But the sensation is not as strong as it was when Heron made only me invisible. He isn’t strong enough alone to make the entire ship disappear. However, between his gift and the natural cover night provides, we should be impossible to see.

Artemisia is next, and she has a flair for drama that Heron lacks. The crowd gathered behind me gasps as she lifts her arms and the tides pick up straight away. The fine mist of magic flies from her fingers as she directs our ship toward the Kalovaxian ships on the horizon, faster than I would have thought possible. In the moonlight, her every movement seems liquid, every jerk of her arms and flick of her wrist executed like the ocean itself gave birth to her.

It’s a bit like watching her sword fight.

The crowd gathered behind her gives whispers of awe—our ship flies across the sea, propelled by a perfect tide. The plan is working—as long as Artemisia can get us close enough before Heron becomes too weak to hold our invisibility. That is the question, the theory we couldn’t test out before putting it into action. That is what this all comes down to. We need to get close enough that Blaise can deploy his own gift.

Some small, stupid part of me hopes that we fail on that account—that Heron will fail to hold our invisibility and the Kalovaxians will see us and that we will fall into a less magical sort of battle, but at least Blaise wouldn’t use his gift. He wouldn’t risk his life like that.

The prayer goes unanswered. Artemisia’s tides propel us toward the Kalovaxian ships swiftly, Heron’s gift holding until the moment Blaise steps forward, his body shaking. He takes the gem-studded bracelet from his pocket and clutches it tightly in his fist.

For all his bravado earlier, he is actually afraid, I realize. Without meaning to, I take a step toward him, but S?ren grabs hold of my arm with his free hand.

“It’s a brave thing he’s doing,” S?ren says to me, his voice low and his eyes still locked on Blaise. “Don’t rob him of that now.”

A protest lodges in my throat. S?ren is right—even though I would rather have Blaise cowardly and alive instead of brave and dead, that is not my choice to make. And so I do the only thing I can do: I watch.

Heron stumbles backward, drained of energy, and Artemisia drops her arms to catch him, keeping him upright. Both of their magic fades, but it isn’t needed anymore. The Kalovaxian ships are close enough now that I can make out the shapes of the sailors running across the decks of their ships, close enough that I can hear their panicked shouts. It’s too late, though they don’t realize that. They will soon enough.

Blaise braces himself against the ship’s railing, his body straining like he’s being torn apart. Our ship is so quiet I can hear each breath from the crowd behind me, each wave crashing against our hull, each Kalovaxian curse and order being shouted in the distance.

He lifts one hand, extending it forward toward the center ship, directly ahead of us. Beneath the thin material of his shirt, the muscles of his back strain like something is trying to force its way out of his skin. A crack splits the air like thunder, followed by another and another, each one louder than the last. Seconds later, I see it—the Kalovaxian ship’s hull splintering apart, planks of wood breaking off and splashing into the water. The crew begins to call out as the fragmented ship sinks, and a bell rings out. An alarm, I realize, to alert the other ships of trouble.

The ship on the left hears it first and they try to come to the first ship’s rescue, but Blaise is ready for that. He lifts his other hand toward them. The power that racks its way through him is so strong that he has to lean the full weight of his body forward against the bow’s railing to stay standing. Even above the chorus of destruction, I can hear him gasping and grunting with pain.

“It’s too much,” I tell S?ren. “He can’t do any more.”

But even as I say it, the second ship begins to break apart, just like the first, plunging wreckage into the ink-black sea.

Two ships wrecked without a single life lost on our side—that’s enough. But it won’t be for Blaise. I know this even before he turns his attention to the third ship. Unlike their nobler brothers, the third ship isn’t making an attempt to rescue the other two. Instead, they are fleeing.

“We can let them go,” I say to S?ren, but he shakes his head, keeping his eyes on Blaise.

“They may get help and come back,” he says. “We can’t afford to take that risk.”

Blaise must know this, too. He turns away from the wrecked ships and focuses the brunt of his attention on the one fleeing. His shoulders shake as he takes a deep, trembling breath and lifts up his hands once more. He lets out an animalistic cry so loud it could break open the sky itself. The power that floods from his hands is not a beam of light shooting from us to them. Instead, it is a tornado, whipping through the air without a target—as aimless as it is brutal.

The fleeing Kalovaxian ship takes the worst of it, dissolving to nothing but splinters as quickly as I can blink, but our own ship is not spared. The crowd behind me screams and drops to the ground, covering their heads as pieces of the ship begin to break.

“Blaise!” I scream, but my voice is lost in the madness. A piece of the mast above my head snaps off and plummets toward me. I am frozen in place, unable to move until an arm snakes around my waist and yanks me out of the way.

“Get everyone to the aft of the ship, to the rowboats,” S?ren tells me, drawing his sword from its sheath.

I grab his sword arm. “No,” I say, the word wrenching itself from my gut. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, you can’t—”

“Theo, look around. He’s going to kill us all,” S?ren says, gesturing around the ship with his free hand. “He asked this of me and I’m going to honor that.”

I swallow, tears biting at my eyes. “Let me do it, then,” I say, my voice shaking. “I owe it to him, S?ren.”

S?ren’s eyes flicker to Blaise and back to me. After a second, he nods and passes the sword into my hands. “Remember—strike hard and true, end it fast.”

I nod. It’s only when he turns away from me and begins escorting the frightened passengers to the aft of the ship that I realize it’s the same thing, more or less, that he said to me when I held a dagger to his back.

Steeling myself, I step toward Blaise’s figure, still leaning against the ship’s railing as tremors rack through his body, making his muscles spasm and twitch. Heron and Artemisia stand on either side of him, too exhausted from their own efforts to do much more than stare and call out his name, though their voices are lost in the overwhelming din of ruin.

The sword is longer than the ones I’ve practiced wielding with Artemisia, and the tip of it drags along the deck beside me. The ship careens one way and I stumble, leaning on the sword like a cane to stay upright, only to have the ship rock the other way. Each step I take toward Blaise feels like my body is moving through quicksand, but I keep my eyes on him and put one foot in front of the other.

Distantly, I hear Artemisia scream my name, but she feels a thousand miles away. Everything does. It is as if the world consists only of Blaise and me and the sword in my hand.

The air between us crackles with lightning. I reach out and touch his shoulder, hoping against hope that it will be like the last time and my touch will be enough to pull him free from the magic or Glaidi or whatever it is that has a hold on him. But when his head turns toward me and his eyes find mine, there is nothing of Blaise left behind them. They remind me more of Hoa’s, staring glassy and lifeless after the soul left her body. He looks at me, but he does not see me.

“Blaise,” I say, his name a whisper.

The deck begins to crack beneath my feet, shards of wood peeling up like fruit skin.

This is not like what happened in Sta’Crivero. Then, there was enough of him left that I could pull him out again, but now he is more magic than man, unreachable, unsalvageable. I swallow down the tears threatening to spill and lift the sword with shaking hands.

It feels like I am standing over Ampelio all over again, with the tip of a sword pressed against his back. I killed him then to save him from more pain, to save myself, to keep the rebellion alive. How is this so different from that?

My eyes clench closed tightly so that no tears escape. I know what I have to do—drive the blade through his chest, hard and true, just as S?ren said.

I take a steadying breath.

I grip the hilt of the sword harder.

I lunge toward him.

The sword twists out of my grasp, the force knocking me to the ground. It takes me a moment to process what is happening, but when I do it’s like time itself slows down.

Artemisia with S?ren’s sword, gripping the blade instead of the hilt. Her fingers digging into the sharp edge, streaking the wrought iron with rivulets of red. She charges Blaise with a guttural yell that I barely hear and my heart tightens in my chest, but instead of stabbing him, she brings the heavy hilt of the sword overhead in an arc, hitting him over the head with every last ounce of her power.

They both fall to the ground and the ship goes still.

* * *