Chapter 715
Rathen held her gaze. “No,” he said simply. “I think she’ll suffer either way.”
Viola’s jaw clenched so hard it trembled. She swallowed, and for a moment the anger cracked into something raw.
“He doesn’t vanish,” she finished, quieter, like saying it out loud made it more real. “Luna didn’t vanish…”
Rathen’s voice stayed steady. “He already did.”
That made Viola’s face twist, fury surging back like a shield.
“Then lie,” she said. “Say we lost sight of him but we think he washed up. Say we found signs. Say something that doesn’t sound like you’re handing her a corpse she can’t bury.”
Rathen shook his head once. “I won’t.”
Viola stepped closer again, eyes blazing. “Why? Because you want to feel clean? Because you want to be able to sleep?”
Rathen didn’t flinch. “Because if we lie now, and she finds out later, it breaks what trust we have left.”
Viola’s hands curled into fists. “Trust doesn’t matter if she falls apart.”
“It matters,” Rathen said, voice low. “Because if she falls apart, she’ll still need people around her she can believe.”
Viola stared at him, breathing hard, looking like she wanted to hit him and hug him and scream all at once. Behind her, the dockyard kept hammering. Wood and iron. Tar and rope. Repairing the ship while the horizon stayed empty.
And Viola’s eyes, rimmed with exhaustion, flicked back out to sea, like if she stared hard enough, she could pull Ludger back with sheer refusal.
Kaela stood a little behind Rathen, watching the argument spiral the way storms did, tightening, feeding on exhaustion, pulling everyone in.
She kept thinking I should say something. Something that didn’t sound like a lecture. Something that didn’t get her head bitten off. Her mouth opened once, then closed again.
What do you even say to someone who hasn’t slept in a week and is holding herself together out of pure spite?
Kaela exhaled, eyes drifting past the stone bridge, past the scaffolding around the SS Elaine, past the dockhands and Iron Hand workers hammering like the ship’s heartbeat depended on it… and then she blinked. Because something moved on the horizon. Not a boat. Not a gull.
A line cutting across the sea, too fast and too clean, approaching in a way waves didn’t normally approach.
Kaela’s breath caught. Her gaze sharpened until her eyes started to sting.
“…Viola,” she said, and her voice came out wrong, too flat, too tight. “We won’t look for them anymore.”
Viola’s head snapped toward her like a whip. The glare she threw could’ve killed small animals.
“What did you just say?” Viola hissed, stepping half a pace forward, rage flaring hot enough to drown grief.
Kaela didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look at Viola. Her eyes stayed locked on the horizon. Viola followed the line of her gaze by instinct.
Turned… And froze. Because the thing on the water wasn’t a boat. It was a person. A small figure sliding along the top of a wave like it was a road. The sea rose under his feet in a smooth, unnatural platform, flat and angled like a slope made of water.
And as he got closer, the absurdity got worse. He jumped. Cleanly. Off the crest of a wave. Then he tucked in midair and did a backflip like he was showing off at a festival. He landed on the moving platform without even wobbling.
And he looked… like he was enjoying himself. Like he hadn’t been missing. Like he hadn’t vanished after fighting a sea monster. Like he hadn’t left everyone onshore ripping their own sanity apart for a week.
For a long, stunned second, no one moved. The dock workers kept hammering. The wind kept blowing. The sun kept shining.
But the people on the bridge, Rathen, Maurien, Renvar, Kaela, Valk, Shera… They stared. Because exhaustion did funny things to your eyes. The thought hit them all at once, ugly and hopeful:
We’re hallucinating. We’re seeing tricks. No way.
Then the figure drew close enough that even the most sleep-deprived brain couldn’t deny the posture. The flat stare. The obnoxiously relaxed shoulders. The casual arrogance of someone treating the ocean like personal property.
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Ludger skimmed toward the harbor on top of a wave and did another backflip, because of course he did. Viola’s lips parted. No sound came out. Behind him, a second shape appeared on the water.
At first it looked like a shadow moving over the waves. Then it sharpened, sleek motion, controlled, riding her own platform of water like a fast, stable vehicle.
Luna. She wasn’t playing. She wasn’t flipping.
She was using the water like transport, efficient, direct, eyes fixed forward with that calm, sharp focus she always had, like she’d never once been afraid inside a sea monster’s mouth and would deny it to her grave.
The group’s collective disbelief cracked into something real. Kaela’s hands trembled slightly at her sides. Shera’s jaw dropped. Renvar muttered something incoherent. Rathen went very still, like his brain had refused to accept good news without verifying it six times.
Maurien’s eyes narrowed… not in suspicion, but in that predator way of watching a miracle arrive and immediately wondering what it cost. And Viola… Viola stared at Ludger gliding toward them on a moving slice of water, sunlight on his face, looking like a boy who’d just come back from a vacation.
Her exhaustion didn’t vanish. But for the first time in a week, it loosened its grip. Because the horizon wasn’t empty anymore. And the ocean had just delivered the one thing she’d refused to accept was gone.
Ludger rode the last wave in like he owned the ocean.
The swell rose higher as it hit the harbor’s shallows, lifting into a tall, clean wall that rolled toward the stone bridge like a moving ramp. The dockhands froze mid-hammer. The Iron Hand crews stopped shouting measurements. Even the gulls seemed to hesitate, confused by a wave behaving like it had orders.
Ludger bent his knees. His new skill answered.
The water under him hardened into a sharper plane, pushing forward like a sled catching a downhill slope. He propelled himself up the face of the wave with a smooth burst, spray exploding behind him in a white fan, then launched off the crest.
For a heartbeat he was silhouetted against blue sky. Then he spun. Not once. Not twice.
A ridiculous number of rotations, like he was trying to turn a return from the dead into a performance review. His shirt snapped in the wind, salt droplets glittering around him, and the entire port watched in stunned silence as the missing vice guildmaster treated gravity like a suggestion.
He landed on the stone bridge in front of them with a soft thud, boots scraping, posture steady like he’d practiced it.
Before anyone could speak, before Viola could scream his name, before Rathen could demand details, before Kaela could even decide whether to punch him, Ludger raised one hand and held it out in front of him like a guard stopping traffic.
“Not sentimental reunion allowed,” he said, deadpan.
Everyone stared. Baffled. Renvar’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Shera blinked rapidly. Valk looked like he was trying to decide if this was a hallucination. Rathen’s face twitched, caught between relief and murderous intent.
Maurien just stared at Ludger like he was cataloging a new species of idiot. Then Luna arrived.
She skimmed the last stretch of water like a controlled arrow, her platform flattening as she approached the bridge. No tricks, no flips, just efficient movement. She hopped up and landed beside Ludger with a short, clean step, salt-slick and slightly disheveled, but intact.
Both of them looked… well. Too well. Covered in salt, hair a mess, clothes rumpled like they’d slept in them for days, yet in one piece. And that was what broke something in Viola.
She stood there with her head down, shoulders starting to tremble as if her body couldn’t decide whether to explode with rage or collapse with relief. Her hands clenched at her sides. Her breathing hitched once, twice.
Ludger’s eyes flicked to her and his expression tightened by a fraction, the smallest sign of panic he’d shown all day.
“Run!” he barked, suddenly urgent, stepping back half a pace. “Fire in the hole!”
No one moved. No one even understood it. Because Viola moved first.
Faster than anyone expected from someone who hadn’t slept in a week. She charged. One stride. Two.
Then she grabbed Ludger and Luna by the torso, one arm around each of them, like they weighed nothing at all and pressed them together.
Ludger’s eyes widened a fraction. Luna made a startled sound that turned into an immediate, muffled protest. Viola didn’t care.
She yanked them together and locked them in a crushing bear hug, forcing their shoulders to collide, pinning them against her chest like she was trying to fuse them into reality through sheer grip strength.
They couldn’t move. Ludger’s arms were trapped. Luna’s breath got punched out. Their boots scraped uselessly against stone. Viola held them tighter. And she started to shake. Not with anger now. With everything she’d been holding back for a week.
Her forehead pressed briefly against the top of Ludger’s head, then against Luna’s shoulder, as if she needed to feel them from multiple angles to confirm they weren’t smoke.
Then the sound came, raw and ugly and unstoppable. A sob that cracked out of her like a dam breaking. Viola cried. Not the quiet, dignified kind.
The kind that made her shoulders jerk. The kind that stole her breath. The kind that didn’t care who was watching.
“I—” she choked, voice breaking. “I’m so—”
Another sob cut her off. Her grip tightened again until Ludger’s ribs creaked and Luna let out a small, strangled noise.
“I’m so glad,” Viola managed, words spilling out between broken breaths. “I’m so glad you’re alive…”
Her tears soaked into salt-stiff cloth. She trembled harder, holding them like she was terrified the universe would take them again the moment she loosened her arms.
“I thought…” she gasped, and her voice fractured into another wave of sobs. “I thought you were… gone…”
Ludger’s face went awkwardly still, like he’d been dropped into a situation he hadn’t prepared tactics for. His eyes flicked helplessly toward the others in a silent help.
No one helped.
Kaela had her hands over her mouth, eyes shining. Shera’s expression softened. Renvar looked like he might cry too, out of sheer exhaustion. Rathen’s shoulders sagged like someone had finally cut the rope around his throat.
Even Maurien’s gaze eased, just slightly, like he’d decided this scene didn’t need his commentary.
Viola kept holding them, shaking and crying uncontrollably, repeating it like a prayer she couldn’t stop saying.
“I’m glad… I’m glad… I’m so glad…”
And for once, no one told her to be strong.