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Herrick could feel his ears burning as Maude's sister barged into the small cabin where his better judgment had slipped from his fingers, delaying the joining with Maude that he had been desperately craving. The sudden interruption was welcome, and he didn't know how to feel about that.

He was struggling to adjust being free from chains, now wasn't the time to let himself get lost in his base desires.

The iron band around his throat, still burning into his skin, reminded him that he had been and still was a prisoner.

The unsettling truth that he still did not know the mystery behind how Maude was still alive was the final thread that pulled him back into himself.

It was enough to make Herrick break from drowning in his eldr's presence.

There was a lot that needed to be discussed between him and Maude, but it couldn't happen on this shared vessel that floated over the open ocean.

She is lying to you, even now , a dark voice whispered from within his mind. Don't forget how she left you behind.

Herrick stopped short, almost dropping the dagger he was sliding into his boot in his surprise.

The words came and went so quickly that he didn't know if the source really was from him or something else.

The thought unsettled him, and the more he focused on it, the colder the iron band grew around his throat.

It almost tightened as if to say, yes, it was me .

You will never be free of me , it whispered again before it slithered back into the darkest part of his mind .

Bryn left them to redress in silence, the space between them yawning open and filling with all the things they weren't saying to each other.

Tension had flared to life between them when their words had been passionate and heated.

Now it grew uncomfortable, the events of the last few weeks becoming a separate entity in the room with them.

Maude was strapping various blades to her person as Herrick belted a longsword to his waist, missing the weight of his two-handed battle axe on his back.

He traced the iron around his neck with one finger as he watched Maude ready herself for battle.

The long wine-red hair that she re-braided into a tight coil at the back of her head, the tension in her shoulders as her back remained straight.

In the dim candlelight of the cabin, Herrick could see the pit fighter she had been as she pulled on the fingerless gloves she wore during her matches.

For a moment, he was transported back to when she had just been Maude, the fire vitki who had an anger problem, and he had just been Herrick, the rebel who smuggled the innocent to freedom.

But that wasn't who they really were, even if that was who they wanted to be.

Maude turned to leave the small room, her weapons strapped into place, and her focus shifting to the new threat.

Herrick wanted to reach out and curl his arms around her waist to remind her what she would be fighting for.

He wanted to plant harsh kisses up her jaw and to her swollen, flushed lips until her breathing came as rapidly as her heartbeat did.

Instead, Herrick let Maude walk out of the room without doing any of the things he wanted because, until she could be open with him, he couldn't allow himself to drown in her.

Bryn wished she could scrub the image of her sister and Herrick half-naked from her mind.

Allfather, make me blind, please.

Liv was getting the last of the vitki below decks; only a few remained above through stubbornness.

Bryn would never deny a warrior their right to battle, so she did not protest when they stayed on deck— she just prayed they wouldn't get in the way.

She took the stairs to the top deck two at a time until she stood side by side with Liv.

The warrior's easy and friendly demeanor had slipped. The face of a tried and true Elven shieldmaiden now stood in her place as they faced the oncoming fight.

"Those are my family runes on the flag," Bryn said, her eyes on her father's ship with her arms crossed over her chest. "I don't recognize the colors, though."

"This is something new," Liv said quietly before walking away to meet Hakon, who was rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Liv's gray eyes met Bryn's as she glanced over her shoulder, and something sparked there, but it was gone before Bryn could identify it.

"How do we know it's Father's ship and not a merchant ship?" Maude asked as she emerged from the deck below, tightening the laces around the vest she had taken to wearing since being in the Kingdom of Shadows.

"It's his. The family runes are on the flag next to the runes for the Kingdom of Flame," Bryn explained, glancing at her sister. "Father hasn't taken so well to our disrupting his coronation."

"I welcome the fight," Maude said, stretching her neck and rolling her shoulders to loosen them. "I didn't shed nearly enough blood yesterday."

Herrick soon followed Maude up to the deck, but instead of going to stand by her sister's side, he pivoted and headed toward his brother.

He only made it a few steps away from them before needing to glance back at Maude.

Longing saturated his golden stare, followed by an uncertainty that Bryn didn't understand.

"We'll be down a wielder since Herrick still has the iron band around his throat that saps his galder ," Bryn said, pulling her focus from her observation of the General of Rivers.

At Maude's surprised lift of her eyebrows, she continued, "Liv told me what it was.

She said Aeric might be able to remove it. "

Maude frowned, a divot forming between her lowered eyebrows. "I don't know if I should use any galder either. "

"Why?" Bryn asked.

"All of the elements are finding their way out of me," Maude said quietly, her eyes darting from the ship to hers quickly. "I can't control it— it just bursts out of me like when we were young, and it was just starting to manifest."

Bryn thought back to how many items and people Maude had set ablaze by accident when they were children. With the limited space of the ship they inhabited, it wasn't such a terrible idea for Maude to try and restrict herself.

"Fight with steel until you can't, and just pray to the gods that it works out?" she suggested, raising her slender, copper eyebrow.

Maude laughed then, the bell-like sound clear in the dying night. "So how I normally go through life then."

The sisters laughed before Yuri blew the signal that the enemy was within range.

"Together?" Bryn asked, extending her arm to her sister, the silver ink of their blood oath shimmering in the moonlight.

"In this life and the next," Maude confirmed as she grasped her arm.

Like plumes of smoke, the matching silver ink on their forearms began to swirl in time with each other. Their eyes met, their oath hanging between them, and they each grinned.

Then, the Helvig sisters prepared for battle.

Hakon rubbed the sleep from his eyes as Liv made her way over to him. Being woken from his dreams had been the least of Hakon's problems. Like every night, Eydis plagued him: her moonlight hair and caramel eyes full of mischief and humor.

Liv's face was tense as she reached his side, and the long limbs of her Elven body were stiff with every move she made.

"What's wrong?" Hakon asked, reaching for the person he had been before Eydis had died. If he even existed anymore .

"I have news to share with you all," Liv said, her eyes on the horizon. "I would have told you all as soon as I found out, but this seems like something I need to speak to Aeric about first."

That reality that Liv was technically sworn to both kingdoms reared its ugly head again in his thoughts. She may have sworn to defend the Kingdom of Rivers, but that didn't mean she would abandon her allegiance to Nida either.

"Just tell me," Hakon urged, refusing to be in the dark again.

Liv eyed him for a moment before speaking.

"I can't tell you everything until everyone is present.

I don't even have all the information yet, but…

" She trailed off, her face revealing some internal struggle.

Hakon waited, his usually ever-present patience running thin.

"There is another player in this bloody game. "

Before he could respond, Herrick joined them.

His brother placed one hand on his shoulder, the gesture more tentative than it had been in the past. Hakon tried to ignore the feeling of his chest shattering into a million pieces.

If there was distance between him and his brother, it was only because Hakon put that distance there.

"Discussing strategy without me?" Herrick asked, his tone light, but the disquiet on his face betrayed him.

"Never," Liv said with a sly smile. "Just about how you can't seem to tear yourself from a certain crimson-haired warrior."

"Ouch," Herrick laughed as he shoved Liv's shoulder a bit.

The air became uncomfortable for a moment before Liv— gods bless her— breezed past the awkward tension.

"When they get close enough, we should pull an anchor turn and broadside," Liv suggested. "It'll happen fast enough if we can get the Helvig sisters to manipulate the wind in our favor."

Hakon went to disagree, not wanting to place so much trust in them, but Herrick— the more seasoned sailor of the two of them— agreed that the sailing conditions of the early morning would favor this plan.

Liv and Herrick continued planning strategy as Hakon stared off into the eastern horizon, waiting for the morning sun to dawn on another miserable day .

In the last few years, Hakon had truly made himself their mother's pet. He did what she ordered, fine-tuned his manners to her approval, and played the right politics with the right nobles in their court until she had been satisfied.