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V ahly, Arc, and Kyril landed to a crowd of dragons and the twins. Everyone was talking and gesturing.

Vahly groaned and stretched her neck. “Not exactly the welcome I was hoping for.” She was exhausted from the trip and worried sick over Nix not being able to shift and Zuzan just taking off like that with Euskal.

It was fully day, but smoke-hued clouds blocked the sun and gathered thickly around the palace’s part-mountain, part-tree silhouette. Arrosa ran from the small side door near the front entrance. Her eyes were ringed in red, and her silver hair lay in tangles around her shoulders.

“It’s the sea folk. They’re dying.”

Vahly crushed her in a hug. “I’m surprised they lasted this long, honestly.”

“Mother!” Arrosa pulled away, blinking.

Vahly held out her hands. “I don’t mean I wished it. I’m just shocked they could even come onto the land.”

“But that general did during the war, right? He helped you.”

Arc opened the small side door for them, and they stepped into the warmth of the palace. “Ryton, yes. But he had help from some dark magic.”

“If Lilia died and the earth took the sea folk’s well, then this must be good magic, from the Source, right?”

Vahly shrugged as Arrosa grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the great hall. “I suppose. I really don’t know.”

“Look. They’re withering. Fading. Even though they seem to be able to breathe, eat our food, and drink fresh water, they’re just…

dying.” Arrosa’s fingers dug into Vahly’s arm as the younger woman looked across the hall and the many pallets where sea folk lay with eyes shut, shivering.

Arrosa’s gaze pinned one spot near two tables that had been brought out and set with clean cloth and bowls of water.

“Is that the one you’re taken with?” Vahly asked quietly, her stomach fluttering as if she were the one newly in love.

It was fascinating how she felt for her children; their joy and pain were as piercing as her own, if not more so.

Having children was like watching her soul walk around with no care for her own pain. It was gut-wrenching. It was glorious.

Arrosa spun to look at Vahly. “Me?”

Vahly almost laughed. That look was the same one Arrosa had used when she used to sneak Nix’s chocolate scorchpeppers. It was amazing the girl still had an intact human-ish stomach.

“No,” Arrosa lied. “I’m just worried. But he, I suppose …Dimitris, he is so kind, and even though he only speaks a little dragon, I can still tell what type of kynd he is. A good one…I…” Her cheeks went cherry red.

Arc reached across Vahly to touch Arrosa’s hand. “It’s all right. We will see what we can do for him, for all of them.”

The air smelled of sickness, sour and thick. Vahly followed Arrosa to the male she’d obviously grown attached to, then she knelt at his pallet.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Vahly asked.

His head felt hot, as if he had a fever.

She turned and waved to Enekia, offspring of one of the Call Breakers and the one palace servant who always seemed to be where she needed to be.

Vahly was incredibly grateful that she’d decided to work here.

“Please put out the fire. It’s sweltering in here with all these bodies.

And get someone to open the high window. ”

Dimitris coughed and wheezed as his lips parted. “No strength.” He reached for Vahly’s hand and placed it back on his head. A weak smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Your magic. Strength.”

Arc folded his arms and chewed his lip. “So Queen Vahly gives you strength? She,” he said pointing to her, “gives you strength?”

“Father,” Arrosa said, “he isn’t an experiment. He is a person.”

“Of course, of course. I didn’t intend to sound cold. I’m sorry, Dimitris.”

But the sea kynd male obviously had no idea what Arc and Arrosa were going on about. The poor fellow had shut his eyes, squeezing them tightly like he was in pain. Vahly stood to leave, but he grabbed her tunic, and his eyes flashed open.

“Here. Need. Magic.”

Enekia had flown up to the high window, and a wind gusted through, guttering the oil lamps hanging from the walls and whipping through Arc’s jet hair. He tilted his head, then looked at Vahly.

“The wind speaks.”

Vahly’s magic rose inside her. “And my magic is trying to tell me something too.”

Arc fisted a hand and held it to his mouth. “The Sacred Oak waits for you.”

Her power threaded through her veins, and she felt as though she’d had a shot of dropcider. “Well, I think my magic agrees.”

After making sure the sea folk were as comfortable as they could be in the situation, Vahly and Arc left for the Oak.

Kyril flew them over the towering treetops.

The wind tossed beeches and made their winter-dried, pale orange leaves rattle.

Pines swayed below them and threw clumps of snow onto the forest paths far below.

Vahly squinted and could make out a large clearing and the slate roof of the twins’ project, which extended all the way to a copse of birches.

She twisted to glance at Arc. “The twins have been busy.”

“They’ve been digging up those powerful stones again.”

“The Blackwater agates?”

“Have you named them, Earth Queen?” He nuzzled her neck. “The boys say they have spirit.”

“They do. The earth magic in them, the strength, as Arrosa’s new friend would say, is powerful. Don’t you feel it?”

“I haven’t held one yet. The twins took me to their new tree palace when I was here last.”

“Spirit agate.” The stones shimmered just like the Source’s spring had that fateful day when she’d risked all and washed in the rainbow-flecked water that had woken her magic.

“That’s what those stones should be called.

” The spring that had been in the Forest of Illumahrah forever had disappeared after the flood.

Perhaps the stones held an echo of its power?

“A fine name,” Arc said.

“How is their work on their new home coming along?”

His chest moved against her back as he chuckled. “They have a grand taste like their Granddragon Amona.”

“She would’ve been proud.”

Kyril veered eastward, and Arc’s leg muscles tensed against Vahly’s.

“They talked everyone into helping,” Arc said over the wind. “Even Zuzan picked up a shovel.”

Vahly smiled sadly, already missing Zuzan. She didn’t think he would be returning anytime soon. “Miracles abound here.”

“Now there’s a full court with stone pillars, a floor of carved tiles, and the walls are decorated with live birch trees. They plan to place rubies in every doorknob.”

“They tried to talk me into shaping the palace for them, you know.” Vahly leaned close to Kyril’s neck as he began the descent through the canopy toward the Sacred Oak. “I thought it would be good for those two to learn how to work hard with their hands instead of relying on my magic.”

“Oh, they told me all about your horrible attitude,” Arc said, laughing.

“Little beasts.”

“Not so little anymore.”

Kyril landed softly on the snow-crusted ground near the Sacred Oak’s roots. Fall leaves poked through the blanket of white and crunched under Vahly’s and Arc’s boots as they approached. A hum of power and rightness flowed from the tree to fill Vahly with peace and courage.

Kyril growled deep in his throat.

A shape moved beside the Oak’s trunk.

Vahly stopped and put a hand to Arc’s chest. “Someone’s there.”

“It’s a sea kynd female. Or…” He lifted his nose, his nostrils flaring as he used that wild elven sense of smell he had. “A different sort of creature. A spirit?”

“Who is there?” Vahly drew her oaken sword and held it ready. If anyone dared to damage this tree, there would be blood.

Ungainly and wheezing, the figure moved in the shade of the snow-clad boughs. Arc spun a globe of light and curled shadows around his long fingers.

“Peace, gryphon, king, and queen.” A woman without eyes shuffled out of the shade and into the dappled sunlight.

Gills undulated along her neck, though they seemed too small to have the ability to keep a full-grown woman alive.

Her hair was a tangled nest of silver, and her gnarled fingers gripped a strange cloak over her skeletal frame.

Kyril’s fur stood on end, and he puffed out his head feathers. He showed Vahly an image of him pinning a deer by the throat with his beak.

Vahly set a hand on his pelt to hold him back. “Who are you, and why are you here in our sacred place?” she asked.

“Your place?” she said, continuing in the dragon language. “The Sacred Oak belongs to no one.” She cackled a laugh, then cocked her head like she was studying them. “You have seen the ones I lived with for an eon? I smell them on you.”

Arc still held his magic at hand. If he didn’t trust this crone, Vahly didn’t either. “State your business or be gone,” she snapped.

“The sea folk have changed,” the crone said in her rasping voice.

Vahly could almost hear the ocean’s currents in her words, a sound similar to what she’d heard when she’d been a sea kynd herself and working their form of magic.

“Some have become lowbeasts and have lost their ability to think about thinking. They swam into the deepest parts of the wide ocean, and their bones bend to become foreign to ones who had once known them. The others crawled ashore as Ryton once did.”

A chill shook Vahly. “You’re the Watcher.” The Watcher had given Ryton that horrible thing that he’d worn on his back in order to be able to walk on land and breathe what he called raw air.

Kyril stepped closer, his wings spreading a fraction and his eyes narrowed.

Arc’s eyes widened as he stared at the Watcher. “Is this the first time you’ve left the sea?” His magic faded as his scientific curiosity took over.

“That was dark magic you put on Ryton.” The black beast on his shoulders had exuded an evil that had been more frightening than Astraea.

“It was,” the Watcher said. “But it worked for good, did it not?”

Vahly sighed and sheathed her sword.

The Watcher turned toward Arc. “This is not the first time I have walked on the land. I once lived here with the oak, long before your kynd became dragons, sea folk, and human mages. When there were only elves and they didn’t yet keep records in scrolls.”

Arc knelt and looked up at the Watcher like the crone had all the answers. He was practically salivating. Vahly fought a grin.

“What language did our predecessors speak? Did they live here, in Illumahrah? How many were there? Did they find that gold and copper conducted their magic across longer distances?”

Vahly set a hand on his back, a grin tugging at her mouth. “Simmer down, King Arcturus. One question at a time.”

The Watcher gave Arc a smile, then adjusted her cloak. It seemed to be made of a wide-leafed seaweed. “A language you do not know. Yes, they lived here. There were scores of them, far more than you could fathom. No, they had no interest in toying with magic the way you and your mate do.”

“I wouldn’t call it toying, but…” Arc braced his hand on his knee and stood, his face bunched.

Vahly shook her head. “Watcher, will you live on land now? As long as you swear to avoid using dark magic, we welcome you.”

The Watcher bowed at the waist, then looked up, her face shifting like she could see. “Thank you, Earth Queen. I will be here, but not here.” She turned and walked to the Sacred Oak, then faced them, her back against the trunk.

Vahly and Arc stepped closer. The Watcher’s face was shadowed by the broad limbs of the tree. Snow caught in her hair and pale eyelashes, and small clumps of icy flakes gathered along the shoulders of her cloak.

“To answer you, King and Queen, I am here to spill words into ears that will listen, to hearts that long for knowledge.” The Watcher lifted her chin so that the wrinkled column of her neck showed above a scar that marked her pale skin just below her collarbones.

“ I of the deeps,

Of the dreams,

Of the seas,

I speak.

Listen, if you will.

Dragons shed their mortal guise,

To live immortal in stormy skies.

Only some will last the years,

But they feel not your small fears.

Sea kynd cast off gill and fin,

Wont to live in the bright land’s din.

All will bond with royal blood,

Some will take the power of the flood.

Elf and mage magic bind,

To bring the races fae, elf, new kynd.

Generations build in my mind’s eye,

Strife and war and joy, they sigh.

Bless the sea folk with your sword.

Light the new way with your word.

It is good, my king, my queen.

This is the last I will be seen. ”

Vahly’s lungs emptied. Shaking, she reached out a hand, but the Watcher’s body faded, her face, her cloak, her gnarled fingers. The Sacred Oak trembled, and its power surged, flushing Vahly’s cheeks and appearing to soak in the Watcher’s final silhouette, the last of her energy.

Silence rang.

Bless the sea folk with your sword. That was the line of the Watcher’s prophecy that pealed through Vahly’s mind.

Arc took Vahly’s outstretched hand and held it firmly, the pulse in his wrist rapping against hers.

Then a firebird with feathers like the twins’ favorite gem landed on the branch above the Watcher’s footprints. The bird trilled, and the rest of the forest came back to life, chirping and scuttling and rustling.

Kyril pecked at prints the Watcher had left in the snow, then leapt at the bird.

Vahly couldn’t seem to move. Her limbs were stiff, and her heart jumped like a frightened hare. Arc took her into his arms and held her tightly, his hands bunching into her cloak and snagging on her baldric.

“I think it’s time for a party,” he whispered into her hair.

A hysterical laugh bubbled out of her. “That is not what I expected you to say after a magical crone pretty much told us we are the last of the world’s strong magic and that everything we know will be changed forever.”

“I aim to keep you on your toes, my love.” He looked down at her face, his gaze on her lips.

She rose up on the tips of her boots and kissed him. The feel of his arms around her chased some of the cold away. This kiss felt as much like a beginning as a wedding, charged as they were to bring forth a new world, new in ways she never could’ve imagined.

They broke apart, and Vahly patted Arc’s muscled chest. “We have a serious to-do list, my king. Let’s go.”

She leapt onto Kyril’s back, and soon they were all three in the sky and heading for home.