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While they couldn’t directly summon any of the dimensions into existence, Enchanters were the most prized of aethermancers throughout the world of Lir for their ability to manipulate the Tempestroad, the Squallfast, the Firewarren, and the Rainspring—as long as there was an existing source to draw from. Here on the Continent, they were the backbone of both sides of the Hurricane Wars, kept away from the fighting to craft the hearts that powered the airships and the stormships day in, day out. It was a thankless, taxing role, and Talasyn felt a twinge of guilt. She’d crash-landed so many wasp coracles during combat, wasting the multiple aether hearts that were built into each one.

With her gaze still trained on the Enchanter, she set about answering Khaede. “I’m not sure, but the Amirante and I have discussed in the past what would happen if I ever came across a Light Sever. She thinks that it shouldn’t be much different from how the Shadowforged meditate withtheirnexus points and that my instincts will tell me what to do.”

“So, you’re going to sneak into a country that’s notoriously unfriendly to outsiders and might possibly have dragons with the sole purpose of finding the Lightweave high up on a mountain using only a roughly sketched map, and you haveno real idea what to do once you get there.” Khaede placed a hand over her eyes. “The war is lost.”

“Well, when you put it likethat, ofcourseit sounds impossible,” Talasyn shot back. “But I’ll figure it out. I have to.”

They sank into a desultory silence. It blew in with the northern wind rustling the cypress leaves. Talasyn wondered if she should broach the topic of Sol. They’d buried him here in the canyon, with the other dead, and Khaede had sailed back to the Highlands shortly after. But before Talasyn could decide on what to say and whether she should say it, Khaede spoke again.

“What do you know about Nenavar?”

I know that it calls to me,Talasyn thought.I know that it’s familiar for some reason. I know that I want to find out why.

She longed to tell Khaede—to tellsomeone—about all the emotions that Nenavar stirred in her, but she couldn’t bear to do it. She was too much like her friend; she didn’t want to open herself up to other people’s pity. Khaede would surely think that she was just desperate for any sense of connection, indulging an orphan’s foolish hopes.

Instead, Talasyn patched together everything she’d heard over the years from other Sardovians regarding their enigmatic neighbor across the sea. “It’s made up of seven large islands and thousands of smaller ones. The climate is tropical. It’s a matriarchy.” She’d learned that word from a Hornbill’s Head shopkeeper chatting about Nenavar with his patrons while she waited for an opportune moment to slip his wares into her pockets.

“Don’t forget all the gold,” Khaede helpfully supplied.

“Right.” Talasyn cracked a smile as she echoed one of the older children at the orphanage, in the slums of her early years. “A country of islands ruled only by queens, where the skies are home to dragons and the streets are made of gold.”

She couldn’t fathom a nation so rich in the precious metal that theypavedwith it. Perhaps that was why the Dominion refused to get involved in the affairs of the outside world: they had too much to lose.

But somethinghadin fact motivated them to break tradition and lend aid to the Lightweavers of Sunstead, nineteen years ago...

“Have you ever heard of the Fisherman’s Warning?” Khaede asked.

Talasyn shook her head.

“No, I suppose that you wouldn’t have. You grew up on the Great Steppe.” Khaede worried her lower lip, uncharacteristically pensive. Perhaps even nostalgic. “It’s a Coast thing. A legend, of sorts. Once every thousand years or so, a bright glow the color of amethyst illuminates the horizon over the Eversea, heralding months of rough waters and meager catch. The last time it supposedly happened, the Sardovian Allfold hadn’t even been formed and we sure didn’t have airships yet. Most inhabitants of the Coast agree that the Fisherman’s Warning is simply a myth, but those whodobelieve—the older ones, and this used to include my grandfather, may his soul find shelter in the willows—they say that the glow comes from the southeast. From Nenavar.”

“Guess I’ll let you know if I find any strange purple lights hanging around there, then,” Talasyn quipped.

Khaede offered her a fleeting smirk. “Bring back a dragon instead. That would be more useful.”

We’d win the war with even just one,the bowman had said at the stone longhouse in Frostplum. The memory that was so innocuous on a surface level sent a pang through Talasyn. Everyone was tired, but they didn’t want the conflict to merely end—they wanted to emerge from it victorious. Because the alternative was to spend the rest of their lives bound by the chains of shadow and empire.

She would do her part. For Khaede, for the Amirante. For Sol, and for everyone else who had died to let the dawn break over Sardovia once more.

“How are you feeling?” Talasyn finally worked up the nerve to inquire.

Khaede went tense, her dark eyes narrowing into a glare. Then something in her seemed to crack, and she slumped as one would after an exhale that had been a long time coming.

“It’s hard to believe. That he’s really gone,” she admitted, her voice thick with grief. “I keep thinking that this is a nightmare I’ll wake up from at any moment. And then there are times when it hits me that I’ll never see him again, and I start missing him so much that it hurts to breathe.” Khaede twisted her wedding ring around her finger; the gold band glinted in the fading light. Her shoulders stiffened with determination. “But Sol would want me to keep moving forward. He went to the willows believing in the Sardovian Allfold, believing that we would triumph. And I’ll make sure that we’re going to. My child will grow up in a better world.”

“They will,” Talasyn said softly. She meant it with every fiber of her being, even if no one could tell the future. There were just some things thathadto be true, because, if they weren’t, what was the point in fighting?

Khaede reached over and patted Talasyn’s knee. “Come back in one piece. I can’t lose you, too.” She leaned against the cypress trunk, withdrawing her hand to rest an open palm on her stomach. The sunset cast its burnished gloss over her face in such a way that it made the sadness lingering there all the more stark. Made her look older than her twenty-three years.

It was then that Talasyn truly understood: Khaede would be haunted by Sol’s death for the rest of her days. A part of her would always be missing, buried with him in the canyon, lost forever to the Hurricane Wars. And although Talasyn knewthat it was selfish to take her friend’s pain and contextualize it in terms of her own self—although she knew that it probably made her a terrible person—she couldn’t help but be oddly grateful for the lack of belonging that had plagued her all her life, because it meant that she would never experience such a harrowing ache. She couldn’t help but think,Thank the gods that I will never love someone that much.

Talasyn met with Vela after supper. The Amirante provided her with a more detailed map and intelligence dossier courtesy of General Bieshimma, as well as a slew of last-minute instructions. Then Vela went over to the bow windows of her office, which offered a panoramic view of the Wildermarch in its moon-silvered splendor, her hands folded behind her back.

“I think that it will be all right,” she muttered. “Even if they catch you, there is no cell—no manner of restraint—that can hold a Lightweaver for long.”

“They won’t catch me,” Talasyn declared. It wasn’t that she had awealthof confidence in her abilities. It was more the fact that she couldn’t allow herself to get caught, and so she wouldn’t be.

“You understand why you have to go, don’t you?” Vela held out an upturned palm. Wisps of shadow magic curled into the space above her fingers, the strands shifting and unfurling like smoke, swallowing up what rays of starlight were there to touch them. “It was a stroke of luck for us that the Lightweave and the Shadowgate can be summoned and manipulated with the same basic methods, but they are still fundamentally different in nature. There is only so much that I can teach you.”