starlight hair, and paler uniform. Music claims the pulse, a beat to be seen rather than heard—a kind of music Jun does not have to fear since no part of it belongs to Mare. This flickering art is purely Aurora’s, the Essence of the Night. Or the Essence of something else, according to Beau. Yet, how can it not be Night? The deepest darkness and the glory of distant stars grace every shadow she casts.

Her tail remains before us while her leading end circles our maple and seeps between its branches. Jun’s back presses against mine, though my head barely reaches the base of his shoulder blades. As he slips a knife into my grip, Aurora slithers above me with a curiosity as unexpectedly milky sweet as the coconut I had at breakfast.

“Huuumaaan.” Her voice rattles my teeth, a sizzle in my skull.

Jun ducks, slashing with his blade.

“Stop!” I drop the knife he gave me and throw my arms around him. “She is only trying to communicate.”

He pauses, muscles still taut beneath my hold. “How?

“Can you not hear her?”

He shakes his head, licks his lips, canyon gaze on her swirling form as she coalesces. She is a wave of light, a tsunami, a wall.

My knees no longer support me. If not for my grip on Jun, I would fall into the mercy of the ground’s embrace.

“Jun, hold onto Pearl and stay absolutely still.”

Despite his own advice, Sal retreats from a sliver of light. It undulates like a jellyfish’s string, and the longer I watch, the more Aurora resembles that graceful sea creature. A hood swells at her leading end, and the rest of her breaks into thin strands. She seems as tentative of Sal as he is of her. Yet, when his gaze flicks back to Jun and I, she lashes out at his cheek.

He hisses, flinches, but otherwise does not move. A mark appears beneath one eye, black as an eclipse: a cut and a burn. There is no blood.

She twirls around him, more strings questing but none touching him. “Waaant.”

“Want?” he repeats. “What is it you want?”

Her coils tighten. Heedless of his strangled cry, she lifts him from the ground and snaps like a whip. Sal flies, and she darts after him like a kitten playing with a mouse. As soon as he hits the forest floor, she captures him again, carries him higher, and vanishes.

“Sal!” My voice shatters into a scream. An invisible chain connects me to Aurora and pulls tighter the further she travels, trying to squeeze my heart out between my ribs. I follow, seeking to relieve the tension, but letting go of Jun renders me on my hands and knees. A shot of panic for Sal pushes me forward by another few feet before I fully collapse.

Why do I lose all strength every time Aurora arrives? I cannot help her like this. I cannot protect Jun. Protect Sal.

Get up.

I cannot.

She feeds on me.

The thought burns through my every nerve and stands each hair on end. She is an infant. In my days as a tiny stone, I devoured the sand, always hungry. To her, I am that sand, but if, like Halcyon says, it takes great quantities of energy to sustain a Creature of Essence, how much more does a full Essence need?

I am like a nursing mother trying to satisfy a baby larger than myself. Only Terra, Mare, or Caelus can meet that need.

“Great tempest!” Jun growls. He stands over me, face aimed at the sky and a knife in either hand. “Didn’t it just want to communicate?”

“She managed two words.” Several breaths pass before I can speak again. “Human and want.”

“Hopefully, she didn’t mean she wants Sal for dinner. Can you stand?” Jun guards me, back straight and shoulders square, waiting for me to press against it again. When I do not respond, he turns, kneels, and brushes two fingers along the side of my face. “What did she do to you?”

I cannot tell him. He will be angry, like Sal when I took from him without asking. I am more vexed with myself than at Aurora. I will give her whatever she requires, whether she asks or not.

“Put away the knives, Jun. I know how to get her to come back.” Sitting up is equivalent to lifting a mountain. Yet, with Jun watching and his hand still upon my face, I summon the strength to accomplish it.

Jun’s eyes narrow, the thoughts sliding behind them almost visible. “You know what the monster is.”

I whisper the answer in hopes it will land like a feather, not like a felled tree. “A new Essence.”

“What?” He draws back, halfway rises, lifts the knife.

“No, Jun.” I grab his wrist. “No, she is not Mare. She is an infant who has done nothing to hurt you.”

He looks at his arm, where his sleeve hides recently healed skin.

I sigh, closing my eyes and focusing inward. No niche goes unsearched in my quest for every drop of hidden strength. “She did not mean to, but you were shooting at her. Do you not think it unwise to frighten the Essence of the Night?”

“Basically, you’re saying there’s a new Essence, and it’s a kinky creeper who kidnaps men.”

“She is curious of my emotions.” I am not a fallen log. I must stand, must endure. I came here to prove my worth, did I not? I am a complex Creature of Essence, more than a Golem or a Coral. I will not crumble so easily.

My grip tightens on Jun’s arm, and I pull with every intention of rising. Instead, he falls, knives clattering against the roots as his palms flatten on either side of my shoulders.

His hair teases my cheeks as the sun winks through the canopy behind him. This close, he has a faintly metallic scent beneath the more herbal musk of sweat. “So, you lure it back here. Then what?”

“We capture her. Aurora’s realm overlaps with the other three, and she will be more powerful than them. We can teach her to fight back against Mare and protect the Koa, protect you.”

“You would challenge Mare.” Instead of a question, it carries the weight of an answer to something one dares not ask.

If his face is a door, it swings open, and I stare into the depths it reveals. Thoughts slither past me almost as they did when I was a stone, yet they are too liquid to hold. A strange feeling bubbles across my every nerve, a need to stay and to run, to laugh and cry and remain silent.

I cannot move, not until he retreats and I follow as if something keeps me at this fixed distance from him. As he recovers his knives, his arm brushes mine, and lightning shivers across my skin. I lean into the touch.

He sheathes his weapons, then grips my shoulders and meets my gaze. “What do we need to do?”

“I need to kiss you.”

He stills, missing a breath, two, before he gives the slightest nod. “Because she’s curious of your emotions.”

My hands slide up his arms as I shrink the distance between us. His lips press a thin line, then loosen just before mine would meet them. I stop, wait, and it is torture.

His head tilts, brows lowered and ruby rising beneath his skin. “Is something wrong?”

“You are supposed to come the last little bit. That is the secret to a good kiss, Sal says.”

He retreats, hands stiff on my shoulders to keep me from following. “Are you in a relationship with Sal?”

“I want you, Jun.”

“That doesn’t answer—”

I crash into him, and nothing about this kiss is like Sal’s. Nothing says be gentle or go slow, not his tumble backward or his grunt of surprise. Not how his hands slip behind me, tangle in my jacket, and pull me closer. Not how he steals my breath, and when I retreat an inch to draw another, he chases me. So, I return to him. Who needs to breathe anyway?

This is a deluge falling to the ground, a tiger pouncing on its prey. I weave my fingers into his hair. Leaves stick in it, scarlet against shadow, the brightest red and the darkest black, even in the waving spots of sunlight.

Red is not his color. As I touch the leaves, they crumble into blue ash.

His palms trail along my neck, my cheeks, cup my chin, and push back so he can speak words with no voice. “It’s like kissing a star. Please tell me I’m not actually on fire.”

With a whispered, “Not yet,” I kiss him again, softer this time, allowing him to breathe. His heart pounds beneath my chest, every inhale lifting me. Wonder and hope saturate each movement, and it fuels me, purer than any meal.

Under my touch, his muscles constrict, and we flip, but the flash of light behind him is too green to be the sun this time.

Aurora dives between us in the form of a fiery serpent, fangs snapping at Jun’s nose. He scrambles back, hand on a knife’s hilt. He will not outrun her, and if he stabs her, I cannot say she will forgive him.

Mouth open, she lunges at his throat, and I am there instead. As her fangs bore into my sternum with the tiniest of stings, I gather her to me. She writhes, a fussy youngling, but as I calm my breaths and lock my arms, she settles. Warmth pours over us, and the weave of my jacket melts away, though beneath it, my skin remains unharmed.

She cuddles in, snout tucked into the crook of my elbow until Jun steps closer. She snaps at him, and I hug her tighter.

“No, Aurora. Jun is—” I break off, not sure how to explain in a way she will understand. “I care about him very much.” My voice softens, and I bite my lip, where the taste of him lingers. It is like a sea breeze—crisp and almost sharp with an undertone of salt.

While he does not venture near again, his desire to teeters in every line of his stance. “It—she lets you hold her.”

“She knows I mean her no harm.” My gaze drops to the infant Essence in my arms. “Little one, what have you done with Sal?”

She squirms, neck twisting around my arm so she can look up at me. “Miiine. Mine, mine, mine.” She flickers with each syllable, likely from the amount of effort speaking requires.

Was it not the same for me back in Terra’s cave when I made Mare hear me?

As she swings back to Jun, she draws more from me. Aside from the tingle at every place her glow touches my skin, I cannot feel my arms. My toes seem as distant as the moon.

Her glow flares the same deep blue as my islander’s eyes. “No.”

I sink, and as Jun moves in to catch me, she strikes at him again. I press her even more firmly to me, willing her to understand. He is only trying to help. Do not hurt him. Yet, no matter how hard I hold her, it is not enough. Her needled teeth touch the pulse in his throat.

A hand wraps his nape and throws him back while another lifts me into a strong embrace. Aurora pounces at the newcomer’s face, but he catches her. She wiggles and squeals, and I can no longer hold up my own head.

My cheek rests on a rock-like shoulder. “Do not hurt her, please.”

“It’s sad, the infantile creations.” The newcomer’s low voice blends gravel, wind, and chimes. He continues to squeeze Aurora, though his glove melts and acrid smoke swirls around it. “Always short-lived, too taxing on their Essence’s energy. Even those that eventually live longer don’t possess too much intelligence.”

I cough. “Like Golems, Corals, and Wisps?”

“Seems you might have a brain after all.” He may lift a brow, and he may smile, but the scene is too blurred for me to tell.

Aurora’s light fizzles and vanishes, no longer influencing the highlights of his dark skin or his hair’s miasma of colors. His locks are short aside from one spear that juts crookedly across his forehead.

“Who are you?” Jun demands, and whatever the answer is, this man cradling me like a toddler makes Jun appear short.

“I’m a friend,” he says, “of Pearl’s, though she has never met me.”

“A friend she’s never met?”

Something sparks, and a hollow pool conquers my center. Jun’s knives are out again.

The man sighs, and within the space of a blink, his hand stretches over Jun’s face. My blue-eyed human goes rigid.

“Do not hurt him!” My tongue is so thick, I am not sure anyone understands me, but it is the same message I have been touting all throughout this.

“Walk straight for fifty paces, then stand for two hundred heartbeats.”

Without a word, Jun complies.

“What? Jun!” I call after him, but he keeps on as if he does not hear me.

This strange friend hefts me higher onto his shoulder and chuckles as he walks in the opposite direction from my bewildered islander. “Old Creatures of Essence have their tricks when it comes to dealing with humans. I might teach you a few, if you’re nice enough.”

Continued in chapter 24

Thank you for reading!

~THE SWINE~

This pride doesn’t fit me well, like an outgrown shell pinching off my breath. I should not fight with these humans. It’s stupid, reckless, and will get me caught, especially if anyone sees the color of my blood. I’m trying to keep my distance, but that scene of her and the islander tangled in each other, lips and all, sets fire to my bones.

Of everyone, why would she choose him? It’s like balance demands that her curiosity of the Koa equal Mare’s loathing for them. That’s all it is. Curiosity. That’s all it can be. If it were genuine care, she would realize how much danger she brings him.

He can’t love her. If this enigmatic human emotion is a plant, then I can’t allow even a seed to exist in any human, and especially not him.

He wanders the woods, lost. Not that he doesn’t know where he is. He can go back to Professor Baker at any time, but he refuses to return without the Pearl, and he doesn’t know where she’s gone. He doesn’t remember the Creature of the Land that took her. Lance is very, very old and very dangerous.

Another silhouette flickers between the trees, lupine with a generously bushy tail. She watches but never comes closer. I didn’t know there were any of Terra’s Wolves left. I’ve never met any of these oldest complex Creatures of Essence, and I’ve never desired to. Their idea of entertainment is leading fools to cause their own demise.

I expect her to interfere as I approach Jun, but maybe I’m enough of a fool without her help. I try to persuade him to go back inside. He cares for the Pearl. He feels loyalty toward her, twisted as it is among humans, but I still understand it. These are emotions I have experienced myself, but love? I’m not sure how to recognize it.

How can I spin this into a happy ending? At this rate, the Pearl will take him back to Mare. She’ll win the bet. It will mean my failure, but if I can claim this islander as a gift?

Jun will die, and Mare won’t make it quick. She adores the ones that scream, and the ones that try not to? Those delight her even more.

I will be kind. He thinks I’m out here searching for the Pearl, that we have that concern in common and it is what furrows my brow. He even lends me one of his science-enhanced blades in case we run into trouble. His back is turned toward me.

One thrust, one thin pane of metal through the spine will end this worry for good. Halcyon is right: If Jun dies because of the Pearl, no human will trust her.

I can do this. I have to do this, no matter how my hand jitters as I turn the dial on the knife. Sharpest edge, quickest kill. It won’t hurt him, not if I do it right. This is the best way.

He turns, gaze on the weapon and brows drawn in question.

I answer with a pointed look toward a chaotic pile of rotten logs. Dusk’s light shies from its hollows, preparing for the fourth sunset since the bet began. Half of the week is gone.

A nod acknowledges the direction, features widening in hope, and Jun slinks toward the downed trees. He really is beautiful. If not for the scar on his forehead, Mare would keep his teeth.

I walk with him, sucking in a deep breath. It’s for the best. He won’t understand, but it is. Now. Do it.

The knife launches forward.

He ducks, then backpedals, and the blade slices in front of him. Before I can angle it at his heart, his hand vices my wrist. His back curves, throwing me over his shoulder, but I grab at him. My legs knot around his ribs and pull him down with me.

All my breath leaves as my spine hits the ground. I should have paid better attention to where the knife was. It comes down with all Jun’s weight and impales my side. As its curved tip sinks into the dirt beneath me, his knee on my throat cuts off my squeal.

Golden blood pours from the wound. Not quite liquid, it wafts, dusting his jacket, his face, his dark lashes and hair. Its glow reflects in his eyes, and against that, they look black, like the darkest moments before sunrise.

A different dawn slides over his face. “You’re not human.” Two more knives slide from their sheaths. One hovers above my eye, the other above my heart. “Show me your true form before you die.”

“I can’t shift on my own.” My words are a jumble, more slur and squeal than anything else. Every hard-earned exhale and every thought of movement saws the cut wider. “Mare has to—”

“You’re hers?” His thumb toggles a dial. These are weapons designed to kill Creatures of Essence, and he just put them on their highest setting. Sharpest edge, quickest kill, after all. His hands tremble, though. Good. He fears Mare, as he should.

I’ll tell him what he needs to hear. He’ll run. He’ll never meet her.

“Pearl’s not human either.”

He nearly drops the knives, and I’m not sure he means to breathe the word he does. “What?”

My hand crawls toward the blade in my side. I have to get up, get out of here while he’s distracted. He will kill me. I don’t doubt that for an instant.

“Pearl belongs to Mare, too. She doesn’t care about you, Jun. She can’t. She’s just using you to win a bet.”

*

~THE PEARL~

Familiarity peeks around this stranger’s every edge. It rides in the way his stride devours the land, in how the light plays with his skin same as it does the ruddy brown of the leaves silhouetted above. Beyond them, a deepening mauve claims the sky, pierced by pinpricks of white. I see it only in my periphery, eyes stuck on the one who carries me.

He seems human, features broad and angular as if painted by a thick brush. Though he appears little older than the students here—mid-twenties at most—some spirit about him feels ancient, one part wise, two parts dangerous.

As I think this, he grins, and the eyes that alight on me burn with the molten amber of aged sunflowers.

I open my mouth to share one epiphany, but much more spills out in a breathless rush. “You are a Creature of the Land! What is your name? Has Terra sent you? Why? You cannot interfere in the bet, not unless—”

His deep chuckle rolls through my every hollow. “Terra said you were full of questions.”

Indeed, I have many more. Though the chiseled planes of his muscles are statuesque and rock hard, he is no Golem. He must be a complex Creature of the Land, equivalent to a Sea Swine or a Sky Dragon. He belongs in Terra’s Company, but why have I never met him? Are there others? Why would they leave Terra in loneliness?

What is his true form? Surely, the human looks are a façade. The last messenger Terra sent caused a disturbance, then was smashed. Not even in desperation could the Swine crush this giant.

“Are you also a centipede?”

At the edge of the trees with the university’s residence wing pale in the last of the sunlight, he halts. “No, Honey, we don’t compare any part of this”—his free hand sweeps a gesture along his body—“to a bug.”

I flatten my expression, too reminded of the human disgust Pike used as an excuse. “It is not an insult. Bugs play an important role in nature.”

“Ah. See, I do not, and that’s what I like about me.” His yawning strides resume.

I summon the strength to straighten, watching the forest shrink behind us. “Wait! We cannot leave Jun out there. And Sal—”

The plea becomes a choke as a breeze, chilled with the promise of winter’s distant but inevitable crawl, strokes my shoulders and collarbone where Aurora melted away my jacket. She only touched Jun and Jag, yet she burned them badly. Merely grazing her belly melted a metal rail around the chasm.

Sal’s strangled cry returns to my mind. Aurora wrapped him like a snake at least twice. She not only touched him, she carried him, and who knows what she did once beyond our sight.

Want. Mine. The two words she said about Sal. They fill my throat with sand.

“Lupa will look after them, probably. Sorry for sending off your human toy, but ones as young as you are easily distracted by pretty things. With the Koa around, I wouldn’t have gotten a proper introduction.”

“You have yet to introduce yourself anyway.” I squirm but remain trapped like a vine between tangled boughs. “Take me back or let me go.”

“So you can do what?” He snorts as a door clangs open and the university’s steel and steam innards swallow the deepening sky. “If the Koa isn’t smart enough to go unsupervised for a few hours, he’s not worth it.”

“But Mare—”

“You don’t have the strength to challenge Mare.” He locks me in the crook of one arm and lines my face with a hand. Tingly warmth seeps through my cheek and spreads to the depths of every bone. “You can’t give Sal the last bit of yourself.”

“He is hurt, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied he needs healing.” I struggle to rise, but the pooling warmth carries a planet’s weight. The words are meant to be sharp. Instead, my tongue lulls along them as if over foothills.

“I see I’ll have to pick words carefully around you.”

Like a villain that tiptoes around truth? He terms himself my friend, yet I know nothing of him. I want to trust him as a Creature of the Land, but wariness nibbles at the small hairs on the back of my neck. If he is loyal to Terra, I should have met him before now.

My eyelids weigh even more than my limbs, but I prop them open with a pleading stare. “If you took me back to Sal, you could heal him.”

“Could. Could.” His face hardens, every feature sharp as a thorn. “I will not reward him for meddling where he ought not. Feeding you is generous enough.”

Emphasizing his point, the power flowing between us sputters, and something primal within me reacts. My hands cover his and dig into the cords of sinew. They sniff out his vast stores of energy and draw it as if with a tornado’s inhale.

They get more than energy. Needles drive into my skin, each one trailing tiny chains. It is not merely a gift. It is an intention to trap.

As the walls transition from metal to the wood and paper screens of the hallway outside my room, I know I need to break this connection. Yet, my deepest self is still a tiny stone devouring all the sand it can, growing bit by bit. Despite how it prickles and stings, what this Creature of the Land offers is tastier than sand.

I stay still, limp and cooperative, focusing on the tip of that one spike of hair across his forehead. “How do you know the way to my room?”

“You leak energy like prey with a flatulence problem. One simply has to follow the trail.” He stops outside my door.

“I do not want to go in there. I want to return to Jun and Sal.”

And Pike. Where is he? Did the Swine go back inside alone after I chased Jun? Would he help me heal Sal?

“Sleep a while, stubborn infant, before you annoy me too much.”

Flame dances within my cheeks. So what if I am an infant. I have spent too long without a voice to allow my words to fade without acknowledgement now.

“Put me down.”

When he fails to comply, I say it louder. The third time is more than a shout. It rattles the walls and boils the blood beneath his skin, but his grip tightens.

The door flings open, and Tulip stands in its place, already partway through an exclamation. “…think you’re doing, you great…” Her voice slows, softens. “Mountain of muscles.”

She leans against the doorframe, lips quirked like two ships caught in a whirlpool as her eyes sweep him from head to toe and back. One hand remains hidden behind her.

Her timbre drops an octave. “What’s your story?”

“He is a Creature of the Land,” I say, and her brows become rising crescent moons. Her mouth draws a tiny o.

He smiles at her, planes and angles somehow forming a feather-like delicacy. “Pretty ones get to call me Lance.”

“Alright, Lance, care to explain the giant holes in Pearl’s shirt?”

My broiling emotions drown his response as their steam puffs my cheeks. He allows pretty ones to call him Lance, yet he did not offer me the name. Does he not find me pretty?

I need to be like Tulip and claim the privilege without even a blush, but words refuse to fit together. Only a jumble of nonsensical vowels streams from my throat as I tumble free. Yanking away from him is like ripping the skin from my flesh. Everything burns, and tears simmer in my eyes.

Tulip is there, arms around me in the softest hug. “Did he do this to you?”

If she still refers to my shirt’s ruined state, no, Lance had nothing to do with that. If she means the tears trekking down my cheeks and my trembling lip, yes, those are his fault.

She tucks my forehead beneath her chin and glares at Lance. “Get out of here, Mr. I’m Too Tall to Fit Through the Door, before I do something you’ll regret.”

Panic weaves my fingers into the wrinkled sleeves at her elbows. She cannot send him away. Already, what little he gave me ebbs. I am the smallest of candles, drowning in my own melted wax. “I need his help.”

She glances down with a narrowed expression, then hefts my weight onto one hip. “You need cleaned up and made decent first. Muscles can wait out here.”

Yet, as we enter our room, Lance follows.

Tulip whirls on him, an object glinting in her outstretched hand. “Do you not have ears?”

He grins, one brow lifting beneath the lone spike of his bangs. “Is that a hairbrush?”

“You don’t want to be on the wrong side of my hairbrush, trust me.”

Hands raised, Lance returns to the hall. The door steals him from sight, then a second door closes.

As Tulip sponges me down, I stare at my jacket and shirt, peeled off and abandoned on the floor. “I apologize. You worked so hard to teach me how to clean it each day, and now the garment is ruined.”

“It’s just a silly shirt.” She huffs stray hair away from her face. Over the past few days, their red has deepened into a rusty shadow. “It doesn’t look like you were hurt, at least. On the outside, anyway.”

“Not on the inside either. Not really.” To her silence, I pour out the events of my day, from Sal’s lessons at sunrise to how that advice burned to ash this evening with Jun. I speak of how I gave my all to heal him and of how much more Aurora took. I tell of Halcyon’s revelation about my lack of connection to an Essence and end with, “I need to grow stronger.”

Is this a goal Lance can help me achieve? I do not want his help with the bet. I want to win that fairly, on my own power. In the forest, he said old Creatures of Essence know tricks, and he would teach me. Does he listen now through the thin walls? What does he think?

“I don’t like how many of these creatures are showing up here,” Tulip mutters. “You with your bet is one thing. The Swine made sense, too, if he followed you, but why is Halcyon here, and Aurora, and possibly an infant Essence that Beau knows something about?”

I still need to ask him what he meant. If the new realm is not Night, what other place is there, and what does it have to do with Southern Shores University?

The chasm outside Great Mind’s Café fills my mind. Darkness and water. Silence and a never-ending roar. Does it lead somewhere? Is there a place beneath the sea?

I lose the battle against my drooping eyelids. When they reopen, I am again in Lance’s arms with power trickling between us. It teases, denying me more no matter how hard I pull. The Creature of the Land sits on Tulip’s desk chair, russet skin and bright hair in sharp contrast to the scribbled papers pinned to the wall. Little time has passed. Evening still glitters outside the window.

“But if the Swine—” Tulip cuts off as she notices my wakened state. She leans against the closed door as if to prevent Lance from darting off with me.

“I have already figured out that Pike is the Sea Swine,” I say too loudly as I sit up. My body swims in one of Tulip’s black undershirts, its billowing wrinkles like clouds against a night sky.

They exchange a look, communicating in some language of eyebrows.

“Pearl,” Tulip begins.

Lance’s voice, though seemingly no louder, crushes hers. “You’re here to prove you’re a smart little stone.” He taps me on the head. “That’s what the bet is really about. Not love. Scheming.”

My face scrunches, and my shoulders hunch. “Am I incorrect? Is Pike not the Swine?”

“Terra worries for you amid the human’s designs, though he should be more concerned about your reckless self-sacrifice. I’m only here to make sure you live.” He shakes his head and rolls his eyes with a snort. “If I tell you who is or is not the Swine, isn’t that cheating?”

I bite my lip. “Not if I trick you into telling me.”

“Oh, please do.” He laughs, and it is the sound of branches creaking in the wind, of sap oozing from an ancient tree. I want to be clever enough to make him laugh like this whenever I wish. I would like to call him big brother.

I stare, head tilted. “Lance, what do you really look like?”

A knock sends a jolt through all of us, deafening yet somehow hesitant. Tulip spins and cracks open the door.

“Is your roommate here?”

My feet launch toward Jun’s voice despite the sting of leaving Lance.

“It would be better if—” Tulip does not finish as I yank the entrance wider with every intention of leaping on my blue-eyed human.

His gaze hits me like a falling tree, and I halt, breath trapped within. He stares like a panther about to pounce, every line as rigid as a mountain facing its thousandth storm. Gold gilts him, shimmering more than it should in the wan hallway light.

Sal said Creatures of Essence have golden blood. Why would Jun be covered in that blood?

He speaks with no timbre, only air. “We need to talk.”

Continued in chapter 25

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Silence festers like a wound left open. No matter how I prod at it from my side, Jun’s remains untouched. As I follow him, his mouth forms a rigid, unbroken line. His strides fall quiet but quick. With its tie gone, his hair hangs over his shoulders like a cloak of night, concealing his profile.

“Jun, how can we talk if you do not speak?”

On the stairs, his eyes flick to me, narrow as a blade’s edge, but still he boycotts sound.

When we reach the flat roof of the dormitory, my expression mirrors his. He wastes no time or movement as he covers the gravel with a brightly striped quilt. It lies as smooth as a calm sea, and he attends to a pile of sticks alongside it. Soon, a polite gathering of young flames dances over the wood. I sit on the blanket, knees to my chest, and watch him open a box of ice and meat.

“This is still not talking.”

His sure motions hiccup as he skewers the game. “I’m going to sound like a fool.”

“Never, Jun. You are wiser than I.”

He pulls in a sharp inhale, and his lip catches between his teeth. “Are you a Creature of the Sea?”

“No.”

His eyes remain on his busywork, the darkest blue against the orange of the fourth sunset. From here, the forest stands as a diminutive assembly, and the ocean stretches to infinity, clothed in clouds.

“I am not a Creature of the Sea, but I am a Creature of Essence.”

“Like he said.” It is less than a whisper or breath. He angles two rods against one another so the food leans over the fire.

Embers crack, and thin ribbons of smoke coil around his wrists.

“Like who said?” I reach toward him.

He snatches my hand and finally looks straight at me. Every line of his face is jagged. “I don’t want to believe you.”

His palm cradles the back of my hand in a deceptively gentle hold. Though I flinch, my arm does not return. He keeps it captive, waiting beneath a knife.

Indecision fills him with subtle tremors. He is as I was on the beach at sunrise, pressing a broken shell to Sal’s neck. One slice to reveal the color of my blood and know for sure. The same slice to sever all trust.

I take that blame from Jun, running a finger along the blade. After a moment, smoke the color of starlight wafts from the cut, not gold like Sal said or like the ichor that paints my blue-eyed islander. Still, it is most definitely not human.

His breaths halt. Five seconds pass, swelling into ten, then fifteen as the tiny wound scabs and vanishes. His eyelids fall like curtains, dark, gold-dusted lashes in high contrast to cheeks draining of all color.

I squeeze his hands. When that begets no response, I tug him toward me and capture his lips with mine. Juniper Oakson has become a tree, but one with bark as smooth as paper. I am ink, seeping into him, kissing unheard words across his skin, and hoping he can read them.

His throat bobs, and as if this unstops a bottle, he pulls in air. His fingers untangle from mine, and he pushes me back. His eyes open but remain unfocused behind a glossy wall. One by one, each feature droops: brows, cheeks, lips.

“What do you want with me, Pearl?”

Is this the first time he has called me by name? It is a heavy, round word in his mouth, a rock too hard to chew and too big to swallow.

“I want you to be happy, Jun. I want you to grin and smile and laugh. It forms a song for me, and I want to hear every note.”

His chin lowers, and he pulls in another breath. It trembles. “And you don’t belong to Mare?”

I shake my head with enough force to send my loose hair flying. “She believes I do, but I have never belonged to Mare, and I never will.”

“So, you came here to seek the fourth Essence’s assistance in your fight against the Sea.” His voice is flat, only a hitch at the end hinting at a question.

“You and Pike brought me here.” I stare directly into his eyes, and my throat tightens.

Is it not odd for the Swine to have traveled with a Koa? If he means to sabotage me, why bring me to a place with many humans? Unless he did not think it would matter, and his plan somehow involves me choosing Jun.

My islander’s jaw locks. “Why did you pretend to be human and follow us in the E’er Wild Woods?”

My voice cannot squeeze past all the jumbled questions on the back of my tongue. Five words fall, heavier than mountains but alighting like dewdrops. “Jun, do you love me?”

His brows lower, and in their shadow, his blue falls to the night. “Answer me.”

“Mare wants me for her necklace, but I challenged her. I have three days left to convince a human to love me.”

For a long moment, he does not move. Juices drip onto the fire and sizzle, filling the air with the aroma of umami. He tends to the food, rotating it as it glistens and darkens on all sides, careful never to look in my direction.

“Jun?”

I will him to speak my name again.

He pauses and partly fulfills that wish. “You’re a literal pearl, then?”

“A sea stone.”

“A pebble.” It contains a chuckle, and he peeks at me for the slightest instant. “A sea stone without the sea is a pebble.”

I share in his laughter, not daring to let mine be louder than his, so it remains a quiet thing, like the lullaby a breeze sings to the flowers.

His heartbeat provides the rhythm for that song, loud despite the distance between us. Perhaps it is because his jacket hangs open, and only a thin white shirt protects his chest.

I want to press against him as I did in the forest. I want him to gasp and chase me, to light aflame and dance like light and shadow, to fill and fuel me with his awe.

He will do none of that if I leap upon him.

“Jun.” I place a finger beneath his chin and gently level it. “Will you answer me?”

He searches my face, breaths short and shallow until one finally fills his hollows, and he holds it. Determination stills him. “Take me.”

Without even a touch, he steals all movement. This should be good news. Jun knows the truth, and instead of fleeing, he asks to remain by my side. I have won the bet, so why does a vacant chill shove aside all else within me?

The moment stretches, a river overflowing its banks, and red spills across his cheeks, bleeding the last of the color from the sunset.

“I’ll be yours, do a-anything you want. When you return to Mare, take me with you.”

No, this is not right. He offers to be mine, but his voice wavers with fear of what that means. His tongue stumbles over the limitless nature of “anything” like an accusation that I will ask the worst of him. As if my company is something to be endured, not enjoyed.

Despite the gnawing desire to touch him, I increase the space between us. “You have not said you love me.”

“I won’t unless I fully mean it.”

What is this weight fastening my limbs to the floor? Want tears me in two—one half in a rush to flee, the other desperate to crush into him until he changes his mind.

I do neither, voice one part whine, one part growl. “Pity drives you then? Pity will not win my freedom. It will place me on Mare’s palm.”

And you as well.

“I’m going to kill her.”

A hundred thousand stars peek through the sky’s onyx blanket, witnessing this awful vow. Each one commands a needle stabbing me from within.

Sal’s face on the beach returns. He guessed that humans plan to kill the Essences. His worry was not for them but their creatures. For me.

An exhale shapes two words. “You cannot.”

Jun’s brow rises, distorting the scar across it. His stare, like a bridge made of all the world’s steel, affixes us both in place. “Everything alive on Lemuria came here through the Great Swallowing, except the Essences and their creations. They’re a response to our presence, this world’s resistance to our supremacy. Over centuries, they stole the allegiance of flora and fauna that was naturally ours, and we need it back.”

I recall my first trek through the E’er Wild Woods, carried by a stranger who will forever remain nameless. The birds shied from him, and the trees whispered of his wrongness. Yet, their ancestors hailed from the same place as his. They did not belong on Terra’s land any more than that man did.

The same holds true for the bear that attacked Jun and Pike. Death attended their meeting and refused to leave without a victim.

My fingers curl into the quilt and the gravel beneath it. How very different would things be had I not interfered, had that incident claimed Jun instead?

Perhaps that was Pike’s plan. I would know nothing of Southern Shores University. Whatever peace among the humans that relies on Jun’s safety would have shattered. This islander’s ambition to destroy the Essence of the Sea would die with him, and I would not be tempted to help him.

His gaze abandons me, face of straight lines too sharp in the firelight as he checks the food. He removes it from the flames and swivels back to the shadows to offer me a skewer and its dripping morsel. “Creatures of Essence are always hungry. Eat.”

I take it, fingers sizzling, too close to the meat on the slender beam, but its heat cannot penetrate the greater inferno within me. “You cannot destroy one without hurting the other. There must be balance, like light and darkness. They never dance alone.”

“You call what Mare does balance? We live in fear or not at all.” His voice cracks, and his fingers brush the scar on his forehead. With the fire behind him, he is a silhouette except for the faint glow that remains in the blood spattered on his front. “You want freedom? So do I.”

“Jun—”

“Please, let me choose this.” Though he has yet to partake of it, he sets down his portion and crawls to me. Only a hairsbreadth separates us, his nose alongside mine. His lashes skim my cheeks as his eyes fall to my lips. “I’ve said I’ll do anything, so take your price.”

Salt and sweet glide across my tongue, imbued with the tang of fear this time. It resembles that of all the prey I have witnessed fall, only deeper, richer. This is the flavor of his ambition, and I want it.

I have never taken live prey before, but tasting him is fun. How easily addicting.

I savor the kiss this time, slow, hands on his face holding him back. The gold smears.

“Tell me where the blood on you came from.”

His fingers tremble as they slide up my arm, solar flares beneath my skin in their wake. “I killed a Sea Swine. That’s how I know our new weapons will work.”

I shove him back. “You killed Pike?”

“He’s one, too?”

Can there be more than one Swine here? There are several Creatures of the Sky and now a Creature of the Land, so why not?

Or Pike’s tale of being raised on ships by a pirate queen might be true.

If Pike is not the Swine that Jun attacked, then who?

“Perhaps.” With a horrible thought, I pick up my fallen skewer. “This is not—”

Wary as if I might pounce on him, Jun says, “It’s rabbit.”

I see the truth of that in the shape of the meat and sigh.

Jun does not relax, breaths full but quick. He is as the gears and springs in the walls below us, waiting for steam to release his coiled energy. The knife rests on his fingers.

I extend my hand. “Come.”

After a moment, he complies, stopping when his chest bumps my raised palm and his knees line either side of mine.

The knife remains in his hand, idle by his side. The shine in his eyes reflects the sliver of tonight’s moon.

“Are you afraid?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“I will not take you to Mare unless I know I can protect you.”

He draws a breath to protest, but I barrel on.

“I will not watch her kill you, and she will if I cannot stop her. So, tell me the beginning of the story. Tell me why she hates your family.”

“My ancestor loved her. Somehow, monster that she is.” He turns his head in the direction of the sea, though the darkness holds it completely. The wind still whispers of it, carrying the faintest crash of waves.

“Love was so offensive? Or did he do something else?”

“He aged.” As if convinced nothing will leap from the water and smite him for telling this tale, he finally lowers his shoulders. “Humans have short lives, a hundred years if we’re lucky, usually a lot less. Legends tell of ones living much longer on our original land, but never here. Lemuria must draw on our energies somehow, perhaps to feed the Essences. Smythe wants to study that.”

Keeping a plethora of Creatures of Essence around fits perfectly into that purpose. Could the dean’s goal be to take that energy back?

It is not far off from Sal’s field of study either.

“Mare came and went as she pleased,” Jun continues, “sometimes disappearing for years. After one of these long absences, she returned to find her islander had become an old man. She wouldn’t believe it was him, and when he proved he was, she concluded that he had marred his beauty to punish her. He pointed to his peers, also old, but they had aged with their loved ones. She claimed that if his love had been real, it would have sustained him. He would have stayed looking his best for her.

“She’d been gone for forty years. No one expected her back. He had a family. She grabbed his youngest son and”—he swallowed—“she ripped him apart. It was bedlam after that. The village was destroyed, and there were only survivors because Terra interfered. We forbade her to come on our land. She forbade us from entering her oceans.”

Tears dribble down my cheeks, but my arms are too heavy to wipe them away. I am an idiot, and Sal was right. I am like Mare.

I want my blue-eyed human despite how he fears me, and I want him forever.

He is shadow, hair covering his face, though his gaze finds me like day’s warmth. “That’s the story. There are several versions, but that’s the true one.”

“Thank you for telling it.” Slowly, I regain the strength to lift my arms. They fly around him, and his heart stutters beneath my ear.

“D-do we…We have a deal, right?”

I do not answer with words because I cannot say the ones he wants to hear. I will not take him to Mare. Instead, with the stars watching on, I kiss him as if this will be our last.

Continued in chapter 26

Thank you for reading!

~THE SWINE~

Each new breath is a surprise. It also hurts. Everything hurts. The pain means I’m still alive, though that’s little comfort.

It takes me forever to get to my feet and even longer to reach the dorms. I stagger. I fall against trees, then walls, expecting each one to catch me in an eternal embrace.

The Pearl is easy to track, but I don’t know why I seek her. Lance took her. Even if she has the energy to heal me, he won’t let her. I shouldn’t let her either. She has no idea what she’s doing when she does that. I might end up with antlers. Or inside out. Or inside out with antlers.

What is this hard thing beneath my cheek? A stair. I’ve fallen again. I can’t get up.

I have to. Someone’s calling for the healers. They won’t like the color of my blood. I’m not sure what they’ll do with my body if I die. I’m not sure what they’ll do while I live either.

I crawl. One stair, two, ten. No. Oh, no. I must be imagining this salty-sweet scent. The islander can’t be with the Pearl. I told him, didn’t I, what she is? What she wants. He was supposed to run, but here he is, sprawled on the flat roof, hand lost in the Pearl’s dark hair. Dawn drenches the scene in scarlet. Her head rests on his middle, face turned away from me, and neither of them move. I am part of this drawing, just as motionless, watching for either of them to breathe.

He does, chest rising in the slow, deep hills of sleep.

She doesn’t.

This is my fault. I told the Koa what she was, what she planned. She’s a fragile infant, but she didn’t go down without a fight—he has several scorches. She managed better than I did.

What am I going to tell Mare?

I’m not.

An enhanced knife waits just beyond the fingers of Jun’s free hand. I scoop it up, and it fits perfectly in this human grip. My blood still paints its hilt with a faint firefly glow. Is it the one he speared through my side or the one he plunged into my heart?

The knife swivels in my palm, blade down. I can do this. One strike to take care of the Koa threat, then I’ll give whatever strength I have left to the Pearl and hope it’s enough.

Luminescence choruses beneath her skin—a sparkle like a horde of distant stars. Its song quickens as my fingers brush her cheek. She nuzzles into my touch, and warmth flows through me. Jun’s dark jacket wraps her, dusted in gold. Why would he cover her wounds like that?

I would, if I felt I had to destroy this beauty. I’d cover the parts I ruined.

This is my fault. Fix it, useless pig.

The scene swims. Bubbles of light and darkness pop. The knife falls vertical on Jun’s chest and stops. A hand encases mine, dark and stiff as new rock, and I know better than to fight it. The islander’s next inhale brings him to the blade’s tip, and soft, white fabric splits, as does the flesh beneath it.

He flails, but a second hand covers his eyes, and he falls still.

“Lance,” I say as loudly as I dare, “I invoke contract. The Koa is not on Koa land. There’s no protection for him here.”

His voice is that of a stampede. “This one belongs to Pearl now. Of his own volition.”

I hiss but still don’t dare to move. Lance taking the time to explain is a rare mercy. I expected hoof or horn to gore me without warning.

I still expect that. “He belongs to the Pearl, and she belongs to Mare. You know what’ll—”

“You haven’t figured it out?” A whisper and a laugh. He’s mocking me.

“Figured what out?”

At his shove, I fall into a backward somersault and hit the parapet with a grunt. My breath gurgles, and I can’t catch it. I, a Creature of the Sea, am drowning in my own blood. This human disguise needs to breathe air, and I’m not sure what will happen if it doesn’t get it.

I waste too much effort lifting my head.

Lance spins the knife casually between his fingers. “If the boy ends up in Mare’s hands, that’s his problem, not yours. I’m fairly certain he’s not sane anyway.”

I choke, tongue swollen and heavy. My arms extend in a bow, my chin against the ground, eyes steady on the Creature of the Land. Both the position and the words I force out are knives to my pride. “Deign to share your wisdom with a fool, Olden One?”

He huffs through a smirk and steps over the sleeping pair to stand on my fingers. “I’m here to ensure the Pearl lives, nothing less, nothing more. Should something befall her, I will answer to our Essences, not you, so let me put this in a way the fool can understand: Get lost.”

“I can’t. The bet—”

“The bet means nothing.”

“To you, but to her and to me?” I swallow. “It means everything. Mare’s leash isn’t as long as Terra’s.”

The cliffs of his face sharpen, and he shifts more of his weight onto my fingers.

I wince, but I don’t close my eyes, and I don’t look away. “To keep me from her, you’ll have to kill me.”

His head tilts just like the Pearl’s—just like Terra’s, probably. With the shift of angles, the color of his hair vacillates—platinum, pink, and celadon—before it settles on gold. The long spike of his bangs forms the silhouette of a horn.

He kneels. I no longer feel my fingers.

“You’re dying.”

“I know.” Two syllables, each a sob. I use my pinned hands to inch closer to the Pearl.

“Get the Toad to heal you.”

Saburra hates that name or any reminder of the form Terra crafted when he gave her to Mare as her first complex creature. That’s exactly why Lance continues to use it.

She would heal me, and I need her to, but Jun is here. Lance protects him despite ancient agreements between Land and Sea, and Saburra will start a fight she can’t finish.

Lance probably hopes for that. He’ll find it amusing.

“I’ll call her for you.” He releases my hands and lands a palm atop my head.

My shoulders hunch, and I claw across the gravel. A desperate stretch brings my fingertips to the Pearl’s elbow, my mind reaching out to hers with the tiniest voice. ‘Please, Pearl.’

I don’t know what I intend. She won’t—can’t—heal me. She can gulp the last of my strength as a parting gift and apology. I hope she does win the bet, and I hope the human she chooses somehow survives because there’s no way I’m doing either of those things.

Lance’s fingers curl in my hair and lift me until I dangle level with his burnt-copper eyes. “The smallest of the Swine asks for wisdom, so here it is: The leash never gets longer if you don’t pull on it.”

I squirm and scratch, though I know I shouldn’t. He holds me beyond the parapet, and it’s a long way to the ground. Shadows spill beyond the forest, muting the sparkle of morning dew on the clipped grass between the trees and the buildings. Their soft darkness will do nothing to cushion my landing.

I fall, not because I wiggled free or hurt Lance. He let me go. Saburra would wish herself wings. I hit the grass like a sack of wet rocks. A gilt cloud surrounds me, brilliance against murky gray.

I curse Lance and my own weakness, running through every foul word in my vocabulary—most learned from tortured sailors. I thought it hurt before, but now? Bottle this and call it agony. Tell no one to open it. Ever.

Footsteps approach, but I can’t turn to look. I think I stare into the sky, but nothing registers beyond formless gold and gray. Arms take me from the ground. My back is damp and cold. Everything is cold. Everything still hurts. I shiver, and a voice speaks. I don’t understand the words, but the melody tells of worry.

Shadow, then a different kind of light, the kind they keep in their electric bulbs. The cold wins as hands pull open my jacket. I lie on something soft—a couch? Fire pours into my wounds, and I squeal.

“Sorry, but these look bad. You have to stay still.”

He holds me down, and the fire returns—in my chest, in my side. It meets somewhere in the middle, gnawing at me from the inside out. He has to stop. I can’t get him off. This is worse than Issoria shooting me, worse than the stab and twist of Jun’s knife.

With a scream, I wrench us off the couch and pin him on the floor.

“You are a terrible patient.”

I know this voice—my roommate. Not Vidal, the other one. The one who wants the Pearl and knows too much. Now, he’s seen my wounds and my non-human blood.

“Leave it,” I rasp. “Don’t look.”

“As if I didn’t already know what color your blood would be. Just be glad I didn’t call the healer professors.” His face slides in and out of focus, an expression made of rigid lines.

He shoves me off him, and the ceiling of our room with its contraption of swirling gears and leaves fills my view. It directs a frigid gale at me, and I curse it, too. Yet, I lie still and let him try to fix me with icy-hot potions and needles and thread. I smell like yesterday’s meat, but I’d like to stay alive if it’s possible.

“Why are you saving me?”

He pauses, warm, steady hand pressed against my side. “Part of my studies, I guess.”

Studies, right. He recognizes us despite our human disguises. He’s part of the human’s plan to destroy us. Does he know how to sew us up because he’s cut us apart before?

The stiff outline of a sheathed knife bulges against his thigh.

“Well, thanks.” So slowly he doesn’t notice, I slide the blade from his pocket.

*

~THE PEARL~

I watch him sleep. In the lulls between inhale and exhale, weightless wings flutter between my ribs as my eyes trace the full fan of Jun’s lashes, the crooked slope of his nose, the curve of his cheeks, and the strong angle of his jaw. Then, movement breaks infinity’s spell, and my wings crumble. My heart sinks in the mud of guilt, further each time.

Glossed scarlet burns dot Jun’s lips and neck, some pale, some livid, some dark as if drawn by ashes, embers, and coal. I press my fingers to the worst at the corner of his lips, and he flinches, but I do not wish him to awaken yet. With a glow like a sliver moon, energy seeps from me to him. He stills, relaxes, and with the gradualness of sunrise, the wound pales to his coppery tan.

It’s like kissing a star, he said in the woods. Please tell me I’m not actually on fire.

In the night, he trembled beneath my caresses. I pressed into him tighter to smooth those nerves like fabric, with weight and heat. Each time he startled, I feared he would not return, but he did, again and again. Now, I see that he should not have. He should have said something, not borne it in silence and half-hitched hisses.

I move my fingers to another charred spot where his jaw meets his throat. “Tell me you liked it at least a little?”

“Probably. He must be at least a bit of a masochist to come here.”

“Pike!” I whirl toward him with a louder gasp than I intend.

He sits on the low wall lining the roof’s edge, arms on his knees, flute balanced in one limp hand. The other rakes through his sand-colored hair. “Don’t be angry. I came to apologize to Jun. For the things I could control and the things I couldn’t.”

My head tilts, dipping my loosed hair over one shoulder, where Jun’s charcoal jacket smells of smoke. “What do you mean?”

“Music is beauty given form.” He grips the flute. “I didn’t understand how anyone who heard it couldn’t love it. They had to feel the same connection to it that I do, but obviously, that’s not the case. I pushed it too far, and for that, I’m sorry.”

My gaze hops between the two young men, one peaceful in sleep, the other slumped as if his fingertips weigh more than the world. “I cherish your music, Pike. Should you not save the apology until the one who needs it awakens?”

“Let me have this practice run.” He slides off the parapet, and the gravel crunches beneath his knees as he works his blue jacket off his shoulders. “My people have done some horrible things, things I can’t apologize enough for. If I could change them, I would. I’m trying. Someday, we’ll have a civilization under the ocean. I’m working on a device right now that lets us breathe underwater, but as I’ve said, my relationship with the sea is complicated.”

“You really do love the sea. Perhaps that is why your connection to music is so strong.” I clip the last few words, unsure of what this could mean. Does my appreciation of his music reveal the Sea’s chains within me? Is it a clue that I belong there after all?

Pike’s brows hop in a caricature of a shrug, and his eyes flutter before settling on me. The midmorning light pales their lagoon depths. “Believe me, I know the terror of being superstition’s prey.”

His discarded jacket wrinkles in his lap as he rolls up his shirtsleeves and presents bared forearms. Scars stripe their delicate side, stretched by his growth, somewhere between pink and brown.

Distance enters his expression, a soft glaze coating his eyes as he glances toward Jun. “The armada was caught in a tempest. Someone suggested a sacrifice would soothe Mare, and I already belonged to the sea. They spilled my blood over the bow. Mare didn’t show because she doesn’t exist, of course, but we did survive. Then, because it had worked before…”

He leaves the sentence floundering in implication as I touch a raised line on his wrist. Each arm hosts at least six marks, though some, like the one beneath my fingers, are remnants of multiple slashes.

I peek at his face. He stares at me, lower lip caught in his teeth, nostrils trembling as he hauls in a deep breath.

“Superstition is stupid, and it needs to change. When I first saw Jun at the train station, I shouldn’t have spoken to him, being a child of the sea and all, but he had that scar on his forehead, and I thought, ‘Here’s someone who looks danger in the eye and tells it he’s not afraid. He’s going to change the world, and I hope we’re the same brand of idiot.’”

Nicks dot his knuckles from carelessness at his building projects.

I trace them and whisper, “Your blood is red.”

“Well, yes.” He chuckles. “So, anyway, should I edit any of that before I say it to Jun? I mean, obviously I’m more scarred, but his is on his face, and he might not…”

Thunder for my ears alone drowns Pike’s rambles. His blood is red. He is not the Swine that Jun stabbed. More than that, he is not a Creature of Essence at all.

“What would you do,” I say slowly, and as if pulled by the same string, his mouth closes while his brows rise, “if Mare were real?”

He shrugs. “Try to get on her good side, I guess? Same with nature that does exist. We don’t need to be stronger than it or destroy it. We need to work together. Like, storms never bother fish.”

He is human. This child of pirates is sweeter than honey, with music more enrapturing than any riptide. He chases peace, not a tragic desire to kill Mare.

The surest way to protect Jun is to not take him with me, and if I do not take Jun…

“Pike, could you love me?”

His sightline flicks from me to my islander. “I thought I was friendzoned. You want a harem or something?”

My mouth opens, all the bet’s details lined up in my throat, yet hesitance grips my tongue. If I bring Pike to fulfill the bet, will Mare claim foul because of his relation to the sea? He is human, yet I cannot grant her any excuse to discount my win. One must consider all angles when working a scheme. If she snares me in a technicality, the loss will be my fault for stepping blindly into it.

I should tell Pike anyway, recruit him as an ally as I planned when I thought him to be the Swine. Yet, if I convince him that Creatures of Essence exist and I am one, will he judge me for wanting Jun? I know my likeness to Mare. I fight it, pummel it, lock it deep within.

Pike looks at me with the core of a grin. I cannot stand the thought of it crumbling into revulsion.

“I must go.” I stand. Jun’s jacket hangs like a tent on my tiny frame, and I wrap it tighter. “Please make sure no one hurts Jun.”

Continued in chapter 27

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Unsteady feet carry me to my room, but Tulip is not here. I call her name as if that will make her appear, but instead, it summons a rumbling laugh.

Lance lounges in the window, one knee bent to support his arm. The other dangles outside. “What do you think Tulip does in those moments you don’t need help?”

“Tell me where she is?” I word it as a demand but pitch it as a question.

“I’ll do even better.” He extends a massive hand so reminiscent of Terra’s, my first instinct is to crawl into it.

As I place my palm on his and revel in the smooth warmth that wafts into me—a gift of energy—he tugs me into his arms and drops out the window. The ground shakes beneath his landing, but no jolt reaches me, cradled against his chest, as the cropped grass blurs at the speed of his strides. I grin.

“Stop healing the islander. You need that energy for yourself.”

My smile twists. “Halcyon said I have no connection to an Essence, and I think it may be because I belong to the fourth Essence, but she is yet too young to support me.”

Lance tilts his head and looks at me from the corner of his eye. His lone spike of hair is a pale silhouette against the overcast sky. I linger in his silence and try not to give into the vacuum of where his response should be. If he finds my theory absurd, he should say so instead of leaving me to wallow in my doubt.

It is preposterous. How can I belong to the fourth Essence yet know so little about her? I feel a familial sameness with Aurora, though, a connection deeper than with the Golems. We must be from the same realm.

“Let’s run with that theory,” Lance says finally, and my lips invade my cheeks in recognition of the pun. We are running. “You have so little energy because your growth spurt is using it all. It’s concerning.”

My smile is a flower, blooming and wilting in rapid cycles. “Why should my growth be concerning? Will my existence tax my Essence too much?” I bite off the last word, wishing to be wrong. I do not want to bring harm to my Essence, yet nor do I want to be stagnant—or worse—non-existent. If I am too much for my Essence, would the best solution be for Mare to take me, as she will if I lose the bet?

Yet, I do not want to lose. I do not want to be trapped and useless.

Brows so low they touch my lashes, I throw out another possibility. “Or are there some who fear my power growing?”

A distant spark flashes in Lance’s eyes. “One can always find a point of view where the answer to anything is yes.”

“That is not a useful skill in this instance.” I shake my head. “Please tell me what you mean, Lance.”

He sighs, steps slowing as we approach the university’s largest building. It faces the land, not the sea. “For over a century, you weren’t more than a speck. You weren’t even an infant. You were an embryo, an egg that might never hatch because no one knew how to make the whims that sustain you real. So, what has happened after all this time to spur you forward?”

Beneath a porch of interlocked arches, he sets me down but leads me by the hand.

“My growth means growth for my realm and my Essence. It means progress and discovery. Is that not good, Lance?”

“It makes one question what exactly the humans are progressing in.” As the front door swings open, prompted by nothing except our approach, he leans down and whispers in my ear. “Whatever they are up to, I feel its danger like rain upon my skin, yet I am not the one who will get wet. If you wish to protect your islander or anyone, Pearl, you must first secure your own power.”

He shoves me through the doorway, and my response dissolves into a yelp.

A hundred paces across a gilded foyer, Tulip sits within the circle of a desk. She greets me with a smile and a beckoning wave, then when I stand opposite the counter from her, she waggles her brows. “Someone was out all night and all morning. Did you and Jun have fun?”

Tears burst over the dam of my lashes and flood down my cheeks. “Where is Sal?”

Tulip is a blur of muted reds, rich browns, and shimmering emerald. “Great mythical giraffe, girl, what happened? If Jun—”

I draw in several shaky breaths and force words between the sobs. “Jun wants to…go back to Mare with me…to win the bet.”

She slides over her desk and gathers me into her arms. She smells of warm strawberries and her favorite mint tea. “Was that not your goal?”

“I cannot take him to Mare. Anyone but him. She will kill him, and I am just like her because I want him anyway.” I bury my face in Tulip’s chest, and she strokes my hair but says nothing. “I want him even if he only thinks of our kisses as a price to be paid because I am evil, Tulip. I am the villain of his story.”

“I told you that you could fall in love.” She lifts my chin, then taps me on the nose and leaves her finger on my lips so I cannot argue. “If this were only a selfish desire to have him—evil, as you put it—then you wouldn’t care about the danger to him or how he felt. So, what are you going to do? It’s already day four.”

I step back, swallow, and clear my throat. “Would it be alright if I told Sal the truth? He is strong, and he knows how to fight but also when to flee. He is not a Koa, and he knows more about the Essences than anyone.”

“Why does it sound like you’re asking my permission?”

“You were the one who told me not to tell humans about the bet.”

With a laugh, she flips stray hair out of her face and pats my head. “I’m not some omniscient being.” Her eyes bounce over my shoulder at the open door, then return to me and crinkle at their corners. “Sal’s choice whether to go with you or not should be an informed one. Tell him, and make sure to smile. Smiling prompts your brain to produce feel-good hormones. It’s also contagious.”

I lift the corners of my lips, a task made arduous by the strings tying them to the needles in my stomach. “I do not know where to find him or what to say once I do.”

She pokes my nose again. “I can help you with the first. After the monster attacks last night, Sal reported that he was too injured to attend classes today. He should be in his room.” She leans over the desk and rummages through a cabinet of tiny drawers and tinier cards. She copies numbers onto a slip of paper and sketches a map beneath. “Here, directions to Sal Smithe’s room.”

My heavy smile slips. “He has the same name as the dean?”

“He and his roommate Beau are cousins and the dean’s nephews.” She shrugs and leans against the counter. “I heard Sal’s mother was estranged from the rest of the family, though. Hey, if he’s recovering, it would be endearing of you to bring him lunch. Do you know what he likes?”

* * *

Sal likes sweet things. He said so when he learned Professor Cookie Baker’s name.

As Lance and I approach the balcony across from the chasm, a stranger stands behind Vidal’s podium. He is tall and impossibly thin like a sheet stretched to its limit. His face is as forgettable as his ears are huge. They stick out, one higher than the other, and his red uniform follows that disheveled pattern.

“Welcome to Great Minds Think Café. I’m Vidal. What can I get you today?”

“Are you the manager Vidal who gives out free hugs?”

He leans over the podium. “For you, I will be.”

I hope he is not, or else I understand why the hugs are free. He smells of rotting leaves and rancid puddles. Yet, for him not to be means a third Vidal must be employed at this establishment, and that seems too much.

I decide not to ask and to ignore the offered embrace. “I would like to order the sweetest thing you have.”

His chin dimples as his lips scrunch to his nose. He strides to a counter along the back wall and tosses me a small paper sack closed with a tie. “Sugar packet. I won’t even charge you.”

Its scent prickles my nose. Of course, sugar is sweet, but this will not do. On upturned palms, I hold it out to him. “I am going to ask a very large favor of someone, so I will need a larger packet. If there is a price, Dean Smithe will pay it.”

His mouth invades his nose’s space again as he plucks the packet from my hold. His chin resembles the nub of a long-ago broken branch on a very old tree. “What’s this favor? Maybe I can recommend something.”

“I will ask that someone love me despite the danger inherit in doing so.”

“Ah, you need chocolate cake.” He tows me behind a wall near the food counter, where mound-like confections of all colors wait in glass displays. He chooses one glossed in even darker brown than my skin, stabs it with a fork, and pops a moist crumble between my lips.

Greed takes over. I bite and swallow as my legs give out and my vision blurs. “That is chocolate?”

“Chocolate is magic,” he says with a shrug, briefly frowns as he inspects the remnant of his fork, then tosses it behind him. “Of course, the best kind of cake for your purpose is one you make yourself with love, but ours is delicious enough, your special someone won’t notice. So, we’re charging this to the dean?”

As he boxes up a generous slice, I taste the echo of the chocolate on my lips and think of Jun’s kisses. Does my blue-eyed human like chocolate?

You have not said you love me, I told him on the roof. He vowed he will not say it until he means it. Can this magic chocolate tip the balance in my favor? Once I am free, will I find Jun again? I can learn to make cake for him as Vidal mentioned, with love. Tulip says I love Jun, though Terra claims that is impossible. Tulip says she is not all-knowing, and neither is Terra, though between the two, he is closer to it. Surely she is the one who is incorrect.

Yet, how I wish hers to be the truth.

If I love Jun, is it wrong to want Sal to love me, too?

Boxed cake in hand, I head for the stairs, but Lance leans on Vidal’s podium and announces that he wants to try one of everything on the menu.

Vidal snorts. “You can afford that?”

“Sure, I can. It’s all free.”

I turn back, but Lance waves me on as Vidal blinks at him.

“It’s free?” the human repeats in a stilted, not-quite question.

Lance touches Vidal’s forehead. “That’s what I said. It’s free.”

He speaks it so casually, yet this Creature of the Land times his actions with focused purpose. He wants me to witness this use of his power over humans as if it serves as his silent answer to the question I did not voice.

The bet is not about love, he believes. It is about scheming and whether or not I have the intelligence and the gall to win. If I do not acquire Sal’s love—or the love of any human who will survive meeting Mare—then I will not be free to love anyone.

Or I can take this cake to Jun. We can speak to Sal, Professor Baker, the combat students, and the scientists. I can return to Mare with a human who loves me and an army to protect him.

Yet, our first encounter flashes on the inside of my eyelids and rings in my ears. The bear would kill Jun, or he would kill it. I wanted to save them both. I failed.

I do not want to belong to Mare, but I do not want her to die. The only way to save them both is to ensure Jun and Mare never meet.

* * *

The hallway outside Sal’s door is an open, spacious place. It is a railed balcony much like those around the chasm, though steam chokes the center and hides the view below. Prismatic clouds waltz in front of the windows above the widely-spaced doors.

Numbers identical to those on Tulip’s map stamp the metal plating that bars my entrance. I cup my mouth and call Sal’s name. The rapid clack and churn of spinning gears tries to drown out all noise, but it fails to hide a rustle. A thud.

“Sal? Are you alright?”

Of course he is not. Aurora carried him away last night, and it is a wonder he is anything more than ash. He is too injured to attend class. He should have at least gone to his healer’s class. Could they not have helped him?

I push on the door, and it swings open.

Beau leans on it and the wall with a grimace as deep as the ocean. As he drinks in the sight of me and the present in my hands, it transforms into an open-mouth smile. “Did you bring me cake?”

“No, I…” I hold it closer. “Is Sal here?”

After a pause, he grunts. “Sal. He…ran off.”

I do not believe Beau and shove past him. “Was he not injured?”

“Yes,” he says through a hiss as he falls against the wall behind the door, hands pressed to his left side.

Their room is much larger than the one Tulip, Issoria, and I share. Giant leaves circle high above and push a breeze down onto my head. The room breathes yet I do not as I take in the sight of the overturned couch and the crimson and glitter that stains its white fabric. The same human and Essence blood pools on the floor in front of it. It coats the rug hung over the rail of the outdoor balcony at the far end of the room. Wet towels fill a waste container alongside it.

“What happened?” I have no voice, yet somehow, Beau hears me.

“I was trying to help him. Then he stabbed me and took off.”

I whirl toward Beau, eyes uncomfortably wide. “This is your blood?”

He tsks and looks away. “My wound’s not that deep, really. I already cleaned it, sewed it, and changed clothes. I was trying to scrub up the mess before anybody saw, so thanks for barging in.”

Despite the nonchalant hop of his shoulders, he stands at an awkward angle, all of his weight on his right leg or his right side against the wall. The crisp, unsoiled state of his uniform testifies to his story, as does the tightness of his face. The words are true, yet their terse delivery speaks of an unseen side.

I narrow my gaze and step closer. “If you were helping him, why would he stab you, and why would he leave?”

The harsh line of his mouth slants and somehow grows even sharper. “I don’t want to talk about it. But since you’re here.” He pivots off the wall and completes two shaky steps before he stumbles.

My shoulders play targets for his outstretched hands. Unlike Jun’s touch, no thrill accompanies the contact, nor does it carry reassurance like Sal’s hold. Yet, a shock sizzles along my bones, part lightning, part fire. I stand straighter and perhaps a smidgen taller.

When I kissed Jun in the forest, his wonder fueled me—I did not take energy from him as with Sal, Halcyon, or Lance. His emotion generated it. This is similar yet a thousand times more potent. I want it, and I fear it.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here.” His voice strains, too quick and pinched. Invisible tremors wrack his hands, and I do not move. “I want to show you something. If you meet me in the science wing, the building closest to the sea, at sunset, I promise you’ll find the surprise fascinating.”

The invitation reverberates, so similar to Sal’s when he asked me to the beach at sunrise. Sal, who is missing and injured, perhaps more than Beau will admit.

My eyes gravitate toward the outdoor balcony, the stained rug, and the filled waste container.

Beau shakes my shoulders. “Say you’ll come?”

A “no” teeters on the tip of my tongue, but doubt tortures it beyond recognition. What if Sal refuses to return with me to Mare? Or worse, what if he is dead? My gaze flicks again to the large cylinder of the waste bin. The gory towels may hide something more gruesome.

Or the golden blood may be Sal’s.

It may be Beau’s.

It may be neither. Beau may have concocted the story to hide what he was up do. Sal might never have returned from the woods.

“Beau!” The original Vidal, the one with charcoal eyes and narrow features, barges through the open door. Out of breath, he sags, hands on his knees. “The combat class pulled up something at the docks, and your professor wants you to have a look. They think it’s a mythical Sea Swine.”

Continued in chapter 28

Thank you for reading!