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That was the danger of magic created for a purpose other than mine. It did not care what I wanted or even what I needed. Only what I was capable of.

When I walked out of the hut on the morning of the fourth day Eravic was at the water's edge.

He turned when he heard me. He looked at my eyes and went very still.

"Your pupils," he said.

"White?" I said.

"White," he said.

We looked at each other.

"Did things change for you?" I said.

"Yes."

"What changed?"

He crossed to me in two strides and took my face in his hands and I did not step back.

"Everything," he said. His voice was rough in a way I had not heard from him before. He was close enough that I could feel his breath and he did not move away and neither did I.

"I have always been reasonable," he said. "Calm. Fair. Easygoing. That is what people say about me and they are not wrong." He exhaled. "There is nothing easygoing about this anymore."

I looked at him.

"And now I am something far worse than your husband or Teorin or Sevrin, Asharin."

"What do you mean?"

"They are all obsessed," he said. "They would follow you around the world to be near you." He pulled back just enough to look at me properly. "What I have is far different. Something I did not have until this very moment."

"What is that?"

"Resolve," he said.

We stood there looking at each other. The dark water moved behind him. The cold pressed in from every side.

"These past three days—" I started, then stopped myself.

"When you walk away today you may find that days or weeks or years pass and you can no longer⁠—"

I put my finger to his lips.

He stopped.

I looked at him for a long time. Then I took my hand away.

"If that day ever comes," he said quietly, "the truth still stands." He held my eyes. "My ship is always open to you. Whether you are a princess or a pauper or a mother or a grandmother or a nameless woman in the street with a veil or a frightened girl dressed in boys’ clothes at a tavern."

I looked at him one more time.

"Goodbye, Lord Vaelor," I said.

I turned and walked away and did not look back.

The Vaultline