After an hour of hiking past the Dylle Sea's jagged cliff face, Kealie had memorized the back of Nixian's head. The waving curls of brown hair against his neck defying gravity, the agelessness of his features, the Nerydian qualities she wasn't allowed to possess.

Kealie didn't know how long she'd spaced out, stumbling after him and barely sparing a glance to the ground. Not until it ended abruptly.

She felt her nose smash into Nixian's spine before she could figure out what happened. All of her forward momentum collided with his strong back and worsened the pounding in her skull.

Kealie hissed instinctively, rubbing her face and trying to peer around his arm.

"I hope you're serious about this Caster," Nixian muttered. "Because getting into this city is going to be challenging."

"What are you talking about-?" Kealie asked, her question falling flat as she laid eyes on a large cluster of guards standing outside Natansia's gates.

Their midnight blue uniforms faded to black in the moonlight, but she knew exactly what she would see on those insignia's. Luverie's emblem. The Country's personal sigil.

She swallowed uncomfortably, unable to hear anything of importance with her human ears.

"Are they looking for you?" Nixian asked.

Kealie felt like shrugging it off, downplaying the task force as little more than coincidence so as not to worry him. But she couldn't.

He'd gotten her this far, she supposed she could do the rest alone if she had to.

"Likely," she whispered. "This is the only place I could go to find answers, but she knows that..."

"She?"

"My mother," Kealie said, frowning. "Queen of Luverie."

Kealie watched the look on Nixian's face transform, morphing into something she understood. Though washed over with confusion, the thoughts flooding his mind were disoriented and scattered.

He connected the dots and dismantled the beliefs crowding his head, continuing to reassemble them over and over again until something made sense.

They didn't have time to discuss this.

"We have to go in through the coast," Kealie explained, pointing to the rocky shoreline.

Nixian's brows furrowed slightly. "How do you know there won't be guards waiting at the ports?"

"Because they hate the ocean," she whispered, masking the pain and sadness growing inside her chest. "They hate anything to do with Aelusia and its people."

"She's made an enemy of the sea?"

Kealie shrugged. She didn't know.

Her mother answered to no one and would never explain herself if questioned. Naida allowed her rotting heart free reign over those who came from the ocean and into her country.

She wasn't privy to how her mother had amassed so much power.

Kealie knew she had no answers for any Nerydian who might ask. She was sheltered, left in the dark, and isolated on purpose.

"It would make sense," she offered over her shoulder.

She launched herself into action, leaving the decision for Nixian on whether or not to follow.

Her ears faintly caught the sound of him chasing after her.

Stalking down to the water's edge and dodging out of sight, Kealie began sneaking through the dangerous terrain. Her eyes were trained on the ground, her mind wandering with every small memory of this seaside village.

Of the people whose lives she took that afternoon on the docks.

"They say the burnings began when I was born, when Naida gave birth to me," Kealie found herself saying out loud, if only to herself. "My uncle Verun once said you could hear her screams all the way from the city streets, her utter rage at what was sure to ruin her reign."

"I don't understand," Nixian chimed in as he made pace to take up her flank. "Why would a daughter displease her so?"

Kealie scoffed, a jaded laugh threatening to slip out. Still, she felt the invisible chains binding her soul rattle when she tried to answer.

At first the words stuck in her throat.

"As far as the city knows, I am nothing more than a bastard child, unfit to rule in her place."

He scowled, but Kealie's face remained unchanged.

She kept her focus on the task in front of them, evading large boulders and sharp rocks. Her eyes drifted to the sea from time to time. Softening the edge in her chest.

"What is it that the city doesn't know then, what aren't you saying?"

"I've been bound to secrecy..." Kealie sighed, leading them forward as the first port came into sight. "I'll die if I so much as breathe a word of it, that's why I have to find the Caster."

"What could be so terrible she would have you cursed..." Nixian muttered to himself.

She knew he wasn't asking her, knew he was aware of how pointless that was.

So she focused on Natansia.

On the village cloaked in mist, with a few silver tendrils of moonlight threading through the night and onto the cobblestone paths.

Kealie watched as the fisherman sitting on the docks edge nodded to them as if their creeping through the shoreline were a normality.

Waves broke against the large wooden posts, aging but strong. The ocean was too dark in the night to distinguish if there were any fish or seaweed swaying there, only a giant log stood out.

"Do you know where your Caster lives?" Nixian asked.

She considered for a moment while Nixian knelt down, trying to wring out and dry off the ends of his pant legs. He worked quickly, able to decipher what was and wasn't worth the effort. The water stain had bled up his calves and soaked under his knees.

Kealie couldn't tell her dried clothing from the water trapped against her skin, the fabric still crunchy and covered with grit.

Her eyes scanned the streets, empty for the most part, save for a few guardsmen who hovered nearby. They often distracted themselves talking to one another, one by the docks even dosed soundly.

"Near the eastern border, her house is the small shop mounting the hill," Kealie pointed down shore. "I remember..."

She remembered being dragged through these streets. The memory had sewn itself into her brain from the moment they stepped foot in Natansia.

It hadn't been Kealie's first time.

Though it was her last until now.

"It's best to blend in," Nixian said, righting himself and rolling his shoulders back a bit. He patted his clothing, then pushed the straying clumps of hair back into place. "You know, look like we belong."

Kealie looked down at her destroyed clothing, both torn and covered in mud. Maybe if she had survived a shipwreck or a hurricane, but there were no natural disasters. Only her chaotic plan which nearly drowned her.

And that wasn't even a plan.

Simply a long string of miscalculations.

"How do you suppose we do that?" Kealie asked, laughing softly. "I'm an apparition of the living dead."

"So then we find you new clothes," he smirked.

Nixian's attention is fixated on the closed shop across the street.

Feeling an awfully weird shiver run down her spine, Kealie winced. "You mean steal?"

"More like borrow," he mused.

"You honestly believe we'll make it back to return them?" Kealie asked.

Nixian shrugged and walked forward. His stride was calm and confident, slow so as not to arouse suspicion. She had no choice but to follow as he reached the front of the shop.

"It's locked," she said. "How do you expect to get in?"

"The good, old fashioned way," Nixian answered.

And with that, the Nerydian knelt down and hooked an elongated claw into the keyhole. Breathing through his teeth, Nixian finessed the tumblers, slicing through the chamber.

The door opened with a click.

Nixian grinned up at her before standing and holding open the door. "Ladies first."

With a mix of excitement and nauseating fear warring in her stomach, Kealie bit her lip and followed him into the store.

Word Count: 1,319                 Total Word Count: 7,707