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V ahly was almost certain Ryton wouldn’t turn his spear on her. Not completely.

He raised it high, then aimed at the rockfall, his words slippery and oddly punctuated.

The sea folk’s language wasn’t meant to be spoken on land.

Waves peeled away from a circle of space where she and Kyril had surfaced.

The tips of gray rock began to peer through the rippling, sweeping salt water, and even Nix looked impressed by Ryton’s power.

What could only be described as a reverse wave curled from the earth, revealing the entire area, the sides of a few homes visible without the sandy haze of the sea surrounding them.

Magic plucked Vahly’s heart, and she grabbed for Kyril. He bumped her hand with his beak and clicked his tongue when she set a hand on his side.

Arc finished his spell for Nix’s protection from the spelled salt water. “Come!” He looked like a much younger version of himself as he waved and leapt from the former shoreline. He landed, puffs of sand rising around his boots. The land Ryton had cleared of water was dry.

Ryton lowered his spear. Dark circles had formed under his eyes.

Panic stabbed Vahly, seeing the spear lowered and Arc already using his air magic to move rocks below. The water churned like a living wall, surrounding the cluster of buried structures on three sides. The fourth side was dry all the way to the rocky coast.

“You don’t need to keep your weapon raised?” she asked Ryton.

“No. I hold the spell within me now. It will last as long as I do or as long as I will it to.”

Vahly met Kyril’s gaze. “Grab him. We’re taking him with us. If he tries anything funny, take one of his legs off.”

Ryton glared. “I heard that.”

“I wanted you to.”

Kyril’s beak clamped down on the shirt the Jades had given to Ryton, then Kyril threw the general so that Ryton landed neatly on the gryphon’s back.

Nix—her body and wings cloaked in a transparent, golden orb—followed Kyril and Vahly toward Arc.

Nix eyed the magical sphere around her. “I’m glad Arc has that crown and its magic. This will be powerful against the sea kynd,” she whispered to Vahly. “Also, I need to tell you something when you finish your work here.”

Vahly frowned at the odd tone of Nix’s voice. “You can tell me now if you like. I wouldn’t mind a distraction.”

“No, this is a big conversation. It must wait, Queenie.”

Nodding and watching Kyril’s tail flick with nervousness, Vahly walked on. All around them, the water hissed like it was angry at being bossed about. A shiver crawled over Vahly.

Arc moved his hands, and the last of the rocks from the sea shelf shifted to sit beyond the broken homes. None of the roofs remained, and most of the structures were nothing but piles of stone.

Holding her breath, fearing this would go nowhere and that she’d somehow made a huge mistake, Vahly walked toward the first building. “We’re looking for a birthplace marker set into the walls. It will state my name and might be made of a different color stone than the structure.”

Slick patches of algae grew over the right half of an arched entrance to a three-bedroom home.

Or what she guessed was a home. The skeletal remains of four wooden chairs sprawled across the sandy floor.

Magic drumming inside her veins and tugging at her chest, she bent to study a carving set into the chair’s back.

Her fingers traced the curve of a tree branch and the tiny scratches that formed an acorn.

Nix crouched beside Vahly. “An oak. The humans should really have branched out with their decor.”

“Sometimes they use stag antlers,” Vahly said, wondering who had sat in this chair and if it might have been her own mother. She brushed the chair’s broken arm, wishing she could somehow know if her mother’s hand had rested here.

Arc scanned the walls, looking for birthplace markers. Vahly was hesitant to look, fearing this was a grand mistake, a waste of time, that she’d misread her magic.

Kyril towered over the home, shuffling his wings every now and then to shake off the water spray. Ryton sat very still on Kyril’s back, his strange eyes flicking from Vahly to the open sea beyond his magicked walls.

“Earth Queen, may I join you?” Ryton asked, eyeing Kyril like he might bite his leg off. He wasn’t wrong to be concerned.

“Yes,” Vahly said.

Ryton slid from Kyril’s back.

Arc and Nix flanked Vahly.

“Why do you wish to come?” Vahly asked.

Ryton entered the home. He knelt and gently lifted the sea-eaten back of another chair. “I’ve always been fascinated with human things. Probably because it is taboo.” He pushed a spot on the top of the chair back, and a square of wood swung open.

Vahly rushed over. “What is that?”

Nix and Arc leaned in.

Ryton took a lapis lazuli stone from the hidden compartment and held it up. “It’s some sort of charm, I think.”

The stone held a carving of an oak leaf on a sun. “More oaks.” Vahly rolled her eyes and shared a grin with Nix.

But it was time now to stop stalling and mooning. Vahly marched to the walls and began searching for birthplace markers.

Arc disappeared into one of the lesser chambers but appeared again quickly. “No markers in that room.”

Vahly found nothing on the first wall, so she headed into the next chamber with Arc. Nix and Ryton searched the far wall, unspeaking but not fighting either, which seemed like a good sign for this temporary and bizarre band they’d created.

The second chamber was empty. The third as well.

The group left the house and began searching the next. And the next.

Ryton’s face had grown ashen. He wasn’t going to be able to hold off the water much longer. Everyone was quiet, and the silence, touched only by the sea’s hissing against Ryton’s spell, unsettled Vahly and made her jumpy.

The sixth structure they came to was narrower than the others, with a peaked stone entrance that remained whole.

The roof was gone, of course; Vahly was fairly certain these homes had used thatch roofing.

Kyril lifted into the air and flew above the group as they began to search the building’s snaking corridors and chambers.

Vahly stepped over a pile of wine amphoras, crockery that must have held such things as honey or goat’s milk, and stacks of cracked plates and mugs.

Ryton walked behind her, Nix close enough to burn him alive if he did something they didn’t like.

Vahly’s magic punched against her heart, and she stopped, putting a hand over her chest.

“It’s here. Somewhere,” she whispered.

Kyril landed between Ryton and Vahly, tucking his wings tightly to fit into the round room.

The curved walls showed five dark red stone tablets. The names on the first four blurred as tears pricked Vahly’s eyes. This was her family’s home. She knew it. The truth of it pumped through her veins. And these tablets showed her parents’ names and those of her two siblings.

She had a brother and a sister.

“Antton,” Ryton said, reading the birth marker for Vahly’s brother. “I believe it means One Who Is Beyond Price.”

Vahly swallowed. What had this older brother looked like? Had he cared for Vahly when she was an infant? She kissed her fingers and touched the stone before moving to her sister’s tablet again.

“And this one?” she asked Ryton. She could barely speak for the emotions surging through her and the magic thundering through her blood.

Ryton cocked his head and squinted, the circles under his eyes darkening with every minute he held the spell. “Irati. Her name means something along the lines of plants, but I can’t be certain.”

She was named for something of the earth. A smile pulled at Vahly’s mouth. She kissed the stone and stepped over to her own birth marker.

“Vahly,” Ryton said quietly. “Blooded for the battle.” He faced her, a confusion of feelings swirling in his eyes.

“Your dragons killed my sister. But my kynd killed your family. We must end this, Earth Queen. Will you balance the world instead of seeking to slay all of the sea folk? Will you be the queen I wish Astraea was?”

Vahly soaked in the presence of Kyril, Arc, and Nix, drawing strength from them. “I will do my best, General, but I’d be lying if I said this was a sure bet.”

Nix chuckled. “Such a Vahly thing to say. She’s nothing if not genuine.”

Ryton bent his head briefly, then met Vahly’s eyes. “Then carry on. I will do my part.”

Now what? Vahly pet Kyril’s head, his feathers soft under her calloused hands.

Kyril flashed an image of Vahly’s face. She almost appeared to be glowing.

Nerves sparking, Vahly closed her eyes and focused on the magic flowing through her veins. She stepped forward, keeping a hand on Kyril as she stood directly in front of the stone marker.

A buzzing traveled from the soles of her bare feet, up her legs, into her torso, and all the way to the crown of her head. She felt taller, stronger…more.

Words threaded into her mind, and her lips opened to speak them.