Sunbeam Lair A husband waits outside

She'd always found it difficult to be alone with her thoughts — but never more than she did now, burdened by the words of so many others always ringing in her ears, the names of leaders she'd met and brought to her cause, the empty eyes of the fallen she'd helped to bury without ever meeting them in life. The scent of home, a fading memory: her daughters and Dusty Rose curled tightly against her for the night. It felt less vivid than the rest, and that hurt.

Her eyes settled on Hunst with a weary half-smile.

River Sea-Snake had been the last of the leaders to meet her, the last to promise a warrior of his own blood to her protection, and perhaps the strangest too. Perhaps the most honest. Reverie felt she couldn't know just yet.

River told me that we're related, She murmured conversationally, though she was sure that Hunst must know it already. Through my grandmother - Nereida. Reverie hardly knew what it meant, of course — but that shared blood was what had endeared her to the Sea-Snakes, and to the Cyaneans. Funny, she thought: they were set to destroy each other if her parents didn't get there first.