Nobody slept properly that night, though half the ship pretended otherwise.
Ainen was propped against the mainmast with a blanket he kept insisting he did not need, sipping something Fraisea had brewed from the last of the island's roots, and every few minutes someone found a reason to walk past him just to see that he was still breathing on his own.
"I am fine," he announced, to the fourth soldier who wandered by with suspicious casualness. "I would like it noted, formally, that I am fine."
"Noted," Silvester said, and did not leave.
Almond sat apart from the fuss, near the bow, the crown fragment resting in his open palms. He had not put it down since they surfaced. Every time he tried, the Essence of All Things pulled his attention straight back to it, the way an unfinished sentence pulls at the mind until it's finished.
Lily settled beside him without asking, the way she always did when something was clearly eating at him and clearly not going to be talked about on its own.
