“Rhine… I think I lost the most important thing in my life.”
The sunset looked like a slow fire at the edge of the world, washing Dusk Isle’s beach in soft red. James—still more boy than man—sat in the sand, weeping over a girl he could feel in his memory but couldn’t name.
Beside him sat a bulging sack of pearls.
The rest of the Sunship’s crew weren’t doing much better. They stared at the sea with hollow eyes, each of them wearing the same stunned grief—like a dream had been ripped away while it was still warm.
Rhine picked up a pearl and rolled it between his fingers.
Perfect luster. Perfect round. Expensive enough to buy a small house in the right part of Windrest.
Merfolk were generous—when they felt like paying.
Unfortunately, a sack of jewelry didn’t do much for a broken heart.
James sniffed, eyes red. “I was… asleep, right? It felt like a dream. In the dream, there was a girl. She was so beautiful. She was so kind. She… she looked at me like I mattered.”
He clutched his chest as if the ache lived there. “Then you woke me up and she was gone. I keep trying to remember her face and it’s like my mind is sliding off it. Rhine, please—tell me where she went.”
Rhine opened his mouth, found nothing, and closed it again.
Skye, sitting beside him with far too much composure for someone who’d nearly been dragged into a mermaid mind-trap, nudged his ribs with her elbow.
When Rhine looked over, she tipped her chin at James, then at herself, her expression screaming: See? See how awful they are? Praise me. Right now.
Rhine answered by turning his palm over and showing her the pearl.
Wordless: They paid.
Skye’s mouth tightened. She let out a small “hmph” and turned away, offended on principle.
James’s crying immediately got louder, as if he’d sensed Rhine’s attention drifting to another “girl.”
“Okay,” Rhine said at last, aiming for gentle. “Listen. Merfolk enchantment doesn’t work the way human love does. What you felt was real, but it wasn’t… chosen. It was guided.”
James stared at him, helpless. “So she used me.”
Rhine didn’t deny it. He just didn’t know how to soften it without lying.
Earlier, he and Skye had returned from the temple to find the entire Sunship crew unconscious on the beach. Skye had explained it with a shrug: the merfolk had gotten what they wanted, then erased the memory to make it feel like a dream.
Rhine had stayed long enough to wake them. He still needed information.
And James—Bright Isle’s governor’s youngest son—was the kind of idiot who heard everything.
…
Night settled in. The Sunship’s deck filled with the smell of roasting meat.
Since it was too late to sail safely, James invited Rhine and Skye aboard for dinner—part gratitude, part embarrassment after learning Rhine was an awakened, and part desperate hope that Rhine knew some secret way to find the mermaid again.
Rhine didn’t want to waste time, but he had questions too.
He ate, listened, and waited for an opening.
When it came, he dropped his voice like it was casual.
“I heard the Black-White Court launched an ocean ship.”
James blinked. “You know about that?”
“I’ve been on the sea lately,” Rhine said. “Rumors travel.”
James leaned forward. “The Court is weird. They’re based on Bright Isle, but my father hardly deals with them.”
He glanced at his boatswain, who shook his head, and continued. “The dockmaster said their ship is probably heading toward Storm Island.”
Storm Island.
Rhine and Skye shared a quick look.
“Do they have holdings there?” Rhine asked.
“I don’t think so,” James said. “Unlike Violet Eye, the Black-White Court doesn’t run normal businesses. But they spend like money grows on coral. I have no idea where it comes from.”
He lowered his voice as if he was passing contraband.
“Every few years, someone defects. An Infiltrator. I’m guessing their rules are so strict they drive people insane.”
“Defectors,” Rhine repeated. “How do they handle them?”
James’s answer came fast. “They kill them. No mercy. The Court doesn’t do second chances.”
Rhine’s thoughts clicked into place.
A Soul-Eater, tainted by forbidden rites, hiding in Windrest.
A Black-White Court traitor… who somehow also wielded Soul-Eater arts.
Skye voiced the question before he could. “If he’s a traitor, he should be an Infiltrator. How can he be a Soul-Eater too?”
She paused, then her eyes widened with sudden certainty. “Unless he’s Abyssbound.”
Rhine nodded. “Infused with demon essence. Two aspects. Two paths.”
The idea tasted wrong in the mouth. It also explained too much.
…
Past midnight, Skye steered the Sunship into empty waters so they could teleport without witnesses.
Moonlight cut a silver trail across the swell. The sea was cold and quiet, and Rhine found himself staring out the cabin window, thinking about a traitor who wore two faces.
Another memory surfaced—one he couldn’t ignore.
“Skye,” he said, “how did that Abyssbound Hunter catch you in the first place?”
Skye’s hands tightened on the wheel. For a moment she didn’t answer.
She exhaled. “That… is a long story.”
So she told it.
Before Rhine ever stumbled into her contract ritual, Skye had been drifting through human society alone, low-ranked and hungry, hiding her true nature under fur and illusion.
She’d come to Storm Island for revenge.
No money. No allies. Just a reason sharp enough to keep her moving.
So she became a stray cat in Windrest and learned the city from gutters and rooftops.
That was how she found the convent.
There had been a girl there. A real Skye. Panglos Fell’s unwanted bastard daughter, living under the protection of the abbey’s walls with her mother.
Jory Fell—the governor’s favored bastard—saw her and decided he wanted her.
“He couldn’t force his way inside,” Skye said, voice tight with old anger. “There were guards. So he failed, and he got… creative.”
If Jory slept with his half-sister, it would be a scandal Panglos couldn’t allow.
So Jory’s mother—the governor’s mistress—poisoned the real Skye and her mother to protect Jory’s future.
Skye’s eyes went distant. “I was out gathering information. When I came back through the side gate, I found their bodies.”
No one had discovered the deaths yet.
So Skye made a decision.
She took the real Skye’s identity and stepped into Stormkeep’s shadow, carrying two vendettas at once—her own, and the dead girl’s.
“At first, I didn’t even know who did it,” Skye said. “So I kept scouting as a cat. I was sloppy. I was desperate.”
Someone noticed.
The Abyssbound Hunter.
“He was higher-ranked than me. I couldn’t beat him,” Skye admitted. “He captured me. That’s the part you already know.”
Rhine nodded slowly, the pieces fitting into places he hadn’t realized were empty.
They sat with the silence for a while.
Rhine said, half to himself, “If I hadn’t drunk the potion back then… if I hadn’t killed him during the ritual…”
Skye’s mouth curled. “It wouldn’t have gone the way you think.”
She told him her version: she’d been ready to end herself to collapse the ritual. The backlash would have crippled the Hunter. Rhine, being Rhine, would have finished him.
“Either way,” Rhine said, “a choice decides a life.”
Skye looked at him for a long moment. “That’s why I kept watching you.”
Rhine raised a brow.
“I liked how you handled threats,” Skye said simply. “You killed him when he was weakest, even if he was only a potential danger. I wanted to know who you were… where you came from… what you’d do next.”
Her eyes flicked to him. “Then I watched you kill those nine pirates. Seven ordinary men. Two Infiltrators.”
Rhine didn’t correct her. He just let the sea swallow the rest of the conversation.
…
Dawn crept up the horizon. Skye contacted Haizan.
A blue, spectral candlelight opened in the cabin, and the Dreamwarden troll answered. With a quiet flash of power, Rhine and Skye returned to Rhine’s home in Windrest’s Outer City.
Haizan looked at them with something like resignation. “Back at dawn again.”
Rhine opened the window to let fresh air in.
Instead, he got noise. A lot of it.
The plaza in the Outer City was already bustling, shouting echoing between half-repaired buildings.
“What’s going on?” Rhine asked.
Haizan hadn’t been tracking local news. He called one of the troll warriors stationed in Windrest and asked.
The answer sounded like ordinary politics—until it didn’t.
Stormkeep’s knights had found a massive, intact slab of sea-crystal on Sea-Crystal Mine Isle. Too valuable to cut. So craftsmen had carved it into statues of the Seven Gods.
A ship was arriving soon to deliver the “once-in-a-century” sculpture, and the plaza was being cleared to display it.
Rhine barely cared.
Skye did.
“Sea-Crystal Mine Isle,” she said, the words sharp. “That’s where Jory was sent.”
Rhine’s gaze sharpened. “So Fell found an excuse to bring his favorite son home.”
Skye’s smile was all teeth. “Good.”
She stared toward the busy plaza like she could already see the boy who’d ruined a dead girl’s life.
“Let him come back,” she whispered. “I’m not finished with him.”