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For one sickening heartbeat there was nothing but black water and freezing air beneath my feet before we landed heavily on the opposite deck.

“You could have warned me,” I gasped, shoving his shoulder as he set me down.

Helion chuckled, holding a hand against his shoulder as if I’d actually hurt him.

“Riven.” A quiet, wonder-filled voice made me still.

Selkie sat cross-legged near the base of the mast. Her only movement were here purple eyes, framed with frosted lashes tracking our movements.

Her lilac hair stirred around her face despite the lack of wind, and her hands rested loosely against her knees.

“Selk,” Helion greeted softly as he crouched beside her. “I’m just Helion now. Turns out I don’t need to pretend to be someone else.”

Their voices dropped too low for me to hear, and Selkie’s gaze flicked towards me. A strange unease crawled across my skin.

“Cerilla is below deck,” he said louder, half looking over his shoulder at me. “Third door on the right.”

Grateful that he clearly had no intention of following me, I hurried towards the narrow doorway that led below deck.

Each step groaned beneath my weight as I descended the stairs, carrying me closer to the woman who betrayed my trust.

The air grew colder the deeper I went, thick with damp wood, salt, and something faintly metallic.

I blinked, eyes adjusting to the darkness. There were no candles lit to guide my way, only the dull light filtering in from gaps in the pale wood.

I stopped outside the third door, letting out a heavy breath while my hand hovered over the handle.

I hadn’t forgiven her for taking me from Rythos, but she would do anything for him. Which meant she was the only option to help me end my life to fix this fucking mess.

I pushed the door open, the wood groaning on unused hinges that echoed through the hallway.

Cerilla sat on the edge of the narrow bed with her hands resting in her lap, shoulders drawn tight beneath the weight of a silence that seemed far too large for such a small room.

If she was surprised to see me, she did not show it.

Her gaze travelled slowly over me before returning to my face, lingering there as though she were trying to decide how much I already knew. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, shutting out the groan of the ship and the muffled movement beyond the corridor until there was nothing left but the two of us and the uncomfortable silence.

“Did you know I created the monsters?”

Something flickered across her face then, small and sharp enough that I almost missed it, a fracture in the careful mask she wore before it disappeared behind the same guarded stillness.

“Yes.”

The word struck harder than I expected, not because I hadn’t suspected the answer, but because some foolish part of me had still hoped I was wrong.

She knew this whole time that I had been the one to create the curse plaguing Rythos in the first place.

I stared at her, waiting for explanation, denial, anything that might soften the edges of that single word, but Cerilla held my gaze without flinching.

“Did you know I broke the throne? That I am the reason the kingdoms are dying?”

A pause followed, barely more than the space between one breath and the next, but I saw the answer in the way her fingers tightened against the fabric beneath them.

“Yes.”

My stomach twisted, dread curling through me like dark water finding every crack it could seep into, because every truth she gave me seemed to uncover another one beneath it.

“Then you will help me, or I will tell Rythos that you knew and kept it from him.”