Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The fireflies are magnificent. They shimmer across the green in front of the Bee at the Border, swirling through the air like clouds of sea stars shining below the surface of the ocean. The scents of smoke and salt and the sea sting my nose—familiar, achingly familiar—as if the fireflies are a gift, a reward, a thank you for delivering the last of my beloved's final letters.

My heart clenches as I watch the luminescent dancers. My fingertips twitch, remembering the sensation of Kip's cool hands in mine. I want to shut my eyes, to dwell in the dream of Kip standing there with me, his fingers entwined with mine, the length of him pressed tight against my side, his head tucked under my chin. I wish—

I curl my hands tight into fists, force away the selfish thought. It is Basil who Kip should be standing here with. Basil—the cousin he'd loved and thought lost in the Fall, no matter that he'd written him three hundred and twenty-seven—three hundred and twenty-eight—letters.

“Kip was always like that,” Basil had said as we'd sat together in the cellar of his inn drinking mugs of the famous honey wine of the Woods Noirell, the echoes of songs I could no longer find it within me to sing pressing heartlessly down on us from the common room above. “He didn't know when to stop. He wouldn't stop, not unless—”

“Not unless he had no other choice,” I'd finished quietly—so quietly—knowing it for truth. Kip hadn’t wanted to stop; not even at the end, not even when I’d told him that he could.

I'd told Basil of Kip's final moments then. He'd deserved to hear them, much as I'd never shared them with anyone. Not with Ludvic or Rhodin or Conju. Not with Kip's nephew Gaudy. Not with any of the dozen members of Kip's family who'd arrived a full day too—too late. Kip's mother hadn't asked any questions—none of the Mdangs had—hadn't said anything about the gold marks dotting Kip's face and hands and hair. All she had wanted was to take Kip home.

I'd let them go. I'd let him go, no matter that all I'd wanted was to cling to the shell that was all that was left of him, the only proof I had that Kip had been more than a dream.

No, not the only proof—not with all he’d done for Zunidh, for our people, for me—I’d known that even as I'd struggled to let him go, to let them take him and deliver his spirit safely into the hands of— “He'll sail with our ancestors,” Kip's Buru Tovo had told me, meaning it as a comfort. And it had been. I’d been grateful to know that Kip had somewhere to go, that he wouldn't be—wouldn't be alone.

Watching the fireflies dance, I can’t help but think of the vision I'd had the first day that Kip had walked into my study: two men sailing under a brilliant night sky, with the sea stretching out to the horizon beyond them and the stars above hovering, big and bright and close. My heart is glad that Kip has that—a forever full of family, of all those that he loves.

All I have waiting for me is a cold, dark tomb in the imperial necropolis. A forever apart, a forever alone, a forever without—

I choke on a breath, blink hard, focus on the path winding its way into the woods. Cliopher’s nephew is no longer standing in front of me. He’s gone inside, leaving me with the decision to go and see his waterfall or not as I like. I glance back at the Bee—consider, briefly, going to find my old friends. But they don’t want me. They want the person I’d been once, not the person I am now—heartbroken, lost, uncertain what to do now that I’ve delivered Kip’s last letter.

I need to find an heir, I know that. It is the last part of our plan—of Kip’s plan—so I can retire. Not that retirement means much to me now, not without—I have to do it though, for Kip, to secure the peaceful world that is his legacy.

But that is not a task for a night full of fireflies.

I know what Kip would want to do if he were standing at my side—my Kip, who at the end had wanted nothing more than to see one last sunrise.

I step onto the path and into the field of fireflies.

***

I fall into the waterfall, fall out of the world, fall into the Divine Lands. Of course I do. Even if I don't want to be who I am, I have no other choice.

I splash down into an ocean that is almost as breathtaking as the lagoon that Kip once took me snorkeling within. Magic is thick in the air and the water is like the smoothest of silk on my skin. A soft luminescence hovers over the water, a reflection of the stars or something more—I don’t know.

Once, I would have wondered, would have used my magic to investigate, would have had the curiosity to seek out whether the water was alive and interested in talking. I’d loved talking once—long before Kip first entered my study, before I’d been pinioned to the Empire of Astandalas and my words had become death traps for the unwary.

I’m not far into the ocean, I realize as my feet find the ground, my toes sink into the soft, silty sand, and my eyes catch on a stretch of brilliantly white beach that runs along the shore and into the distance, broken only by an enormous ship—and people, more than a dozen, hurrying down the beach towards me.

I sigh loudly, although not loudly enough to catch the attention of those approaching—not when they’re making so much noise themselves, traipsing across the sand, their voices billowing through the air excitedly. I have little interest in what they are saying; I want to run in the opposite direction, towards a line of palms, their leaves cast in starlight. It’s been years since I’ve seen palms, since the time Kip brought me to visit his home.

My chest aches with a pain so fresh and so deep it’s impossible to remember how long it has been—forever, and like it was yesterday. I’d gone to Clio’s waterfall because it was the path Kip would have chosen. And I’d desperately wanted—needed—solitude, to get away from my old friends who cared only about the person I’d once been and not about the person left after—

I swallow the lump in my throat. The last thing I want is to deal with strangers, but it seems I will not have that choice. I take a shallow breath, then a second. Perhaps, at least, dealing with them will be less trying than dealing with my old friends.

Two men lead the contingent, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with an air of long familiarity.

The first is nearly a mirror image of the man in the painting in my study; he has the same perfectly dark skin and golden eyes, and a similar number of years. While his head isn’t bare, and he’s wearing a reddish vest loosely over a light-brown kilt rather than robes of white and black and gold and imperial yellow, I know who he must be. Aurelius Magnus—my ancestor who had been stolen away by the Sun.

Which means that the man at his side can only be Elonoa’a, the Seafarer King; except, when telling me the Vangavayen version of the story at Navikiani, Kip had called him something else. Paramount Chief.

I hold onto my breath without thinking as I glance at the golden skinned man at my ancestor’s side, only letting it out again as I realize he doesn’t look much like—like my Kip. While his skin is a similar hue, his face is too wide, his eyebrows too bushy, his eyes and his hair much darker shades of brown. He is wearing a grass skirt—although nothing as fine as the one my Kip had worn when he’d danced over a bed of hot coals in the Throne Room of the Palace of Stars—and several necklaces.

Efela. I knew the word from the day Kip had shared the story of his long-journey home after the Fall, the importance of it from his great uncle, who’d given me one shell from Kip’s efela of golden-ringed amber cowries that had been gifted to Cliopher by a god while I’d watched. “You hold his promise now,” Kip’s Buru Tovo had told me then, even as I could barely speak for my grief in the wake of Kip’s family taking his body away.

My hand goes unthinkingly to my neck, my thumb tracing the ridge of that single shell dangling in the hallow of my throat on a simple brown cord.

Elonoa’a’s eyes go wide at the sight of the shell; his forehead wrinkles in thoughtful curiosity. After a long moment, he bows over his hands and says, “Tē ke’e’vina-tē zēnava parahë’ala.”

I recognize the words as the formal Islander greeting they are, both from reading the Lays of the Wide Seas and from my studies with Kip’s nephew Gaudy, but I do not know or remember the appropriate response. In losing Kip, I’d lost any will to continue my studies. I’d so desperately wanted to gift Kip with my knowledge. And while I had, the timing had been—all I could do was regret not having told him sooner, not having spent the time learning with him.

I grasp for the cloak of serenity that once was my prison and now is a—an analgesic, a relief, a way to keep going when going is the only thing left. I take one long breath, then another, then a third, pressing all thought beyond the present down as deep as it will go and focus only on the two men before me. For all I don’t remember the formal response, I haven't forgotten everything.

“Thank you,” I say in Islander. “I am—Fitzroy Angursell. I am glad to meet you Paramount Chief Elonoa’a.”

Elonoa’a’s eyes widen farther. “You know who I am?”

“Your story is a legend in the Palace of Stars,” I tell him. “Although the story told there is not the one told among the Wide Seas Islanders. A beloved friend told me of you, and of your journey out of the world to find—”

“And your friend is one of my people?” he breaks in.

His curiosity is honest, interested, friendly. Once I’d have thrived on it; now, it cuts deep, bringing the memory of Kip’s last moments to the surface like blood fountaining from a wound. I choke, clenching tight to the shell in my hand. He’d been, is—will always be—so much more than a—

Beloved, I’d called him as I’d pressed my lips to his forehead, as I’d told him that he could sleep—that it was time to stop. Beloved.

But these men wouldn’t care, wouldn’t understand. “He was,” I manage, my heart little more than shards of glass left broken from a loss more profound than losing my freedom to the Empire of Astandalas.

My ancestor wraps a possessive hand around Elonoa’a’s shoulder and pulls him in tight to his side, then kisses the side of his head. “Come El. Let our guest breathe,” Aurelius says, giving me an apologetic look. Perhaps he understands more than I think. “He’s obviously just arrived—and not the usual way. I expect he could use a drink.”

Elonoa’a takes the cue, much to my relief. He pulls out of Aurelius’s hold, but immediately reaches for the other man’s hand. I ignore the pang of jealousy as my ancestor obliges without a moment of hesitation, curling their fingers together in a manner so easy, so comfortable, so right. “My apologies, Fitzroy,” the once Paramount Chief of the Wide Seas Islanders offers, tone contrite. “We haven’t come across many outside of the gods since we came here, and now you’re the second to visit in—Will you share our fire? Perhaps tell us the story of how you came here?”

“Of course,” I agree. My quest is nothing but a task, a mission, a duty to ensure the future of Zunidh; much easier to talk about that, than to talk about—

“And perhaps you might share how we are related,” Aurelius Magnus asks, more diffidently than his partner. “Because it’s obvious we are.”

“That is easily told,” I tell him, forcing my lips into the hint of a smile. “You are Aurelius Magnus, the Forty-Ninth Emperor of Astandalas, who was stolen away by the Sun. I am your descendant many generations down the line—I am—or was, as the Empire of Astandalas is no more—the Hundredth and Last.”

“You’re the last emperor?” They ask the question in tandem.

I shiver under the press of their eyes—their surprise, their shock, their disbelief. “Yes,” I admit hesitantly.

The two men exchange glances. “Well, that explains a lot,” Elonoa’a says.

***

Exactly what it explains, they don’t tell me. Instead, they usher me towards their ship—the He’eanka, Elonoa’a calls it—and beyond, towards a large campfire burning fiercely at what seems the easternmost shore of the island.

It is there—once I am sitting and a wooden cup of some alcoholic drink is placed in my hands—they introduce me to the rest of Elonoa’a’s crew. His crew—because, as I learn from their introductions, Elonoa’a did not sail out of the world on his own. He took others with him.

The pang of that knowledge bites deep. I ache with sadness, with grief, with regret that I am the one to hear their story and not—I swear to bring word of the ship and her crew, of Auri and El as they call themselves now, back to Kip’s people. It’s the least I can do, much as I know Kip would have done so much more.

Not for the first time, I wish the assassin had caught me instead of my beloved. Kip’s loss is so much more than mine could ever have been. But I can’t turn back time. I tried to once—after the end, when my tears and my loss and my grief got to be too much—and I cannot bear to try again.

***

The night passes.

We eat and we drink—although I do not eat much, and I drink even less. I have no heart for it, no matter that I am sitting with legends in the realms of the gods. I want to curl up in a blanket, to sleep, to dream of a world where Kip and I are together and the idea of adventure is not a lead weight in my stomach because he’s not here to adventure with.

But a blanket isn’t offered, nor is a tent although I can see several scattered about. Then, there’s no need to sleep in Sky Ocean, so perhaps Auri and El do not think that I might wish to.

Or perhaps there’s more to it than that. No one else sleeps either or goes their own way. One woman adds wood to the fire. A few sing quietly. Most simply sit and watch the stars on the eastern horizon. They’re waiting for something, I realize—no one says what and I have no curiosity left within me to ask, but I’m certain of that much.

***

Hours, days, possibly centuries later, Auri lets out a gasp. “There,” he cries.

I can’t help but look. My ancestor’s face is alive with wonder and amazement and joy; his eyes are caught on something in the distance—a brilliant star hovering just over the edge of the horizon.

No. Not a star, I think, as the light brightens and grows and expands to fill the entirety of the eastern horizon. Whatever this is, it’s moving much too fast to be a star—and it’s heading directly towards us.

I find myself staring. As much as I don't want to watch, don't want to be caught up in someone else's story when I can barely stand being in my own, there’s no way to ignore the excitement in the air. Next to me, Auri and El are crying; they're clinging to each other and crying and laughing and kissing. Whatever this is, it’s someone incredibly important to them—the kind of important that reshapes people's lives. The kind of important that was my beloved Kip walking into my study for the very first time.

My heart beats rapidly. I turn from the two men, unable to share in whatever joy this is, yet unwilling to ruin something so obviously precious. Perhaps I can slip away, hide, find somewhere to be alone. Except I can’t focus for the sounds echoing through the air— the shush-shush of water on wood, the flapping of canvas, the grating sound of the hull of a ship meeting the shore.

My eyes catch the ship first—a small boat with one sail, guided by the steady hand of what seems to be only one sailor. His back is to me as he lets go of the tiller and jumps into the water, pulling the boat up the beach with one hand; his other is tight wrapped around a small clay pot radiating the light of the—the light of the Sun.

My chest constricts at the shape of the man—not tall, golden skinned, with broad shoulders and powerful thighs. His hair is long and glossy, dotted with a few strands of silver and a handful of almost luminescent soft-coloured feathers.

Only when he's done pulling the boat well up onto the shore does the man turns towards us. For a moment, he is framed by the most magnificent shades of dawn—lavender, silver, dove-grey, pale rose, warm charcoal—the same shades as the feathers glistening beautifully in his hair.

And then he is simply a man, a beautiful man, a man that I recognize with my heart and my soul and everything that I am— “Kip?” I whisper.

Chapter Text

Kip freezes, the hand cupping the pot of what can only be the light of the sun still held high. His eyes flare wide, and slowly, so slowly—so desperately slowly—he turns his head in my direction.

I drink in his eyes first—their shade entrancing and warm, sunlight through tea. I couldn't bear to take tea in the weeks and months after his family took him away; Conju had been beside himself trying to provide alternatives as I'd refused coffee and chocolate as well for all the memories they carried of Kip. My Groom of the Chamber had finally resorted to serving me hot lemon water and honey.

Around Kip's eyes are whispers of gold—shimmering, shining, brilliant. A brighter mark glistens in the center of his forehead, the shade of the sun cupped in his hand, of my touch, of my magic. My heart aches at the sight of it, of the proof of his—of his last request.

I shift my gaze downwards, taking in the rest of him; I linger on his bare chest, his grass skirt, his bare feet. Stars, he's beautiful—so magnificent, so strong, so healthy.  He isn't sick and faded. His forehead isn't lined with pain or worry or fear. He isn't—

He isn't dead.

“My—” Kip says, the word more a gasp. He blinks at me a few times, dazed, then flicks his gaze to Auri and El, to the others on the beach whose names I’ve already forgotten. It’s impossible to miss the uncertainty in his voice, the hesitation, the doubt.

It’s been one year, five months, five days, and thirteen hours since I last saw Kip—since I gave him into his family’s keeping, knowing that I would never, ever, see him again. Longer still since I last saw his forehead wrinkle in confusion. My thoughts slip back to the last time—that final day, those final hours as his hands betrayed him, as his voice betrayed him, as his body betrayed him. I shudder.

Kip sees it. “My—Fitz—Fitzroy?” His voice is tremulous as he stumbles towards me. One step, two—

I should move, I should go to him, meet him halfway, but I can’t—I’m shivering, shaking, trembling. Kip is here. He’s here. He’s—

He reaches a hand in my direction, the hand cupping the small pot of sunlight. Its glow is bright and glorious, but nowhere near as glorious as having Kip standing before me. “Oh!” he says belatedly, staring at the pot in dismay.

“Here—” someone offers, stepping into Kip’s reach. A young woman—her eyes bright and laughing, her hair dark and long, caught back by shell combs.

Without a pause, Kip deposits the pot into her hands. “For Auri,” he says, clearly relieved. “Thank-you, Pinyë,” he adds a second later, even as he takes another step in my direction. He reaches out again, hand now empty. “Fitzroy.”

The mark of my kiss glimmers on his outstretched palm, bright against the powdery gold lacing the rest of his skin. The softness of the markings sends a pang through my chest; it’s a testament to how gently I’d held his hands, desperately afraid of hurting him in his final moments.

My eyes blur with tears—and I’m crying and trembling and he’s mere inches away and I still can’t move because what if this isn’t real? What if it’s a dream and my hands go right through him? What if it’s a nightmare and he turns to ash at my touch?

“Fitzroy,” Kip says a third time, breaking through my spiraling panic; then, more steadily, more firmly, more fondly, “Beloved.”

The word sparks a fire within me and sets it to blazing. The separation between us is abruptly untenable. I launch myself at him; he’s so close, I crash into him like a sea train. He overbalances, loses his footing, sends us tumbling to the sand in a tangle of arms and legs.

We scrabble for each other. My hands wrap around his back. Kip’s reach up, curve around the back of my head. I loop one of my feet over the back of his knee, draw him in as close as I can. He takes the invitation and presses himself into me—close enough I can tuck my head into the crook between his shoulder and his neck.

I tighten my hold, cling to him the way I’d wanted to when—As I shake and tremble and weep, I frantically try to memorize the feel of him, the scent of him, everything that he is. Gods, I’d thought him lost. I’d thought him gone. And now he’s in my arms and I can’t imagine letting him go.

Kip’s fingertips are warm and tender against my bare scalp. They’re not smooth or silky like mine are thanks to centuries of Conju’s tireless care. They’re calloused and dry, chafed and wind-burned, perfectly common and ordinary. But they are his. They’re his and they are on me and I press myself further into his neck because I can’t get enough. I’ll never get enough.

Strands of his hair tickle my face. I relish the sensation of it, the way the windswept strands and the luminous feathers twisted into them play against my skin. Stars, his hair is long—wavy and fine and utterly fascinating—so different than he’d worn it through all the long years of his service. I want to twine my fingers through it, but I can’t bear to let him go, so I bury my face in it instead.

I suck in big, gasping breaths, wallow in the taste of all that he is on my tongue—smoke and ink, salt and the sea, sunlight and something more.

“Beloved,” Kip whispers—again and again and again—holding on to me as tightly as I do to him. “My beloved.”

I should say something. I should answer his litany of beloveds with my own. I should—

I cling to him and let my tears speak for me.

***

Later—possibly much later, given how the fire has died down—I pull my face out from the shelter of Kip’s neck. My cheeks are sore, scraped raw from my tears, but the pain is like nothing next to the ready warmth of Kip pressed against me. I feel as raw as my cheeks, but full—so full—of the knowledge that Kip is in my arms, safe and healthy and alive. His heartbeat is reassuring; I can feel its steady rhythm beneath my fingers, still clasped tight around his back.

I never want to let him go. Never.

“Beloved,” I finally say, my heart aching with the truth of it. I raise my eyes to meet his. “Beloved.”

His soft smile is brighter than the pot of sunlight he'd carried. “Beloved,” he agrees, squeezing me tight one more time before pulling out of my grasp awkwardly.

I must make a noise, as Kip immediately reaches back for my hand. I sigh appreciatively as I take it and twine our fingers together. “I don't want to let you go,” I admit.

His face reddens beatifically. “Oh,” he says shyly, glancing down at our clasped hands.  “It’s only that it’s been—a long time. I thought we might go somewhere more private—where we can clean up, rest, talk.”

“Ah,” I manage, flushing with embarrassment at my neediness and glad that my colouring hides it. Glancing down at my outfit, I can't help but grimace. My sky-blue tunic, my trousers, my scarlet mantle—for all I hadn't felt like my old self, I'd tried hard to look the part for my old friends—are all a mess. They've been damp and wrinkled since my drop into Sky Ocean; now they are damp and wrinkled and utterly encrusted with sand. I squeeze Kip's hand. “Wise counsel as always, beloved.”

***

Kip takes me to the little boat he arrived in first, now fully onshore and well away from the water. “Rule number one: always secure your boat. I should have—” He shakes his head and offers me a rueful smile. “I admit, I got a bit—distracted. I wasn’t expecting—”

I’m not certain what to say. If I mention that I hadn’t ever expected to see him again, I’ll only start to cry again, and I don’t want to cry anymore. Kip doesn’t deserve that. Not now. Not here. Not when I have him back. “Auri and El obviously took care of it for you,” I manage.

“Yes,” he agrees, then glances around, presumably for our illustrious ancestors. “I suppose I’ll need to thank them later.”

I shift my gaze from him to the empty stretch of beach and ocean and the remains of the once roaring fire; in the time we’ve taken to disentangle ourselves, the crew of the He’eanka have dispersed, leaving us alone with Kip’s boat and its much larger counterpart. “Where do you think everyone got off to?”

“The crew is probably giving us some space,” Kip says immediately. “Auri and El—well, I expect they went off to the other side of the island to celebrate. The sun’s ray means a lot for Auri.”

From the colour of Kip’s face and the memory of how passionately the two men had kissed when Kip’s boat had emerged out of the sunrise, it is easy enough to guess exactly how they might be celebrating. Rather than dwell on that, I return my attention to Kip. “What’s so important about a ray of the sun?”

“Auri needs it to be able to go home,” he explains—not that it’s much of an explanation—even as he pulls me up onto the deck of the small boat. It’s a bit bigger than I’d thought—a good dozen feet wide and twice as long.

“I’ll need my hand back for a few moments, beloved," Kip says apologetically. “I’ll grab a few things and then we can—they gave me a shelter when we first crossed paths. It’s more than large enough for us to share.”

Smiling at the thought of a place just for us, I clench my hand reflexively around his, then force myself to let go. If I bite my lower lip to avoid making another sound of distress, at least Kip is none the wiser. Or so I think for the briefest of moments—until Kip gives me such a perceptive, knowing, understanding look that my heart stutters.

I hold my breath—unaccountably terrified that Kip might disintegrate before my eyes now that I’m no longer clinging to him. I watch silently, trying not to tremble, as he crouches down on the deck and open some kind of storage space in the hull. From it, he pulls out a length of cloth. A scarf, I think, or perhaps a mantle; whatever it is, it’s lovely, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The cloth is a shimmering shade I can’t quite name; it’s more than white, almost iridescent, like the foamy bubbles in a bath—soft and glistening, with the hint of a rainbow sheen.

Kip wraps the strange cloth around his waist like a belt, then pulls something else from the hold—also cloth, properly white this time, but a white that practically glows in the brightness of the morning sun. This, he holds out to me. “It’s a good length tunic—” he explains. “The Wind That Rises at Dawn—the foremother of my people—gave it to me to wear at the House of the Sun. You can change into it once you clean up.”

I take the tunic from him, letting my fingers brush across his as he passes me the cloth. I take a breath, grateful for momentary touch. “Thank you, beloved.”

He smiles at me fondly, then digs into the hold again—this time coming up with a large coconut and a much smaller mango. “In case we get hungry,” Kip says, closing and latching the storage compartment. He stands with an ease I can’t help but be jealous of, tucks the coconut and mango into the crook of one arm and offers me the other. “Shall we?”

***

As the sun reaches its zenith, I slip into Kip’s shelter—as clean as I can be for having used a clay jug of water, a small bowl, and the least sandy edge of my scarlet mantle to wipe myself down before pulling on the white tunic Kip had provided me with. It fits perfectly despite my taller frame—a much more useful attribute than whatever made the cloth glow. Having met the Sun once, I am quite certain the useful magic contained in the tunic must be a gift from Kip’s forebearer.

Kip waits for me inside the shelter, sitting cross-legged on a mat of what seems to be woven grass. It’s impossible to miss his relief as his eyes find mine. Before I can say anything, he smiles, uncurls his legs, and shuffles over to make room for me. “Beloved,” he says, then opens his arms in invitation.

The fire at the heart of me blazes high. I drop onto the mat and press myself tight into Kip’s side. He lets out a soft sound of surprise, then wraps an arm around my back and pulls me in close before we can fall over. I wrap my own arm around him, tuck my head onto his shoulder, and gently lean my head against his. I savor the feel of Kip—take a deep breath, then a second, then a third, letting the scent of him fill my nose again—smoke and ink, salt and the sea, sunlight and something more. “You smell nice,” I offer, pressing a kiss to his ear.

I can feel his flush of warmth through his bare skin. “You’re ridiculous, beloved,” he says.

“I’m allowed to be,” I tell him. I hesitate for a long moment, but we’re in the shadow of the shelter’s woven-grass roof and it feels easier to admit the truth here than it did in the full light of the sun. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

A shudder runs through Kip at my words; he shifts abruptly out of my grasp, then turns so we’re facing each other. His hands come up to the sides of my head; they’re so warm—so there—I tremble under his touch—not light but purposeful, compelling, insistent. He pulls my head down urgently, leans up until our foreheads press together. He meets my eyes with ferocious intensity. “I would never have let that happen, Beloved. Never.”

I shake my head at the confidence in his tone—so much my consummate diplomat, my great negotiator, the man who bullied my Council of Princes into doing so much more than they ever would have on their own. “There are some things even you can’t control, beloved. When I die—” 

Kip jolts as if struck by lightning; he leans back so our foreheads are no longer touching, although his hands don’t stray from my head. “Wait—you mean you aren’t—you aren’t dead?”

I stare into his wide eyes, full of shock and astonishment and—stars—distress. I shake my head slowly. “No, beloved,” I tell him quietly, reassuringly. “I was in Alinor and fell through a portal. I arrived here—last night, I think. It’s hard to say. Time doesn’t pass the same way here as it does back ho—”

“Alinor? You went to Alinor?”

Kip’s question is quiet, tremulous, almost fragile; it breaks through my ramble and reminds me that—gods, I haven’t told him anything. I reach for his hands, hold them gently between us, close to my heart. “Kip—Beloved—yes. Yes. I went to Alinor. I delivered your letter to the Bee at the Border. Basil—he’s alive. And Sarah—and your nephew, Clio. Oh, Kip, he’s a good lad. You’d be so proud of him.” 

Kip’s eyes well up with tears. “Basil. He’s alive?”

“Yes, Beloved,” I swear, pulling him close; this time I’m the one to press our foreheads together. “Basil’s alive—and he’s—he’s friends with Jullanar. She’s known him for years.”

“Basil’s alive,” he repeats—this time less questioning, more wondering. “I’d—I’d hoped—when I saw the Ancestors’ ships and he wasn’t there—not him, not Dimiter. I thought they—he—had to be, but I wasn’t cert—”

This time it’s Kip who bursts into tears. I pull him into my arms—ignoring the way our knees knock together—tuck his head into my chest and press my chin gently down on the crown of his head. “Oh, Beloved. Beloved. Yes. Basil’s alive,” I tell him for the third time. “He’s safe. He’s alive. His family is alive.”

“But he didn’t answer any of my letters,” Kip murmurs into my chest. “Why—why didn’t he—”

I huff gently. “Alinor didn’t have you to reform their dreadful postal service, my dear,” I say, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of his head. “Basil only received your letters a few months ago. Three hundred and twenty-seven of them at least—all at once.”

Kip trembles against my chest. I tighten my hold until I realize that he’s no longer crying; he’s laughing—great gulping peals of frantic laugher. “Oh gods, I can’t even imagine.”

I chuckle into his hair. “The rest of the village was quite put out apparently. The first letters they’d received in years—and all but a handful of them were for you,” I tell him. “But Basil wasn’t that surprised to receive so many, at least not once I explained how much time we had in the Palace of Stars. He was quite certain you’d never accept loss if there was any other option.”

“I suppose not,” Kip admits softly. There’s a weight in his words I want to ask about, but before I can, he adds, “I’m glad he’s alive. That you’re—I thought—”

My heart aches at the way his words break off, at the deep well of sorrow infused within them. There’s no way to hold him any tighter than I already am without hurting him, so I kiss the top of Kip’s head again, then softly lip at his ear. “You thought I was—how long has it been for you, beloved?”

I can’t see Kip’s face, tucked as he is against my chest, but I can guess the truth from his tears, from how he’s still shaking. “A long time,” he tells me on a gasping breath. “So long. I’ve been alone so long—”

“Oh beloved,” I whisper gently, wanting to wrap him within me until there’s nothing left between us. “You’re not alone now. I’m here. I won’t leave you—not again. Never again.”

“No—” Kip’s reaction to my promise is startlingly sharp. He pulls out of my embrace then slides back a half foot. His eyes meet mine, and there’s a sudden tension in their brilliant, shimmering brown—a worry, a fear, a desperation— “Stars—you’re alive beloved. You have to go back. No—you need to.”

It’s impossible to miss how distressed his own words make him. I know he doesn’t want me to leave “Why?” I demand. “Surely if El followed Auri—stayed here with Auri—I can stay here with you.”

Knowing Kip as well as I do, I can only imagine that he’s thinking about the succession. “You don’t have to worry, beloved. There are protocols for if I don’t come back for the Jubilee. Aioru made sure of it. And he has a friend, Tanaea. I’m quite certain she’s the one meant to succeed me. If I don’t go back, Zunidh will accept her. I’m certain—”

“This isn’t about—” Kip takes in a harsh breath. then reaches for my hands and folds his fingers around mine. His aren’t—they aren’t as warm as they were, and he isn’t trembling anymore. “This is about you, Fitzroy. You need to go back for you.”

“I don’t,” I tell him forcefully. “All I need is—” I try to flip our hands so I can take his.

He doesn’t let me, just tightens his hold until I stop trying to wriggle out of his grasp. His eyes flare brightly—sunlight through tea paired with the glimmering stars of Sky Ocean—bore into me as if he’s trying to memorize everything that I am before letting me go. I want to say that he doesn’t have to, that he never has to—

“You have a daughter, beloved,” Kip says.

I freeze, thunderstruck. I can’t—there’s no possible way. But Kip would never lie to me, not about something like this. It takes me forever to remember how to breathe. “I—"

Kip gives me the gentlest, softest, saddest smile. “You have a daughter, beloved,” he says again. There’s no hesitation in his words—he’s entirely certain, entirely sure.

“But how—who—how did you—”

Kip raises a bemused eyebrow. “The usual way, I expect. She’s your daughter by way of the Moon. As to how I found out—when I visited the house of the Sun to negotiate for a ray of his light, I might have bargained for a few other things as well.”

Despite my effusive shock, wonder, burgeoning amazement, I can’t help but laugh. “Of course you did, my beloved,” I say. “Of course you did.”

Chapter Text

While the sun is high, Kip and I talk and talk and talk. And it’s so—so easy.

At some point, Kip peels the mango he took from his boat. It’s delicious, so juicy and flavorful, the most incredible fruit that I’ve ever tasted—possibly because I’m sharing it with Kip. 

Still later, he tells me of the moment his spirit slipped between Zunidh and Sky Ocean. “You were singing,” he shares quietly, his voice pitched low and suffused with sorrow. “And I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to let you go, didn’t want to leave you alone. But I had no choice; in my ears, in my mind, in my soul, your song became the song of my people, the song the Lays—and everything that I was drifted into that song, became a part of that song—the great Naming of my ancestors.”

“I could have lost myself in that song,” Kip admits, glancing down at our clasped hands. We’re not sitting curled up together anymore, but rather cross-legged and facing each other, knees pressed to knees, our hands resting in the hollow formed between us. “But the Old Woman Who Lives in the Deeps of the Sea gathered me in, kept me safe, took me home.”

Kip’s head lifts; his eyes sparkle with joy and amazement and a deep-rooted transcendence. I can’t help the wave of longing, of jealousy, of want for even a fraction of what my beloved Kip has. I shiver. No, of what he had—before.

Home. It’s a word full of weight to my beloved, I know; he’d saved up every one of his holidays so that he could make lengthy journeys home to visit his family before I’d granted him a sky ship for his travels. Kip had seen the use of a sky ship as a great gift; to me, it had simply been a way to bring him back to me sooner.

At least until that last sky ship, that last journey—his final trip home.

My heart aches with loss, even with Kip sitting before me, his fingers twined with mine. He’s lost everything and yet he still wants me to go back, to leave him—I know this. He’s telling me this story so I can understand why, so I know that he’ll be safe and well and won’t be hurt if I go. But I can’t imagine letting him go a second time. I can’t. I might never have had a home, but I have a heart and it’s Kip, and—

“And then I woke up here,” Kip states, his tone flattening discordantly. “I woke up here, and I was alone and I didn’t know why. I’d thought—”

“Your Buru Tovo told me that you’d be sailing with your ancestors,” I say when I realize he isn’t going to finish his train of thought.

“That’s what the Lays say,” he agrees quietly. “I’d thought to wake up to my father, to Navalia, to Basil and Dimiter. I didn’t expect to wake up alone.”

I squeeze his hands gently, wanting him to know, to understand that he isn’t alone now. “What about Auri and El—the crew of the He’eanka?”

“Oh, they were here too. But I woke up on the other side of the island and, well, it was a while before I could make myself go exploring.” He offers me an awkward smile, perhaps meant to be placating; it isn’t. It’s too easy to appreciate how alone he must have felt because I’d felt the same way with him gone, even with Conju and Ludvic and Rhodin doing what they could in the months after, even once I’d left on my quest and found several of my old friends, even after I’d found Basil and given him Kip’s last letter and told him of Kip’s last moments.

“I did find them eventually,” Kip continues, tone a bit rueful. “That was—it was better. Except Auri and El had just learned the next star in their ke’ea and were nearly as—they were grieving for something they thought impossible.”

I consider the astonishment, the wonder, the sheer joy I’d seen on their faces when Kip came sailing out of the sunrise. “A ray of the sun?”

Kip nods. “I don’t know all the details, but Auri and El were given a vision. With a ray of the sun they'll be able to attract the attention of a goddess who will be able to save Auri from the poison in his veins so that he and El can—so that all of the crew of the He’eanka can—return home.”

I push away the thought of what it might mean for Auri and El to sail back into the world, what ripples their arrival might cause, what I might need to do to ensure no one tries to use Auri to displace my future heir. If I think too hard about it I might start appreciating Kip’s point of view, and I refuse to believe that anything is more important than not letting Kip out of my sight. Surely, Aioru can deal with the fallout of the forty-ninth emperor of Astandalas reappearing out of nowhere. Surely.

“And no mortal can visit the House of the Sun more than once,” I say slowly, forcing my thoughts back to the details of Kip’s story. “If Auri was taken by the sun, I presume El and the others made their own visit to get him back?”

“Something like that.” There’s a note in his voice that isn’t quite agreement, suggesting that there's more to their story than I've heard previously, but Kip steers away from that side path. “When I found them, Auri and El were devastated. I couldn’t let that go, not when—not when I could help them.”

Even if Kip had traveled to the House of the Sun before becoming my secretary—a feat I wouldn't put past him given the long journey he'd undertaken to get home after the Fall—he isn't mortal anymore. If he wants to visit the House of the Sun, he can. Not that I think it’s something my Kip would do more than once without good reason—not when the Sun is more self-righteous than Prince Rufus on a bad day.

I can’t help but wonder what the Sun thinks of my beloved Kip, but I have to content myself with the reality that I’ll likely never know given how closed-mouthed Kip is about his own accomplishments and how unlikely it is that the Sun and I will ever become boon companions. But it doesn’t really matter; whatever battle of wits they’d fought, it’s obvious my Kip had won. I smile at him appreciatively. “And you did,” I say, thinking of the small pot of sunlight he’d passed off before greeting me. “Auri and El were lucky to find you, beloved.”

Kip blushes and glances away. “Given all that happened on my journey, I don’t think luck has anything to do with it. Auri and El weren’t the only ones who wanted something from the House of the Sun.”

“Oh?”

Without letting go of my hands, Kip brushes the nearest edge of the cloth wrapped around him like a belt. It’s soft to the touch, like the finest gossamer. “I met Vou’a—the god of mystery—on my journey. I learned he really is my Buru Tovo’s husband.”

“That explains a lot.” And it does—Vou’a is the god that challenged Kip in the marketplace on Lesuia—the one Kip stood toe-to-toe with and refused to back down. “You promised him that you’d bring home the hearth-fire of a new life for the world.”

“How did you—” Kip pauses mid-sentence, perhaps remembering that he’d shared the exchange at the same time as he’d shared his long story of the sea. He clenches his eyes shut for a brief moment, then squeezes my hands; when he meets my eyes again, his are dark and despondent, despairing. “I did,” he whispers, his grief near palpable. “But I failed. I earned a boon from the Sea Witch. I won a boon from the Sun. And still I failed. Neither of them could see me returned to—to the world so I could fulfil my promises.”

I flip our grips so I’m cocooning Kip’s hands within my own. “You haven’t failed beloved. It’s not your promise to keep anymore,” I say.

Kip blinks and shakes his head. “Promises don’t work that way, Fitzroy.”

“Don’t they?” I ask, raising an eyebrow at him. I shift his hands to one of mine so that I can raise my other to my neck. I tug the single amber-ringed cowrie on its simple cord out from under the collar of the shimmering tunic. “Your Buru Tovo gave me this,” I tell him. You hold his promise now, the elderly man had said then, even as I could barely speak for my grief in the wake of Kip’s family taking him away from me.

Kip’s eyes widen at the sight of the shell cupped between my fingers. “He gave you—”

Yes, I want to say, but that’s not what Kip needs to hear. “You didn’t fail,” I stress instead. “I accepted this from your Buru Tovo—and your promise along with it.”

I realize my mistake even before I finish speaking. The only way I can keep Kip’s promise is to go back—and the only way I can go back is if I let Kip go. Tears spill from my eyes at the realization. “I’m sorry,” I say without thinking. “I didn’t know that I’d find you again.”

“Oh beloved,” Kip says softly. “Beloved.” And then Kip’s arms are around me and my head is tucked under his chin and my tears are dripping freely down his bare chest. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“It’s not,” I murmur into his chest. “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to let you go again.”

Kip’s lips brush against the crown of my head—gentle and soothing and calm. “I don’t want to let you go either, beloved,” he says gently, affectionately, fondly. “But we’ll have all the time in the world one day. I promise you that.”

I shudder against him. “But what if we don’t? They’re going to lock me up in the necropolis. What if I’m trapped? What if I’m lost? What if I never see you ag—”

Kip’s arms tighten around my back. His lips continue to play across my scalp, breaking me free from my panic. “You don’t have to let them,” he says once my shaking relents. “You can’t have been planning to stay in Solaara after the Jubilee?”

“I never made any plans.” I suck in a harsh breath and let it out slowly, audibly. “Once you were gone, I couldn’t even think about leaving the palace forever. It’s not as if there’s anywhere else for me to go—not like—at least in the palace, I have your memory.”

His sharp intake of breath mirrors mine, sends a sharp knife of guilt stabbing through my chest. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “It’s not your fault. It’s not like you wanted—”

“It’s not your fault either,” he declares—firm and staunch and resolute—as if he’s defending the need for a new postal service and not simply ignoring the fact that he died because of me. “And you do have somewhere to go, beloved. My home is your home. Before I—I invited Ludvic and Rhodin and Conju to settle in the Vangavaye-ve with me. I’d hoped—” Kip’s pause is long and full of longing. “I’d hoped one day to be able to ask you to come home with me too.”

“Oh.” I rest my head against his chest, let myself soak in the rhythmic thrumming of his heart. In my mind, I envision the two of us curled up together on a couch—perhaps the one in the sitting room of Navikiani where Ludvic first broached the idea of retirement. “I would have said yes,” I say simply, clearly, so he can’t take my words as anything but the truth. “I love you, my dear Kip. I always have. I would do anything to share the rest of my life with you.”

There’s a wetness against my scalp that is more than the press of Kip’s lips; my beloved is crying too. We hold onto each other, both crying, curled so close it’s as if we are one person.

After a while—perhaps a very long while—Kip pulls back enough to tuck one of his hands under my chin and raise my head until our eyes find each other; his smile is soft and warm and infinitely tender. “I wish—” There’s a longing in Kip’s voice that makes me want to pull him close again—but I don’t move, I can’t move, I can only stare at him, my heart open and raw and wanting.

“There will be time enough for us, beloved,” he says gently, so very gently. “I want you to go—to share a home with Conju and Ludvic and Rhodin, to find your daughter, to have adventures with all of your friends. I want you to be happy for all the years we should have had together. And then, when it is your time, I promise you won’t be lost to the Deeps. I promise I’ll find you. I promise we’ll sail Sky Ocean together—forever.”

The air crackles with the depth of Kip’s promises. My magic blazes around us in response, filling the shelter with rainbow hued light—a sea of stars. And in it I see the vision I saw the first day Kip walked into my life.

A night sky.

A luminescent ocean stretching to meet the stars—so bright and clear and close.

A small, unfamiliar boat—no longer so unfamiliar—cutting magnificently through the waves.

Two men, pressed close, their eyes on a distant horizon.

I blink and find myself staring into Kip’s lovely, beautiful, brilliant eyes—so confident, so certain, so sure. I’ve never doubted him before; I refuse to start now. “Forever won’t be nearly long enough,” I tell him.

Chapter Text

I’m not the only one leaving Kip.

With the pot of sunlight they need, Auri and El and the crew of the He’eanka are leaving too.

The plan—Kip’s plan—is for us to leave together.

For us to leave him alone.

***

Time in Sky Ocean is the time of the soul, stories say—my stories, my poems, my songs from before I was bound and crowned as the Hundredth Emperor of Astandalas.

If it were my soul, my time with Kip would last forever. But it’s not, and it doesn’t.

At least, we don’t leave right away.

The days blur together as the crew of the He’eanka prepare for a long voyage—storing coconuts and bananas, drying fish and mango, filling containers of water from the island’s natural spring. No one knows how long it will take to sail back into the world—or even where we will arrive when we do—so El insists on being prepared. While we might not need food or drink or rest in Sky Ocean, the same will not be true when we arrive.

What I don’t understand is how they even know where to go. Left to my own recognizance, I wouldn’t have any idea how to get back. The last time I’d been in Sky Ocean, the Moon had thrown me out a window and I’d fallen back into the world; it’s not an experience I care to repeat.

Kip assures me I won't have to. “The directions are in the Lays, beloved. El knows this better than I ever could—and if he didn't, Tupaia would,” he says. “East first, then west and home.”

There's a sadness to his words—a grief I can't heal because Kip can't sail with us. As much as he tries to make light of his situation when anyone brings it up, the truth is stark: he can’t come with us, he can't return home, he will never return home again. The assassin's poison took that from him. There will be no miraculous homecoming for Kip Mdang. There can’t be. Death is one line that even the gods will not cross.

My heart hurts for the future that is no longer ours. We’d only just started planning the Progress that would have seen Kip celebrated across the entire world on his path to becoming my Viceroy when the assassin had struck. We’d only just agreed that the final ceremony would take place in Gorjo City in the Vangavaye-ve, where I could shower him with all the praise he so richly deserved in front of his family and friends. I’d only just approved his costumier’s visit to Gorjo City in order to make him a costume reflective of both who he was and who he was going to be.

Each time I look at Kip in his grass skirt and bare chest, his only decoration the efela-ko at his neck, I am starstruck by his beauty. The simplicity of who he is, how perfect he is, does nothing however to calm my mind of the vision of Kip dressed to accept the care of the entire world from my hands. Stars, the world has lost so much with Kip’s death. I have lost so much.

And I’m only going to lose more. I’m going to lose him again. Even though Kip’s made me a promise—three promises, like a story out of legend or song—I can’t be excited for the future. I don’t want to spend more time—days, years, decades—without Kip. I don’t. I don’t.

I push aside my fears and my failures, try not to let the could have beens and what will bes take the joy out of what time I have with Kip now.

We spend uncountable days hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, curled around each other until there’s no space between us. We walk the island round nearly every day; Kip shows me where he woke up, where he first met Auri and El, where he said he would travel to the House of the Sun. We swim in Sky Ocean like we once did at Navikiani, this time unencumbered by the presence of the taboos. I explode with warmth and affection and love each time he takes my hand and points out something magnificent—although most of the time I spend looking at him.

And he takes me out on the boat his ancestors made for his journey to the House of the Sun—his vaha, I learn to call it—and teaches me the fundamentals of sailing. “I’ll teach you more when you come back,” he says as we lay together on the deck, enjoying the salty air and each other’s company. “We’ll have plenty of time.”

We do not sail at night; when Kip makes the suggestion, I refuse. I need the vision of our future together too much; I need it to carry me through the long years ahead.

***

Each night we spend time with Auri and El and the crew of the He’eanka, telling them stories, getting them prepared for a world that is much different from the one they left, getting ourselves ready for the day when we will have to part.

Kip speaks of the world as it is now, shares the new laws that govern Zunidh, explains the protocols that will help them find a place in the world as it is. I ask Kip fondly if he wrote a Protocol for the return of Auri and El. “I didn’t,” Kip answers seriously. “But Protocol Twenty-Four addresses people appearing out of pockets of time. That one should work well for this.”

Kip’s suggestion reminds me of the Mae Irion, so I tell him—and the others, as well—about how his Protocol has likely already been put to good use by Aioru. Kip seems greatly relieved that our ancestors shouldn’t have any difficulties outside of who they are. “You might want to wait until after Fitzroy’s Jubilee before you visit Solaara though,” he says to Auri one night. “So there is no chance of anyone trying to use you as a final attempt to restore the empire.”

Auri’s face gives away his thoughts on the matter. “I have no desire to ever return to the Palace of Stars,” my ancestor swears—which seems to lessen Kip’s worries even more. “I am only glad that your people will accept El and I for who we are to each other now—and Pinyë and the others as well.”

“They will be glad to have you back—all of you, exactly as you are,” Kip tells them, so vehemently that Auri and El and most of the crew members smile. “You will bring home new truths for the Lays. You will bring home songs and stories and skills that have been lost to our people.” Kip adds. “And Tupaia will bring back the ability to dance Aōteketētana.”

I squeeze my beloved’s hand supportively; I know how important Aōteketētana is to him. I’d heard the story of how it had helped him find his way home after the Fall. I’d watched him dance it in the Throne Room of the Palace of Stars. I’d seen the pride in his teacher’s—his Buru Tovo’s—eyes afterwards.

I had never known, never realized, that Kip was the only one of his people capable of dancing Aōteketētana fully—that not only had the assassin taken my beloved, my Lord Chancellor, my soon-to-be Viceroy, away from me, but they had also taken a rising tanà away from his people before he could train someone to follow in his footsteps.

Kip believes Tupaia will easily take his place, will slide seamlessly into the role because of who he is, will be better than Kip could ever have been. I don’t suggest otherwise. Kip can’t return home, so there is nothing good to be had by telling him how irreplaceable he is. Tupaia does not say anything either, although he insists that Kip prove himself—claim his role as tanà before Auri and El and the rest of the crew of the He’eanka—so that he can bring word of it back to the world.

***

Kip dances the fire the night before the He’eanka is to set sail. My eyes flood with tears watching, so I don’t see nearly as much of it as I’d like. But the vision of Kip after the dance, standing at the opposite end of the fire—sweaty and glorious, radiating magnificence, the gold of my touch shimmering on his forehead and his face and his hands in the flickering light of the coals—burns into my mind. I cradle the image close, glad to have it to bring back with me, to push out the memory of my beloved’s sickly body giving out in my arms.

Kip standing on the opposite side of a bed of fiery coals from the rest of us is symbolic in a way that cuts deep into my heart and my soul; I try not to dwell on it, on the separation between the living and the dead, between Kip and I. I have to leave because he’s asked me to, because he needs me to, because it’s the only way to ensure that we’ll share our forever.

As I wipe my tears away, Tupaia—who beat a handmade drum in time with Kip’s dance like his nephew Gaudy once did in the Palace of Stars—approaches my beloved. The man offers Kip a solemn bow, then unties the efela of fire coral from his own neck and makes to wrap it around Kip’s. My beloved holds up a hand in negation, but Tupaia simply glares at him until he relents. “You have earned the efetana, Cliopher Mdang,” Tupaia tells him—tells all of us. “I will share with our people how you provided us with hope and light and news of the world, how you travelled to the House of the Sun and brought back a ray of his light to free Auri from his poison and to guide our way home, how you asked your fanoa return to the world to fulfil your promises. They will sing of your devotion in the Lays.”

Fanoa. I catch the word Tupaia uses for me, although I don’t understand its meaning. The glance Kip aims my way is far more recognizable; it’s a request, a hope, a plea. It’s all I need to launch myself up and around the dancing field to his side. “Will you let me help you, beloved?” I ask quietly.

Kip’s face is full of emotion; while he doesn’t speak—I don’t think he can speak for the moment—he grabs for my arm like a lifeline and pulls me close, lets me take some of his weight. I give Tupaia an appreciative nod even as I tuck Kip close so I can wrap a supportive arm around his back; Tupaia’s given me clear instructions on how to take care of my beloved without the need for additional assistance, so I’m well prepared. “This way, dear heart,” I say, guiding Kip away from the bed of coals, and from Tupaia, Auri and El, and the others.

It takes some time to make our way across the beach and around the He'eanka and her smaller cousin, but it’s time we have—at least for now. I steer Kip towards a sizeable tidepool that has been made ready to cool Kip’s feet and legs. It’s a private space, lit only by the brilliant stars hovering close and the soft luminescence coming from the water. The moon is nowhere to be seen, a fact I can only appreciate given our history and the news Kip brought back from the House of the Sun.

I delight in the opportunity to care for my beloved. I help Kip sit on the soft mantle I'd been wearing when I'd arrived, now clean—if little more than a large swath of cloth after my magical ministrations—and spread over a flattish rock next to the water. He sighs appreciatively as he slides his lower legs into the tide pool.

After a moment, Kip raises an eyebrow at me and opens his arms in clear invitation. I clamor onto the rock, but rather than fitting myself in next to him, I curl myself around his back, my legs and feet out to either side so I don’t accidentally press against my beloved’s feet and calves—which, according to Tupaia, are likely to be excruciatingly sensitive. Kip seems to find my choice of position perfectly acceptable, as he leans back into my embrace and pulls my hands into his lap and twines our fingers together. I tuck my nose into the curling strands of his hair, letting the feathers he received from the Wind that Rises Dawn play against my scalp even as I breathe him in.

“You were magnificent, beloved” I tell him after a while. “No—you are magnificent.”

Kip shivers at my words. “Thank you, Fitzroy,” he whispers, his voice a bit dry and crackly. “I’m glad that I could—I only wish—”

I blow softly against his ear to break his train of thought, then kiss it gently before pressing my cheek against the crown of his head. “I wish you could come back with us, beloved—that you could claim Aōteketētana in front of your friends and family. But they’ll hear about this—and if your Buru Tovo hasn’t told anyone about how you danced the fire in the Throne Room of the Palace of Stars, then I’ll make sure they hear about that too.”

What Kip deserves is a song, but I can’t offer him that—not now, not knowing that we have to part, not when the last time I sang was to sing him to sleep.

***

Even if the night lasts a century, the dawn comes much too soon.

We lay together on my mantle-turned-blanket—Kip curled into my side, his head pressed against my chest—neither of us sleeping. I don’t want to break the silence, but I can feel Kip beginning to stir and I want more time before our time is up. “What does fanoa mean?” I ask softly.

Kip lets out a long breath, then raises his head to look at me. His eyes are dark but luminous, rich with the touch of Sky Ocean. “It’s an old Islander word,” he says. Despite having plenty of water overnight, his voice is still scratchy and rough. “It means a—a matched but equal pair—two halves of a clam shell, two sandals, the keel and outrigger on a boat.”

I smile at the comparison, but Kip isn’t quite finished. “It’s more than that though. It also means—the person you love so deeply you would leave the world to sail Sky Ocean for them.”

Oh. “But I’m not El,” I admit, heart heavy and aching. “I thought you were gone. I never thought—"

Kip presses a hand to my cheek; I turn my face into his palm. “You love me so deeply you’re willing to return to the world for me, beloved,” he says. “To fulfill my promises, to pass on the treasures I’ve brought from the House of the Sun, to find your—our—daughter.”

“Our?” I whisper, delighted.

Kip blushes, but he doesn’t look away. “If—if you’d like. Being fanoa is as important as a marriage in the Vangavaye-ve,” he explains, rubbing his thumb along my cheek very gently. “So she could be my daughter too, even if I’m not—even if I can’t be there for her. You can be there for both of us.”

“Oh beloved,” is all I can manage before I fling myself at him; we tumble off the blanket and into the sand in a jumble of arms and legs, so much like when we’d first been reunited I can’t help but laugh. And then I’m crying, and Kip’s crying too, and we’re clinging to each other so hard, so tight, so desperately because we know that this is it—this moment is all we have left.

***

Kip asks me to bring three things back for him.

First—the name of the third son of Vonou’a: Samayo Ateatamai. When I suggest he give the name to El or Tupaia, he shakes his head. “You know the grief of not having a name, beloved,” he tells me, his tone sad, sorrowful, aching. “I can think of no one better than you to bring his name back to our people.” I flush with warmth at Kip’s words, even as I wonder at my reception. Will Kip’s family and friends want to hear anything that I have to say when I was the one responsible for Kip’s death?

Second—a blue coral firepot containing a flame of the sun. The light is unmistakable—bright, brilliant, breathtaking—so much like the one Kip carried back for Auri and El that I raise my eyebrows. “Auri gave me a flame earlier,” he explains. “When I questioned the gift, Tupaia rightfully reminded me that a fire is not lessened for lighting another—and so, as Auri gave part of his fire to me, I give a part of my fire to you, beloved. As a symbol of our promise to bring home the hearth-fire of a new life for the world.”

Not only a symbol, I think, staring down at the little pot of sunshine in my hands. A new fire for the hearth of the world—a gift from Kip to go with the new world government he architected and the opportunities he created for the people of Zunidh.

Third—the Mirimiri of Ani: a mystical garment that will allow Ani—the Islander Goddess of the Sea and the fanoa of Vou’a, who is also married to Kip’s great uncle—to walk on land once more. Kip wraps the shimmering, iridescent cloth around my waist and ties it carefully; it has almost no weight and yet all the weight of expectation. “You should find Vou’a with my Buru Tovo,” Kip tells me softly. “When you give this to him, tell him—tell him that no loss is irreparable.”

When Kip is finished with his requests, I set the pot of sunlight carefully to the side, then kneel in the sand at his feet. I completely ignore his shocked gasp of protest. I am not the Last Emperor here—I am only and always and forever Kip’s beloved.

I reach for his hands, gently cup them in my own so that I can trace the shimmering gold that I’d marked him with the last time I’d had to say goodbye with my thumbs. I try to remember that this parting isn’t the same, that Kip isn’t gone, that this time I know I will see him again—if not for years, possibly decades.

I kiss one of my beloved’s palms, and then the other, and then raise my eyes to meet his. “I will carry the name of Samayo Ateatamai home for you, my dearest Kip. I will carry the fire you won from the House of the Sun to provide a new hearth-fire for the life of the world. And I will carry the Mirimiri of Ani that you negotiated for to Vou’a so that he can be reunited with his fanoa for once and for all,” I promise him. “But I refuse to leave you with nothing but memories until we see each other again, beloved. I would like you to have this—as a token of my esteem, my affection, my great love—which has no bounds.”

Between one breath and the next, I tug the imperial signet from my finger—the ring that’s been with me since the day I was crowned the Hundredth Emperor of Astandalas—and place it gently in Kip’s hand.

“But that’s the—the Imperial Seal,” he says, even as his fingers curl possessively around it.

I grin at him. “It seems only fitting, beloved—after all, you were the one to make certain I would no longer need it.”

***

In the time before sunset, the He’eanka is made ready to sail. Auri and El and the crew of the He’eanka offer quiet farewells to Kip, then make themselves busy boarding the ship.

We don’t have much time, and we’ve said so much already. Quietly, Kip and I grasp forearms, press our foreheads together, breathe together. Once, twice, a third time.

“I love you, my dear Kip,” I say—softly, gently, fervently. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“I love you, my dear Fitzroy. Beloved. My beloved,” he says. “Don’t see it as leaving me. You’re simply off to complete a few tasks—and then you’ll be back.”

“And then we’ll be together forever,” I whisper, unable to hold back my tears.

Kip brushes them away with his thumbs, then presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “For always, beloved.”

***

I imagine the sunset is beautiful, but I don’t spare it a single look. As the He’eanka sails forward, I can only look back. As far away as we are now, I can’t see my beloved, but I know that he’s there; I can still see the dazzling ray of light that he’s holding in his hands, even as I hope that he can still see mine.

Chapter Text

Time passes.

Day follows night. Night follows day.

It’s a ceaseless refrain—no beginning, no end.

No Kip.

***

The He’eanka sails farther and farther away from the island holding my Kip. During the day, our separation feels interminable, endless. But when the night falls, I can see the beacon of light that Kip holds and I know that he is there.

I hold my own firepot through the long night, standing at the stern of the He’eanka. I cradle it close, hoping that my beloved can see my brilliant piece of the sun as clearly as I can see his.

No one tries to stop me. No one tells me to rest or to move or to sit down. No one tells me to stop looking backwards—to let Kip go.

On the second night, Auri takes up a spot at my side, his shoulder mere inches from mine. We stand there together through the long night, neither of us saying a word. The next night it’s El who comes—then Tupaia, then Pinyë, then other members of the crew. Each night, someone stands at my shoulder so that I am never alone.

Some nights I imagine it’s Kip standing next to me. I imagine his beloved face, his gleaming eyes, his ready smile. I imagine his fingers curling around mine, his forehead pressing against mine, his breath mingling with mine.

When the tears inevitably fall, I imagine Kip tenderly brushing them away.

***

One night, the goddess that Auri had dreamed of finds the He’eanka, drawn by the light Kip brought back from the House of the Sun—not the fire he’d shared with me, but the one Auri and El had set into the bow of the ship.

In return for that light, the goddess gives Auri a cascade of shooting stars. A viau, Tupaia calls it—a dream, a wish, the yearning of one’s heart. For me, that is only and always Kip. For Auri, it is the healing that will allow him and the others—and me, much as I’d rather go back to my beloved—to return to the world. Auri’s wish is granted in less than a breath.

I do not watch. I cannot watch. At night, my eyes are only for the light on the horizon behind us—the piece of the sun I know my beloved Kip is holding for me. I’m afraid if I glance away, look away, turn away, my beloved will slip away forever.

Not forever, I try to tell myself, staring at Kip’s brilliant, beaming light. One day we'll be together again. He’s promised that when my time comes I won’t be lost to the Deeps, that he will find me, that we’ll sail Sky Ocean together.

One day that will be our forever. It will be. It will be.

***

We sail west and west and west.

Time passes. Days. Months. Possibly years.

In the dark of night—every night—my eyes cling to Kip’s light shining behind us. I hold my firepot high, desperate for my beloved to know that I’m still there, still with him, if only as a light in the distant sky.

Stars, I don’t want to leave him. I don’t. I don’t.

***

The end, when it comes, arrives without warning.

The He’eanka sails into a sunset, glorious shades of colour billowing out around us, filling the sky with a painter’s paradise of golds and oranges and reds. My heart brims with anticipation, knowing that the night is mere moments away. That Kip’s light is mere moments—

The sea gives way to sky, and the He’eanka crashes out of Sky Ocean in a fearsome plunge.

The fall is ferocious, frantic. People scream, grab on to what they can, grab on to each other. There’s no time to lift the lid of my firepot, no time to catch one last glimpse of Kip’s light in the darkness rushing to swallow the day, no time for anything but regret and fear and the sharp pain of loss as we fall away from the Divine Lands, away from Sky Ocean, away from my beloved.

My heart aches for Kip, for what he will think when he looks to the western sky and sees—nothing.

***

It’s been generations upon generations upon generations since El sailed the He’eanka out of the world to find Auri. The return is like knives, daggers, the sharpest of teeth. It flays Auri and El, every member of the crew. It cleaves at their skin, at their minds, at their hearts.

It bites at me too, but it’s a pain I recognize, a pain I know well from a thousand years piecing the broken magic of Zunidh back together, a pain I readily accept, endure, embrace because it is easy—so very easy—next to the pain of leaving my beloved Kip behind.

I know what Kip would do in my position, so I do it. I take care of Auri and El and the others. I make sure they drink. I make sure they eat. I make sure they’re protected from the sun and the heat and the rain when it comes.

I don’t know where we are, but I use my magic to keep the He’eanka’s sails full. East first, then west and home. Without other guidance, I trust the words of my beloved. I keep the ship sailing west.

I don’t count the days. I can’t. There’s only one day that matters to me now and if I think about how far into the future that day might be, I will falter and break, shatter again. I bury my emotions down as deep as they’ll go, cling to the serenity that once was my prison and now is cold comfort—all I have to buffer me against the rest of a lifetime without Kip.

I can do this. I will do this. I have to do this. I won’t fail my beloved—not again.

***

“You’ve done well with magic, Fitzroy. You’re like Auri was before I taught him to sail the proper way,” El tells me when he feels well enough to take over directing our journey. He gives Auri a fond look over my shoulder.

I don’t turn to catch my ancestor’s response; I know that Auri’s eyes will be soft and warm and focused entirely on El. My heart aches at the mere thought of their devotion to each other, at the knowledge of what I am missing, of what we are missing, of all that we could have had if—

“But magic will only get you so far,” El continues, kindly ignoring my lack of response as I spiral between thoughts of the past and the present, and dreams of what could have—should have—been. Of everyone on the He’eanka, El understands most how much I have lost, how much I am broken, how much I am only one half of what should be a whole. “I know your fanoa taught you a little, but sailing a parahë is very different than a small vaha. Will you give me the pleasure of teaching you?”

I blink at the casual mention of Kip, at the way El’s acknowledgement of our relationship echoes my own churning thoughts. With Auri and El and the rest of the crew mostly recovered, there’s nothing left for me to take care of, nothing left for me to do, nothing left for me to focus on besides—

There’s nothing of pity in El’s eyes when I look, only sympathy and compassion and care. He knows what he’s offering—a lifeline in a tumultuous typhoon—and how much I need it.

“Yes,” I say.

***

We sail west and home—to Kip’s home, and El’s, and the crew of the He’eanka’s.

Auri’s too, much as he was born in Astandalas. “It’s El’s home,” Auri explains one day when we’re both set to mending a tear in a length of sail; mending and repair, I have learned is one of the first skills people learn when they join the crew of a parahë. “And where El is will always be home to me.”

My chest aches with grief for a long time after that conversation, at the knowledge that perhaps the Vangavaye-ve could have been my home too—once, if Kip had survived, if we’d been able to retire together. If Kip had asked me to go home with him, I would have said yes. Stars, I wish I’d had the opportunity to say yes.

Without my beloved, I know my welcome in the Vangavaye-ve will not be kind. How could it be when I’m the reason Kip left, the reason Kip stayed away for so long, the reason Kip died? I can only think of how much his family and friends will hate me, hate that I am the one who fell into Sky Ocean and got to see Kip again, hate that I am the one Kip trusted to bring back his fire, and the name of Samayo Ateatamai, and the mirimiri of Ani.

The best thing I can do for Kip’s family and friends is to complete the tasks that Kip asked of me and then leave as soon as I can. They’ll have Auri and El and the crew of the He’eanka to worry about, to welcome, to focus on. I can do my part and then slip away. If there’s a sky ship at dock, I can commandeer it; if not, I can send for one through the Lights.

The Vangavaye-ve will not need to bear my presence for long.

***

Sailing a ship like the He’eanka is an enormous undertaking, with knowledge of weight and balance, weather and wind, currents and waves all important to keeping her upright and on course. El shares what he knows of each of these even as he teaches me how to rig the sails, how to navigate shifts in the wind, how to recognize the presence of reefs and other obstacles in the water.

While I would still trust my magic and Zunidh more than my hands were I to find myself in charge of the ship again, I can't help but feel a small measure of satisfaction at all that I am given to learn, at the praise I earn when I do things right, at the fact there are two dozen people willing to correct me without fear of censure, condemnation, or the threat of execution.

It brings back memories I worked hard to forget after being crowned and bound to the Empire of Astandalas. As El and his crew take me under their wings, the memories rise again in my mind, less painful than when I’d been trapped in my gilded prison, expecting to die there. Long afternoons spent wandering the garden of the Red House, Master Tutor pointing out plants and flowers and their myriad uses. Finding the magic books of Harbut Zalarin in my tower and trying each spell with the naiveté of youth. Learning how to use a sword from Damien, being taught to swim by Ayasha, discovering the wonders of friendship as our company grew from three to five, to eight, then ten.

I’d done Masseo and Jullanar and Pali a disservice, I realize one day while untangling a line; I’d questioned the depth of our friendship over the years I’d been trapped, blamed them for something that was in no way their fault. Worse, I’d taken my deep well of grief out on them when we’d been reunited.

Once I’ve carried out Kip’s requests in the Vangavaye-ve, I’ll return to Alinor, I decide. I’ll bring word of Kip to Basil—tell him how Kip went to the House of the Sun and brought about the return of Auri and El. I’ll apologize to my friends, if they haven’t carried on without me; and if they have, I’ll leave them be. I’ve hurt them enough. I’ll get on with my search for an heir so that the world Kip forged out of the ashes of the empire will have what it needs to thrive. And then I’ll look for my daughter.

Having a purpose helps pull me—if not from my grief, then from my sense of despair.

I cannot set aside my loss. I can’t bury it like I can my emotions. My soul aches unceasingly—with every thought, every breath, every beat of my heart. When the loss overwhelms me—which it does, no matter how hard I try to keep busy, to keep focused—I cling to the vision of Kip and I sailing, cling to the promise inherent in its brilliant starry night. I will see my beloved again. I will. I will.

El tries to teach me how to navigate by the stars, but while the sun comes out often during the day, the evenings are plagued by thick blankets of clouds, leaving El to chart our course by listening to the wind—a skill I can’t emulate outside of a deep trance.

Neither Auri nor El ask me about the weather despite knowing that I’m the Lord of Zunidh; I expect they’ve discerned the truth and are simply too kind to bring it up. I know I need to let go—to accept what I have lost—but it’s too soon. I can’t bear to look up at a sky full of stars when I know I won’t see Kip’s light on the horizon.

***

By the time the He’eanka makes the Gates of the Sea, I am—if not a proficient sailor, at least a modestly capable deckhand. I do not, however, offer to help as El navigates the narrow passage. I know how important this journey is. I know what it means—to El, to Auri, to each member of the crew.

After forty-nine generations, the He’eanka is returning home.

***

We arrive in Gorjo City at sunrise.

Despite how different the city must look compared to when the He’eanka departed, El is confident as he stands at the bow and guides the ship in towards the shore, Auri standing companionably by his side. El tilts his head into the sea breeze—listening to the wind, I surmise, and feeling the way forward.

I watch in admiration as he navigates the ship past a reef dotted with cormorants, through one of the seemingly identical channels cutting through the city—not quite identical, I realize, as El’s choice does not have any bridges to foil the He’eanka’s passage—and into a large, well-protected lagoon.

In a matter of moments, the ship comes to a gentle stop—perhaps helped by Auri’s magic—at one of the floating docks along what is an impressively bustling thoroughfare for just after dawn. One other ship rests at the dock opposite ours—a small vaha that reminds me of Kip’s, its prow covered with intricate carvings that suggest shifting clouds and islands and shadows.

Silence falls—over the ship, over the thoroughfare, possibly over the entire Vangavaye-ve. I shiver in the white tunic that Kip gave me despite the heat. This is a moment out of a story, out of a legend—a moment like the one when Kip promised a god that he would bring back the hearth-fire of a new life for the world.

I clutch the firepot holding Kip’s promised fire to my chest even as I watch El, wait for him to call out a greeting to the people on shore. He is the one who sailed out of the world for Aurelius Magnus. He is the one who brought the He’eanka home. He is the one who should—El turns away from the dock, from those staring at the He’eanka in shock and wonder and awe, his eyes wide with unexpected uncertainty and nervousness. He looks so very young as he glances at Auri, who presses in close and wraps an arm around his waist, then whispers something in his ear. Both men turn towards Tupaia.

The older man—older than Auri and El at least—says something quietly to the pair. Tupaia is the tanà as Kip would have been tanà if he’d survived long enough to return home; when he speaks, everyone listens. After a few moments, El looks over at me. “Fitzroy,” he says, his voice low and anxious. “You know this world. You know these people. Your fanoa told us we would be welcomed, that our relationship would be celebrated—"

“You will be welcomed,” I tell them, utterly certain, utterly sure. “Kip would never lie to you. Your people have been waiting for you to come home for centuries. You will be welcomed—both of you—all of you.”

El glances at the firepot in my hands, then at the mirimiri of Ani tied around my waist, then at the members of the He’eanka’s crew gathered around us. “It is your fanoa who made our return possible. He is the one who should lead the way,” the once paramount chief says after a moment. He raises his head and meets my eyes. “As his fanoa, would you—act in his stead?”

I swallow my instinct to refuse, to say that I’m not Kip, that I am not who they need—that I, unlike them, won’t be welcomed. But this is a gift from El to Kip—an honour I know my beloved will appreciate, will treasure, will cherish, even if he can’t receive it directly. One day, I will be able to share the story of it with him. One day. Which means that I cannot say no today.

Tears burn in my eyes; I blink them away.

I take a breath, straighten my back, and bow over my hands in what I know is the Islander way.

In this, I will act as my beloved’s Hands.

Chapter Text

I can do this, I tell myself, as I approach the stairs leading up from the dock to the thoroughfare above. I can do this.

I’ve been the centre of thousands of ceremonies, rituals, and rites over the years—from the ritual that made me the Marwn that I don’t remember at all, to the nineteen-hour ceremony that bound me as the Hundredth Emperor of Astandalas that I wish I didn’t, to the final rites of deconsecration that seemed like nothing in the wake of Kip’s death.

I’ve remained aloof under the eyes of priest-wizards who revered me as a god, of aristocrats who looked to me as liege lord or barrier depending on their desires, of criminals who saw me as nothing more than the judge who could order their execution.

I take a harsh breath. This is not like any of those; this is a moment out of a story, out of a song, out of a legend. Kip’s moment, which my beloved will never experience because he died on the other side of the world—in my service, in my arms.

My beloved never once failed me. I will not fail him now.

I take a second breath—slow and deep and grounding—and settle into myself the way I’d seen Kip do each and every time he’d acted as my Hands. I let go of my own anxieties and worries and fears, the knowledge that I will not be welcome here once my task is complete. My concerns don’t matter here; in this, I am not the Hundredth and Last Emperor of Astandalas. I am not Artorin Damara. I am not even Fitzroy Angursell. I am simply the fanoa of Kip Mdang, acting on his behalf because he cannot be here.

I swallow my heartache, my longing, my grief. I clench the firepot Kip gave me close. An image rises in my mind’s eye: my beloved at the end of the fire dance in Sky Ocean—confident, glorious, magnificent.

I take a third breath, working to channel Kip in that splendid moment. “You’re a wonder, beloved,” I whisper to him under my breath, even though he can’t hear me. “And I’ll make certain everyone here knows it."

***

“Well, well, well,” a voice calls out as I crest the top step of the stairs. “Who is this that comes out of the sunrise?”

The people who’d noticed our arrival are gathered along the boardwalk, split into groups to either side of the stairs to make room for me and for those following in my wake. A quick glance beyond the watchers—a benefit of being quite tall, relatively—is enough for me to recognize where we are from my first visit to Gorjo City.

I’d taken this same boardwalk past the lagoon and the collection of shops opposite to visit Kip’s family home—I bite the inside of my lower lip hard, using the pain to keep from looking farther down the boardwalk for a house clad in red wood with a Jacaranda tree out front. Visiting the Mdang home is not why I’m here. I’m here to bring word of Kip, to share the gifts that he won from the House of the Sun, to share the tale of the He’eanka’s return, and then to leave.

The one who called out isn’t one of those standing along the boardwalk, I realize quickly. He’s sitting in the midst of a collection of tables outside a small shop, underneath a cheerful canopy that has already been unfurled despite the early morning hour. A coffee shop, I guess, noting that the dozen or so visible chairs outside the shop are full and that people are milling around nearby as if waiting for a turn inside. But a sign in the window says, Barber, suggesting that this is—

My beloved’s Uncle Lazo is a barber—the lynch-pin of Gorjo City in a less fraught way than I’d once been the lynch-pin of the Empire. I’d learned of his role the day Kip had vigorously defended his province against Princess Oriana over the matter of a new fish farm. Well, he’d supported it vigorously once the issue had been raised by others, by Jiano and Aya, who I’d met on my visit to Navikiani, then again in the Palace of Stars, and—

And who are here.

My eyes pick the pair out, standing slightly to the side of the barbershop, dressed in grass skirts—not as simple as the one my beloved had worn in Sky Ocean, but not as impressive as what the two had worn when they’d presented their case to my Council of Princess.

Aya sees my glance and winks despite the pressing silence of the moment. Then, she once called me—almost called me—by my chosen name in the heart of the Palace of Stars, so I’m only the slightest bit surprised by her temerity. Not that I smile or nod or wink back. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Aya’s greeting must be misplaced; she can’t know the details of how Kip died—of how it was all my fault. Once she learns the truth, she’ll regret her casual welcome. Better to pretend that she didn’t notice me at all so that she has no regrets later.

My eyes return to the one who called out; he looks entirely calm, relaxed, patient, as if he’s willing to wait a thousand years for my response to his question. Perhaps he is, I realize, as my gaze meets his, sinks into the endless pools of shadow that are his eyes—so dark, so old, so full of mystery.

Mystery. The air crackles with it, with a humming energy, with a power far beyond anything that is mine as the Lord of Zunidh. This isn’t simply an elderly man sitting casually outside of what has to be Kip’s uncle’s barber shop, sitting next to—yes, to Kip’s Buru Tovo, whose wrinkled face is full of recognition and hope and expectation.

This man, then, must be the one my beloved named Vou’a—who is Kip’s Buru Tovo’s husband, who is the fanoa of Ani whose mirimiri I carry, and—

And I’ve seen him before, I realize, taking in his hair and his face and his eyes and remembering the market at Ikiava village. This man—this Islander god, so it seems—was the seller of shells who had given my beloved a string of forty-nine amber-ringed cowries in exchange for his promise to bring home the hearth-fire of a new life for the world. A promise I now carry. I raise a hand from Kip’s firepot to the shell dangling from a cord at my neck—one of the ones from that great, magnificent strand.

It appears the requests that my beloved made of me will be easier to accomplish than I could have imagined. But before I can begin, I must first answer the god’s question.

Who is this that comes out of the sunrise? It’s the same question Kip had whispered to me on the day that he—a pang of longing cuts through my chest, so painful I have to bite my tongue to hold in my gasp.

Why had Kip asked that question then? Why did Vou’a ask it now?

Kip had muttered Aurelius after speaking the question, after I’d told him of my language lessons with Gaudy. Perhaps that is all this is. Recognition. Vou’a must know whose ship is behind me, must know that Auri and El and the crew of the He’eanka have returned to the world, must know who I am and whose promise I hold, given it was his husband who passed it on to me.

I wonder what answer Auri might give for a long moment, then set the idle thought aside. I am not Aurelius Magnus. My answer can only be mine—not the answer my ancestor might give.

Who is this that comes out of the sunrise?

I glance back at the lagoon, at the way we came. The sun is just over the horizon now, but the soft, hazy clouds still reflect a hint of the splendor of sunrise.

Whether the question is a legendary one with a legendary answer or not, it is at heart a simple and accurate question here and now. A question I do have an answer to, although it might not be the answer Vou’a wants. “I am here on behalf of Kip Mdang,” I answer the god, then look to the others clustered around him and across the boardwalk. “Kip Mdang, who is Tanà Tovo’s great nephew and, I expect, a cousin to many of you. I know Kip had a great number of cousins.”

Someone laughs—an older woman in a floral print dress, sitting on the opposite side of Kip’s Buru Tovo. “I see you’re familiar with the Mdang family,” she says, eying me speculatively. “But who are you to speak for Kip, who we all know is sailing with the Ancestors?”

“I am Kip’s fanoa,” I tell her firmly. I give that a moment to sink in, then add, “And Kip himself asked me to come. I fell through a waterfall and into Sky Ocean after carrying news of his—of his death to his Cousin Basil—”

“Basil’s alive?” a man cuts in before I can continue; from the smock that he’s wearing, I can only guess that he is Kip’s Uncle Lazo, the barber.

“Yes,” I agree, trying to ignore the hot flash of embarrassment. Of course, Kip’s family wouldn’t know that Basil is alive; even Kip hadn’t known until I’d told him. “Yes, Basil is well. As is his wife Sarah and their son Clio.”

Lazo Mdang’s eyes glisten with tears. “Thank you,” he says, his words rough and thick with emotion. “It’s been a long time since—we’d thought them lost in the Fall.”

I nod gravely, knowing the relief it must be to learn that someone you’d long thought dead is still living. “While that wasn’t one of Kip’s requests, he’ll be glad to learn that I carried news of Basil back to you as well. He was—overwhelmed to learn the news when I met him in Sky Ocean.”

Kip’s uncle nods, then wipes at his eyes and swallows visibly. “And in what ship have you sailed?” he asks, glancing behind me.

I find my lips curling up—just a little—knowing what my words, what the ship, what the arrival of Auri and El and the crew will mean to Kip’s people. “I have sailed in the ship called the He’eanka—the ship of Elonoa’a of Izurayë—the Paramount Chief of the Vangavaye-ve who sailed out of the world when his beloved was stolen away by the Sun. I have sailed with Elonoa’a of Izurayë, with Aurelius Magnus, and with many of the crew who left on the journey with them, and with the memories of those that were lost upon the way.”

I step into the middle of the thoroughfare to make room for the ship’s company to come up the steps behind me, led by El and Auri, hand-in-hand, with Pinyë and her father bringing up the rear. Only once they have all settled, do I turn back to Kip’s Uncle Lazo. “I was able to sail in the He’eanka because Kip Mdang travelled to the House of the Sun and negotiated for the piece of the sun that was needed to heal Aurelius of a poison coursing through his veins,” I tell him. “And I came because Kip Mdang negotiated for a number of items while he was at the House of the Sun—gifts that he asked me to bring home to his people.”

The elders sitting in front of the barbershop—they must be elders, I think, given that those gathered around them are all much younger—look to each other. I’m not certain whether they believe me, or whether they’re too caught up in the presence of Elonoa’a and Aurelius Magnus to give the rest of my words much attention. But Vou’a is listening—and so is Kip’s Buru Tovo, whose expression is open and proud and pleased.

“And what gifts do you bring?” Vou’a finally asks, far more solemnly than he’d asked his first question.

I hold up the firepot. “First, I bring a flame of the sun, given to me by Kip Mdang. Kip gave the ray he collected to Auri, who gave Kip back a piece to keep for himself. Kip then shared his piece with me, saying that a fire is not lessened for lighting another. This flame I now give to you to fulfill Kip’s promise to bring home the hearth-fire of a new life for the world.”

I lift the lid of the firepot and daylight streams out with a glorious intensity that cannot be questioned—a complement to the sun itself rising in the eastern sky. “Over his lifetime, Kip lit many fires. He lit the first fire in the Palace of Stars after the Fall. He lit the fire of a new government for the world, forging it out of the ashes of Astandalas. He lit the fire deep in the heart of the Last Emperor of Astandalas, who’d thought it gone out forever.”

I step forward and set the open pot of sunlight on the table in front of Vou'a and Kip's Buru Tovo, then step back. “This light that Kip sent back with me might be the brightest of all the fires that he's held, but it is merely a symbol of all the rest. He has held every fire ever given into his care, and he won’t ever stop—not even in Sky Ocean.”

I know I should give them time to consider the first of Kip’s gifts—the light of the sun itself—but now that I’ve started, all I can do is keep going. “Second, I bring the name of the third son of Vonou'a—whose name, Kip said, was taken away by the Sun just as mine once was by the Empire of Astandalas.” Someone gasps, but I don’t look to see who. “The name that was taken away from the third son of Vonou’a and that Kip now gives back to you is, Samayo Ateatamai.”

“That is a name that has been lost for a long, long time,” Vou'a says, his eyes rising to meet mine.

Something inside me stills as I look into the darkness of his eyes—as I see something of myself in him.  “It is not the only thing lost that Kip asked me to bring home for him.”

The god laughs like one of the kookaburras in the menagerie. “Kip Mdang sent his fanoa home with a ray of light from the sun, with Elonoa’a and Aurelius Magnus and the crew of the He'eanka, and with the name of Samayo Ateatamai,” he says. “What else did he send you with? Guest-right to the House of the Sun for any of his family that would like to visit?”

It’s a very pointed question, which makes me think it isn’t an accident that he’s asking. “Kip did not mention a guest-right to the House of the Sun,” I answer truthfully. “But if you asked him to negotiate for it, I am confident that he did.”

Vou’a laughs again but acknowledges my answer with a slight bow of his head. “And so, what could be more important to Kip Mdang to send home? One for a token, two for a promise, three for—”

“Kip asked me to find the one named Vou'a, who is the fanoa of Ani, the Goddess of the Sea,” I interrupt, holding the god’s gaze for a moment before turning to my beloved’s Buru Tovo. “Kip told me that Vou’a was married to his great uncle Tovo and that I would likely find them together—”

“Ey ana. Took him long enough,” Kip's Buru Tovo huffs, yet his tone is as soft as I’ve ever heard from him and entirely fond. As if there’s any question of who his husband is, the man who'd once visited the Palace of Stars and asked my beloved to bring him the sun and the stars of his life clasps Vou’a’s hand across the table.

Vou’a smiles at his husband before turning back to me, his expression shifting to something more serious, solemn, sorrowful. “I cannot bring your fanoa back to life.”

My heart aches. I hadn’t considered—Kip hadn’t considered— “Kip didn’t ask for that,” I tell Vou’a, rubbing my chest with one hand. “Just as he didn’t ask to be gifted with Tupaia’s efetana—an efela I understand proves that he is worthy of being tanà—after performing the fire dance in Sky Ocean. Just as he didn’t ask me to share that he asked Tupaia to bring back Aōteketētana, although I know for a fact that he did.”

Kip's great uncle shuts his eyes for a long moment; when he opens them again, I can see the glistening sheen of tears. He gives me the barest of nods—acknowledgement perhaps, or appreciation—then glances away from me, beyond me, over to Tupaia. How he knows who Tupaia is without the efetana to identify him, I am not certain, but I’m glad that he does. There is so much that the two men will have to say to each other, to share with each other, to—

The future conversation between the two tanà is not my concern. Once I have finished—once I have left—they will have time enough to discuss all that occurred in Sky Ocean.

Focus, I tell myself silently, digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands—painful enough to sting but not to draw blood. I have one last gift to impart, one last promise to Kip that I need to fulfill, and then I can go. I finger the luminous, translucent, ethereal substance of the cloth wrapped around my waist, undo the knot that Kip tied, and gather the material up in my hands. “While Kip was at the House of the Sun, he bargained for many things,” I say evenly, calmly, serenely. I turn my attention back to Vou’a. “Including a gift for your fanoa—something Kip told me was lost long, long ago.”

Vou’a face transforms at my words. Between one moment and the next—one blink and the next—he’s standing, his limitlessly dark eyes no longer full of shadow, but sparking with unexpected light, and fire, and hope. His gaze sears into me before shifting down to the otherworldly cloth in my hands. He freezes, stills, doesn’t say a word. The air crackles with the force of his longing—so big, so vast, so monumental that he’s probably afraid to voice it for fear that it isn’t real, that it will slip through his hands, that it will dissolve into smoke if he tries to grasp it.

I know the feeling all too well.

I don’t hesitate. I take the final few steps to Vou’a and place the mirimiri of his fanoa into his hands. “Kip wants you to have this, wants your fanoa to have this,” I say gently—so gently—as Voua’s fingers slowly curl around the cloth. “He asked me to give this to you—and to tell you that no loss is irreparable.”

Vou’a lets out the softest of sounds as he pulls the mirimiri to his lips and breathes it in.

I think of my beloved going above and beyond again and again and again—for me, for Zunidh, for his people and his gods. Surely, surely, there is something— “I don’t know what promises Kip made you, but clearly this isn’t one,” I say to Vou’a—who dips his head in agreement. “Kip would never ask for repayment—this is a gift as all that he gave me to bring back for him are gifts. But as his fanoa, as someone who loves him dearly, I would ask that you—please—consider what succor you can offer to him as only one who can visit Sky Ocean at will can.”

Vou’a meets my eyes and nods once, sharply. Without saying a word, he disappears.

***

In the wake of Vou’a’s departure, everything gets—confusing.

I try to breathe in the midst of the storm, cling to my serenity as the world wobbles and warps around me—too loud, too bright, too close.

Islander. Ancient Islander, Shaian. It’s a sheer chaos of language and sound, gestures and movement. Someone approaches El and Auri and says that they are Kindraa. Buru Tovo moves towards Tupaia and Pinyë. My ears fill with a cacophony of greetings as different elders—Lorekeeper is a word used often, and at some point I realize that those closest to the barbershop are equals to my beloved, holding skills like my Kip holds the fire—reach out to the crew of the He’eanka.

As I watch the ebullient reunion of families and their ancestors—can it be called a reunion when they’ve never met before?—my heartbeat begins to pick up, to pound, to sound so loud in my ears that I think the noise must soon attract attention.

I fall away from the crowd, not wanting to interrupt such a joyous moment. I’ve done my part. Now is the time for me to—I need—I need to go. I turn abruptly and take a few steps away from the barbershop. But while I free myself from the crowd, my eyes don’t clear; all I see is a wash of smeary, dizzying colour—

Bursting white-gold from the ray of the sun Kip gave to—

Grainy brown like the hue of Kip’s writing—

Aquamarine like the water where Kip and I had—

My stomach twists and roils. I retch, I choke, but nothing comes up. I reach out—needing, wanting, desperate for—

Someone grabs my arm. The heat of their fingertips against my skin blazes. I gasp, pull away harshly, reactively, instinctively. I’ve hurt too many; I don’t want to hurt any more.

“Shh. Shh,” someone says—a woman, I think, but can’t find it in me to look. A hand presses against my back—light, delicate, featherlike, as if I’m a wounded bird. “Breathe. Just breathe. You’ll be fine.”

I try to follow the direction, suck in harsh breaths one by one by one, but the air is thick like sand and every gasp feels like an enormous effort. The woman keeps speaking, keeps telling me to breathe, keeps telling me that I’ll be fine. Stars, I don’t feel fine. I don’t feel—

“Is he all right?” someone else asks. I recognize the voice this time: Aya. She sounds worried—too worried. She wouldn’t be worried if she knew the truth; I should tell her so she can stop, so she can leave me be, let me go.

Right—I’m supposed to go. I’ve delivered Kip’s gifts. There’s no reason to stay, to hurt Kip’s friends and family any more than I already have. I need to see if there’s a sky ship waiting at the dock. I should have looked earlier. Why didn’t I? I try to turn my head, but my eyes are still—I shiver uncontrollably.

“Overwhelmed,” the first woman answers, rubbing my back softly, gently, supportively. “That couldn’t have been easy,” she whispers to me.

I tremble at her touch, at her understanding. Yes, it was hard, I want to tell her, but it was for Kip, and I’d do anything for Kip—but I can’t seem to get the words out. It’s like they’ve run dry. The woman doesn’t seem to mind. She keeps whispering calming words, kind words. I don’t know why she’s being kind. I don’t—all I did was what Kip asked of me, what Kip should have been able to do for himself but couldn’t because of me. My heart aches.

Aya and the woman rubbing my back keep talking, but their words blur and run together.

“Is there somewhere we can take—Jiano and I have a hotel—”

“—He’s Kip’s—always be—”

“—far?”

“Just up the—”

“—sure Buru Tovo knows."

The hand at my back shifts and comes around my side, the touch still light but more supportive. “You’ll be all right, come on,” the woman says, nudging me into moving. “Let’s get you home.”

***

Home does not mean the sky ship dock or the sea train terminal so that I can return to Solaara—which I only learn when we arrive at a house with faded red wood facing and a Jacaranda tree out front. The distinctive aroma of the flowers—mild but distinctive, a scent I’ve only experienced one other time in my life—wakes me from my stupor.

“What—why did you bring me here?” I ask, stumbling back and away from her, away from the door to Kip’s family home. “I can’t be here.”

The woman’s eyes—so much like Kip’s, I realize, now that I can focus on them—go wide. “This is your home too,” she insists, as if Kip’s home is something I have any right to.

“It’s not,” I deny—a little too loud, a little too frantic. “I’m the reason Kip won’t ever come home. Why would you—”

“An assassin killed Kip,” she says sharply. “Your friend Conju told the story of it when he came for the funeral. You can’t think that anyone blames—”

“Kip wouldn’t have been targeted if not for me. I should have protected him better. I should have—”

“You might be the emperor but even you can’t save everyone.” The woman gives me a compassionate look. “Conju said that you did everything that you could, that when it was clear Kip was going to pass you held him right to the very end. No one—not even my stubborn sister-in-law—could have asked for anything more, dear.”

Tears sting my eyes—at the dear, at the memory of holding Kip’s hands, of cupping Kip’s face in my palms, of kissing his forehead so softly, marking him gold. Beloved, I’d called him then. My beloved—because it was the one thing I desperately wished, wanted, needed for him to know.

Beloved, he’d called me in Sky Ocean, when I couldn’t speak for the sight of him, for the fear I was dreaming, hallucinating, would wake up and he wouldn’t be there.

Tears drip down my cheeks. Kip isn’t here—no matter how much I wish that he was. “He wouldn’t even let me—I wanted to stay with him,” I admit softly to Kip’s aunt. “When I found him again. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to come back, to leave him alone—why don’t you hate me?”

Kip’s aunt gives me a wry smile. “Because you’re Kip’s fanoa. Because you’re family. And more importantly, because you’ve done nothing wrong,” she says. “Kip is tanà, just like my Lazo,” she says. “Of course he wouldn’t want you to stay with him, no matter how much he loves you. It wasn’t your time, and he knew that.”

I slump my shoulders. “But I miss him already—so much.”

“You wouldn’t be fanoa if you didn’t,” she tells me, closing in enough to pat my arm gently; this time I don’t pull away. “But we all miss Kip too. And it’s been difficult accepting how much of Kip we didn’t get a chance to know—how much we didn’t try to know. Kip didn’t say much about his time in Solaara—and Vou’a knows none of us pressed. All we know is that he loved you—and that was entirely thanks to Conju.”

She reaches for my other arm and I realize—thanks to my time with Kip in Sky Ocean—what she wants. I bend my head down so she can press our foreheads together. “A number of Islanders over the years have gone to see if the new emperor was worth staying for and came home disappointed,” she says, voice soft and private, although there’s no one else close enough to hear. “We want to get to know the man who Kip saw and said, ‘Yes he is.’”

My heart aches with recognition. On that last day, before I’d taken his hand, before I’d kissed his forehead, before I’d called him beloved, Kip had whispered, worth staying.

Worth staying.

What had Kip seen in me that made him want to stay—that made dying so far from home worth it? What? It’s a question I have no way to ask him. All I can do is be thankful, grateful, glad that he did. I never would have survived all of the years since the Fall without him.

I let out an audible breath, recognizing that isn’t true any longer. I can survive now.

Because of my Kip, my beloved, my fanoa, I have everything I need to survive today, and tomorrow, and all of the days until I see him again. A world where I’m no longer alone. Knowledge of a daughter I didn’t know that I had, that I can hope my friends—old and new—will help me find. A family who loves my beloved as much as I do, who want to know all about my Kip, just as I suddenly want to know all about theirs—of the boy who grew to become the man I half fell in love with the first moment I saw him and who I will love for the rest of time and beyond.

“Oh,” I say softly, feeling a chord spark in my chest—not a song, not yet, but maybe one day it will be. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“There’s no rush,” she says. “Why don’t we start with breakfast? You look like you haven’t eaten properly in months.”

My cheeks warm because she isn’t wrong. “Yes, Saya—”

“None of that, now,” she huffs, rolling her eyes in a manner that reminds me of Conju, not that he’s ever rolled his eyes at me—not yet, though I can hope. “It’s Aunt Onaya, dear.”

“Aunt Onaya,” I echo, my chest tightening with emotion. “And I’m—Fitzroy.”

***

No one hates me, it turns out. No one hates me. No one suggests that what happened to Kip is my fault. No one is upset that I am the one who got to visit him in Sky Ocean; a bit jealous perhaps, or maybe envious, but not upset.

The minute Kip’s sister Vinyë sees me, she hugs me. “I’m so sorry,” she says, as if I’m not the one who should be apologizing to her.

When Kip’s young cousin Dora sees me, she politely asks if she can hug me now too. Then, after she does, she gives me one of her Koala Kids, saying I probably need the company now that Kip is gone. Her grandmother—Aunt Oura, she insists—tells me afterwards that Dora hasn’t played with the dolls in a couple of years, but that doesn’t matter, I cry anyway. No one outside of Kip has given me a gift in years.

Kip’s mother is—I can’t say that she welcomes me with open arms, but then she is sore hurt and grieving, and I understand all too well how much I must add fuel to the burn that Kip’s loss is to her. But she does greet me kindly, and she uses my name, and she even shares how Kip used to harangue anyone and everyone who would listen about why Aurora was the greatest work of poetry in the Nine Worlds. And while she soon retreats to another part of the house, she shows me to Kip’s room first and, with a hand on the door, tells me, “It’s not much—but it was Kip’s. I expect you’ll appreciate it more than anywhere else we could offer for you to stay.”

Kip’s bedroom makes me cry again because it’s so Kip—and yet, a Kip I never had a chance to get to know.

There’s a desk with a box on top containing a wide range of the treasures that most children—the ones who are not the Marwn—are allowed to have. Old quills and dried out ink pots. A glass globe that lets off a steady and clear light when I touch it with my magic. A small notebook with writing that I can’t bring myself to investigate yet. A rough piece of obsidian that reminds me of Kip’s efela ko.

And—tucked carefully away in a swath of dusty old linen—a perfect pair of white shells, each with a hole carefully drilled through its base.. Fanoa.

Without thinking, I lift the two shells in one hand and hold them tightly to my chest. “Oh, Kip,” I whisper, thinking of a dream I’d once had, of a boy with bandaged hands reading Aurora. On the desk next to the bound copy of my most infamous work, there’d been a pair of shells, memorable for how perfectly white they’d been.

These shells, my heart is certain of it. These shells and my Aurora and my beloved Kip. Together, long before I ever knew him. A dream and a hope and a promise.

Kip’s bed is small—far too small for my gangly legs—but I crawl into it anyway because it’s his. I curl up under the worn and faded coverlet, clinging to the pair of shells, and cry myself to sleep.

***

I survive the day. And the next. And the next.

It’s difficult not having anything specific to do. I’d thought that as soon as I fulfilled Kip’s promises in the Vangavaye-ve, I would leave—that I’d throw myself back into my quest for an heir with the same fervor I’d thrown into learning all that El could teach me about sailing a parahë.

Instead, I find myself embraced by some dozens of Mdangs. Every one of my beloved’s fifty-nine cousins seems to drop in to the Mdang house, wanting to see Kip’s fanoa, wanting to pay their respects, wanting to bring food.

I try to tell the visitors that I don’t need anything, but at dinner on the third day Vinyë tells me that it’s my own fault for not coming to the funeral, or even to the Sagali on the one-year anniversary of Kip’s death. “I didn’t think I would be welcome,” I tell her. “I wasn’t invited.”

She lets out a pained sound. “No one sends invitations to funerals, Fitzroy—everyone is welcome,” she explains. “And we weren’t—you were so quiet, so aloof, so serene. We thought you might be Kip’s fanoa, but he never claimed it, and then you didn’t claim it, and then you just let us go—”

“I wasn’t Kip’s fanoa then,” I admit. “We didn’t—there was so much that we didn’t say to one another, and then we—ran out of time. We only became fanoa when we met again in Sky Ocean.”

“Ah,” she says. “So that’s why you don’t have an efanoa.”

“A what?”

She tugs at one of the efela around her neck—a lovely thing made of blue coral and pearls and a half-dozen shells. “This is an efelēla—a marriage efela. An efanoa would be similar, but for two people who are fanoa.”

“Oh,” I say softly, thinking about the pair of shells tucked carefully away in Kip’s room. Had he meant for those to be— “I did give him my ring. I wanted him to have something—”

Vinyë’s face brightens remarkably. “Oh, Kip would have loved that. He’s always been into grand gestures.”

“Like going to the House of the Sun to get the fire Auri and El needed to get home?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow in question.

Kip’s sister laughs. “Exactly.”

***

“Welcome, Kip Mdang’s fanoa,” the man I assume is Mardo Walea says when I walk into his shop. He’s dressed simply in a blue cotton tunic and trews—which only highlights the complex network of efela hanging from his neck. I recognize him immediately as one of the people who’d been in front of Kip’s Uncle’s barbershop to witness the He’eanka’s arrival. “Or should I call you the Glorious and Illustrious One?”

My stomach tightens for a moment, but then I realize that the man is smiling and that his eyes are full of good humor. “Fitzroy, please.”

“Fitzroy, then,” he agrees easily. “I’m Mardo. And I should have known that Aya would be right.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Aya?”

He nods. “She seemed pretty certain that you—well, Kip’s lord—was Fitzroy Angursell, even before she went to Solaara and learned that you were the Last Emperor. When she came back, she was confident.”

I shake my head, entirely unsure what to say about that. Then, I suppose I hadn’t denied the claim she didn’t make—simply suggested she refrain from discussing it in public. “She does write mysteries,” I say. “Stands to reason she’d be able to ferret out mine before anyone else.”

“That’s Aya for you. She’s always been like that,” Mardo says. “Just wait until she corners you about Oriana.”

“Princess Oriana? Why?”

“That’s a list better shared by Aya,” he says. “Although, Oriana’s always disliked Kip—and hates him more now that he’s gone and not doing her job for her. I suppose that alone should be reason enough.”

A swell of emotion rises through my chest, and I can admit—if only to myself—that it’s fury. “I’ll look into it before I leave.”

“Aya’s staying at the Dolphin if you want to talk to her.”

This is Kip’s home. If Oriana’s causing problems, I need to suss them out and fix them. “I will,” I promise.

Mardo nods amicably, then taps his fingertips against the counter’s top. “I’m sure that isn’t why you came into my shop today, though. What can I help you with, Fitzroy?”

I glance around the shop, take in the beautiful cloth-covered walls and the magnificent efela on display. “You were there—you heard what happened in Sky Ocean—”

“I think everyone in Gorjo City has heard by now, but yes,” he agrees. “Kip went to the House of the Sun to get a ray of light, negotiated for every other legendary item that he could think of while he was there, then asked his fanoa to bring it all home for him.”

“That’s my Kip for you,” I say—because it is. “You should have seen what he did when I asked him to bring me back peace once.”

Mardo’s eyes widen perceptibly. “What?”

Fondness for my beloved swells through my chest, soft and warm and comforting. “He brought me back peace, a treaty that became the seeds of a new world government, and the realization that I had in him the greatest statesman in recorded history,” I say matter-of-factly. “I promise, that was at least as legendary as anything he brought back from the House of the Sun.”

Mardo coughs, then shakes his head, seemingly bemused. “Kip’s told me a lot about his accomplishments over the years, but you’re making me think he left a lot out. No wonder you didn’t mention the new star in the sky.”

“He probably did,” I tell him without thinking. “Wait—what star?”

The man gives me an incredulous look. “The new star—it’s so bright no one can miss it. You can’t tell me that you haven’t seen it.”

“I haven’t—” My heart lurches so hard I set my hands against the counter to keep from falling. “A new star—Kip’s star.”

“That’s what everyone’s been calling it since you arrived—and the Nga lore-keepers agreed.”

My heart aches. Tears burn in my eyes. Kip’s light on the horizon that I’d treasured every night in Sky Ocean—that I’d been so desolate about losing upon falling out of Sky Ocean that I’d covered the night sky with clouds so I wouldn’t have to see the stars without it—was still there as a new star in the sky.

Kip’s star. I want to scream and shout and run outside to see it, but it’s the middle of the day and it’s sunny and I won’t be able to see anything—not yet, not for hours.

“Thank you,” I manage, smiling gloriously at Mardo Walea. I finger the shells in my hand. At least there’s one thing I can do to pass the time until it gets dark. “Kip’s sister Vinyë told me about efanoa,” I tell him, quite certain I must sound downright giddy. “And I—Kip and I didn’t become fanoa until I saw him again in Sky Ocean.”

“Of course, you didn’t,” he says gently. “No time, I imagine.”

“Exactly,” I agree. “I did give him a token—my imperial signet ring.”

“Like you do.” He gives me a kind smile.

“Yes, I’m not going to need it anymore—and that’s all because of him. But—” I pause, feeling embarrassed, guilty, unsure of how to even admit—

Thankfully, I don’t have to. “You want a token too?” he asks.

I nod silently, then place the two shells on the counter before Mardo, set together as one. Next to all of the extravagant shells and efela positioned all around us, Kip’s shells seem simple, common and ordinary—but I can’t imagine anything that I would want more. “Vinyë told me that Kip dreamed of having a fanoa for a very long time,” I say quietly, anxious, a little nervous. “I found these hidden in his bedroom the day I arrived. I expect he found them once and was keeping them for—but I don’t know. I asked Kip’s Aunt Oura—she said I should ask you.”

Mardo stoops to examine the two shells where they sit on the table, then picks them up carefully and looks at how well they fit together. “They are a striking pair,” he says. “Not the same, but perfectly complementary, matching, part of one whole. I expect Kip would be delighted that you found them—that you want to make them the heart of your efanoa. They’re simple, yet strikingly beautiful because of it.”

“They’re a common and ordinary good,” I explain softly, feeling tears bead in my eyes. “Everything I wish that Kip and I could have had.”

Mardo nods, then separates the two shells, revealing a shimmering red interior that sparkles with a hint of gold. “Perhaps not so common and ordinary,” he says.

Chapter Text

Kip’s star is beautiful, brilliant, breathtaking.

As soon as I see it, I understand why Mardo Walea was surprised that I didn’t know what he was talking about. The star—Kip’s vibrant, dazzling, awe-inspiring piece of the sun—blazes through the darkest reaches of the night, spectacular and utterly impossible to miss unless you’re a great mage who’s covered every evening’s sky with a blanket of clouds for days and weeks and months on end.

My heart sings with joy and astonishment and wonder even as it pangs with the knowledge of all the nights I’ve missed looking up to the sky and seeing proof that my beloved is still holding a fire for me even if he can no longer take solace in the fire I carried out of Sky Ocean for him.

I watch Kip’s star from the far side of the stubby but brightly painted lighthouse where I’d first confirmed my plan to abdicate my position and retire, where I’d first asked Kip to be my Lord Chancellor, where I’d first proposed that he restructure the government of Zunidh so that it wouldn’t be dependent on any part of the Astandalan hierarchy—particularly me.

He’d done it too. Not—not completely, not as much as he would have wanted, not to the end as we’d both hoped and expected and planned for. But he’d done it. Once I find my heir, the future of Zunidh—a future beyond the last frayed threads of the Empire—will be secure.

And more, once I pass on the crown of Zunidh it will be safe for me to have the daughter that Kip brought me word of from the House of the Sun. I will be able to find her, to get to know her, to love her, to try and make up for all our lost time—if she’ll let me—without any fear that she might be trapped and bound as I once was. We will both be free, thanks to my beloved. I glance up at Kip’s star. I only wish—

I clench the hem of the shirt that I’m wearing with the hand not holding Kip’s pair of shells; it isn’t the tunic that Kip had been given at the House of the Sun, but rather a faded blue one I’d taken from his childhood bedroom. It’s entirely ill-fitting—far too short in length and too wide in the shoulders—but it belongs to my beloved, so wearing it is comforting. And it isn’t as if Conju is in Gorjo City. I need not worry that my Groom of the Chamber might scold me for my fashion choices. Not that he’d admonish me outright; no, he’d simply give me a scathing look more than equivalent to any words he might offer to someone else.

I twist my fingers in the rough cloth for a long moment, thinking of how Kip had occasionally done the same when he was anxious and didn’t think anyone was watching him, particularly in the years he’d served as my secretary. He hadn’t done so in my presence after becoming my Lord Chancellor, not even in advance of Council of Princes meetings anticipated to be heated; perhaps my Groom of the Chamber had given my beloved a lecture on the difference between the sturdier materials of his secretarial robes and the more delicate silks and ahalo cloth that he’d been required to wear as head of my government. I wouldn’t put such a lecture past Conju.

My Cavalier wouldn’t appreciate if I wrinkled anything with anxious fingers, either—not even a shirt far removed from anything that he’d find acceptable for me to wear. I release the tunic with a huff and cradle my hands together, curling Kip’s pair of shells against my chest as I’d once held my beloved’s firepot.

I should not regret giving up his firepot. I should not ache so deeply with its loss—not when it had never been mine to keep. I should be glad that I’d done all my beloved had asked. I had carried his ray of the sun home to his people. I had brought back his light to provide a hearth-fire for a new life for the world. I had kept the promise inherent in the amber ringed cowrie I wore around my neck. I glance up at Kip’s star. I only wish—

My chest tightens with distress, with grief, with a yearning so painful that tears well in my eyes. I want to tell my beloved that I’d fulfilled his promises. I want to tell him that I’d found his shells. I want to tell him that I’d talked with Mardo Walea, that I want to—

I can barely breathe for my longing. I stare up at Kip’s star and I wish and I wish and I wish—I wish until my tears blur it into a coruscating web of light and send fragments of shimmering gold dancing across my vision like fractures of sunlight echoing through an orb of glass.

***

I find a different place to gaze at Kip’s star each night.

I watch it from the roof of the Mdang family house, with the not-so-quiet murmurings of Kip’s family rising up from below.

I stare at it from the near-silent deck of the He’eanka—still docked in front of Kip’s uncle’s barbershop—ruing the fact I’d missed doing so for all the time we’d sailed the open ocean.

I contemplate it from the summit cairn of the Reserve—the closest I can get to my beloved in the Vangavaye-ve without bringing down the wrath of Mama Ituri; Kip would not be happy if I upset the mother goddess of his islands—not that I would without far more cause than my heartache.

Each night, I spend hours looking up at Kip’s brilliant star. Each day, my stomach churns with the same fearsome thoughts: I need to carry on with my quest; I need to bring word of Kip to Basil; I need to apologize to my friends; I need to complete my search for an heir. I know I need to go, to leave, to carry on, and yet—and yet—

I’ve brought back Kip’s gifts. I’ve kept his—our—promise. I’ve made peace with Kip’s family; or, rather, I’ve been blanketed by reassurances that Kip’s death was not my fault—even though it most certainly was—and welcomed into their fold as if I’d always belonged there. I’ve even investigated the matter of Princess Oriana and sent detailed orders to Aioru and Ludvic through the Lights. They have the power to do what is needed. There’s no reason for me to stay.

I have to go, I tell myself for the nine thousandth time—a fortnight after my arrival, as I watch my beloved’s star shimmering brilliantly in the sky out beyond the Tahivoa lagoon. Kip would tell me to go.

It isn’t as if my presence in Gorjo City—or anywhere else on Zunidh, for that matter—will help my beloved in any way. Kip can’t see anything of me like I can his star. He’s already—I can’t leave him any more alone than I already have.

A sharp pang runs through my chest, full of regret and loss and longing. Without thinking, I raise my hand to my neck, run my fingers over the cord of the new efela hanging in the hollow of my throat. Two efela really—two efanoa, each holding one of the shells I’d taken from my beloved’s childhood desk—although I’ve braided their cords together so that the pair of clam shells can remain firmly together until I can give my beloved the one that is his.One day, I promise his star. One day.

“Kip’s star is bright tonight,” a voice calls out, startling me from my reverie.

I suck in a breath and lower my head from the stars to the shimmering waters of the sea. It takes less than a moment to find the speaker; Kip’s great uncle Tovo sits at the tiller of a small vaha below me, its sails barely cresting the top of the wall demarking this part of the lagoon. The size and shape of the ship are so much like the one Kip sailed in Sky Ocean, my heart thuds hard for a moment—until I realize the wood of this boat’s crafting is several shades lighter. The decorative carvings lining its hull are also soft and well-worn from the passage of time, unlike the fresher contours of the ones on my beloved’s vaha—built for him by his ancestors to sail to the House of the Sun and beyond.

The vaha bobs in the water gently, as if it’s been resting there for a while. Kip’s great uncle’s posture suggests the same; he’s relaxed and unperturbed, his attention focused on me rather than on the position of his boat. Despite his advanced age and a face deeply lined with wrinkles, the tana-tai seems strong and alert, his eyes full of good humour and—excitement, I think, or eagerness, or possibly anticipation. He’s dressed in nothing more than a grass skirt, possibly the same grass skirt that he’d worn on both of his visits to Solaara; first for the unexpected visit that saw Kip dance Aōteketētana so triumphantly in the Throne Room of the Palace of Stars, and then—too soon after—to help bring my beloved home.

“Your fanoa teach you anything about finding the way by the stars?” Tovo asks abruptly before I can collect myself enough to respond to his initial greeting.

I shake my head free of the painful memories. “Finding the way?”

He gives me a considering look. “There’s ways to find where you want to go by the stars. The ke’ea sets out the path to follow.”

“A map?” I ask.

“Ey ana, that’s the way of it if you know the star paths,” he agrees. “But anyone of the islands knows at least their ke’e—the zenith star of their island.”

I remember— “Kip’s island was Loaloa.”

The older man nods approvingly. “And the ke’e of Loaloa is Ofuluente.” He points to the northwest sky—to the star named Ofuluente I expect, not that I can tell which star he is actually pointing to. To me, the only recognizable star is Kip’s. “You ever visit Loaloa and Ofuluente will be above it when the star’s at its zenith.”

I press my lips together, not quite certain why he’s telling me this. “Is that where you’re off to?” I wonder out loud. “Or coming back from?”

“I’ve been to Loaloa. No need to go now,” he says, brushing my question off with a soft huff of indignation. He waggles his eyebrows at me in a manner that’s almost—unsettling. “Your fanoa’s star though—it’s new. Might be worth taking a sail to see what new island might be out there to see.”

I glance up at Kip’s star. It’s a ray of light from the sun, not an actual heavenly body. And a new island would require— “I'd know if there was a new island,” I tell Kip's great uncle quietly. “I'm the Lord Magus of Zunidh. I'd feel it.”

“Hrumph.” With a smooth, effortless motion, he rises to his feet and reaches towards the rigging for the sails. “So you don't want to come, then?”

Something in his voice is skeptical. I glance back up at Kip’s star, considering. I’ve been feeling the pressure to go fighting with the desire to stay for days—the need to hold on to what I’ve found with Kip’s family knowing it will not likely last if I leave. The idea of getting away—of not having to choose what to do, if only for a little while longer—is powerfully, strikingly, desperately appealing.

And besides, it’s my beloved’s star Kip’s great uncle wants to chase; how could I do anything but— “I didn't say that,” I say quickly, before the older man can make any effort to adjust the sails to catch the wind. “If you want the company, I'll be glad to sail with you.”

His lips curl up slightly, whether in amusement or recognition, I’m not certain. “Come then, fanoa of my great-nephew. Let's go follow his star.”

***

We sail away from Gorjo City in relative silence, the sounds from the shore making for pleasant enough company—jaunty music echoing outwards from somewhere along the boardwalk, young people laughing as they jump off an empty dock into the water, night birds calling to each other from along a rocky shore as we pass.

The wind seems in our favour, filling the sails fully as Kip’s Buru Tovo navigates the vaha towards the open ocean and guides us along the path towards Kip’s star. The farther we sail from the city, the more the sky brightens until it is little more than a swirling sea of sparkling stars—all centered, at least in my own mind around my beloved’s star.

An hour passes, two, perhaps three. Much as I offer, there’s little for me to do to assist with the wind in our favour and Tovo’s weathered hand securely on the tiller, so I spend most of the time staring up at Kip’s star. In the endlessness that is the open ocean, I can almost imagine that it’s calling me onwards—a soft tug in my chest, in my heart, deep in my soul. I know it’s not real. There’s no magic to the sensation; it’s just my desperate longing for my beloved given room to breathe away from the noise of Gorjo City.

The tides of the world’s magic are easy for me to discern, second nature after so many years of working to make it flow smoothly. Zunidh is—lively, as she always is away from the places that human hands have shaped, but her magic isn’t pulling me anywhere. There is no hint of tangles or knots or anything that might cause unease. If anything, Zunidh is more settled now, more right than she was before I left on my quest, when our bond and my own wretched grief had caused her to mourn with me. Not that she hadn’t always had a soft spot for Kip too—for the man who’d brought peace to her shores, and prosperity, and plenty.

Her bright magic limns everything around us, giving an effervescence to the softly ripping water that reveals how comforted, relieved, reassured she is that I am no longer sinking under the despair that I carried in the days and weeks and months after Kip—

If all the islands of the Wide Seas Islanders have zenith stars, then my beloved Kip’s star deserves an island. Recognizing Zunidh’s love for my beloved, I wonder whether—I wonder if she might be willing to help me create one. A gift, a legacy, a memorial—something more than a proclamation telling the world of Cliopher Lord Mdang’s passing and of the Emperor’s great grief. Something from me, and from the world he so loved and cared for.

The idea of it fills me with warmth. He’s done so much for others—from reigniting the fire at the heart of the Palace of Stars, and at the heart of me, to bringing so many life-changing gifts back from the House of the Sun. Nothing for him—of course not, Kip never thinks of himself—only for his family and his people and those that he loves so that they know that he still cares for them, even if he can never return to them.

I want to give my beloved something as meaningful as everything my beloved has ever offered to me. I know that’s an impossible task—what is an island next to peace for an entire world—but surely I can create something that will at least show the world how much he means to me—how much he’s always meant to me.

Kip won’t mind if I make him an island, I think, even if he can never see it or visit it or stand on its shore. Knowing my beloved, he’ll simply be glad for his star to gain an island—if not for himself, then for his family, for his people, for me. I let out a determined breath and begin to consider how I—how we, as Zunidh will need to be my partner in this—can go about safely creating an island without causing any harm to the ecosystem of the Wide Seas. That is not something my beloved would want.

Whatever sound I make is audible enough that Kip’s great uncle gives me a considering look. “My husband met your Kip in Sky Ocean. They had a good long talk," he says after a moment, without prompting.

His husband. Vou’a. I raise an eyebrow curiously. “Did they? Kip mentioned they'd met, but didn't say much else.”

“That boy wouldn’t,” he returns, letting out the softest of laughs—not the humorous kind, but rather one more resigned, sad, full of loss. “I taught him all the ways of being tanà for our people—to look first, to listen first, to ask questions later. Your Kip—he learned to look and listen, but never quite understood when to speak.”

I frown. “He speaks when it matters for other people,” I say. It’s an easy revelation given all I’ve just been thinking about. “He keeps so much of what’s in his own heart so close—as if he’s afraid to share it, as if he’s afraid of being rejected.”

My beloved’s Buru Tovo lets out a soft sigh, then nods in agreement. “It may be that his family didn’t help with that. Eidora was too afraid of losing him to let him go off into the world gracefully like she should have. Someone always goes, we say. Kip was the one who went. No shame in that, much as he was made to feel it,” he offers, then drops his eyes to the tiller for a long moment before returning his gaze to me. “When I returned from your palace, I didn’t share what had happened there. Kip needed to be able to claim his place and his dances for himself. It was the only way it would have meant anything to him.”

“Ah,” I say, chest tightening with regret. I’d wondered why Kip dancing for Tupaia and the crew of the He’eanka had seemed so much a revelation. “He wanted to come back,” I manage, trying to hold the tremble from my voice. “He was—he was going to, once he—once he opened my cage so that I could go free.”

“You are his fanoa,” he tells me, as if that explains everything; then, perhaps to him, it does. “Like Ani is to my husband. He would never have left you chained—not given any other choice.”

“I know,” I agree softly, because I do. Even in his last hours, Kip had kept trying to— “Ani. Was Vou’a able to give her—”

Tovo’s eyes brighten like the sun peering through a blanket of clouds after a long rain; I know the answer even before he lets out a soft, heartfelt, “Yes.”

I smile. “I’m glad for them,” I say—and I am. I am.

“Thank you, little sunling,” someone whispers in my ear.

I startle so badly I leap up from the deck. My unexpected movement sends the vaha careening to one side. I freeze immediately, cradling the ship in a breath of my magic to keep it from even the possibility of overturning. As my eyes settle on the man, the god—Vou’a—now filling the previously empty space behind me, I let my magic dissipate. While the god of mischief might toss me into the water for upsetting the boat, I doubt he’d do the same with his husband.

Vou’a’s laugh echoes around us, both laughing bird and roll of thunder. “I’ve tossed Tovo into more seas than you could possibly imagine, little sunling,” he says brightly to me before giving his husband a look that can only be described as searing. “He usually thanks me for it.”

Tovo gives his husband an indulgent look. “Leave Kip’s fanoa alone,” he orders, patting the space at his side. “Thought you’d be with Ani.”

Even as I settle back into a cross-legged position on the deck, Vou’a blinks out of the world and reappears half in Tovo’s lap; the god immediately presses a kiss to his husband’s cheek. Kip’s great uncle doesn’t blink twice—used to his husband’s antics, I expect—simply tilts his head to accept a second, more thorough kiss.

A sharp pang runs through my chest at their easy affection; I bite my lower lip, trying to hide it. I shouldn’t be jealous of how easy they seem together, how comfortable, how content—and yet I am. What they have is all that I’d ever wanted, everything that I’d ever wanted.

“Your fanoa is doing just fine,” Vou’a tells me, breaking through my heartache. “Or so he says.”

“Kip always says that,” I tell him ruefully, then realize what he’s offering. I sit up straight. “You went to visit him?”

The god meets my eyes. His are as fathomless as the first time I’d looked into them, full of darkness and hints of the unknown; but there’s also something soft and warm there, even fragile. “Took Ani to see him,” Vou’a tells me matter-of-factly; then, with a hint of aggravation, he adds, “She’s with him now—told me to leave them alone for a bit and go mind his little sunling. As if I’d tell her no, even if I just got her back.”

Tovo gives his husband a fond look, his lips twitching into a small smile. “I’ll have to ask her for pointers, then. You tell me no.”

“You enjoy my mysteries, tirului,” the god says, pressing in for another quick kiss. “If you didn’t, you’d have given up on me long ago.”

“Ey ana, this is what comes of loving the god of mystery,” Tovo says, turning to me.

I can’t help but appreciate their affection, much as I wish I could have it for myself and my beloved, but I want to know, to be sure— “And Kip’s really all right?” I ask Vou’a.

He gives me a wide grin that leaves no room for doubt. “Your fanoa hasn’t been sitting around moping if that’s what you’re asking. He’s spent a goodly time with the Grandmother helping her sort all the lost things she’s gathered in since the world was formed—He was quite adamant that she needs a better filing system.”

I snort, because that sounds so much like my Kip that my heart hurts. “Kip’s the best advisor there is. If he thinks it’s needed, she should listen.”

“I did warn her that your fanoa likes his challenge songs,” Vou’a says, releasing another billowing kookaburra laugh into the night air. “Then, I think she likes him. She used the firmament that he carried from the very bottom of the sea up to the House of the Sun—the task that led him to find the feather he traded for my Ani’s mirimiri—to make him an island.”

My heart lurches sideways without the benefit of magic to keep it sailing true. I glance up to Kip’s star, clinging to it for steadiness, comfort, reassurance. I take a breath, then a second, then a third—the slowest of them all. Only then do I let my gaze fall to the dark stretch of sea beneath my beloved’s star and all that I’d imagined creating there. I don’t say a word, but with Vou’a I don’t have to. He smirks. “You can take it up with the Grandmother if you like, little sunling. I wish you well of it.” 

As if I could—I’m not Kip who could negotiate for a dozen impossible things before breakfast. “It isn’t as if Kip could appreciate any island I made for him here,” I admit mournfully. “But your husband mentioned his star should have an island, so I thought—”

The god nods in not-quite-solemn acknowledgement. “Suppose that’s a good enough reason to raise an island,” he says. “But you’ll find there’s no need for that either, little sunling.”

In that moment, like a sign from the gods—or at least from one particular Vangavayen god much prone to drama—the light from my beloved’s star cascades, pours, streams down from the sky until it catches on a shadow, a shape, an outcropping rising out of the sea beneath it.

An island.

My heart skips a beat as I stare. There shouldn’t be an island here; there shouldn’t be, there can’t be. I would have recognized it, sensed it, felt it. And yet—

Gleaming rock. Glistening sand. A great grove of greenery suggesting fresh water. It’s—it’s beautiful, and far more alive than anything I could ever create, even with Zunidh’s help. I could call fire from the depths of the earth to create an island, but it would take years, decades, centuries for anything I made to transform into this—this perfect complement to my beloved’s star.

There’s only one possible way for the island to be here. I turn to meet Vou’a’s mystery-filled eyes. “Did—did you—"

“You and your fanoa deserve each other,” Vou’a says blithely, not answering my question. “When you returned my Ani’s mirimiri, you asked me to consider what succor I could offer to your fanoa as only one who can visit Sky Ocean at will can.”

I nod; it was all I could think to ask for at the time, the only thing I thought might help my beloved that Vou’a might be willing to give.

The god of mystery huffs in obvious annoyance. “And I did. I offered him anything within the bounds of my power that I could. Your stubborn fanoa twisted your ring on his finger and told me that he didn’t need anything else but you when the time comes—which he stressed shouldn’t be soon if at all possible—and that if I wanted to do anything for him, perhaps I could find a way to lighten your load of grief instead.”

“Oh Kip,” I whisper fondly, dropping my face into my hands. I’m not certain whether I’m laughing or crying—possibly both, given the sounds I am making and the tears dripping over my fingertips. Of course, of course—even from Sky Ocean—my beloved would rather look out for me than take care of himself. “I hope you told him I was fine.”

Vou’a makes a noise halfway between a scream and being strangled. “That’s it. I’m done with you both,” he declares, pulling Kip’s great uncle to his feet. “Tirului, how would you like to go taste the Sun’s mead with Ani and I?”

“Taste the—I can’t. You know that,” Tovo tells him, “Not yet. I need more time with Tupaia. He needs to be able to dance all of Aōteketētana.”

“Hush, my little fire tender. I would never ask you to leave before your time,” Vou’a whispers quietly, apologetically, ignoring my presence completely to press his nose into Tovo’s hair along with a soft kiss. “But your stubborn Kip won guest-right to the House of the Sun for all of his extended family, living or dead, so I thought we might—”

“He did?” I can’t help but frown at the enormity of the surprise in Tovo’s question.

“That he did,” Vou’a answers, curling his arm possessively around Tovo’s back and pulling him in tight against his side. “And I promise you, taking advantage of the Sun’s offered hospitality for a few days will be far better than staying here.” The god lets out another peal of kookaburra laughter, then waggles his eyebrows at his husband. “The beds will be nicer too.”

Tovo snorts loudly but then bumps his head gently against Vou’a’s. “Ey ana, if I can come back, you know I’ll follow you anywhere, old kookaburra.”

“Thank the stars,” the god proclaims, before giving me a fierce look. “Little sunling, don’t you dare lose my Tovo’s boat while we’re gone. I’ll bring him back in a few days. Once you’ve had time to—"

Vou’a waves jauntily, then disappears mid-sentence, taking his husband with him.

***

It takes some time to accept that Vou’a isn’t playing tricks on me, that he and Tovo aren’t going to pop back onto the vaha, that he and his husband really are—quite probably—on their way to visit the House of the Sun.

The fact they can do so because of something my beloved did, I can’t second guess. It is Kip after all. He relit my heart’s fire, won me peace, built a world that didn’t need an Emperor. What was negotiating with the Sun to him after all of that?

I wonder if the Sun has any idea of what he’s in for—of just how many Mdangs there are. I kind of hope not. It will make for a much better story that way. A good story, perhaps even a—It’s an amusing idea, the thought of Kip’s ninety-nine cousins—and just a few more—going to visit the House of the Sun.

I find myself humming—not quite a melody, not yet, but something—something. I can’t look at it too closely, too afraid it will slip through my fingertips. Creating an island would be easier, I am sure of it.

Well, I think, as I settle myself carefully at the tiller of Tovo’s vaha, head swimming with thoughts and words and the hint of a refrain.

Well, I think as I let myself hum, finding one tune transitioning into a second as I look ahead to the island that I didn’t make for Kip’s star but that is tugging my heart forward nonetheless.

Well, I think, as the notes twist and twine, separate and combine, build from a near-cold ember to a spark, and from a spark into a tentative flame. Kip does like my music.

Chapter Text

The beach where I aim Tovo’s vaha is beautiful, pristine, empty–perfectly illuminated by the light of my beloved’s star; there’s not a trace of a pattern etched in the sand beyond those carved by the wind and the water and the will of Kip’s gods. I hum a few uplifting notes as I bring the small boat gently into the shore and leap into the shallow waves. My bare feet are well met by comfortably cool water and tickling grains of fine, soft sand.

Stepping out of the sea and onto the beach, a tide of awareness surges through me, filling my chest and my head and my heart to overflowing with a deep sense of recognition, of rightness, of belonging. The world sings around me, bursting with the glory of it.

I’m yours, the island tells me in words that aren’t words as I stagger up the beach tugging Kip’s great uncle’s vaha; even now, I can’t forget my beloved’s first rule of sailing: always secure your boat.

You’re Kip’s, I correct as I ensure the vaha is safe from the vagaries of the tide. As Lord of Zunidh, I expect the island to listen, but it effervescently refuses my every attempt at denial. With each step I take, it burrows deeper into my soul like a cat nestling into place where it knows it belongs.

I’m yours, the island insists, whether I want it to be or not.

I don’t, I argue, but can't hide the truth of my heart. I do.

I’m yours, the island confirms, snuggling its way deep into the centre of me, curling in and around the pearls holding my fire safe, shoring them up. It fits seamlessly—as if it belongs there, as if it has always belonged there, as if I’m not visiting for the first time but simply coming home.

Coming home. It’s an impossible thought—amazing, astounding, astonishing. Nowhere I’ve lived has ever been a real home. Not the red house, no matter how much I’d loved Master Tutor. Not the tower at the edge of Colhélhé where I’d been relegated to as Marwn, and which I'd left as soon as I could strip the magics containing me there. Certainly not the Palace of Stars, no matter that I’d been emperor there for nearly a thousand years; still was, despite my current absence, at least until I could renounce my title at the Jubilee and pass on the Lordship of Zunidh to its rightful heir.

Once, I might have called each roaring campfire surrounded by my friends a home. But that home had only been an illusion. My friends hadn’t known the truth, hadn’t found me at the centre of the empire when I'd been taken and bound, hadn’t saved me. They hadn’t even found each other after being separated in the Silver Forest. What we'd had then had been ephemeral, fleeting; not a home, much as my friends had been—and still are, much as I don’t deserve them—my family.

If a person could be a home, then my home is Kip—the other half of my shell, the other half of my heart, the other half of my soul. If he’d lived, perhaps we would have made a home together. Perhaps then, I could have claimed his family's home as my own. But how can I call Kip’s family’s home mine when my beloved isn’t there to share it?

Not that Kip is here either. I know that. But this island lies under my beloved’s star and standing on the beach I feel as if Kip is close, so very close, closer than he’s been since I left him in Sky Ocean. I only wish—

A breeze ruffles through the leaves of full-grown trees that belie the island's newness—palms and bananas ripe with fruit, shimmering under the light of the Sea of Stars—drawing my attention. I take a long breath, let the sea-salted air and the welcoming embrace of the island soothe the aching parts of my heart.

I brush away the tears welling in my eyes. Kip will want to know everything about this adventure when I see him next, so I can't start it off by crying. I can't.

The trees rustle loudly, distractingly, invitingly. I smile at the island's lack of subtlety. “All right. All right,” I say out loud, letting my lips twist up in the hint of a smile. “Let's see how magnificent you are.”

***

Kip’s island is breathtaking. Every tree is green and lush and full. Vines cling and drape magnificently from trunks as if given decades or centuries to grow rather than minutes or hours or days. Vibrant flowers—pink and bright purple, yellow and white shaped like stars—fill my nose with glorious scents reminiscent of the walks I’d taken through the jungle at Navikiani.

Navikiani. One day on that precious gift of a vacation, my beloved had explained that the word meant the meeting place of Iki and Ani. Iki, he’d said, might be Vou’a—the god of mystery. I brush my fingertips over the petals of a flower whose name I don’t know but whose fragrance is achingly familiar. No might about it, I think.

There's plenty of space on Kip’s island for a house like the one we’d stayed at on Navikiani. I can see it in my mind's eye, nestled comfortably among the trees with a magnificent view of the beach beyond and of Kip’s star above.

In Sky Ocean, my fanoa had said that he’d asked Ludvic, Rhodin, and Conju to settle with him in the Vangavaye-ve after retirement. I can’t help but wonder whether they might still want to do that—to make a home together—and whether they might be willing to make that home here, with me. They might not be my beloved, but I love each of them all the same.

Conju, who had cared for me gently over many long years, who had given me choices, who had led me back each time I’d entered the deep trance with soft words and soothing teas.

Ludvic, who’d kept me safe, who’d stood by my side—who’d stayed by my side—even when I’d brought a storm of fire down on his island to save the rest of Zunidh.

Rhodin, who’d once guessed who I was—if only in the most nonsensical way—and who’d kept me informed of the most ridiculous intrigues in the Palace. Whether he believed them or not I still wasn’t certain.

Conju. Ludvic. Rhodin. They’d been there for me for nearly a thousand years. And more, they’d been there for me in the days and weeks and months after I’d lost Kip. For all that they hadn’t stopped treating me with every courtesy they thought due the Last Emperor of Astandalas, they’d also treated me like—like a grieving husband who’d lost the love of his life and not simply as an emperor who had lost his Lord Chancellor. They’d treated me like a man, not a god.

They’d come so far, but would they be willing to take one step farther? Would they be willing, would they be able, to see me as a friend rather than as their lord—as Fitzroy Angursell and not Artorin Damara?

I can’t invite them to stay on Kip’s island—asking them to stay on my island would sound too imperial, no matter that the island insists that’s what it is—right away. Not yet. Not until there is a place to invite them to. While Ludvic and Rhodin might be willing to rough it for a little while, I can't say the same about Conju. I am not at all certain that my soon to be former Groom of the Chamber has slept even one night outside under the stars; if not, I don’t want his first experience of doing so to be at the start of his well-earned retirement. I want him to like it here. I want them all to like it here.

Once Vou’a and Tovo return from the House of the Sun, I’ll need to return to Gorjo City and arrange for contractors to build a house before I continue with my quest—a house and a bathhouse of a suitable size. While I'll be glad to cast off most of the cold, impersonal luxury of the Imperial Apartments after my Jubilee, the Imperial Baths are not something I want to forget. They’d given me succour. They’d given me a distraction. They’d given me one place outside of my private study where I could pretend to be alone, pretend to be cradled in someone's embrace, pretend to be loved; I’d cried for my beloved there, pretending that no one could see.

I might not need the entirety of the Imperial Baths here, but I can admit to wanting something equally as marvelous—if only to have a place where I can dream of being cradled in Kip’s arms.

I expect there will be some dismay, if—when—Kip learns of the enormous expense of building a grand bath on such an isolated island, even without the added cost of hand-crafted and gem-encrusted mosaic tiles. Or maybe he’ll understand. He’s nothing if not practical, my beloved; he might simply rub his temples and suggest that at least a luxurious bath is a far more practical retirement gift than a sundial.

What story will entertain my dearest Kip more when I see him again? The house having both, I decide.

***

I spend hours wandering the island under my beloved’s star, mapping out possible locations for a house and a bath. I consider where we might put a guesthouse as well, careful not to dwell on whether my old friends might come to visit; if not them, perhaps guests from Solaara. Kip’s successor Aioru and his Tanaea. Ylette and her wife and their gaggle of children I’d heard all about but never met. Those of Kip’s former household. Gaudy and his friends. Any that Conju and Ludvic and Rhodin might care to invite.

A great wave of weariness sets in, weighing down my limbs and my mind and my focus, but I can’t stop moving. Who else might Kip want to visit his island even if he himself will never see it? His mother and sister for certain. Basil and Sarah and Clio. Perhaps his friends Bertie and Toucan and Ghilly.

My eyelids grow heavy as I stagger through the jungle, thoughts twisting and turning and whirling—Jiano and Aya. Kip’s uncle Lazo. All of his cousins—onward and onward and onward. I blink hard, forcing myself to stay awake.

I glance up at Kip’s star. It’s bright, brilliant, breathtaking, so close I can almost reach out and touch it. Almost.

Auri and El and the crew of the He’eanka—I can’t forget them. They’d done so much for me after we’d left Kip alone—after I’d left Kip alone. I know how difficult it is to return to a life left long behind. If any of the crew find Gorjo City too much, find returning to the world too much, I can offer them a place on Kip’s island. When I return to Gorjo City, I’ll need to speak to them—to Auri and El, to Tupaia as well.

Between one moment and the next, one breath and the next, I trip over something my eyes refuse to see and tumble into a mossy hollow made of a large tree’s exposed roots. My body aches at the impact, but it’s a soft and subdued sensation, buffeted by overwhelming exhaustion. My head fizzes, thoughts whirling and twirling and swirling like drifting smoke and sand.

I cough, try to catch my breath. I should get up, should return to Tovo’s vaha at least, but nothing in me wants to. The very idea of standing feels weighty and impossible next to staying where I am.

And there’s nothing to stop me, I realize. It isn’t as if Conju is here to see. And there’s no imperial bed waiting to confine me within its opaque curtains, to lock me away safely from the world. This is—there’s just enough room to curl up comfortably despite my long limbs. The moss is soft and surprisingly springy against the back of my head. Kip’s star hangs close in the sky, filling my view; he feels close, so very, very close.

Kip’s star. Kip’s island. A place to call home. My heart is soft and full and warm.

***

“Oofph!” I hear, even as an elbow crashes into my chest, driving the breath from my lungs and my consciousness from a heavy, exhausted sleep. I launch upwards—shocked, flailing, needing to get away before I hurt, before I burn—

A head careens into mine. “Oohfk!” I manage, not quite echoing the sound of my assailant as I tumble back against a tangle of roots. Pain flashes through my shoulder; the mossy hollow is nowhere near as welcoming as it’d seemed in the long hours after midnight.

A substantial weight lands on my chest. Strands of dark hair sweep across my face—blinding, ticklish, laced with the scent of smoke and ink, salt and the sea, sunlight and something—I suck in a big, gasping breath.

“Sorry—sorry! I wasn’t watching where I was going. I didn’t know anyone was—Fitzroy?”

My breath catches at the sound, at the voice, at his voice—as familiar as my own but far, far more beloved. My eyes dart upwards without my permission, catch on eyes that are—that are—

Stars, they’re familiar—desperately, achingly familiar.

“Fanoa?” he asks hesitantly, as if he’s unsure. But his hands—my beloved’s hands, my beloved Kip’s hands—show no such uncertainty. They reach out and cup my cheeks gently, gently, so very gently. “Beloved?”

My heart stutters at sound, at the word, at the sheer wonder in his voice. Tears well in my eyes and drip freely down my cheeks, brought up short only by my beloved’s fingertips. Impossible, I think, even as I curl into his touch, as I raise my own hands to his face, as I let myself sink into his eyes—so beautiful, so brilliant, so breathtakingly alive.

“You’re here,” I manage, the words less than a whisper. I press my forehead to Kip’s golden-kissed one, trail my fingers from his cheeks into the loose strands of his hair, brush my fingertips delicately against his gifted feathers—each one a mirror of the soft shades of the dawn rising in the sky above us. “Stars, you’re here.”

He leans into my touch like a sunflower basking in the light of the sun. “I should be the one saying that,” he grumbles even as he rubs his nose gently against mine. “How did you even get here, beloved? The grandmother made me this island. She insisted I needed a place to call home, a place where I could wait for you that didn’t hold any memories of letting you g—”

“This isn’t Sky Ocean, beloved,” I interrupt, catching one of his hands with my own. I twine our fingers together. “This is—we’re just past the Ring. This is the island under your star—the fire you brought back from the House of the Sun. See, it’s right—" I point upwards with my free hand, knowing exactly where my beloved’s star is without having to think about it. But the sky is bright with the rising sun and there’s nothing left of Kip’s star to discern. “Well, it was there, and will be again when the sun goes down.”

Kip shakes his head mulishly. “This must be Sky Ocean, beloved,” he insists. “It must be. You know I can’t come back. It’s not—”

I release a harsh breath, clinging hard to his hand. This is my Kip. I know it is. He isn’t a vision. He isn’t an illusion. He isn’t a ghost. “It’s not allowed. I know,” I say. “But Kip—Kip, I promise I didn’t come to Sky Ocean. Your Buru Tovo wanted to see if there was an island under your star. I just sailed with him. We didn’t sail into the Divine Lands. I’d know if we—”

“Buru Tovo’s here?” Kip pulls back just enough to glance around hastily, guiltily, as if expecting the older man to pop out from behind a nearby tree. Then, given who he was married to—who he was presently with—I couldn’t entirely say that he wouldn’t.

“No,” I say, smiling faintly at the blush rising on his cheeks, at the shimmering gold dancing like starlight across his skin. “Vou’a showed up—said you’d won guest-right to the House of the Sun and invited Tovo along on a trip to taste the Sun’s mead.”

“Oh! Ani said they’d be going. She came to thank me for returning her mirimiri. Not that I needed her thanks. I told her that—”

Kip frowns, forehead wrinkling in obvious concern, so much so that I want to reach out and smooth the worry lines with my fingers but that would require letting go of him first. “She didn’t say Buru Tovo was going though. I hope that doesn’t mean—What about Aōteketētana?”

The last words are a whisper, perhaps only meant for himself. But I know the answer my fanoa needs. I lean forward and press a soft kiss to his forehead. “It’s all right, beloved. Vou’a said he wouldn’t ask Tovo to leave before his time,” I offer gently. “And now isn’t the right time. The guest-right, Vou’a said, was for your entire family, living or dead.”

Kip collapses against my shoulder for a long moment—if not long enough for my liking. “So, it was,” he agrees shakily, pulling back again. “I wonder if that means the whole family’s going to be lining up for the privilege?”

It's not hard to imagine. A muddle of Mdangs filling the Sun's hall to overflowing, providing a boisterousness not seen since—well, since I'd last been for a visit. “I can just see it now,” I tell him, grinning. “All ninety-nine of your cousins—”

“Fifty-nine,” he corrects, much to my delight. “But that’s just first cousins. There’s all the extended family too. I'm related to a good quarter of Gorjo City according to the lore-keepers.”

My jaw drops open at that magnificent thought. I laugh fully, unreservedly, wholeheartedly. “I can almost feel sorry for the Sun.”

***

We eventually make it out of the hollow. If our desire not to let go of one another means it takes us four tries—possibly even five—we can be grateful no one else is there to know.

I lead him to Tovo's vaha, wanting to make certain it hasn't disappeared during the night. I can't put the possibility of shenanigans out of my head, given how Vou'a had first appeared on the boat and then how he’d disappeared along with his husband. But the vaha is resting exactly as I'd left it, still well secured. “Well done,” Kip tells me supportively. “Buru Tovo won't have any right to complain.”

I flush warmly at his praise. “I had a good teacher,” I say, tugging him close and pressing a soft kiss against the side of his head. He shivers under my touch, and I warm even further.

Kip glances across the white sand, pristine except for the marks of my arrival. “I landed on the other side,” he says. “The grandmother sent me east first, then west—”

“And home,” I finish, knowing it for truth. If Kip’s island is my home, then it has to be his too.

Yours, the island enthusiastically agrees from its place at my heart’s fire. Around us, Zunidh sings her own approval; it’s a brilliant song, breathtaking, with delicate harmonies that speak of gods and the sea and Sky Ocean.

Kip’s eyes fill with tears. “And home,” he says.

When he doesn’t say more, I pull him down onto the deck of Tovo’s vaha. He immediately climbs into my lap, curling in against my chest. I kiss away his tears, then tuck him in close and press my chin softly down on the crown of his head. Stars, I never want to let him go.

I think—sensing the strong, stable, perfectly balanced state of the Worlds around us—that I might not have to. At least not for long, and only by choice.

“Vou’a knew,” I tell my beloved, knowing it for truth. “When he asked Tovo to go with him to the House of the Sun. He knew I was going to find you here. I think this is his answer to your bringing back Ani’s mirimiri.”

“Ani didn’t say—Vou’a didn’t—” Kip starts, then lets out a soft chuckle. “Then, he wouldn’t, would he?”

I press a kiss into my beloved’s hair. “Too good a mystery,” I tell him.

“And an easier way to get all my relatives to visit the House of the Sun?”

I laugh, because it’s probably true and we both know it. “If they come here first, it means you’ll get to see them too.”

“Oh,” Kip says. “I’d—I’d like that.”

Mentally I revise how much space we’ll want for the guest house. Maybe I’ll mention that to my fanoa first. Warm him up for the idea of a glorious bath.

I tighten my arms around my beloved, let myself relax into the wondrous feeling of having him in my arms. I know I’ll have to leave when Vou’a and Tovo come back. I’ll need to hire builders so we can have a house and a guest house and a bath. I’ll need to go back to Alinor to tell Basil—to let Basil know that he can visit Kip. I’ll need to finish my quest, find my daughter, find the rest of my friends.

This time, the thought of leaving isn’t as terrifying. I know—I know—that I’ll always be able to find my way home.

Yours, the island tells me, entirely satisfied.

Ours, I insist.

Together, my beloved and I watch the sun climb higher and higher into the sky.