We meet our first monster not five days after we set sail from Thistle. The Endless Sea is said to be full of kraken, toothed whales, and other horrors, and we’ve come equipped with cannons and archers. When the creature draws closer, it’s revealed to be a massive leviathan. The archers nock their bows, but the boatswain raises a hand, signaling for them to hold their arrows. The leviathan is ancient, the fires in its belly long cooled. Its eyes are clouded and its ridged, scaly back is covered in barnacles.

It doesn’t attack, but it swims too close to the ship, bumping into us out of curiosity. Before it descends into the deep, the creature’s rock-hard hide grazes the port bow, and a flailing tentacle takes out the smaller mast.

We’re forced to stop for repairs on one of the windswept outer islands. When we’ve dropped anchor, I don a cloak and walk the deck, impatient, but it will be at least three days before a tree can be felled and fashioned into a new mast after the ship is towed to shore for repairs. As I scan the horizon, I notice a plume of smoke hanging above one of the nearby keys. The island where we’ve stopped is covered in forest, but the keys are mostly rocks and scrub. I frown, studying the little isle.

Below the smoke, there’s a shimmer of colors—blue and purple and brilliant umber. I keep watching it to make sure it’s not a trick of the light reflecting on the water, but it continues in an endless pattern: blue on purple on orange on green. So does the billowing smoke.  

I find the boatswain directing sailors in the rigging. “Will you spare one of your men to row me to that nearby key to bring some buckets?” I point toward the smoke. “It looks to be on fire and if the wind shifts, it could reach the trees.”

“Yes, Your Highness. Rus!” He gestures to a wiry young sailor with a sunburned face. “Take the princess to see that mirage on the key.”

I frown at the boatswain. I’m sure he’s been to sea a hundred times to my one, but that doesn’t mean he has to treat me like an idiot in front of the crew.

Rus looks nervous as he rows us toward the key. I try to think of something reassuring to say. “It’s probably just a brush fire started by stray ash from the main island,” I tell him unconvincingly.

We drop anchor in the shallows and wade onto a pebbled beach that reminds me of the shore beyond the world. The smoke plume is much higher now that we’re on the key and I can see the different-colored flames flickering through the thin scrub. Heat wafts toward us in shimmering waves.

“Doesn’t look much like a mirage now, does it?” I say. “Nor an ordinary fire, not with the way it moves.”

Rus looks terrified. He whispers the name of a lesser sea goddess under his breath and says, “I’ve heard of such things at sea. We mustn’t go any closer.” He hooks his index fingers together, twisting them like he’s pulling a knot taut. I’m not familiar with the gesture, but it resembles the universal sign against evil, like the sign for Zori in Lazul.

“You stay here, then. Or return to the boat. I have my own defenses.”

“B-but Your Highness, what if...?”

“What if I don’t return?”

He nods and I purse my lips, annoyed at his inability to act without orders or think for himself. “Then row back to the ship and bring help.”

He scrambles obediently back to the boat, splashing through the shallows, and I go forward. The heat is so intense I have to hold my cloak over my nose and mouth to breathe, but I keep going, drawn toward the blaze. I’ve felt heat like this before and hope blooms in my chest. I try to tamp it down, telling myself it can’t be. After all, how many times did I hope my mother would come back after she died? She only ever returned to haunt my dreams.

I pass an A-frame shelter made of scrub branches and green tree limbs. There’s a spring in the center of the key, and on the other side of it is the source of the fire. It comes into focus as I skirt the spring—a being of pure flame, human-shaped, but with fire spouting from its hands and mouth. The flames engulf a pyre of driftwood and sage grass that has been built beside the spring.

I’ve seen fire benders and heat wielders before, but none like this. It has to be a goddess, or a godsgift gone wrong, like the first elementals. It turns in a slow circle, revealing eyes that glow like white-hot coals in a flaming face and an open mouth that spews air hot enough to boil water. I shrink away, protecting my face with my cloak.

I’m beginning to think it was stupidity that brought me here, not bravery. Gate’s always saying I don’t know the difference. I wish he was with me right now, but he chose to stay with Plover.

I back away on shaky legs, but it’s too late. The being has seen me and comes toward me interminably fast on legs of flame.

“What are you?” I scream, my throat raw from the heat.

It stops and stands still about twenty paces away, and the flames dwindle, dying almost as quickly as they grew. Little blue flames lick all over its body, fading into threads of orange that glow, come together, and close, leaving only flesh. The fire being is gone, and a woman is left behind. Her skin isn’t burned and blackened, as one would expect, but fresh and dewy. I circle her cautiously, hand at the ready above my vial. As if lighting could do anything against a demigoddess of fire.

“Don’t you know me?” she asks.

I wanted it to be her so much, I tell myself I’m imagining it. But she looks so much like Neev. The same heart-shaped face, the same large gray eyes, the same short brown hair being flicked about by the wind. But she looks different, too. She’s radiant with happiness and good health. Behind her, the sea is a blinding blue beneath a cloudless sky, but she is brighter than both.

It has to be a trick. All this time I was expecting to find her a shade on a far shore, but here she is before me, vital and alive, and able to control her powers. It can’t be.

My voice quakes as I say, “Let me see your hands.”

She holds them out. The palms are smooth and I shake my head as tears prick my eyes. “Hers were scarred.”

Before I can draw back or reach for my vial, she grabs my hand and holds it to her cheek. I flinch, expecting her face to burn me, since it was on fire only seconds ago, but it doesn’t.

I don’t wait another second to take her in my arms. I hold her tight, and she kisses me, and she feels like Neev. She has Neev’s waist and hands and, good goddess, she has Neev’s soft, sweet lips.

I draw back to look at her and take her face in my hands. “You feel real.”

“I am, I promise you, I’m flesh and blood. Isn’t this real?” She takes a step back and conjures a little ball of flame in the palm of one hand.

“But you were dead.”

“I was. My grandmother, Opalista. She granted me a new body and control of my powers. As a gift for sacrificing myself to kill Rothbart. And Zori owed her a favor.”

I stare at her, speechless. She gives a little half-smile that shows her dimple.

“It is you,” I blurt, and it sounds like an accusation even though I don’t mean for it to. She’s naked, and I take off my cloak so she can cover herself.

She laughs at my dumbfounded expression as she wraps the offered garment around her chest. “I’m sorry to have ended your voyage so quickly.”

I clasp her hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s been five days and I’m already tired of the sea. It’s wet and cold.”

She pushes back the hair from my brow and the corner of her mouth turns up in a half-smile. “They wouldn’t put a fire in your cabin?”

“Neev, I...” I’d expected months to practice this speech. I don’t know how to begin. “I’m engaged to Dette,” I announce. “And you know that I love her. But it’s a political marriage, and she understands that. She knows how much I need the alliance to save my people.”

“But will you trust me to love you, even if I’m married to her? I want you to have a house by the sea and never know pain or hunger again. I want you to—”

“Thedra,” she interjects, interrupting my blathering. “You were going to cross the Endless Sea, just to keep a promise you made to me. I trust you.”

I reach out to touch her face, a part of me still unable to believe she’s real. I trail my fingertips down her smooth cheek, across her lips. Her hand clasps my elbow and I let her pull me into a kiss. She tastes like the sea, like salt and sage grass and wood smoke. Her lips are soft and warm on mine, no longer burning hot.

“You told me something,” she says when we part, “in Alder Tower when I was dying. And I didn’t get to say it back.”

I nod, my eyes burning with tears. “I remember.”

“I love you too. For always.”