The Drowned City was beautiful.
It was also terrifying.
Kael stood on a balcony of coral and pearl, looking down at streets that had been underwater for three hundred years.
Spirits drifted through the thoroughfares — translucent figures in ancient robes, their faces curious and sad.
They spoke to each other in the Tongue of the Drowned, a language that sounded like waves and wind and whispers.
He understood none of it.
But he felt it.
The throne had changed something in him.
When the Drowned spoke, their words vibrated in his chest like distant thunder.
“Stop brooding.”
Dorian appeared beside him, pressing a cup of something warm into his hands.
Kael looked down.
The cup was made of polished shell.
The liquid inside was golden and smelled of honey.
“What is this?”
“No idea. A spirit gave it to me. I think it’s tea. I hope it’s tea.” Dorian took a sip.
“Tastes like the sea and sugar. Not terrible.”
Kael drank.
It was warm and strange and oddly comforting.
“You slept,” Dorian said.
It wasn’t a question.
“An hour.”
“Liar. I watched you. You didn’t sleep at all.”
Kael looked at him.
Dorian’s hair was still damp from the sea.
Someone — a spirit, probably — had bandaged the wound on his arm with woven seaweed.
He looked tired and beautiful and here.
“I kept thinking,” Kael admitted.
“About what comes next.”
Dorian leaned against the balcony railing.
Below them, a group of Drowned children — spirits, translucent but playfully chasing each other — ran through a garden of glowing coral.
“The empire won’t let us keep this city,” Dorian said.
“Valdris will send an army. Maybe two. He’ll burn it down before he lets a throne of queer love stand in his kingdom.”
Kael flinched at the word.
Queer.
He had never heard anyone say it so plainly.
So unashamed.
Dorian noticed his reaction.
“Does that word scare you?”
Then, quieter: “Yes. My whole life, I’ve heard it whispered like a curse. Like something shameful.”
Dorian turned to face him fully.
His gray eyes were soft.
“The Drowned had a different word,” Dorian said.
“Aeran told me last night while you were pretending to sleep. They called themselves Veyan. It means ‘those who love truly.’ Not queer. Not sin. Not sickness. Just… people who love with their whole hearts.”
Kael’s throat tightened.
“Veyan.”
“It suits you,” Dorian said.
“It suits us,” Kael replied.
Dorian smiled.
It was small and crooked and made Kael’s chest ache.
Below them, the spirit children stopped playing.
They were staring up at the balcony — at Kael.
One of them, a girl with silver hair and wide dark eyes, pointed.
“Aeran’s chosen,” she said in the common tongue.
Her voice was echoey, like a bell underwater.
“The new king.”
The other children gathered.
They stared at Kael with open curiosity.
Kael gripped the railing.
“I’m not a king.”
“You sat on the throne,” the girl said.
“You spoke your truth. The city rose.” She tilted her head.
“That makes you king.”
Dorian snorted.
“Told you.”
Kael elbowed him.
The girl climbed the stairs to the balcony.
She was small — maybe ten years old when she died, frozen forever in that ghostly form.
Her robes were pale blue, embroidered with symbols Kael didn’t recognize.
“My name is Mira,” she said.
“I was a singer. Before.”
Kael knelt to her level.
“I’m Kael.”
“I know.” Mira smiled.
Her teeth were like pearls.
“The whole city knows. The throne hasn’t sung in three hundred years. When you sat on it, it sang so loud the spirits woke from their long dreams.”
Kael looked at Dorian, bewildered.
Dorian shrugged.
“I didn’t hear anything.” Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“You are not Veyan,” Mira said to Dorian.
Not cruelly — just stating a fact.
“The throne’s song was for us. For the dead. It said: ‘Wake up. Someone has finally spoken the truth.'”
Kael’s heart pounded.
“What truth?”
Mira looked at him.
Her dark eyes were ancient despite her young face.
“That love is not a sin,” she said.
“That you are not broken. That the empire lied. The throne sang all of that, in the old tongue, and the city heard. We all heard.”
Behind her, the other children nodded.
Kael felt tears prick his eyes.
He blinked them back.
Dorian’s hand found his.
Squeezed.
“Aeran wants to see you,” Mira said.
“Both of you. In the throne room. He says the empire is coming and you need to understand what you are now.”
“What am I now?” Kael asked.
Mira smiled.
“You are the beginning,” she said.
“The first Veyan king in three hundred years. The one who will decide whether this city lives or dies.”
She turned and floated back down the stairs, the other children following.
Kael stayed kneeling for a long moment.
Dorian crouched beside him.
“Well,” Dorian said lightly.
“No pressure.”
Kael laughed — a surprised, watery sound.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“No one ever asks to be king,” Dorian said.
“But you’re the one the throne chose. And for what it’s worth…” He paused.
“I think it chose right.”
Kael looked at him.
At his scarred face and steady eyes and bloody bandages.
“You’re biased,” Kael said.
“Completely,” Dorian agreed.
“Now come on. Dead king waiting.”
He stood and offered Kael his hand.
Kael took it.
They walked together toward the throne room — toward Aeran, toward the future, toward whatever war was coming.
Hand in hand.