The rain is a cool balm to her fever the day they bury her mother. The princess stands with her father, his most trusted lords and ladies, and the royal staff further behind them. The rain mixes with her tears, crashing down onto her black cloak in a dance of grief and wet. The usual high fashion she would wear is muted now—a simple black dress, without the frills or the cage skirts to get the appropriate silhouette. Her cloak covers her folded blue wings. More appropriate for mourning, sure, but she misses the bright colors and bustle-skirts.

A dour grasshopper Sykorde woman in a long black dress recites the last rites of the queen. She has green skin, no hair, long antennae, and like the princess, her cloak covers her folded wings. She holds a small book in her four hands, though she doesn’t read from it.

“Taikka, Thorn of the World and Mother of Magic, we ask that you keep this soul and guide her safely to your realm,” she calls.

A wave of dizziness, a side-effect of her fever, makes the princess stumble. Her father tightens his grip around her shoulders to keep her steady. She lets her heartbreak surge in her, sobbing hard, to cover the stumble, not wanting him to ask her if she’s all right—not wanting to put any more strain on her father. When the dizziness passes, she rights herself, though now that she’s let her sadness out she doesn’t know how to reign it in. Her mother is dead. Her guiding light in the world has been snuffed out, and far before her time. All races in Terraia measure their lives in spans of 25 year cycles; Fae live 500 years and so have 20 Life-Cycles. Her mother had only barely begun her 12th.

The princess was meant to spend many more years with her mother, but now all of that is gone, shattered by something as simple as an illness.

The funeral goes on, until the princess is bone dry from crying, hollowed out to her core. She’s sure she’ll cry more later, she’ll never run out of tears for her mother, but as the funeral ends she’s more weary than anything else. As she steps into the palace, the heat overwhelms her, and she longs for the coolness of the rain outside. It’s the fever, she thinks to herself. She knows she should tell someone, but she can’t bear to bring that kind of grief or panic to her father, not today. She dismisses herself to her room, and once there, she strips down to her shift and sits in the rain out on her balcony until the sun goes down.

For days, the princess feels as though her veins are boiling. The fever runs through her, but she tells no one, not wanting to be a burden in these hard times.

A week after her mother’s funeral, she collapses while walking down the hall to breakfast. The automaton Guardian rolling next to her is the only one to witness it, and the machine screams loudly as its metal arms pick her up. Her body is burning. If she had enough awareness, she would raise her voice and scream, too, but nothing is inside of her now. Her vision swims, and she feels sweat break out across her forehead, and down the back of her neck.

Someone yells her name, but she can’t make out who.

“Quarantine the king and his servants! I want healers with him as soon as possible.”

“And the princess?”

“Leave her to me. I’ll take her out of the palace. Perhaps the countryside will be good for her health. The king may join us when he is checked for this illness and cleared.”

“Yes, doctor Ellesen.”

The princess comes in and out of consciousness for several days, but eventually she breaks through to find her father standing with doctor Ellesen, both of them wearing masks that cover their mouths and nose. The room she’s in is small and unfamiliar.

“This mage of yours you’ve found will come soon?” her father asks.

“He will.”

“Daddy?” the princess calls, her voice weak, and muffled by the cloth mask she now realizes is over her own face as well.

He turns to her, stepping forward, but he doesn’t touch her. “Sweetheart. How do you feel?”

“Tired,” she says, and then a cold fear pierces through her heart. “A—am I dying?”

She had suspected that her sickness might have been what her mother had, but she didn’t want to admit it. She simply had a cold, she told herself, and she could tell her father she wasn’t feeling well when they had gotten through the funeral.

“Oh, no, of course not, sweetheart. You’re going to be just fine,” her father reassures her, but she can see the worry in his blue eyes.

“Am I sick like mommy was?” she asks. There was no cure for her, and she may only be ten—not even halfway through her first life-cycle—but she’s old enough to know what that would mean for her.

Her father takes a deep breath. “Yes, my sweet. But the doctor here has found a way to save you.”

“He has?” Hope flickers to life within her, marred by the anger that he could not do this for her mother as well. “What will he do?”

A strange mix of things that she cannot read flash behind her father’s eyes. He steps away, and doctor Ellesen steps forward.

“You’re going to go to sleep for a little while,” the doctor says. He holds up a clear mask that has wires attached to it. “We’ll put this on you to make sure you can still breathe.”

The fear doesn’t subside. “And then I’ll be better?”

“Yes, dear,” her father says, his voice tight. “And then you’ll be all better.”

Ever since her mother died, Lucy has toyed with the idea of telling the truth. Would it fix anything? Change things? Or would it only make it all so much worse? 

The palace is stifling today. Pink streamers and blue balloons decorate the hallways. Every servant, teacher, and nobility she passes gives her a bright smile, as if tomorrow is something to celebrate. For Lucy, all she can think about is her grades, and how each one gives her more reason to compare herself—more reason she’s going to fail at guiding this kingdom. The king never had anything less than straight A’s. Lucy isn’t made for this life. A different princess would be better in her role. 

As Lucy slips out of her second to last class of the day, she only thinks about escape. Her skin is clammy, and the bright decorations that popped up overnight and keep popping up make her eyes hurt. Her Guardian is at her side, as always, and as soon as she gets to an empty hallway, she stops and slips into a servant’s passage. The Guardian waits outside, its metal face-plate enchanted only to see faces and not the difference between a door to the small hallways hidden in the castle, and a classroom. 

Lucy slips away through secret passages she’s known since she was young, coming up to the next hidden door, thankful she didn’t run into any servants and have to explain herself. Most days she can smile and pretend, but today she can’t keep up the facade. Today—her birthday—Lucy wishes she could slip out of her skin and give it to someone else. She wishes another girl could swoop in and take her place, so she wouldn’t have to be the princess anymore. 

She pushes open the flush door slightly, peeking out to make sure the hallway is empty. When she’s sure it is, she steps out, then extends her blue moth wings. Just another thing she’s stolen; Terraia myth suggests that all Fae features and lands were taken from others. In Lucy’s case, the luna moth shape of her wings were, of course, stolen from the insect-like Sykorde people. 

Lucy flies up to the high vaulted ceilings and flies along the rafters, out of sight of any guards. In a stretch where there aren’t any human guards, a Guardian rolls down the hall on a gold cased wheel. A metal pole stretches from the wheel to connect its metal torso, its arms hanging limply at its side. Automatons like this are top of the line, found only within noble households, and used to further the security of the building. Guardians are fast and strong, and their screams can call anyone within miles. Without a neck, it can’t look up to see her flying, though it can register movement all around it. 

The Guardian stops below her, and Lucy prays to the Thorn that it doesn’t see the movement of her wings keeping her afloat, or the gentle swaying of her skirt. She holds her breath. If it screams, it’ll alert every guard in the palace, and her chances of slipping away unnoticed will be gone. 

After a few agonizing moments, it rolls away, and Lucy lets out a breath of relief. She needs to get out of the castle. The air is too hot, the walls too oppressive. The last thing she needs is a guard following her around town, or worse: the king trying to comfort her. 

Lucy flies on toward her bedroom. Her next class starts now, one with the other young nobility, and after she’ll be expected to dine with the king. After yet another failure in class—her grade on the financial proposal for the kingdom just another abysmal score in a long list of them—she can’t fathom sitting among her peers knowing how much smarter they are. And with her birthday tomorrow, she can’t stand sitting with the king for dinner. She can’t add to his disappointment at a time like this. She’s supposed to make him proud, but she’s failed over and over again over the past ten years.

As she touches the ground in front of her bedroom, the eye-sore sea of flowers and streamers and notes and balloons that decorate her door greeting her, a voice from down the hall calls to her. “Princess!” 

Lucy tenses, but forces herself to put on a smile and turn to the guard. “Yes?” 

He’s young, maybe twenty-seven—just out of his first Life-Cycle and now considered an adult. His Scillir features remind Lucy of a lizard, his brown and green scales glinting from the sunlight that streams through a nearby window. 

“Should I escort you to class, princess?” he asks. ‘Shouldn’t you be in class?’ he means. 

Lucy’s cheeks heat red and she searches for an explanation for why she’s wandering around the castle. a cleverer girl would have an excuse right away. A proper princess would have enough confidence to keep her head up and tell the guard he had no business questioning her—and she’d probably be right. 

“I—um. I was just going to change before I met my father for dinner,” Lucy lies. She chastises herself for stumbling over her words. If she can’t even get through a conversation with a guard without stumbling, how is she meant to rule a whole kingdom one day? 

“Right, of course.” He bows to her, then continues on his way down the hall. 

Lucy shakes her head at herself. He didn’t believe her, obviously, and now he’ll go off and tell someone. ‘The princess is once again slinking around the palace like a peasant’. With a sigh, she walks into her bedroom. 

Lucy sheds her fancy dress like a snake sheds skin and slips on a dress several years out of fashion, the pink faded and a few buttons missing. She removes all her jewelry and takes her hair out of its elegant updo, until she doesn’t look like a princess anymore. Until she doesn’t feel like one. Then she goes to her balcony and steps off to fly out toward the surrounding city of Lukios. 

Flying usually helps calm Lucy, but right now, looking at the citizens of Inklinet’s capital city going about their daily lives below only makes her feel worse. They deserve better than her. Every paper she hands back to her professors proves how incompetent she will be. 

Lucy dips low enough to hear music from street performers, louder chatter, and the rumble of steam engines in automobiles. She smells wood smoke from the chimneys of restaurants, salt from the sea, and clean fresh air. She would give anything to be one of them. Just a citizen in the streets. As she flies, Lucy passes a dozen other flying Fae and Hikaine. Many of them smile at her as they fly by, unaware that she’s the princess who is going to be their ruin. She was announced only five years ago, her name finally shared with the public, and in five more years she will be formally introduced to society. Until then, there are no public portraits or photographs of her, and her blonde hair and blue eyes are fairly common. On her good days, flying around unknown like this gives her a sense of freedom, but today she only feels like an imposter. 

She takes the long way around, flying closer to the sea. There’s a ship coming into port there, a Nymph woman at the helm. Goggles rest on top of her dark braided hair. Her blue skin is a few shades darker than the waters she traverses. She stands with an ease Lucy has never felt, and she wonders what a life as a sailor is like. Does that captain relish the freedom she has? Does she know what others—what Lucy—would do for the chance to see the world or to escape into the vast oceans of Terraia and disappear? 

Shaking the thoughts from her mind, Lucy flies back to the center of town and touches ground in front of a quaint shop called Mr. Ritcher’s Cogs, Clocks, and Toys. It’s squished between a jewelry store and a bakery—the smell of sweet sugar and hot bread floats through the air to her. She folds her wings against her back and looks around. She doesn’t have to be a sailor to know obscurity. What might it be like to be a citizen of her kingdom? To go back to the farm, to live and die with only the responsibility of herself to manage? 

Across the street, a handsome Serraide man walks down the street, his legs that of a goat, his hooves clicking against cobblestone. His horns curve backward, the same shade as his deep brown hair. He bumps into a passing Elfen woman, and she doesn’t notice, but he slips the silver bracelet off her wrist as apologies fall from his lips. Even that, Lucy thinks, would be preferable to her own life. To know that any trouble she gets into is on her alone and wouldn’t affect the fate of those who live within Inklinet. If she were a commoner, a thief—or more of a thief than she already is—her crimes would land only her in prison, while the rest of the world kept spinning without her. 

Lucy pushes open the door to Mr. Ritcher’s shop, the corner of the door ringing the bell above her. Ticking gears fills the air. Display tables hold wooden and mechanical toys, along with varying kinds of clocks. From his counter at the far end of the room, Mr. Ritcher looks up from the mechanical cat he’s fiddling with. 

“Lucy,” he says warmly. His pale lips curve into a smile beneath his wide, black, beak-ish nose. 

He looks like she does, which is to say they share the standard features that unite everyone on Terraia: bipedal, a torso, at least two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. What sets them apart are the details. Lucy’s Fae signifiers are her pointed ears, stolen from the Elfs, and her moth wings. As a Hikaine, Mr. Ritcher resembles a bird. Black feathers mix with his white skin—more feather on his chest and arms and more skin around his hands and face. His black hair is more feather than hair and he’s tucked his black wings down against his back. His feet are talons, so he doesn’t wear shoes.

Lucy stops in front of his counter and he reaches over to take her hands in his. “How are you?”

Lucy bites her lip, keeping herself from bursting out into childish tears. It’s always harder to keep it together around Mr. Ritcher. She’s known him since she was little; he was a close friend of her mothers. When she can’t talk to the king, she knows she will always be able to confide in him. 

“Tomorrow is . . .” she chokes on her words, but he’ll know what she means, so she skips past it. “And I just can’t help but feel like I don’t belong here. I’m going to lead the kingdom into financial ruin or—or to a war we can’t win. Or something else decidedly stupid because I shouldn’t be king.” 

Mr. Ritcher pulls her around the counter so he can bring her into the warmest hug she’s had in a while. She melts into it. 

“You belong in that castle just as much as anyone else,” he says gently, his deep voice rumbling through his chest against her cheek. “And you’ve still got time, crumpet. You don’t have to be ready right away. The king is in good health, and though he’s in his 13th Life-Cycle, he doesn’t have to retire right away. You have time. When you take his place as king, you’ll be ready. You have such a big heart, like your mother. You’ll make every decision with the people in mind, and that is so much more valuable than anything you can learn.” 

Good health now doesn’t mean good health forever, she wants to argue. Sickness can kill a king as easily as a blade can. The future isn’t certain, and in five years if anything happens to him, she’ll be expected to step up. 

“Until I bankrupt the kingdom,” Lucy grumbles into his chest, thinking back to her proposal earlier in the day, which she’d gotten a dismal A-minus on. “Or make some other terrible decision that leads us to ruin.” 

“You’ll be fine. What would your mother say?” 

Lucy pulls away enough to shrug. “You’d know better than me.” 

She only got ten years with her mother, and she hadn’t needed to worry about anything that young. Lucy doesn’t know what her mother might say about her concerns now. 

Mr. Ritcher puts a hand on her shoulder, and she looks up into his kind, yellow eyes. “She’d tell you that you’re too hard on yourself. She’d tell you to stop worrying so much.” 

She starts to say, I don’t know how to stop worrying, but her words get lost in the air as someone walks into the store. A young Elf woman wearing messenger blue and with several brass cannisters of letters on her belt walks up to the counter. She nods respectfully at him as she pulls a page bound in brown leather out of a cannister and gives it to him. 

“For you, Mister,” she says. 

“Thank you kindly.” He fetches a few gold pieces from his pocket and drops them in her hand. 

As she leaves, he gestures to the sitting room at the back of his shop. “Why don’t I make you a cup of tea?” 

She leaves Mr. Ritcher’s shop feeling no better than before, and flies back to her balcony, wishing more than ever that someone else could come down and take her place as princess. She changes back into her princess costume, donning her jewelry and sweeping her hair up as best she can. When she gets to her door, she hears voices outside and stops. They’re muffled, but it sounds like the king and someone vaguely familiar. It sounds heated. 

Slowly, Lucy opens the door enough to let the voices in, but not draw attention. She doesn’t risk peeking out to see who it is. 

“I’m not saying to empty out the treasury. I’m just saying to give me a ship and a few good men and let me see—” 

“It has been a decade, Doctor. I expected you to find me something real with the time and resources I’ve given you. Perhaps it’s time I found a new doctor? One who might actually give me results?” Lucy has never heard the king this angry in all her life. What could they be talking about to prompt this reaction from him? 

“Please, your majesty, I saved her life—” 

The king laughs harshly. “Saved her life? She is as good as dead to me! And if what you said about your machine is true, she will be within the year. Now, you can get back to work and save her before then, or I can find someone who will. Yes?” 

Muted, the Doctor says, “Yes, your majesty.” 

Their footsteps walk away from the door, but Lucy isn’t breathing. Save her? For ten years, Lucy has lived a life that isn’t her own. Could . . . could it really be true that there might be a way out of it? 

When life gets maddening, Mireya turns to the sea. Which is easy enough to do given she spends more time on her ship than on land. 

They’ve only just docked in Lukios when the metallic bird delivers its message. Mireya grips the paper tight in her hand, the words seeming to burn into her blue skin. They might as well. She won’t need to read the words again. 

Hellhallow spotted on a dock on the western coast of Dyrae. 

One sentence and two words that catch her breath in her throat. Hellhallow spotted. It’s the first solid sighting of him in years if the note is true. 

“Penny for your thoughts, Captain?” Elizabeth, Mireya’s trusted second, slides up next to her. 

Mireya silently hands her the note, and she swears she sees the imprint of the sprawled, black cursive on her palm. Out in the water, a dragon pokes its head up, looks around, then disappears back beneath the waves, checking up on the land dwellers. It might be curious about the new ships coming into port, or it might belong to an Aglicean who lives down below. It’s appearance is the only thing that reminds her she’s docked. She’s in Mighet. She was here for a reason. 

Elizabeth lets out a long whistle before handing the note back. “You believe it?” 

“I have no reason not to.” Mireya pockets the note and leans against the rail of her ship, watching the waves lap at the side. As the sun sets, the water is dark enough to match her skin. One and the same. 

“Shall I tell Kunala to redirect our course?” There’s a note in Elizabeth’s tone that harmonizes with the one in Mireya that longs to have Hellhallow’s blood beneath her fingernails. 

Mireya shakes her head. Behind her, the crew works diligently to get things ready for the morning. Shipments promised to a few trusted fences in town, some set to be delivered further into Mighet to different kingdoms. Then there’s the routine maintenance to do.

“No. We stick to our current plan,” Mireya decides. 

Elizabeth puts a hand on her shoulder, as comforting as a sibling. “The crew wouldn’t mind—” 

“I know, Liza.” Mireya’s crew would back her through anything. She’s been good to them, built trust over the last decade, and she knows they’d follow her into the depths of hell. “But we’re not ready.” 

Hellhallow may be a retired pirate hunter, but he’s still legendary. He’s taken down some of the most fearsome pirates who ever lived. Elizabeth knows this more than most. She may only be two Life-Cycles older than Mireya, but that still means she’s been alive decades longer—long enough to have sailed on this ship when it still belonged to Mireya’s mother. 

“Ready or not, we know where he is. If we don’t take this shot, we might not find him for a while,” Elizabeth points out. 

“And if we go after him now, he could kill us all,” Mireya counters. “We follow the plan. Get the map, get the treasure, and go from there. We’ll hunt down Hellhallow when I know we’re ready to.” 

As much as Mireya wishes to strangle the pirate hunter, she knows she’s only half the pirate her mother was. She needs to be stronger. Her crew needs to be stronger. They’re too fresh to get into a fight like that. She’ll wait until Mr. Ritcher sends word he has her map, and they’ll set off. 

Elizabeth’s brown eyes pierce her, as fiery as any Adere Elf, and Mireya thinks she’s going to argue, but she simply shakes her head and looks at the crew. “Aye, captain.” 

“We’ll get him eventually,” Mireya promises. 

Elizabeth takes a deep breath, surveying the crew. A strand of her dirty blonde hair slips free of her long braid. “You realize the longer you run from what haunts you, the longer it will tear you apart.” 

“I’m not haunted,” Mireya says. 

“We’re all haunted by something,” Elizabeth says, but she leaves it at that as she steps away to join the others. 

Mireya sighs. Anger swirls in her blood, and she pounds her fist on the railing. She wants to agree with Elizabeth. She wants to follow the lead back to Dyrae and find him. 

Soon, she tells herself. Once she gets this treasure, she’ll be ready.