* * *

There were disadvantages to being a dead man.

Merik Nihar, prince of Nubrevna and former admiral to the Nubrevnan navy, wished he’d considered living a long time ago.

Then maybe, right now, he wouldn’t be filled with so much regret. Maybe, right now, he would have more memories of Kullen and Safi—and even Vivia—that were worth hanging on to. As many memories, perhaps, as the leaves that drifted off the water-bridges.

Merik, Cam, and Ryber had ascended the hillside near the dam. The plan was to travel north, following the river into the Sirmayans, but on their way, the funeral had begun.

The girls wanted to watch, and as morbid as it was, Merik had wanted to watch too.

The leaves tumbled at different speeds, orange and vibrant, green and alive. Some rode air currents, popping higher, while others hit slipstreams and coasted down. Some were aflame with smoke tails that chased behind. Others simply shone, unlit yet still brilliant in the sunset.

“It’s beautiful,” Cam said beside Merik, her left hand held across her heart. The healers had told her to stand that way, and for once she was doing what she’d been told.

No, no, not “she,” he reminded himself. Cam lived as a boy, and though Merik wasn’t used to that yet—to thinking of Cam as a “he”—they had weeks of travel ahead. Plenty of time in which Merik could retrain his mind.

“It is beautiful,” Ryber agreed from Cam’s other side. She swatted a braid that dangled before her eyes. Unlike Cam, she had kept her ship-boy braids, and though tied back, one kept popping free.

“I’ve seen enough,” was Merik’s eventual reply, and he turned away. He’d had enough of the macabre for one day.

He adjusted his hood, tucking it as low as it would go. Too many people lingered nearby. Farmers who’d climbed up from the valley and soldiers off-duty from the dam’s watchtowers. With his scars healing, his hair growing back, and his true face now peeking through the dark, lacy shadows, Merik couldn’t risk being seen.

He needed the world to think him dead. Not merely so he could hunt for Kullen in peace, but also because the world didn’t need him in it. Vivia didn’t need him in it either, and Merik knew her life would be easier without him around.

One for the sake of many.

It was, while Ryber and Cam were joining Merik on the shore of the Timetz, where the hoof-carved trail they sought cut into the trees, that Cam began humming a familiar tune.

Instantly, Merik’s hackles rose. He walked faster. Trees soared up around him, birch and maple and pine. “Not that song, please.”

“Why?” Ryber asked. She lengthened her stride to join Merik as well. Her boots rolled in the grooves of the path. “That rhyme has a happy ending.”

Then, before Merik could stop her, she sang.

“Blind brother Daret, with senses so keen,

smelled danger lurking ahead.

So he called to the Queen, I am bigger than he!

Release him and eat me instead!

“Her maw then swept open, and Filip raced out,

to where Daret waited nearby.

Then fin-in-fin the two brothers fled,

leaving Queen Crab far behind.

“Said fool brother Filip to blind brother Daret,

once they were free of the cave,

I was wrong to leave you and hurry ahead.

My brother, my friend, you are brave!

“So forgive me, dear Daret, for now I can see

that I was the one who was blind.

I do not need riches nor gold nor a crown,

as long as I’ve you by my side.”

“See? A happy ending.” She grinned, and two gold-backed cards slipped from her sleeve. She flipped them Merik’s way, revealing the Nine of Hounds and the Fool. They fluttered on the breeze, not entirely natural.

Merik halted. His sack dropped to the ground with a whoomf. Then he doubled over to plant his hands on his knees.

His heart pounded against his lungs. The mud and scree blurred, streaks of red and gray that wavered in time to his quickening pulse, his quickening winds.

So forgive me, dear Daret, for now I can see

that I was the one who was blind.

Merik was the fool brother. He had been all along—it was so clear now. He’d wanted something that wasn’t real, something he could never have, and he’d wanted it for all the wrong reasons.

Seeing what he’d wanted to see.

His story, though, just like the two brothers’, had a happy ending. He was still here, wasn’t he? And Kullen was still out there too—and maybe, just maybe, both he and Kullen could still be saved.

Ryber had told Merik she knew how to heal him. How to stop this strange, half-cleaving that had taken hold. She’d said the answer waited in the Sirmayans, and since Merik had nothing to lose—and everything to gain—by trusting her, he’d packed up his supplies and set out.

Cam, of course, had refused to be left behind.

At the memory of Cam’s stubborn jaw and pursed lips, Merik’s shoulders unwound. His breath loosened.

He straightened, listening to the dusk around him. Crickets, owls, nightjars—they drifted into his ears. The sounds that he and Kullen had grown up with. The sounds they would listen to again one day soon.

“Sir?” Cam murmured, approaching. Her … no his dark eyes shone with worry—so familiar and yet so unknown. He’d forgiven Cam for hiding the truth of Garren and the Nines.

But this is the secret of Queen Crab’s long reign:

she knows what all fishes want.