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Kylian watches my face as I stop in front of him, then reaches out and brushes his knuckles over my cheek.

“Let him cool down,” he says. “He is hurt. Don’t chase him. Don’t give him the option of saying something he can’t take back. Just leave him be for now.”

All I can do is stare. “You’re being very understanding,” I say, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.

“I am trying very hard to be tolerable.”

I huff a breath that almost becomes a laugh, and the sound feels wrong with Arlo only a few steps away.

Kylian’s gaze moves briefly toward Arlo, then returns to mine. “He will come around,” he says.

“You really believe that?”

“I believe he loves you enough to be angry before he is understanding,” he replies.

The ship horn sounds before I can reply, long and low, and every person aboard seems to move faster at once.

Eagan calls for the last crates to be secured, and Garret orders the gangway cleared. Ropes are hauled loose from the posts, and the ship begins its slow turn away from the black cliffs of Sangremere.

I watch the cliffs shrink until the fields I healed are just a smudge of green against all that gray, and I have to remind myself the island will not fall apart the moment I turn my back on it.

Kylian left it in careful hands. He trusts our people to hold Sangremere together in his absence. They have orders to guard the new fields as fiercely as the walls, to keep the wells clean and the sick fed, and to send word if the rot tries to creep back.

“It will keep,” Kylian says quietly, following my gaze before the deck disappears above us, reading the worry through the bond the way he always does. “What you started does not need you standing over it to survive. You gave the island back to itself. It knows how to live now.”

It is strange to trust that something you built will go on growing without you, and stranger still that it is his voice steadying me while I learn to believe it.

***

Arlo stays with Eagan for most of the trip, helping the crew with anything that keeps his hands busy and his eyes away from me. Kylian is moving between the captain, Garret, and the maps spread over a table. He has circles and lines drawn over the path our missing supply ship took from Purgatory, and they’re trying to find the best route that doesn’t take us right into the approaching storm and avoid crossing paths with any of King Draven’s ships.

For the most part, I wander between the deck and our room, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Kylian doesn’t crowd me, but he never lets himself get too far either, and every time I feel the bond tug at his absence, he seems to find me.

As the sun begins to sink, I am near the stairs leading below deck when Eagan comes up too fast, making Kylian pause beside me.

“My king, a ship has been sighted west of us,” he says. Kylian’s head lifts at once.

“Kingdom crest?”

“Too far,” Eagan answers, his eyes briefly cutting to me. “The build looks like an Emberfall ship, but I cannot confirm if it’s Draven himself or just one of the kingdom’s cargo ships.”

Kylian’s jaw tightens. “It’s course?”

“East,” Eagan says. “Toward Avelvorn’s waters.”

The elven kingdom. The thought pulls me forward. Kylian turns, and shakes his head, stopping me.

“Go back to our room, Alessia,” he says. “It is cold, and there is nothing you can do on the deck.”

“I’m not going below deck while we have sights on an Emberfall ship,” I say, stepping around him, not allowing him to block me.

He curses, shrugging out of his coat and dropping it over my shoulders, using it to tug me to him. My head lifts to gaze up at him when he pinches my chin.

“You are impossibly stubborn.” His lips tug slightly as he leans down to brush his lips against mine softly.

“You knew that before you marked me,” I say, pulling him away.

Kylian smiles, and the sight makes my stomach flutter. “I had hoped my venom might improve your obedience.”