Warm water was the closest Eos got to home.

  She had some things, of course. Her old dress (ripped apart, sewn together into a cloak and gloves), her beads, (only one set, incomplete) and the scars on her arm.

  But warm water was when home came back to her.

  Eos wheeled Anesi into the thick mist of the bathhouse and tried to soak it in. Weeks, months, years spent in the arid atmosphere of crystals and far-flung planets had Eos feeling like a shrunken, withered reed. But here, she could pretend those days were all behind her.

  Let the humidity rejuvenate her, Eos prayed, let her skin remember a sense of vitality.

  Elpis was not a goddess of hydration, but even so, Eos could feel her prayers being answered.

  This private bathhouse may have been only for House Nixie, but it looked like it was built only for their egos instead. Thick white pillars held up a golden ceiling shimmering with embedded lights, and several pools of deep water laid out before them. A servant had given Eos a guide to them at some point — this one full of certain oils, that one was ice-cold, this one shone with purifying light, and another one with salts meant to keep you young forever…

  The Inner Ring had more wonders than Eos could wrap her head around. As curious as she was to jump in every single one, their first order of business was to scrub clean. So Eos had chosen something that felt luxuriously familiar to her. A warm bath, scented with roses and rose petals.

  Eos parked Anesi at the water’s edge. Eos inhaled deeply and stepped forward. The roses they used weren’t anything like the ones from home, but… Eos could pretend.

  “Isn’t this magnificent?” Eos signed.

  Anesi sniffed judgementally.

  Of course she did. Eos knew she was talking to an empty audience, but it still needed to be said — how lovely is this? How beautiful is that? Or else she’d forget to see it at all.

  “Oh, nothing impresses you anymore. Come on!”

  They’d been given gauzy robes to change into, and a large platter to the side in which to stow their things. In went Anesi’s shawl pin, Eos’s beads, and — of course — Elpis in her box, clinking snugly into the plate.

  Eos found her hands struggling to find a good grip as she helped Anesi out of the wheelchair. Anesi’s legs had gone from shaky to weak. Eos wouldn’t mind carrying her everywhere, but she knew it would earn her several sharp lectures — and it wasn’t like Anesi wasn’t capable of standing and smacking her on the head if she really wanted to.

  For a slippery, sharp-tiled bath, though, Anesi would reluctantly relent. If only because she knew Eos would try to take on any head wound she acquired if she slipped and fell.

  “Steady now,” Eos said, carefully seating Anesi at the edge of the pool. Anesi waved her off.

  “Oh, if you’re certain you want me gone.” Eos said, a mischievous smile playing on her face. A glance at the water told her everything she needed to know. One step back — two — and Eos was launching herself off the edge, splashing down into the glittering water.

  Eos resurfaced triumphantly to a soaked Anesi (who, of course, had her middle finger raised like a practiced salute). Eos laughed. “Why so grumpy, Captain? Didn’t you want to send me off?”

  Anesi only wrinkled her nose. Eos swam to her, draping her arms over the edge of the pool. “Your turn to come in, Anesi,” Eos said.

  Anesi shook her head and tapped at both her wrists. “First, your bracers,” she signed, pushing out at Eos scoldingly.

  Eos laughed.

  Of all the wonderful and mysterious properties of Eos’s bracers, the best by far was how easy they were to clean. Eos felt for the hidden, latched edges of her bracers and flipped them open, shaking her bracers into the water. An embarrassing amount of dust flooded the water, turning the rosewater a dull grey.

  She sighed.

  So much for all those attempts to clean out all the ash. Eos has tried to be presentable before dinner.

  Eos dragged in a washcloth, scrubbing at the bracers till they were silvery-bright once more.

  “And your gloves,” Anesi signed. Eos rolled her eyes.

  “I didn’t intend on leaving myself filthy, you know,” Eos signed. Slowly, the long gloves peeled over, and Eos wrung them in the water. It was nice to free her arms — it was extra nice to do so somewhere she didn’t have to jostle elbows or look over her shoulder.

  Eos let the bracers and gloves clink onto the platter by the pool.

  Hopefully, Elpis wouldn’t mind the platter being just a tad bit more crowded.

  “Alright,” Eos signed to Anesi. “Now it’s your turn.”

  Anesi was going to keep her sour face on forever, she’d made a promise. And Anesi always kept her promises. Eos held her arms out, shuffling to the shallow end of the pool till she was before Anesi, and wrapped her arms around her.

  “On three,” Eos said. “One, two…”

  Anesi fell forward, and Eos caught her.

  The water buoyed them as Eos carefully pulled back into deeper waters, letting Anesi float. With a little bit of careful repositioning, Anesi could sit upon a deeper set of stairs, and Eos could begin the careful process of washing her.

  “Now,” Eos said gleefully, looking at the dozens of bottles lining the pool. Products Eos hadn’t even heard of shone in their tinted glass. Anesi’s curls were going to be defined like a dictionary and smelling like a wildflower field by the time Eos was through. “What kind of silly quartermaster would I be if we didn’t make this a hair wash day?”

  Anesi splashed at the water in front of her idly, scattering her reflection.

  “You’d be silly,” Anesi signed, craning her neck around to see Eos, “to let that child rob you.”

  Eos whipped her head around.

  Bent over her tray, fingers dangling over Eos’s abandoned bracers, was none other than Iris. Eos’s eyes flicked over her. She’d gone barefoot and silent along the marble. Hah. How Anesi caught these things…

  “Ah,” Eos said, amused. “If you wanted to try that on for size, you should have asked.”

  Iris yelped and yanked her hand back, the bracer clutched comically against her chest. Eos raised an eyebrow. So much for not needing to look over her shoulder.

  “And you shouldn’t lose your nerve when you’re caught,” Eos said. “You shouldn’t let your opponent intimidate you into making mistakes.”

  “I - you’re not my opponent,” Iris scoffed. “You’re guests.”

  She said guests like she meant subjects. Eos exhaled a small laugh.

  “Indeed,” Eos said. “And if I remember the laws of hospitality well, it’s bad manners to rob your ‘guests’.” She held out a hand, gesturing for Iris to hand them over.

  But Iris hugged the bracer to her arm, pacing around Eos in a wide berth like she was some sort of cornered, wild animal.

  Which, Eos supposed, she probably looked the part right now. It’s not like Eos hadn’t tried to take a bath before dinner to be presentable. It was just… the Lucifer only had so much water. They’d had to ration after the long hunt for the Leviathan.

  “My things,” Eos started, but Iris raised her hand.

  “Me first!” Iris said. “You can talk around my Mama all you want, but I have questions.”

  Hah. Was this what the bounty hunters were teaching her?

  “Ask away,” Eos said, amused. “But I’d like my bracers back at the end.”

  “Sure, sure,” Iris said. She clutched the bracers to her chest like a toy she was afraid would be taken away and then pointed at Anesi.

  “First — who is that?”

  “Someone who will teach her all the manners her mother never did,” Anesi suggested, pointedly ignoring Iris’s baffled face. “Who lets their child run into their guest’s bathing time? Honestly. Nothing is sacred anymore…”

  “Oh, so this bath time you didn’t want is sacred now, is it?” Eos signed back, laughing. Anesi splashed her.

  “Hey!” Eos flinched back as Iris’s snapping finger entered her vision. “What the heck was that?”

  Eos gently batted away her hand as if it were a palm leaf swaying in her path. “She said that who she is, is someone who will teach you all the manners your mother apparently never did. ‘Who lets their child ruin their guests’ bathing time? Honestly, nothing is sacred anymore….’ Is that about right, Anesi?”

  Anesi was nodding before Eos could finish speaking.

  “Wh—! Anesi? Like, Anesidora? She’s your captain?…. But she’s so old. And I bet she didn’t actually say all that!”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Anesi was still nodding.

  “I have taken a solemn oath to always truly and faithfully interpret for my Captain,” Eos said, pressing a hand over her heart. “No matter how her words might pain the masses, they are hers.”

  “You could just say that to my face,” Iris sniffed. Eos exchanged a glance with Anesi, who was now pushing her to the side.

  “My. Voice. Doesn’t. Work,” Anesi signed very, very slowly, with lots and lots of emphasis.

  Iris drew breath, but Eos cut in before she could say anything that might warrant a particularly violent reaction.

  “My Captain’s voice has been lost,” Eos explains. “Stolen. Taken in a battle many years ago.”

  “What kind of battle takes away a voice?” Iris said, clutching at her own throat in horror.

  Anesi sniffed. Eos patted her shoulder comfortingly and turned her back to Iris. Eos had a feeling they had many, many more questions to go before her bracers were returned, and Anesi still needed to be washed.

  Eos diluted the shampoo in the small basin the servants had laid out. She ran it gently over Anesi’s braids. Anesi leaned her head back into Eos’s massaging fingers.

  Maybe Anesi could see Iris’s shadow cast over her as she curiously approached, but the Captain and Eos had an understanding — better to just let the girl agonize in suspense.

  “What—“

  “We heard your question the first time, bug,” Eos said. She shifted her body back behind Anesi, picking up the cloth to run it over Anesi’s body, soap and scent seeping into world-weary shoulders. “…it’s the kind of battles empyreans have.”

  “Empyreans?”

  “Now you’ve done it,” Anesi signed, brow furrowed in exasperation.

  Eos grinned, dripping water down Anesi’s face.

  “Captain Anesidora, she of many names,” Eos said. “Chief among them, Anesidora Elpis, empyrean and steward to the daimon Elpis.”

  “Elpis…hope. That can’t be right,” Iris said. “Empyreans are magical and also not really, really old.”

  “Empyreans are really old,” Anesi signed, Eos faithfully interpreting. “That’s what immortality does to you.”

  “You know what I mean! They don’t look old!”

  “That’s what happens when an empyrean’s daimon is slain,” Eos said. She nodded at the box to the side. “See for yourself. Elpis rests there.”

  Iris whipped around, eyes wide. Eos could trace the imagination of a young girl — looking for a graceful creature balanced on thin hooves, or a powerful one with rippling muscle. Looking for something with the vitality of a god.

  Eos could see the moment Iris really saw her. All the pent-up tension in her body melted away, the frantic wonder giving way to an ache. Iris didn’t let go of Eos’s bracer, but her arms fell from where they’d be crossed. Eos saw her wander to the platter, and just — kneel by it. Her hand hovered over the box, dancing over it like one feels for steam over food. Too hot to touch? Or just right, to have, to eat, to live?

  “What you met earlier was the body of our goddess,” Eos said. She could feel Anesi shift, crack an eye open to witness Iris by the box. “But here, in that box, lays her heart. This is where she really resides.“

  “It’s so… small.” Iris tucked her legs under her and hugged Eos’s bracer again. It looked less like she was protecting the bracer and more like the bracer was protecting her, a safety blanket made of cold metal, too small to cover her, too big to wear. “She’s so small.”

  “Her soul separated from her body,” Eos said. “But she’s a goddess. She lingers.”

  Eos shifted closer to Iris, who turned her face away as if to hide. Eos smiled softly at her. “…It’s said she calls to those who need her most.”

  “Need her,” Iris muttered. She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You brought her with you to the bath?”

  “Your bath is big enough for you to be here uninvited, isn’t it?” Eos said. “And people can need hope here, too.” Eos lowered her voice into something more playful. “Like myself. I simply hope I can get Anesidora clean without her calling me every foul word she knows.”

  “I can still hear, bug,” Anesi signed.

  Eos laughed, pulling back. “I don’t ever like to be far from her. Neither does Anesi. I don’t just polish Anesi’s name — I make peace, I make hope. I pray these things please and sustain the goddess. Then she, in turn, keeps Anesi spry and living. Between Elpis and the polish, we’ve done a splendid job.”

  “So — if you don’t do all that stuff — they’ll die?” Iris said. “And what about whoever killed her?”

  “Oh, I’d surely seek vengeance,” Eos said. “If I had the time, the ability. But along with her voice, the Captain has been forbidden to speak their name. And, as she tells me, I’m better off not knowing.”

  “You’re better off alive,” Anesi signed, not opening her eyes. “Your foolish brain has an affinity for running headlong into death’s jaws, so I need to keep it as empty as possible.”

  As if it wasn’t empty enough! Eos started to move her hands, indigence making them a little slower than they otherwise would be. “I work very hard to rid my head of useless thoughts—“

  “If you’re — you’re traveling with an Empyrean,” Iris started, then stopped. She shifted the bracer in her arms, looking between them.

  There was something there in her hesitation that Eos couldn’t place. A secret? A confession? A kind reconsideration of words she was going to say, holding back from saying something rude?

  Probably not the last one, but…

  Eos liked to think of herself as someone good at teasing these things out, but it eluded her nonetheless. And when Eos glanced up, there was a complexity in Iris’s expression that Eos couldn’t— frankly, didn’t — expect to see. The fullest conclusion that Eos could draw was that Iris’s expression was — pained.

  But just like that, it was gone.

  “If you’re traveling with an Empyrean, why didn’t she just —“ Iris made some vague whooshing sounds and waved her arms around. Eos laughed.

  “Because I need the practice,” Eos said. “Apparently. My Captain likes her crew to stand on their own.”

  “Literally alone?” Iris said.

  “Well… it is just the three of us.”

  “Three of — right. Dead. Um. Dead daimon. So you just fought the pirates off yourself.” Iris’s eyebrows furrowed. “How did you get the pirates off our ship?”

  Eos raised her eyebrow higher. “You were there.”

  “I was —! I was busy!”

  “Hah,” Eos said. “It’s alright, bug, I presumed as much. I offered them a way out. A trade charter with a city on Naguya Tan. Exporting fabrics and dragonscale, woven furniture and other such coveted goods. Your mother was not lying when she said trade there was booming.”

  Iris’s eyebrows furrowed. “I thought you said your planet was taken over and stuff and you’ve been traveling.”

  “All true things,” Eos said, a bitter smile on her face. “I haven’t set foot back on Naguya Tan in years. I traded and bargained to gain access to Naguya Tan charters… I broker them to the best of my ability, now, out along the stars. My people don’t know it’s me, but I send them the help I can.”

  “That seems like a lot of work,” Iris said, clearly chewing on the thought. Eos leaned over for her bracer, but Iris just started pacing. “How did you know they’d want it? Not just a charter, but that charter?”

  “I’m familiar with the Leviathan and their fleet,” Eos said. “I’ve traveled these parts far and wide. Like your mother said, I’m polishing a name. I’ve chosen to do so by brokering peace among the ne’er-do-wells and the travelers along these routes. At least, for now. It’s been going well.”

  It certainly beats being a simple passenger ship. While Eos never minded the company passengers brought, it also felt so… passive, in comparison to resistance needed against the horrors of the dark unknown. Anesi could no longer move like she used to. Elpis could no longer speak. What use would Eos be if she sat silent in their stead?

  “You’re familiar with the Leviathan?” Iris asked, eyes squinting. Eos rolled her eyes. The tradeoff for pursuing peacemaking and danger was a lot of puzzled questions.

  “I was following them,” Eos said. “Is that what you’d like me to say?”

  “You’ve been studying them,” Iris guessed. “You’re a bounty hunter.”

  Eos laughed, shaking her head. “If I was, I would have helped your mother turn them in to the Guild,” she said. Iris drew breath to speak again. “And if I was part of their crew — Despoina, or mercenary, or any ally at all — I wouldn’t have been caught sneaking around their ship with you. In fact, I would have held onto you. Bargaining, remember?”

  “I know what bargaining is,” Iris said, still hugging the bracer.

  “Evidently, you do.” Eos eyed her bracer. “Have I not answered your questions to satisfaction?”

  “Maybe,” Iris said, drawing out the syllables. “Maybe. Hm.”

  She contemplated only a moment longer before — at last — holding out the bracer. Eos exchanged a look with Anesi. No signing was needed to read the ridiculous girl in Anesi’s eyes. But there was a fondness in it, too. Hah. How many times had Anesi looked at Eos like that?

  Eos reached forward for her bracer —

  Iris seized her wrist in a snap, harsh enough to send Eos’s balance rocking forward.

  “I knew it,” Iris hissed fervently, gripping tight to her wrist.

  Eos winced — how did a twelve year old get so strong? — and tried to pull her arm back to no avail. Iris stayed glued in place. Her eyes were zeroed in on Eos’s left forearm.

  Scars. Not like the faint, thin lines of her right arm, but big, ugly things — welts and shredded pink skin, and taut, fibrous, white tissue. And in between the carnage, flecks of forgotten, melted gold. Left behind in a hackneyed job (but if the job was just to cause her pain, was it really done poorly? They’d accomplished all that and more.)

  Eos’s mind screamed, sending reason fleeing, and she tore her arm back.

  Iris went flying.

  Well — flopping, shrieking a bit as she tumbled into the rose water of the pool. Eos stared. Anesi quietly ate a wave of water to the face.

  “Oh, stars,” Eos said, standing, water sloshing all around her knees.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Anesi signed.

  Eos jumped into the pool. She wasn’t sure how she’d help, but she’d remiss if she didn’t try — but Iris resurfaced, hair plastered against her eyes, and spit water in a stream.

  “You’re an Argonaut!”

  Eos felt the currents of warm water run over her skin. It seeped into the crevices between her scars and flooded into the canyons of skin she’d tried very, very hard to forget.

  Eos turned and swam back to the stairs. She should apologize, her mind told her. She should just surge out of the water and run back to the ship, her body said.

  An arm caught hers — Eos went to pull away, but Anesi tugged her close.

  “Sit. Breathe,” Anesi signed. In, out, in, out. Eos let her body sink back into the water, breath caught in her throat. In, out, in, out. Eos clutched at her chest, feeling it ache. She can tame her runaway heart. She can wrangle her lungs back into obedience. In, out, in out.

  Stars. When did breathing become so difficult…

  Eos let her body slump against Anesi. She could feel Anesi run fingers through her hair. Her ponytail slipped away, the tension at her temples with it - the braids she couldn’t quite get undone falling apart. Eos exhaled and rested her cheek on Anesi’s shoulder.

  There was sloshing next to her. Eos could feel each wave hit her, and Anesi pushed her deeper and deeper into the water, until she was neck deep and the water wasn’t rushing over her side and arm and shoulder. Eos bobbed quietly.

  “…I wasn’t kidding about being a bounty hunter,” Iris said quietly from her side. She’d sat down next to them, it seemed. Eos could feel a headache coming on. “I’ve been studying. I know all about the Argonauts.”

  “Is that right?” Eos said wearily. “You could stand to know a little less.”

  “You’re their despoina!” Iris said. “Or, you were. That’s how you know so much about the pirates — why that boy said you helped his uncle. You were the Argonaut’s only girl.”

  “Is that how I’m known?” Eos said. She looked down at her wrist, sighing as she ran a thumb over her arm. “All that work to be reduced to their girl.”

  Iris leaned over. “Who did that to you?” She asked. “…The stories say it would be all of the Argonauts. Was it really all of the them? It can’t take that many people to remove a brand.”

  Eos looked down. In the rippling water, distorted by petals and twisted light, Eos could almost pretend her arm had no marks at all. She just had to make sure she didn’t touch it at all.

  “No,” Eos said. “Just one.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Eos shook herself, schooling her expression into one of neutral, innocent questioning. “I thought you knew everything about the Argonauts?”

  “I don’t know all their names, there’s too many of them,” Iris grumbled. “I didn’t know your name. Eos Despoina. Lady of the house.”

  “Lady no longer,” Eos said. “Traitor. Betrayer. Whatever other name you want to call me.”

  “So you did actually betray them? And got away with it? And you’re telling me?”

  “I suppose I’ll be run out either way, once you tell your mother who we are,” Eos said. “I see no reason to hide the truth from you.”

  “Run you out?” Iris said. “Are you kidding me? I — I’ve been trying to get you to stay. I want you to teach me.”

  Eos looked at her. “You’d want to learn from a criminal despoina? And a failed one, at that.”

  “Maybe that’s what everybody else thinks,” Iris said. “I’m not like them. I don’t care what you did or what you’re doing. You’ve actually lived with Argonauts, betrayed them, and are still alive, somehow, so — I guess you can’t be that bad. We have doctors and ships and money. If you stay, you can teach me and you can do whatever you want. You’re better to learn from than any dumb tutor my mom hires. Definitely better than Mielikki. Mom only hired her to babysit me.”

  What a job this Mielikki was doing. Eos gave Iris a weary smile. No, no. Eos would be hypocritical to think such a thing. Eos remembered having to babysit, too, and letting her ward have entirely too much freedom. Freedom to spread her wings — to be curious — and learn about the world on her own terms.

  Eos missed that. The honor of being a teacher. The pride of watching someone grow under her wing.

  But…

  “I can’t stay to teach you,” Eos said, voice quiet. “I have my Captain and my goddess to care for. My people to find justice for. You’re bright, bug, and you’ll succeed under anyone’s tutelage. But my home has no one to speak for them except me.”

  “You’re really going to spend the rest of your life trying to get back a whole planet and resurrect a god?” Iris asked glumly, a pout already forming on her face.

  Eos patted Iris gently on the shoulder. “You can call me foolish all you want, but I know who it is I follow. I know what I hope for. If I should die, I know how it will happen — one foot in front of the other, following this hope to the very end.”

  Iris stared down at her hand. Eventually, she reached out and handed Eos something wet and waterlogged. Her bracer, from which Iris had been tossed in the pool with. Eos closed her hand over it.

  “I’ll let you take your old lady bath,” Iris said, standing. “…Just… think about it. And if you change your mind, I’ll make Mama let you stay.”

  “We won’t impose on your mother like that,” Eos said. “We’ll stay the night we are given, and take our leave once we reach the Mid Rim.”

  There it was again. That look on Iris’s face, some expression of pain and longing mixed with a question — but silenced as she flicked her gaze from the box, to Anesi, and back to Eos.

  “Bye,” Iris said, and scurried off.

  Eos watched her go and sighed, sinking back down into the water. She was starting to prune in the water, and Anesi had aged with an extra thirtyfold wrinkles. Eos reached for the bathing supplies.

  “You can abandon me for riches and happiness anytime you like,” Anesi signed. “It would do you much more good than me.”

  “I have plenty of riches and happiness right here, thank you very much,” Eos said, rinsing out Anesi’s hair. “All I could want.”

  Anesi scoffed.

  “I mean it,” Eos said. “That little girl was going to lay the whole world at my feet just to have me as a teacher. And you know who taught me? You.”

  Anesi was silent. Eos rubbed soap into Anesi’s back.

  “I can’t give you the world,” Eos said. “But I can give you this. You’ve not been able to shake me yet, Anesi. You won’t, anytime soon.”

  “Stubborn bug.”

  “Sweet captain.”

  They bathed the rest of the time in comforting, assured silence.

  —

  It was as luxurious as they’d hoped. Fresh, soft, dry robes were waiting off to the side on a rack that appeared to be solid gold. Eos shook her head. Maybe that was smart. No corroding, no rust.

  Eos wished she could be so lucky. Even Anesi was eyeing the rack. Maybe she was thinking of all the wondrous metal things she could fashion from it, if she melted it all down.

  Better not give her any ideas. Eos tucked Anesi back into her wheelchair.

  Now to find their rooms…

  “Hey!”

  Eos turned.

  Who waiting there, but little Iris?

  She looked like she hadn’t moved from the spot, her sari still damp on the shoulder Eos had patted.

  “I realized you didn’t answer one of my questions.”

  “Is that right?” Eos said. What else in stars or heavens could this girl ask? “Well, can’t have that. Go on, bug. Ask away.”

  “Who did that to you?”

  Iris gestured at Eos’s wrist, but — the movement wasn’t pointed. It was stilted, awkward, with none of the demanding confidence she held just a little while ago. Why was she acting as shy as a schoolchild running up to their favorite teacher? Eos ran a finger along her left wrist, now hidden beneath her bracer once more.

  “I mean it.” Iris said. “Whoever did that to you, I’ll make sure if I ever see them, I’ll get them real good.”

  Eos paused. Iris wasn’t meeting her eyes, swaying back and forth like a palm in a breeze. But this time, Eos did not swat it away. Some sort of dangling thread was there. A toe dipping into a water, a hesitant line in the deep current. Eos wasn’t sure if she Iris would pull away if she tugged on it. What was she looking for?

  “Orion.”

  The name weighed in her mouth like pebbles, like fish bones, like glass.

  “His name is Orion. Is, was. He may be dead, for all I know.”

  “Well,” Iris said. “He definitely will be, if I see him.”

  Eos cracked a small smile.

  “Many thanks, bug,” Eos said. “Against you, he won’t stand a chance.”

  Iris nodded. She turned sharply on her heel and ran down the hall. Eos once again watched her go. Would this be the last time? Probably not. Eos had a feeling she wouldn’t stay away for long.

  “You’d sicc that child on that boy?” Anesi signed.

  Eos scoffed, turning to push Anesidora in the opposite direction.

  “I’d sicc Death itself upon him,” Eos said. “But that’s neither here nor there, Anesi. He’s not my concern. You are.”

  “Stubborn bug.”

  “Sweet captain.”

  Nighttime was upon them.