When Raliel walked out onto the beach, Moon vibrated inside her, and she laughed a little, breathless with its energy. The white sand glared under the sun and brought the tang of tears to her eyes. Moon relished the glint and expanded to every part of her body as she lifted her gaze to the sea itself. Water fluttered like a thousand ruffled skirts as the wind blew steadily toward shore, toward them.

  go in go in, Moon said.

  Raliel stared out at the bright, flickering waves, to the three pillar islands in the distance. They rose like giant fingers, a massive old beast reaching its hand out of the ocean. The sun sank just to their west.

  “This is the place?” asked Osian from behind. Raliel didn’t turn, keeping her eyes on the sea, which Moon appreciated. The demon had liked being in that strong little body, liked running and laughing, liked looking at Raliel instead of through her. Liked shocking her with the kiss, liked tasting her too, and liked exposing Osian for being a liar. It had told Raliel late last night that honestly it liked Osian more now. Before, Osian had been funny but annoying. Charming, useful, but stifling. Now Moon was impressed. Now it knew Osian was bold. Ambitious. The lie of being demon-kissed had been precisely chosen to gain him the advantage he sought, without doing great harm. Moon told Raliel this was an excellent quality in a friend.

  After her surprise subsided, she’d nodded in agreement.

  The fact that he’d been a sleeper assassin and spy was several major points removed from his favorability column, but it did give them something very concrete to attack, a mission for the rest of the Heir’s Journey, a goal they could actually express: to put an end to Syra Bear Mistress’s quest for vengeance.

  But not today.

  Today belonged to the sea.

  Oh, it smelled bright, like salt and seaweed, rot and reclamation. Moon thrummed! Raliel rolled her shoulders and flattened her palm down her forearm as if she could press away the little goose bumps running along her skin and lifting her hair.

  go in, Moon demanded. I want to taste it! breathe it. we will fly through the deep water together, Raliel Dark-Smile.

  It felt her gasp, and she shivered. She wanted it. To fly with Moon. She… desired such a thing. The great demon could feel the desire welling in her hips, in her throat. Moon liked knowing how it could make her feel and touched tiny fingers of itself to the hot places in her that slowly knotted up.

  Moon teased like the tug of the tide, aching as it drew out out out to sea.

  “I’m worried,” she whispered.

  about what!

  “Sorcery. I… we’ve barely managed transformations. The eyes, the hair color. But breathing? And… It isn’t sorcery. Just power.”

  Raliel’s heart sped, rushing blood to her face. Moon retaliated with a surge of cool aether, flooding her chest with it like a medicinal compress. Raliel, it soothed. Raliel, we can do this. I am the great demon of the palace, and you are Raliel Dark-Smile. we have come this far. I have the whole ocean of aether to draw upon.

  “I’m worried,” she said again.

  scared.

  Her jaw clenched. She nodded.

  The great demon did not know scared any better than it knew love. It said, use it.

  “Use it?”

  fear. energy. make it yours, mine. ours.

  “Ours,” Raliel murmured. “Ours.” She drew a deep breath that seemed to ground the vibrations of her bones and breath. “We need it,” she said. “Or you’ll never be free. It’s worth it.”

  yes

  “It has to be.” She took another deep breath and slowly let it out. She stepped forward.

  “Wait,” Osian said, and Moon growled.

  But Raliel turned. “You stay here. We’re going under, to try to talk with a great demon.”

  “Under!” Osian caught her hand.

  Raliel allowed it, though Moon felt a sizzle of surprise up her spine. She turned her hand so that their palms grazed together. “Yes. To visit with a different great demon.”

  His entire expression seemed to widen in horror. “Raliel, that’s… too dangerous. You can’t go under the ocean, and great demons…” Osian’s grip tightened.

  Moon hissed, raising through Raliel’s throat to push the hiss aloud through her teeth. But Raliel held her lips in a firm line and swallowed it back. She did, though, jerk her hand free of Osian. “Stop. This is what is happening,” she said.

  “But—”

  “No. You do not have a say in this, Osian Redpop.” Raliel lifted her chin. Moon felt her gather her inner snowscape and put it in her eyes. Oh, Moon liked that. “Wait here, and if it all goes wrong, you will be free of us. You can tell your mother anything you wish. Tell everyone.”

  “Queens of Heaven,” he muttered, and glanced up beseechingly.

  “Osian.” Raliel put her other hand to his face, almost tenderly. Her thumb brushed his cheek, and Moon wondered if she was thinking about touching him when Moon has possessed him. Kissing had been weird but good—slick, warm, sloppy. Tongues were for eating and talking, and this was somehow both! Moon wanted to do it again, the way it wanted to eat another river spirit or taste demon-kissed blood. It should ask Raliel if she’d liked it.

  Moon was so enveloped in its thoughts that when Raliel spoke again it was quite surprised.

  “You couldn’t stop me if you tried,” she said, and smiled a little cold smile. She stepped away, letting go of his face and hand, even as Osian’s mouth fell open. Through the corner of Raliel’s eye, Moon could see the promise of his tongue. But Raliel wasn’t looking.

  She faced the sea again and bent to remove her boots.

  Behind them, Osian sighed hard. “How long will it take?”

  “Moon?”

  I have no idea.

  “If I’m not back in… three days? Go.”

  “Three days!”

  “Probably less.” Raliel put her socks into her boots, then dropped her bag, unbuckled her sheath and sword, and began removing her outer layers of jacket, vest, and robes. “Should I… leave anything?”

  as little as possible. Moon suspected the shape-shifting would be difficult enough.

  In the end Raliel left on her trousers and the thin undershirt. She shivered in the cold wind, and her toes where the sea grasped again and again with the tide turned vibrant pink.

  Osian asked her to take at least a knife. His were all in her bag, tucked away where Osian couldn’t use them against her. It wasn’t a terrible idea. Osian avoided looking at her nearly naked body, gaze averted, but when he finished speaking, he looked right into her eyes. “Please.”

  Raliel and Moon agreed, and she strapped it on with one of Osian’s thigh sheaths, though the salt water would ruin both.

  When they were ready, Moon coiled itself around her spine, slithering up into her skull. this will be wonderful, it said.

  “Yes,” Raliel replied in an eager whisper. She stared over the water again, the setting sun hot orange near the horizon. The pillar islands were directly south of where they stood on the beach. A half mile out, Moon guessed.

  “Be careful,” Osian murmured.

  Raliel stepped into the water. Cold swallowed her calves. She stepped again, and again, until the incoming waves rushed around her thighs, sticking her thin trousers to her skin. She shuddered, hugged herself.

  I’m here, Moon said.

  “I know.”

  The ocean was on fire with the setting sun; it shoved and pulled at them, waves hitting harder and dragging more desperately as Raliel stood hip deep in the water. Shoved. Pulled. Shoved.

  She closed her eyes and centered herself. Moon went with her, focusing its shadows and fingers of aether. It felt as her threads opened, the aether-points in her feet and hands, belly, heart, mouth, crown tied together with a flare of her power—Moon’s power. Theirs.

  It concentrated, knowing what it wanted, knowing how it should work, to pull her out of her shape and into a shape that could thrive in the ocean—see, hear, talk, swim, breathe.

  “Do you feel the aether of the sea?” she whispered. Waves crashed around her. Pushing. Dragging. The sand slipped out from beneath her feet: even the earth wanted the sea.

  Moon looked through her skin and eyes. Unlike the land where aether followed threads and nets, where aether streamed and lifted and tangled in roots and rivers, the aether of the sea spread everywhere, filling space, and shifting, sliding, lilting, billowing in currents and tides. Moon moaned softly, unable to help it, and Raliel opened her lips to let out the delicate cry.

  oh the sea, the sea! Moon reached for it, lost to longing, and it remembered the sky, too, where the aether was wind and clouds, spun by heat and rain.

  Raliel dove into the next great wave.

  It was dark, loud, cold, but exhilarating. Moon laughed, and Raliel stroked deeper with her arms, kicked with her legs, just as Moon had told her to do, just as they’d practiced in her dream last night.

  But Raliel held her breath, squeezed her eyes closed.

  This was the only way to prove she could walk a path of sorcery. most of us find sorcery between life and death, The Scale had said.

  open your mouth, the great demon commanded, and she did. Ocean flooded in, tangy, bitter, the salt of the whole world coating her tongue, making her pallet into a cave, rushing down her throat.

  Moon pulled aether through her skin, through her mouth—there was so much!

  It took and took and took while Raliel choked and flailed. She had to, had to, get to air!

  Moon took control, stopped her muscles: for a long moment they hung there, suspended in the sea, aching from the heart out, rigid fingers, burning eyes.

  Dying.

  Then Moon exploded the aether it had gathered outward.

  Raliel’s back arched, and she clenched her jaw. Black and golden spots burst in her vision, her skin tore, her heart stopped.

  Moon wove, shoved, screamed wordless magic, and then her name, her name, her name.

  Raliel!

  Raliel, catch it, help me.

  do this.

  be this!

  She did. She curled her fingers in the water and shut her mouth. She opened her eyes again to burning-cold water, greenish-black misty in the evening. They were so deep, falling, floating.

  First air: the great demon twisted the lungs and forced them to be what a shark’s were, redrew connections, tore and reknotted, made infinitesimal filters and fringed gills.

  Second eyes: thin inner lids, a wider pupil for more light light light.

  Third skin, fourth hands, fifth bones and muscles until she was a person-shaped fish, sleek and sharp and strong.

  Moon let her go, and Raliel gasped. She breathed the water, jerking, and stared out at the murky green ocean she’d kicked up to churning. Light from above, glinting, shimmering, and out to sea: gorgeous shades of blue-black-green, shadows and there—

  Light.

  A brilliant star glowing silver-gold.

  It looked how Moon felt, how Raliel felt as she dragged fingers through water, catching on the membranes between her fingers. She pulled herself forward, then spun, laughing with a mouthful of ocean. She curled up and stretched and swam a little. Her black hair turned in a spiral around her face, and she spread her hands down her body, up again to touch the edges of her gills, the sleek change of her skin. Again she made a bubbling sound that had to be a laugh.

  Moon liked it too.

  They’d done it: they were a sea monster.

  And the ocean pushed at them, drawing them toward that underwater star. Raliel grinned, and Moon thought, distracted, it should have made her teeth sharp. Oh well, next time!

  the star, it said, and Raliel nodded.

  They swam, reveling in the sensations, through the sea. Light tinged gold from the setting sun barely filtered toward them, but the star was a perfect beacon.

  A flight of silver-striped fish darted past them, and they sank to go beneath a few bobbing jellies. Raliel reached out toward one of the pale orbs, but Moon tugged her hand away, nudged her stomach to make her go forward again. She laughed and obeyed.

  The pillar islands thrust up from the edge of a dark ravine in the ocean floor, a gash, a crack, stretching like a smile. Coral and seagrass clung to the black rock, waving in the currents. Bright pink and yellow grasses and anemones lived up the pillars too, striping them and giving them splotches like the lichen on standing stones. In the center of the pillars a thin plinth rose, seemingly grown of corals, and upon its top glowed the star.

  No, Moon realized. A tree. An aether-silver tree, reaching branches like veins streaming up up up toward the surface. Its roots crawled down down down along the pink coral plinth.

  There was no other obvious place to look for a demon or sorcerer here.

  They swam deeper, strong strokes and easy kicks, as if Raliel had been born to this—like Moon knew, knew, itself had.

  As they neared, they saw the nearest of the great pillars was covered in spirit sigils. Writing!

  Raliel neared it without needing Moon to suggest it. She caught herself against the rough black stone and brushed away a tangle of grass. Moon read:

  Build a god with breath of salt

  Raliel followed the lines of sigils, around and around, lower and lower against the pillar, and they read the entire poem:

  Build a god with breath of salt

  Bones of coral, volcanic steam

  Sand and teeth and dolphin dreams

  Build its heart with scales

  With fins and gills

  The songs of whales

  Build its temper with shipwrecks

  The tongue of oysters chewing pearls

  The smile of a shark

  But always its blood is our blood

  As Raliel paused her hand against the final sigil, Moon asked, is this about a demon, or a god?

  Before Raliel could find a way to answer, something dragged sharply at her hair.

  She cried out, voice strange and thick and low, and together they kicked, turning. Raliel put her back to the pillar, ignoring the sharp pain as hair was pulled from her scalp. Grabbing Osian’s knife, she held it blade-down, and faced their attacker.

  A creature floated before them. Person-shaped, with two legs, two arms, a single head, but there the resemblance ended: its round eyes were far apart, covered in a sheen of membrane, its nose mere slits and its mouth lipless with very sharp lines of teeth showing as it sucked water. Beautiful green-blue scales covered its body, overlapping and dangerous, with spines on its elbows and knees, at its hips, and five flares of them in rows along its skull. It was small, like a child, but Moon thought it was fully grown.

  It moved its mouth and one hand with an intention that spoke of a language.

  Raliel shook her head, attempted to speak back.

  The creature gestured at the pillar. “Oh!” Raliel said, though it was mostly a burst of water. She moved to the pillar and drifted up its length to a strip of basalt that had no spirit sigils. She looked back, and the creature had followed. Staring at them from the distance of an arm’s reach.

  With a finger, Raliel drew the sigils that appeared just below this space: bones of coral.

  She did it again, and a third time, looking evenly into the sea creature’s strange eyes. The creature reached and spread its fingers; it pressed two against the basalt and wrote a sigil. bone, then added the plural signifier.

  Delight, like laughter, bubbled in Raliel’s throat, and Moon purred, proud of her.

  Raliel wrote, meet sea demon.

  With a flick of its long-boned feet, the creature flattened its hand over the sigil for demon.

  Raliel turned to gesture at the silver-aether tree, then wrote meet sea demon again.

  The creature did not respond. Except bubbles, a stream of water, burst out from behind its ear, as if expelled in frustration.

  use the poem, Moon said.

  Raliel moved around the pillar to tap the sigil god.

  The creature drew the god sigil.

  Raliel wrote, meet god

  After a moment staring at Raliel, the creature wrote, what are you

  of air

  The creature expelled water from behind its ears again.

  Moon said, I’m going to shift you again, welcome it

  Then Moon flexed the aether woven throughout this shape of theirs, breaking the smooth sharkskin, letting it peel away to reveal hardened dark green-gray scales. It lengthened Raliel’s bones, made it mirror the creature more, while the creature clutched the pillar, staring.

  Raliel curled over herself at the sensations, jaw clenched as Moon pushed these changes, but she did welcome it. She reveled in the alluring sensations; as did Moon. It gave her thicker chest armor and slicked shadowy fingers against her scalp until spines burst out through her long black hair. Suddenly Raliel flung out her arms and legs, spread like a starfish, and arched her back.

  The sea creature’s elbow spines jutted out, and it shoved away in shock. But it did not flee.

  Raliel reached to the pillar and against the basalt wrote, meet god

  Only hesitating a moment, the creature made its way to the end of the long spiraling poem. It caressed blood is our blood

  Then, below the blood sigil, it added, feed.

  oh! Moon understood. give the tree your blood. summon the demon!

  Just then, more of these sea creatures appeared out of the distant ocean waters. Various shades of green and blue, a few with streaks of white and eye-popping orange spines. More of them reached out their scaled hands.

  Raliel bowed her head, then suddenly turned and swam hard for the silver tree.

  It gave off a cool power, familiar to both Moon and Raliel. Pure aether. As it glowed, aether stripped away from it in wisps like smoke, fading into the wilder aether of the ocean. Moon wondered if the tree was the demon.

  Raliel stopped moving, holding herself carefully in place against the push of the currents, and reached for a slender white branch.

  Blood, Moon whispered.

  She paused, then took Osian’s knife and cut her hand open. Salt water stung badly but blood blossomed bright red, a sweet puff drifting on the little currents that warred among the three pillars.