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Is there any grace in this world equal to that of love? Any mercy to rival the comfort of a generous heart?

If there is, I’ve yet to find it.

This is what the goddess teaches us.

from the unpublished papers of Rahvekyan High Priestess Omira

This mean shack on a mostly barren island would have been unlivable if not for Naia’s gifts.

A more thorough survey of their temporary home had revealed fairly little of use. Einar found two rusty buckets—one that might still be able to hold water, and one that most certainly could not—a cobwebbed hip bath, a cast-iron pot meant to hang over the empty hearth, an assortment of broken ceramic dishes with one chipped cup still intact, and a stack of blankets so dusty, Einar had sneezed upon shaking out the first one.

He’d learned how to live rough as a child, thanks to Petya’s relentless tutelage. But when he lifted the bucket and opened the door to fetch water, Naia had laid a hand on his arm with a gentle laugh. With a graceful crook of her fingers, power had swirled around him. Water started flowing uphill from the churning ocean, like a babbling brook that jumped when it reached the doorframe and turned into a glittering arc of water that abruptly began to steam.

Einar and Aleksi both watched in reverent awe as tiny flakes of salt drifted down into Naia’s outstretched palm. The water splashed into the hip bath, circling it once to rinse it clean. The dirty water splashed back into the bucket, and soon the little tub was full of steaming water.

Naia cradled her handful of salt and smiled at him. “If you can find driftwood for a fire, I can dry it out. And perhaps some fish?”

So Einar fetched her driftwood and fish. Soon enough, there was a merry blaze going in the hearth that heated the place to mostly tolerable. Everyone got a chance to bathe while the fish—seasoned with Naia’s salt—crisped over the fire.

Einar had lost his clothing when the Kraken ripped out of him, and Naia’s dress had ended up torn in the battle on the ship. But when her skirts were spread out and topped with one of the newly washed blankets, they created a cozy nest in front of the fire. She shrugged into Aleksi’s shirt, and they wrapped the other blankets around them. With the heat Einar gave off in this form, along with the crackling of the fire, Aleksi and Naia both finally seemed warm enough.

The three of them leaned against each other, trading sips of fresh water from the single ceramic cup as they filled their bellies with fire-seared fish and savored the quiet moment together. But as loath as he was to shatter it, Einar knew there were things that must be said.

“I got a look around while I was out there,” he said as he handed the cup back to Naia. “I think we’re on one of the islands in the archipelago northeast of Akeisa. It may be dawn before the Kraken can reach us here, even with fair winds.”

Naia frowned at him over the chipped rim of the cup. “Northeast? Where were they taking us? Taking Aleksi, I mean.”

Aleksi made a distressed noise, as if the reminder that they all weren’t meant to reach their destination, whatever it had been, still upset him.

Einar freed his arm from the blanket to rub a soothing hand over the Lover’s shoulder. “South from the island would have been the quickest route to the Empire—but Kasther is in chaos now. My guess is the Eastern Waste. All that empty land and no laws to speak of? Most of the smugglers and pirates I’ve dealt with came from there. These probably did, too.”

“They were common pirates,” Aleksi agreed. “But you heard that woman. Someone wanted me to pay for something they believe I’ve done.”

“Another member of Sorin’s former court?” Naia asked softly.

“Retribution,” he confirmed. “For killing the Shapechanger. We know they’ve heard. Sir Balian taunted me about it in open court.”

The map of the Empire formed in Einar’s mind, and his breath hissed out. “The lands the Shapechanger ruled on the Betrayer’s behalf border on the Eastern Waste.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Naia placed the cup on the floor with a thump. “They will not have you.”

Aleksi stroked her cheek. “Of course not, love.”

Einar slid his hand up to Aleksi’s chin, turning the man’s head slightly so he could meet his eyes. “We mean it. You understand that now, don’t you? You’ve seen inside my heart. Do you think I would allow anyone to take what is mine?”

“Of course not. And I will not take unnecessary risks,” he allowed. “You know that is all I can promise.”

Because the Lover would not lie. And as a member of the High Court, he would not shrink away from battle or confrontation. If there was one thing they all had in common—sometimes perhaps the only thing—it was the sense of responsibility they felt to this world and the people in it.

It had been easier for Einar to go to war when his heart was frozen. He knew grief for those he had lost, but not even Petya had ever inspired this bone-deep terror. For the first time in his life, he wanted to spirit someone away, to hide them somewhere safe until the violence and death had passed. The Lover was not meant for a bloody battlefield, and Naia ...

Oh, she was fierce. She fought with the heart of a warrior. But for all of the ancient wisdom she’d brought with her from the Dream, that heart was so open, so soft . He didn’t want to watch it harden in the face of the fight to come.

He wanted to protect them, and yet he knew he could not. Gods didn’t hide from their enemies. Dreamers didn’t turn away when the very world they walked was threatened by nightmares.

Einar traced his thumb over Aleksi’s lower lip. “You bade me open my heart,” he whispered, reaching with his other hand to find Naia. Her fingers were soft and welcoming, twining instantly with his in a way that made his heart hitch. “Don’t break it, Lover.”

“Einar, that isn’t fair.” Naia clung to his hand. “He will try, as will I. But no one can predict or avoid the vagaries of fate. Not even the ancient goddess of your homeland.”

Because every small choice had ripples no one could foresee. Three thousand years ago, Aleksi’s family had fought. The final battle between the Betrayer and the Dragon had shattered the very continents, separating the Sheltered Lands from the Empire forever and raising the dangerous underwater mountain range that Einar now called home.

As a result of that fight between brothers, terrible waves had traveled the ocean, smashing into an island those men had never heard of, causing the death of a goddess who had walked those shores since before the High Court had first heard the whispers of the Dream.

Because of that fight, the Betrayer had fled and begun a conquest that had laid siege to that unknown island and killed Einar’s parents.

Because of that fight, Einar had been a fisherman in the right place at the right time to thwart the Betrayer’s attempt to return to Aleksi’s home and wreak vengeance.

Because of that fight, he had become a god.

One fight had changed everything that came after.

Perhaps one kiss could do the same.

He might never know what ripples would spread out from this moment. What lives would be changed, what nations might rise or fall. The union of three gods could not help but shake the foundations of their very world. Perhaps, knowing how much pain could come from one simple action, he should be cautious.

Or maybe the War Between the Gods had only caused such pain because it had been a sundering. Maybe this kiss could be a union that brought joy.

Tangling his fingers in the Lover’s hair, Einar pulled him closer and seized his mouth. The Lover’s lips parted instantly, a welcome that turned fierce as a jolt of sensation shivered down Einar’s spine. He’d kissed Aleksi before, and with considerably more heat, but something about this felt different .

Perhaps it was simply that none of them were fighting it anymore. The distance caused by Einar’s wounded heart and the Lover’s wounded soul had collapsed. Aleksi wasn’t pushing them away. Einar wasn’t holding back.

This wasn’t a last kiss, but a first.

Naia climbed halfway onto Einar’s lap, wrapped her arms around them both, and buried her face in the hollow of Aleksi’s shoulder. Einar savored Aleksi’s kiss for another heartbeat before breaking away to rest his forehead against the other man’s. Naia’s hair was like silk under his fingers, and she murmured her pleasure as he stroked it.

There was no rush this time. No grasping. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do until the Kraken arrived with the dawn.

So they cuddled. They exchanged lazy kisses and touches, soft whispers. Einar closed his eyes and reveled in the intimacy of it, something that had been so rare in his encounters before. Affection had been common enough, and passion inevitable. But closeness like this only came with trust. And maybe with love.

Abruptly, Aleksi sucked in a sharp breath, and Einar looked over to see Naia’s teeth set in the vulnerable skin at the base of his throat. At the same time, one of her hands crept beneath the blanket that Einar wore.

Clever fingers danced up his thigh, and he became intensely aware that he was still in his other form. For centuries, this had been the body he only inhabited in solitude, sliding through the deep for the joy or the peace of it. Most mortals who caught a glimpse of it shied back in terror. The monster, in all its terrifying glory, they could at least understand. This monstrous man, trapped between worlds—

But Naia didn’t flinch away. She caressed his skin, as if relishing the changed texture of it. And Aleksi’s slow smile held nothing but heat. Einar let his head fall back, savoring her curious touch and the Lover’s easy acceptance.

For now, in this moment, he could simply be .

Naia lifted her head. Her hair was tousled, her face flushed. She leaned close, her mouth hovering over Einar’s, but only a murmured confession kissed his lips. “I think I’ve always loved you.”

Einar couldn’t imagine that was a memory she had brought with her from the Dream. Many of those who made their living on the seas had respected or feared him over the years. No small number had desired him. But the kind of passionate love that shone from her eyes?

He’d known that only from the two people in this shack.

He licked her lower lip just to hear her gasp, and gave her back a confession every bit as raw. “I felt you in the sea before I met you. I was already on my way to Seahold when Dianthe summoned me. I had to know who was calling to me.”

Her mouth crashed into his, frantic and hungry, but even the pleasure of her quick tongue stroking his vanished in a roaring wave when her fingers wrapped around his cock.

Aleksi’s words came back to him—the taunting promise to Naia that she would be able to feel its length inside her. Einar hadn’t been sure she truly wanted it—the size alone was enough to be intimidating, but the sensitive ridges—

He shuddered as she drew a finger along one, swallowed her whimper of longing, and he could have cursed Aleksi when he wrapped his fingers around Naia’s wrist and pulled her hand away.

“Patience, love,” Aleksi murmured, utterly in command. “If you want him inside you, it will take some time.”

Einar broke their kiss. There was a dangerous light in the Lover’s eyes, one that meant they’d end this night weak and wrung out from pleasure, if only they trusted him.

Einar did. Naia wasn’t feeling so patient. “I don’t want to wait,” she shot back.

“No. But you want to be ready .”

The thought of sliding inside her in any form was enough to break a stronger man’s will. But like this? His truest self, held tight within her body as she writhed and moaned and squeezed him with every screaming climax?

He almost wrapped his own fingers around his cock just to soothe that ache.

Instead, he reached for Naia’s chin and tilted her face to his. “Do as he says, sweet goddess,” he crooned. “And you can be the first person to ride the Kraken’s real cock.”

“Don’t tease me,” she moaned.

“It isn’t a tease.” Aleksi pulled her from Einar’s lap and spilled her to the floor. “It’s a promise.”

Firelight from the hearth danced over her skin as Aleksi revealed it one inch at a time. The Lover was clearly taking his time, making a show of it for Einar’s benefit and exploring each revealed spot with his tongue for Naia’s. But his satisfaction was impossible to ignore, each bolt of it shared through the magic that pulsed through the room as the shirt fell away, baring Naia’s naked body.

She reached for them then, but Aleksi clucked his tongue and resumed his slow exploration. When his lips teased the underside of her breast, she gasped and arched, her fingers plunging into Aleksi’s hair.

“So impatient,” Einar murmured as he captured Naia’s wandering hand again. He kissed her palm and nipped at the fingertips. “If we were on my ship, I’d have a cure for these restless hands. Silken ties the color of the sea. But in their absence ...”

He caught the Lover’s gaze, and saw only hot anticipation there as he straightened. “By all means.” Aleksi captured her wrists in one hand and pinned them both above her head. “Does this meet with your approval?”

She was stretched out between them on her back like an ancient offering, the flushed skin and glowing eyes and eagerly arching hips turning her into a temptation he could never resist. Einar started at the adorable tip of her chin and traced one finger down her throat, pressing just hard enough for the rasp of his thicker skin to cause a delicious friction. “So many places I have yet to touch. Where do I even start?”

“You start ... here.” Aleksi circled one of her nipples with his fingertip.

Naia’s gasp was gratifying, but not as delicious as the way she squirmed when Einar ducked his head to lick Aleksi’s finger and her nipple. He let his fingers drift to the other one, and now he knew exactly how she liked it—a gentle tease and then a pinch hard enough to bring her hips off the floor.

“Beautiful.” Aleksi dipped his head and joined him. Einar felt the slick glide of the Lover’s tongue and gave way, letting him soothe her ravaged nipple. But a moment later, Aleksi gave her a hint of teeth, enough to force a pleading cry from her throat that Einar wanted to hear again. Needed to hear again.

So he closed his teeth gently around her other nipple, tightening until she moaned his name in a throaty voice that might as well have been a caress.

Their goddess didn’t like things soft and easy. No surprise, given how desperate she had always been to feel . She’d feel all of Einar soon enough, filling her so completely there’d be room for nothing but the sensation of him.

But not until she was so hungry for it that she begged.

So Einar took his time, aided in his exploration by Aleksi. She liked it when they sucked and loved it when they bit, but her favorite was when their tongues battled over her nipple, an intimate kiss she couldn’t tear her gaze from.

They teased her until she was whimpering, and only then did Einar trail his roughened fingertips down her body to the soft skin of her inner thigh. “I remember how your skin tasted here. And the noises you made when I licked you.”

“Please,” she rasped.

“No making him give in,” Aleksi warned. “You know what to do if it’s too much. Otherwise, trust us to make it good.”

Naia swallowed another whimper and nodded quickly.

Part of him wanted to hurry, but the rest of him knew that for her to truly take him without pain, she needed to be weak with wanting him. He had no fear of harming her—a Dreamer’s body was never so fragile—but Einar wanted nothing but her unalloyed ecstasy when he finally sank into her.

So he kissed her everywhere. Her arms, her chin, the vulnerable curve of her throat and the sweet curve of her belly. He let Aleksi murmur dark, filthy words of encouragement as he stroked and coaxed, coming closer and closer to the hips she thrust up in naked plea before skating away to kiss and touch some more.

When she was shaking, he drew the tip of his finger up the inside of one thigh. It was slick already with desire, her need so intense that he almost groaned when he slid his fingers against her and found her hot and wet. He lifted his hand, painted Aleksi’s lips with her desire, and smiled. “Taste how much she wants us.”

Aleksi licked his lips with a slow smile. Then he winked, released Naia’s wrists, and vanished down her body. Naia barely had a moment to understand what was happening before Aleksi’s face was between her thighs, his hum of pleasure eclipsed by Naia’s stark cry.

Einar caught both of her hands as they plunged toward Aleksi’s hair and coaxed them back up above her head. She whimpered in protest, her hips bucking, but Einar simply stretched out at her side and stroked her cheek. “Breathe, goddess.”

“I can’t.” She twisted beneath his hands and Aleksi’s mouth. “His tongue ...”

Sharp pleasure raced up his spine, a tingle as intense as he’d felt the first time Naia had closed her lips around the head of Aleksi’s cock. His pleasure, spilling out over them both, and apparently the Lover found the taste of Naia every bit as intoxicating as thrusting up into her mouth.

Einar could understand that feeling all too well. He nuzzled her ear, whispering the words against it just to make her squirm. “Can you feel it? How much he loves fucking you with his tongue?”

“Yes.” She was trembling, the tremors overtaken now and then by tiny shudders. Then she went rigid, her teeth sinking into her lower lip.

Aleksi raised his head. He’d replaced his tongue with his fingers—three already, sliding deep. Einar soothed her with a hand stroking down her body, gently holding her hips down when they twisted upward. “That’s it, goddess. Take all the pleasure the Lover can give you.”

“All we can give you,” Aleksi corrected. “Help me, Einar.”

Einar teased his fingers lower, watching her face as his roughened fingertip slicked over her clit. One of her wrists jerked beneath his grip, and he let her go. She plunged her fingers into his hair and dragged Einar down into a desperate kiss, moaning with every slow circle of his finger. Her hips tried to buck up, but Aleksi steadied her, his fingers plunging deep again with a liquid sound.

“Ride it, love,” Aleksi murmured. “Let it happen.”

She made a choked noise, her teeth suddenly closing on Einar’s tongue. He savored the bite of pain, all the more thrilling when he pulled back to watch pleasure break over her face. “Scratch me up, sweetheart. Show me how good it is.”

She took him at his word. Her fingernails found his chest, digging furrows that would have broken his mortal skin. The pain shivered over him, mixing with the increasing pulse of Aleksi’s pleasure, and his own satisfaction at watching her throw her head back, entire body straining.

Release broke over her like a tidal wave. Judging by Aleksi’s hiss, he knew she must be pulsing around his fingers. Her entire body shuddered, the frantic sounds escaping her throat breathless as she bucked and writhed. When her hips finally dropped back to the blankets, Einar lifted his hand and stroked his knuckles over her cheek. “Beautiful. But she’s not ready yet, is she?”

“Not to be fucked the way she wants to be fucked.”

Einar traced Naia’s parted lips with his pleasure-slick finger. “Can you take more?”

She laughed, giddy and more than a little breathless. “From you and Aleksi? Anything.”

Einar glanced briefly at the Lover and received a nod. So he slid his hand back down her body until he encountered Aleksi’s slick fingers. Then he caught Naia’s gaze again, holding it even though his words were for Aleksi. “Use me. Give her everything she wants.”

Aleksi eased his fingers free of Naia’s body and grasped Einar’s wrist. His hand slid down, stroking Einar’s first three fingers, making them wet before he guided them to Naia’s body, and they should have been too big, too much, but the Lover knew what she could take.

Einar worked them halfway into her as she panted and writhed. Aleksi bit her inner thigh, then moved up so that he was lying against her other side. “Easy, little nymph,” he soothed, stroking her cheek. But his eyes held a silent command for Einar.

Einar thrust his fingers deep.

Naia’s head dug back against the blankets as her whole body arched. She was impossibly tight around his fingers, slick and hot and so, so greedy , already driving her hips up as if she wanted to take more of him. Einar’s head spun as he fucked them into her again, and it only took the slightest brush of his thumb against her clit for her to scream her release into Aleksi’s mouth.

The shock of it hit Einar harder this time—Aleksi’s pleasure at Naia’s climax, a shivery demand that was almost impossible to resist. And then there were fingers in his hair, a grip tight enough to hurt, and Einar lost track of who he was kissing. There was only heat, and lips, and tongues, and Naia’s slick body accepting the strong thrust of three impossibly wide fingers, easier each time she came, and came, and came —

A glow seemed to suffuse the room. Einar pulled back from a dizzying kiss to see Aleksi’s face, illuminated from within as he stroked Naia’s hair back from her face and drank in her latest orgasm. That glow that Einar had always struggled to see—it was impossible to look away from now, with deep-violet eddies and the diamond sparkles he’d always seen around Sachielle, only in Aleksi they shone like gold.

Everyone had always claimed that sex made the Lover stronger, but as Aleksi brushed his thumb over Naia’s cheek with a heartbreaking tenderness, Einar finally understood. It wasn’t sex that gave Aleksi his power—it was the pleasure of his partners, the intimacy of being trusted with moments like this. Moments of deep connection and absolute surrender.

And his power made everything more intense, more immediate. More devastating. Even limp from an orgasm that had barely ended, Naia’s body had already tensed against the rising wave of the next one. Einar took pity on her, plunging his fingers into her deep and hard as his thumb stroked circles over her clit, and her relieved cry was followed by a climax so hard, Einar almost came against her hip when Aleksi’s pleased reaction crashed over him.

Maybe he shouldn’t bother to hold back. With the Lover’s power twining around them, he could spend himself against her hip a dozen times and still be hard enough to fuck her. Caught in this web of magic, there would be no end to the bliss and the orgasms—no end except Aleksi’s mercy.

Einar eased his fingers from Naia’s trembling body. Aleksi slid an arm under her shoulders, lifting her half-upright so that she would be able to see everything when Einar knelt between her thighs, and licked her lips. “Watch him take you.”

She was flushed and disheveled but so eager, and Einar thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as the two of them, eyes glazed with pleasure, waiting for him.

He moved slowly, coaxing her knees apart with gentle hands so he could settle between them. His hand was still slick with her pleasure, and he stroked it over his ridged cock, letting her watch as he positioned the broad head at the entrance to her body.

Naia was panting, trembling, but there was no hesitation in her. She reached down with one hand, curling her fingers over his, and urged him to thrust forward.

They both moaned as he worked himself in—barely deeper than the width of his thumb, but it didn’t matter. She was already so tight and hot, squeezing the head of his cock, and when he rocked a little deeper, she threw back her head with a shuddering gasp.

So close. It took only the slightest brush over her clit to send her flying, her body shaking in Aleksi’s grip as she moaned helplessly.

Pleasure rocked through Einar—his own, first. Then Aleksi’s. Maybe Naia’s, too, for all he knew. At this point there was no separating them. Every muscle in his body clenched against the need to thrust deeper and spend himself inside her.

Aleksi wrapped his hand around the back of Einar’s neck. “Don’t you dare. Not yet.”

An unyielding order. Einar shuddered and held to self-control by his fingernails as Naia’s shaking slowed. His next shallow thrust nearly undid them both, but with Aleksi’s fingers digging into Einar’s neck in command, he gritted his teeth and used one hand to grip Naia’s thigh, forcing her legs wider. He was halfway in her now, and he knew that the ridges and bumps along his shaft must be driving her to near madness with every slow thrust.

The way she was watching his cock work into her, dreamy-eyed and eager, was driving him to near madness. “Look at you,” he groaned, as her trembling started again. The roughened pad of his thumb against her clit was enough to bring her hips up to meet him, driving him a little deeper. “Look at how you take me.”

Naia opened her lips, gasping in a breath, but whatever words she meant to form never came. She panted, her eyes wild, teetering on the edge again, and this time Einar didn’t have to push her over. Aleksi did it for him, ducking his head to scrape his teeth over her nipple. Naia moaned, and came.

He rode her orgasm, unsure where the bliss from the hot clench of her body ended and the shuddering pleasure of Aleksi’s satisfaction began. She was so slick now, and he was sliding deeper without having to try, her body welcoming him. He withdrew most of the way and thrust back in, setting off another wave of ecstasy—or maybe it was all one orgasm at this point—and her cries twined with the music that had haunted his dreams, as if this was what he had been seeking for decades beyond imagining.

Not just the sweet clasp of her body, but her , begging for him with her whole heart, pleading for all of him. Not just the man, not just the thrill of conquest that came with bedding a god.

Him. Einar.

The Kraken.

He groaned as one last thrust took him all the way into her body, and he froze there, overwhelmed by the feeling that he’d somehow come home to a place he’d been yearning for since before he’d been born. Then the physical sensation crashed over him, and he snarled with the effort it took not to give in and come.

The Lover eased Naia gently to the floor as he rose, shifting her body around Einar’s cock. He hissed in a breath, and exhaled it just as sharply when Aleksi knelt behind him and licked the spot between his shoulder blades.

“Good,” the Lover whispered.

He felt Aleksi’s cock, hot against his back, and struggled between the competing needs to push back in silent demand and thrust forward to reward Naia’s pleas.

Aleksi’s tongue drifted higher, grazing Einar’s earlobe. “Say yes.”

As if there could be any other answer. “Anything,” he growled in response. “Everything. Yes. ”

Power rippled through the room again as Aleksi’s fingers drifted down his back, and Einar had seen this trick before—though he’d never experienced it. The Lover stroked the curve of his ass, and it felt like fire followed in his wake, flooding Einar with the impossible sensation of heat and slickness and an unbearable need that only the Lover could quench.

The Witch might enjoy brewing aphrodisiacs to thrill the senses and oils that eased the passage of even the largest cock, but the Lover had no need of such things. The echo of his pleasure made the strongest aphrodisiac seem feeble, and magic always readied his path.

And, for once, Aleksi didn’t tease him. He paused after the head of his cock breached that tight ring of muscle, as if reassuring himself that Einar could take everything he was—but when Einar pushed back with an eager growl, Aleksi wrapped his hand in Einar’s hair and thrust deep.

Friction. Pleasure. Impossible heat, as the movement pushed him deeper into Naia—and then Aleksi’s pleasure hit them both. She was writhing and clenching, and Aleksi thrust into him again. It was too much. Naia’s hoarse cry was lost in Einar’s groan of surrender as he slammed into her again and came, and came, and came ...

Colors exploded behind Einar’s eyelids. But when he opened his eyes, they were still there. Aleksi’s glow was so bright, it filled the cabin. Not just violet now but a rainbow of glittering magic that danced with every thrust.

It sank into him. Washed through him.

For all the longing he’d felt for Naia and the bliss of that feeling of homecoming, this was new. The missing piece, the thing that changed the haunting melody that ghosted through his dreams to one of pure joy.

Einar heard the new song woven around the sound of his heart pounding—one of destiny, one of vitality and life.

The Lover. In love.

Something in the universe shifted . Bliss swallowed him whole.

And lasted an eternity.

Einar didn’t know how they all ended up curled together under the blanket. Aleksi must have done it—proof that tiring out his lovers only made Aleksi stronger. Einar certainly couldn’t find the strength in his body to do more than turn his face into Naia’s hair, nuzzling her as she panted for breath and the Lover stroked soothing fingers over their cheeks, a quiet promise that they could rest, and he would take care of them.

Einar closed his eyes and fell into dreams of the sun, and the sea, and music that no longer yearned but instead twined around him as he swam deeper, promising that he would never be alone.

The sea woke Einar.

He jerked awake, unsure what had pulled him from those sweet dreams, until a ripple in the distance tugged at something inside him.

His ship had arrived.

He disentangled himself from his sleeping lovers, tucking the blanket around them both before standing. One glance down his body revealed the silvery-purple skin, and for the first time reluctance stirred at the thought of resuming his mortal form.

No, now was not the time.

He closed his eyes and changed back into his human form, then swept up another blanket to wrap around his waist.

Outside, the sun was just topping the eastern horizon. The sky was alive with blushing pinks and fragile blues, and the reflection of light seemed to draw a line straight to the majestic ship floating just offshore. On the deck, Bexi gave a shout of relief that brought the rest of the crew running.

They’d already launched a dinghy. Brynjar worked the oars with impressive speed while Petya shielded her eyes with one hand. The worry on her face only receded when she caught sight of him.

Einar lifted an arm to wave, then turned back to the cabin. Inside, he knelt beside the nest of blankets, where Naia was already awake. She stared up at him, unmoving. “Are they here?”

“They’re rowing ashore now.” He touched Aleksi’s forehead, brushing his hair back. “Time to go, lover.”

Aleksi stretched lazily. “I think I’ll live here now, thank you. It rather has everything I need.” He nipped at Naia’s bare shoulder.

She swatted him away with a laugh. But her amusement faded as she sat up. “What do we do now?”

“We go back to Akeisa,” Aleksi answered simply. “And we find out who at Gwynira’s court is a traitor.”

“And we kill them,” Einar said softly.

“Or worse.” Aleksi grinned. “I’m shockingly open to the possibilities.”

This was the other side of the Lover, a side Einar understood all too well. In him, the protective rage had always burned hot, but it had been motivated by hatred as much as anything else. Hatred for the Empire, for the Betrayer, for the pain they had caused. But in Aleksi ...

Hatred was a fragile thing. When the object of your revenge was defeated, there was little left to fuel that fire. But love—love could not be so easily quenched.

When roused to protective fury, love could shatter worlds.