Time passed on the island, slow and healing.

  The grove shifted with it, gentle and forgiving. Rain fell sometimes in light sheets, warm and perfumed with jasmine. Other days, the sun stretched across the glade like a cat, lazy and indulgent.

  Lark began to sleep through the night.

  He still woke with his fists clutched sometimes, heartbeat thudding against nightmares—but fewer now. He stretched more, breathed deeper.

  Turaleth trained him when the weather allowed, which was most days—this was his domain, after all.

  The lessons were always unexpected.

  “Balance is not stillness,” the god said once, as he lazily stood atop a thin branch, pruning the overgrown leaves from the tree. “It’s knowing how to shift your weight. Like wind.”

  Lark had fallen out of the tree thirty seconds later, always landing on his feet.

  Other days, the training looked like dancing across slick stone paths with a rapier in hand, learning to move with the grace of the tide and not against it. One morning, Turaleth dumped a basket of fruit down a hill and told Lark to “catch as many as you can, or go hungry.”

  He ate well that day. Bruised, scratched, beaming.

  Azalea watched the lessons from the sidelines more often than not, resting in the shallows or among the shaded vines. But sometimes she’d comment—dryly, helpfully—correcting Lark’s footwork or catching a falter in his form. He always listened.

  She, too, was healing. Slowly.

  She no longer flinched at every loud noise, no longer kept her back to the wall. They learned to laugh more often. Sometimes with the nymphs, sometimes just the two of them, sprawled in the moss beside the sleeping pool, Lark telling stories with wild hand gestures and Azalea correcting his lies with a fond roll of her eyes.

  One evening, as stars bloomed overhead like pale fireflies, Lark asked how one acquired such an island. And Turaleth finally spoke of the past.

  “My grandmother,” he’d said, stirring the fire with a lazy wave of his hand, “gave me this exile like a bird nudges her kin from the nest. Not to punish—but to bless with the means to survive.”

  Lark, sprawled beside the fire with a tired smile, tilted his head. “Your grandmother?”

  “Eluun,” Turaleth said. “Mother of the Moon. Weaver of Stars. First Light of the Night.”

  Azalea raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a handful.”

  Turaleth grinned, teeth bright in the firelight. “She is. I was not always like this, you know. I fought. Bled. Marched beside my relatives in that forsaken war. But when Atherion’s wrath fell like a blade and Korvexia cried for help, I—“

  He trailed off. Not with shame, just tired memory.

  “I said no to both of them,” he said at last. “Atherion wanted me to starve mortals of Velmorien. Korvexia asked I bless them. I chose neither. They both called it betrayal.”

  “And your grandmother exiled you?” Lark asked softly.

  Turaleth shook his head. “She gave me sanctuary. A place to step back from the war. To learn the shape of peace.”

  He looked up at the stars. “This is not punishment. This is paradise.”

  Lark said nothing, just stared into the fire.

  But something had shifted in him, a slow unfurling. He no longer asked if he deserved to rest. He simply… did.

  And in doing so, began to change.

  The day Korvexia arrived was not preceded by trumpets or thunder, but by birdsong.

  Thousands of birds, in colors no birds should be—ultramarine and bleeding gold, coral pinks that shimmered like oil slicks, teal-black with lashes like feathers. They filled the trees and air like a riot of brushstrokes.

  The sky rippled, soft and wrong.

  Turaleth, lounging in a sun hammock suspended between two trees, exhaled long and slow, like a man receiving news he’d both dreaded and missed.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Ah. She’s early.”

  Azalea, sharpening a coral dagger on her knee, didn’t look up. “Who is?”

  Lark peeked out from behind a hanging curtain of moss, a half eaten mango in hand. “Are we being invaded? I am extremely shirtless for an invasion.”

  Then came the color. A flicker first, then a blur. Then a blooming, blooming explosion—petals and velvet, jangling bells and spinning silk. She rode in atop a living statue: a horse sculpted from broken amphorae and glass.

  Korvexia.

  The goddess herself.

  She wore madness like a perfume and art like a sickness. Her gown shifted shape as she moved, stitched from fragments of old tapestries, smudged sketches, and moth wings. Her hair spilled like unraveling ink, tipped in light. Her eyes, the color of pink—seemed to change with every blink.

  “Well,” she said, as her horse dissolved into a dozen doves behind her, “aren’t you both delicious.”

  Azalea’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  Lark bowed so fast he nearly tripped. “I bathed yesterday,” he said. “That’s probably it.”

  Korvexia laughed, letting go of a few snorts with it. Then, without asking, she kissed each of their foreheads—quick, fond, unsettling. Lark’s ears flattened, Azalea recoiled like she’d been branded.

  She turned to Turaleth, who still hadn’t opened his eyes. “Missed me?”

  “I can hear your ego shedding petals,” he replied, voice dry. “Like a diseased rose.”

  Korvexia collapsed into the hammock beside him, heedless of its limits. It lurched wildly under her weight, sending Turaleth groaning as they swung like wayward fruit.

  They bickered like relatives. Or old lovers. There really was no telling. Azalea stood like a statue of suspicion, dagger forgotten in her hand.

  Lark chewed on a mango seed, unsure whether to flee or fetch wine.

  Eventually, Turaleth summoned a second goblet with a flick of his hand and passed it to her.

  Korvexia took it and drank like it was nectar distilled from meaning itself.

  “The war’s moving again,” she said, voice drifting into the trees. She traced a looping shape in the air—two circles and a spiral that meant nothing and everything. “Across the eastern continent. Little rebel towns are burning. Such pretty colors when they die.”

  Azalea tensed, and Lark stilled his foot tapping.

  “The war?” he asked. His voice wasn’t fearful—just… small.

  Korvexia looked at him, really looked this time. “Elion’s faithful are tidying up,” she said. “Mortals picking sides. Picking swords. You know how it goes.”

  Her voice was soft now, like someone reminiscing at a funeral. Lark said nothing. His fingers tightened around the stem of his cup. It was as if Korvexia intended to remind him of Mara, his once friend. “Find her. Find Irene.”

  She’d instructed. The name of her daughter was a stone in his chest. His gaze drifted away—not just to the forest edge, but further, unsettled with the sudden reminder.

  Korvexia tilted her head, eyes dancing over him like a painter evaluating a half-finished canvas. “Wars don’t always wait for you to choose a side, you know. Sometimes they choose you.” She added.

  He met her gaze—startled, uncertain. And then, slowly, he smiled.

  “I don’t think I’m important enough for that.”

  Korvexia grinned, a flash of teeth, too many for one mouth.

  “Oh, darling,” she said, lifting her goblet. “It’s never about importance. It’s about being interesting.”

  She twirled her finger, and a flock of origami swans burst from Lark’s cup and scattered into the wind.

  Azalea muttered something about theatrics under her breath. And Turaleth, eyes now open, clinked his glass to hers.

  “You’re in rare form,” he said.

  “I’m always rare,” she replied, licking the rim of her goblet.

  The grove settled into evening, the sky painted in honey-pink and violet hues, the scent of warm leaves and distant citrus curling through the canopy. Turaleth and Korvexia could still be heard over the distance, while Lark and Azalea retired for the night.

  The hollowed-out tree they’d been calling home was just outside of his courtyard, carved gently by magic and time. Its bark shimmered faintly with bioluminescent moss, and the woven curtains of flowering vines glowed like sleeping lanterns.

  Lark ducked inside first, brushing off a stray petal. He’d been quiet the whole walk back.

  Azalea followed close behind, and for a moment they just stood there together—Lark, hand anxiously scratching the back of his neck. Azalea, eyeing him with a heavy amount of suspicion.

  “…I think I have to leave.”

  Azalea stepped around him slowly, eyes scanning his face. “What?”

  Lark winced. “I mean—I don’t want to. But I have to.” He ran a hand through his hair, pacing suddenly, tail twitching with agitation. “It’s been clawing at me since Korvexia showed up, and I know it sounds stupid, but I promised Mara—”

  “Mara?” Azalea echoed.

  “On the ship. That night. She—” He rubbed the back of his neck, flushed with frustration. “She told me to find her daughter, Irene. She didn’t say why. Just said I’d know. Said to tell her ‘I didn’t die soft’.” Lark explained, vaguely gesturing his hands into two quotation marks.

  Azalea sat slowly on the edge of their moss-covered hammock, her brow furrowed.

  “But Mara—she was older. Not ancient, but you know, weathered. I thought Irene was probably already grown, maybe with a family of her own. So I shelved it. Filed it under ‘strange dying requests I wasn’t qualified to answer.’”

  Lark gave a short, hollow laugh. “But Mara wasn’t stupid. She knew. Knew something would shift, knew I’d live long enough to matter.”

  He stopped, suddenly breathless. And Azalea looked up at him, her silver eyes sharp with regal tension.

  “So what?” she asked. “You’re going to run off across the sea because a dead woman made you promise something vague and cryptic?”

  Lark’s mouth tightened. “It’s not just that. The war’s moving. Korvexia said it herself. Velmorien’s boiling again. Irene’s out there, and maybe she’s a nobody, maybe she doesn’t even remember her mother, but—”

  He swallowed. “I do. And she asked me.”

  Azalea stood, her movement slow but pointed.

  “Lark,” she said softly, “you don’t owe her anything. You’re not—” she hesitated, then added with a touch too much venom, “—you’re not a pet anymore. Not a tool for people to wind up and send chasing ghosts.”

  That landed harder than she intended, Lark’s shoulders stiffened. He turned, eyes narrowed and unreadable. “That’s not what this is.”

  “Isn’t it?” Azalea asked. “Because it sounds like someone gave you a chain and now you’re yanking yourself along behind it.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m serious, Lark. You’ve changed here. You’ve healed. You’re becoming more than just the frightened boy who needed someone to tell him what to do next. You have a choice now. Stay. With Turaleth. With me.”

  The silence between them stretched taut, and Lark looked at her like she’d just struck him. His voice, when it came, was quiet. “You think I don’t want that?”

  Azalea didn’t answer.

  “I love it here. But I’m not safe here, not really. Not while there’s something out there that still needs me. I can’t sit in paradise while the storm rolls over everything I’ve ever known. I still have friends across the eastern continent—they could be dead, or dying, and I left them.”

  She opened her mouth, but he cut her off—softly. “I’m not running from this, Azalea. I’m running toward something.”

  He turned toward the window framed in vines, his profile catching in the light of the moon—illuminating the worry lines across his face. Azalea hadn’t seen him this unsettled since the shipwreck. She continued to watch him from the bed, silent.

  The hurt in her chest was not quite anger, not quite fear. But close, very close.