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“Good.” She took another long swig of her coffee and, when a laugh drifted up from below, started for the stairs. “Sounds like Jade’s up. We’ll be back by afternoon, Papa, I promise—plenty of time for you to drag us across the sound.”

Papa followed her. “Not afternoon , Arden. Noon. I want you back by noon .”

“Papa.” Yes, she sounded more like a child than a grown woman when she drew out his name like that, but when he insisted on treating her like one, what was she to do? “You said we wouldn’t be going until evening tide.”

“I also don’t mean to bring my daughters to the palace stinking of brine and fish. You’ll bathe first, and do something with that nest you call hair, and find something to wear that isn’t older than the king.”

She let out a snort of laughter. What could she say? She was a creature of habit. And she didn’t see the point in wasting resources on new clothes when her favorite white dress with its open skirt over her leather leggings—soft as butter after all these years—suited her so well.

He had a point about her hair, though. The wind and salt water always turned her locks, bleached nearly white by the sun, into one big snarl. She slid her coffee cup onto the kitchen table and gathered the front of her hair to start a braid.

Jade and Mama were there as expected, Mama at the stove and Jade pouring coffee into her favorite mug.

Jade’s scarlet hair was already in a tight braid, her ivory skin glowing with the lotion she applied every morning to keep it from burning in the sun.

“Morning, Arden. The world still in one piece out there?”

“More or less.” She slipped her fingers through another hank of hair and wove it in.

Jade moved her grin to Papa. “We don’t really have to wait until this evening to leave, do we? Can’t we go now?”

“Jade,” Arden said on a groan, her hands giving up their task. “I just talked him out of that. I thought you didn’t want to miss the new section of ruins?”

Jade drew her lip between her teeth, eyes flashing between Papa—who was trying not to smile—and Arden. “I don’t. But Ar, the king!”

Arden pulled out a chair and sank into it. “What’s the hurry? He’s already lived two hundred and seventy-five years. He’s not going to vanish in another eight hours.”

“True.” Jade moved behind Arden’s chair and, after shaking out the bit of braid slowly slipping apart, started again. “And I do want to make a few last-minute adjustments to my gown. But we should come in early. By noon. So I have time to stitch the new beads on.”

Papa chuckled, moved to kiss Mama on the cheek, and helped her carry breakfast to the table. Jade made quick work of Arden’s braid. The platter of eggs and bacon steamed, and Arden reached for the hands she started and ended every day holding. Papa’s in her left, Jade’s in her right.

As her father drew in a long inhale, gathering his thoughts, Arden inhaled her own breath of gratitude.

She remembered, just barely, the lonely days.

After her dying mother had vanished, when Papa had refused to believe she wasn’t coming back, even though she’d told him she was leaving to die.

When it was just his hand, dark as cocoa, holding hers, bronze and small.

The world had been hollow, those years. Empty.

Throbbing. But then Sapphire and Jade, always their friends, had become family.

A woman to make Papa live again, a sister and best friend for Arden.

They’d had their bumps over the last fifteen years, of course—but nothing that could shake them.

Nothing that could keep her from appreciating the skin-toned rainbow of their hands around the table.

Cocoa and bronze and alabaster and honey.

Family . That’s what the ombre said. Love. Security .

Papa blessed the food, and they all rushed through their breakfasts. Mama kissed them each on the cheek and told them she’d have lunch waiting at noon, and soon enough, Arden and Jade were hurrying to the little quay, diving suits in their arms.

“Carry that for you, Jade?” Pash’s voice had deepened over the years, but he’d been asking the same question since they were tykes. He met them, as always, at the end of their boardwalk, a hand reaching for Jade’s suit.

And as always, Jade turned away from him, her smile so sweet he never realized it was a rejection. “You’re so kind, Pash. But Arden’s is the heavy one. Would you carry hers for her? Please?”

Arden was already extending hers, because they’d played out this script a thousand times. Eager to please Jade, Pash would all but fall over himself to take Arden’s heavy diving suit instead.

“Of course! My pleasure. Anything to help the Bleu sisters.”

Arden’s lips twitched. No one ever offered to help her carry her heavy suit on the rare days Jade wasn’t with her. No, when Jade wasn’t with her, no one noticed Arden at all. She might as well be a stand of sea grass or a squawking gull. “Thanks, Pash,” she said.

“Jade! Want a lift?” Kav this time, though occasionally someone else beat him to the offer. He had his solar-powered cart polished to a shine and patted the empty seat beside him.

Jade smiled and shook her head. “And miss my morning walk? You know it’s my favorite part of the day. But you can take my suit—oh, and Pash. He’s got Arden’s as well as his own. I imagine he could use the lift. Thanks, Kav.”

Arden watched with familiar, amused wonder. She could say those same exact words, and Pash would say he’d rather walk too, and Kav would retort that the seat wasn’t for Pash, it was for Jade. But when Jade said it, everyone smiled and nodded and did as she so sweetly directed.

Handy person to have around, her sister.

Their arms now free but for the bags slung over their shoulders and the current suitors buzzing away in the cart, Arden linked her arm through Jade’s. “What are they going to do when they realize they haven’t got a chance with you?”

Jade wrinkled her pretty nose. “I hate to think of hurting any of them.”

She’d have to one day, though, because it wasn’t Pash or Kav or the others who’d caught Jade’s gaze.

No, that honor went to Storm. As children, Arden had been annoyed that her stepsister and cousin refused to claim to be family…

but now she understood. They’d always known they were meant to be more than adopted cousins.

Storm took after Arden’s father, his mother’s brother, in many ways—the tall build, the muscular form, the well-chiseled features.

His skin was closer to Arden’s in shade, thanks to his fair father, and he had Papa’s same steady calm that belied his name and promised him a future in the Elite Guard. If he sought it.

Arden and Jade scrambled over the dune and onto the beach, Arden’s eyes tracking to the small fleet of wooden boats on the shore.

Theirs—once painted a bright teal, now faded and flaked by the years—perched beside Storm’s.

He’d repainted his over the winter, so it shone a proud white and royal blue.

Her cousin stood with his boat, one of his fraternal cousins at his side. They were busy putting their diving suits and what looked like cool-packs of food into their boat, but the moment Storm spotted them, a smile bloomed over his face.

He was the only one of the young men who bothered to greet Arden in such a manner, nodding at her with a look that said he saw the knot of nerves in her stomach when no one else did.

Then, of course, his gaze shifted to Jade, and the gleam in his eyes went soft and deep.

He didn’t fawn over her like the others.

It wasn’t his way. But he nodded her way too, and quietly moved toward their boat to check their lines and anchor for them.

“Wasn’t sure you two would make it today,” he said softly as they approached, inclining his head westward. “Thought Uncle Rico may decide to head over with the morning tide.”

“He did.” Arden grinned and stowed the bag over her shoulder, full of bottles of fresh water, into its place in their boat. “We didn’t want to miss this morning’s dive.”

“We need to be back by noon though.” Jade twisted the tail of her braid into a knot and secured it at the nape of her neck with ribbon. “I have a few more things to do on my gown, and we need to bathe and pack.”

Clouds rolled through Storm’s eyes at the reminder of the ball he wouldn’t be attending with them. “Of course.”

Pash and Kav arrived and heaved the girls’ weighted suits into their boat. Pash clearly lacked Storm’s reserve, given the scowl that knit his fair brows together. “Don’t get any ideas, Jade. We don’t need you enchanting the king and making him decide he’s done mourning and ready to remarry.”

Kav nearly pouted. “Try not to look too pretty, won’t you? It’s not fair to expect us to compete against a king.”

“Especially one that’s half sea-demon.”

“Pash!” Jade’s eyes widened with alarm. She looked around as if expecting members of the Elite Guard to materialize out of the dunes and arrest their friend. “Don’t talk that way. His Majesty may be half mer, but he is certainly not any part demon.”

Pash cast a gloomy look to the west. “We don’t know that, do we? He hasn’t stepped foot in our cathedral in more than twenty years. We haven’t seen the proof of the Triada’s favor. He could have gone dark, like the first king.”

“There are other cathedrals. Other crystal channels.” As ever, Storm’s voice was as calm as the sound—and as unforgiving as the riptide. “He’s received proof of favor in those.”

“We’re to trust that?”

“You think the people in the other cities wouldn’t have objected if the favor was removed?” Storm shook his head. “And we’ll see for ourselves soon enough. Firstday is only two days away.”

“And Arden and I will get to see it!” Jade bounced on her toes, eyes so bright they matched the turquoise water of the shallows. “Can you believe it? The first missa with the king in twenty years, and we’ll be there to witness the Mercy of Waters.”

Kav slid an arm around Jade’s shoulders. “Tell us all about it—when you return. Without the king’s pearl on your finger.”

Arden darted a gaze to Storm, who gave no indication that he minded or even saw the attempt at flirtation. Aside from the way his fingers curled into his palm, that is. When he met her gaze, her lips twitched. A silent dare to him to say something. Stake his own claim.

He narrowed his eyes. Which, as well as they knew each other, might as well have been a shout that said, Mind your own business, Ar. I have a plan. He always had a plan, about everything. And most of them he’d tell her—but not the ones that had to do with Jade.

Jade laughed and moved away from Kav under the guise of stepping into their boat. “Don’t be silly, Kav. Everyone knows the king’s next wife needs to have magic if he’s ever to have an heir. And I am as normal as they come.”

Yet even as she spoke, a shadow flashed over them, drawing all their gazes up.

The Great Golden Sea Hawk was high enough to resemble the size of a normal bird—but it wasn’t.

No, the hawks were the largest birds in the world, flying higher than any other before they dove down into the sea for their breakfast, resurfacing with fish in their grasp.

Arden had been close enough to a dive once to be splashed by the giant and had sat in awe for minutes afterward.

The beast’s feathers shimmered like gold when wet, and it was so huge, she had the silly thought that she could climb onto its back and soar into the heavens with it.

The one circling high above them let out a call, and answering calls echoed up and down the coast until the chord swelled into a melody caught and carried by the wind. Arden breathed in deeply, savoring the song.

Jade’s song—that’s how she’d always thought of it.

How they all did. The hawks had circled the barrier islands in multitudes before vanishing, so the story went, in the years before Jade’s birth.

Then, on the very day she graced the world with her beauty, they returned.

And never could Arden and Jade step foot out of doors without the hawks circling above them.

“Sky demons.” Pash spat. “One of those monsters stole one of our hogs last week.”

“Angels,” Jade corrected. She sat on her usual bench and willed Arden into the boat with a pointed gaze.

“Angels,” Kav agreed, his nod decisive. “Quite likely magical—and they follow you wherever you go, Jade, so don’t discount the possibility that you could have more in your blood than the rest of us. We all know magic follows beauty.”

Arden obeyed her sister’s silent command and stepped into their boat, though she took the time to scowl at Kav first. Yes, they all knew magic followed beauty.

Yes, they all knew magic had to be Awakened in one’s blood, and the last Awakening Ceremony, five years ago, had been before they were of age to be tested.

But the next one would be held in a month, and everyone eighteen or older would stand before either the king or one of his Awakened Guardians and hold their hand out for the curved silver Blade.

Which meant that all too soon, they could learn that Jade would be taken from them. Why did Kav have to point it out?

Arden sat with a huff, put her hands on her oars, and met Storm’s dark, fearful eyes. “Push us off, will you?”

Storm shoved them into the surf, Pash and Kav continued to bicker over angels and demons, and the great hawk circled slowly overhead. Normal things. Everyday things.

But it would all change now. King Seidon had returned to Daryatla.

Was it a sin to resent her Triada-given king simply for being present?