The five of them are all up and out of their inn room a few hours after the sun comes up, so that doesn't help with Sheba's exhaustion. Felix keeps glancing at her, but his face is drawn tight and neither of them try to broach the subject of their discussion the night before. The innkeeper seems more than a little antsy about getting the rooms cleaned up, but when Sheba sees the state of the town she can't really figure out why. The entire place feels suddenly wrong—it's too quiet. All of the shops and even the gambling tents have their doors tightly shut.

"Erm, excuse me," a young woman says, approaching their little group as they wander aimlessly around town. "If you're looking for Isaac, he said to meet him at the house on top of the hill."

"Thank you," Piers says, and Sheba carefully reads the woman's mind as they pass.

That man, Isaac, didn't look too happy. I wouldn't want to be them right now.

Sheba can't quite fault the woman for that.

The instant the door to the house on the hill creaks open, Sheba can feel four pairs of eyes locked on them. But when she actually looks up, all four of them have some sort of relief in their gaze. She feels it wash over her too, like a fresh breeze—she'd been expecting fear or anger, instead.

"I'm glad you kept your promise, Felix," Isaac says, and Felix only nods. Sheba can't see his face, but she can see the tense line of his shoulders and the way he's shifting his weight on his feet.

He can't honestly still be expecting a fight, she thinks, but then realizes he must be. That's Felix's default when it comes to them; he's defensive and scared.

"You'd better explain yourself," Garet says, but Jenna's already shaking her head.

"What is there to explain, Garet?" There's a desperation in her voice that Sheba's definitely not the only one hearing. "Has Felix ever harmed you? Have we ever fought against you?"

"We've been avoiding you," Sheba says, and hesitates when all the eyes turn to her. "But we never had any intention of fighting you."

"But Isaac's been worrying about Jenna nonstop since this whole ordeal began. How could she do that to him?" Ivan says, and Jenna blushes. Piers, who's standing too far back to see Jenna's face, speaks up when she doesn't respond.

"She didn't want a fight."

"Well I know that, now," Isaac says, "but that doesn't explain why you're doing this."

"Felix betrayed his hometown. That's why he hasn't been able to face you, Isaac," Kraden says.

"I was supposed to be the villain alone," Felix says. "But then they involved Kraden, and my sister, and...suddenly it was a lot bigger than me."

"'Supposed to be,'" Isaac repeats, eyebrows raised. "According to who?"

"According to myself," Felix says flatly. Isaac snorts.

"And yeah, we know he betrayed Vale," Garet says. "What you guys have never told us is why."

"All we know is, it was something about re-lighting the elemental lighthouses, which required stealing the elemental stars," Ivan says, "just following along with what Saturos and Menardi were trying to do, right? But what did they do to earn that?"

"They definitely never seemed friendly to me," Mia says. "But maybe I'm biased, considering the situation with Alex."

"Our parents' lives were at stake," Jenna says. "We had to help."

Isaac and Garet both turn to stare at her with nearly identical expressions of compassion, or maybe pity. Isaac opens his mouth to say something, closes it, and then Garet finally speaks up. "Jenna, your parents died in that storm..."

Jenna shakes her head. "Saturos and Menardi led a raid on the Sanctum that night. The storm was because they triggered something there and set off a trap."

"They found us floating in the river, after everything, and rescued us," Felix says. "They took us back to Prox and told us we could go free, if we helped them by giving them access to the elemental stars. We didn't have much of a choice."

"You keep saying 'we' and 'us,'" Isaac says, shoving a hand through his hair with an obvious edge of frustration to his voice. "But you still haven't said how this connects."

"That boulder that fell from Mount Aleph," Felix says. "It didn't kill me, but you know that. I'm saying that no one was killed by the boulder that day."

It takes Isaac a long, silent moment before Felix's words register, and then Sheba sees the emotions whip across his face: Shock, disbelief, anger, and back around to shock.

"So that means—that means my father..."

"Your father is alive," Felix says. "I often spoke with him while we were in Prox together."

They all watch as Isaac's knees give out and he stumbles backward, just barely catching himself on some discarded crates behind him. Garet catches his friend by the elbow, and looks back at Felix with a disbelieving expression that echoes Isaac's.

"I—I can't—" Isaac shakes his head, and Jenna makes a sort of half-step movement toward him and abruptly stops herself.

"It's true, Isaac," she says quietly. "I didn't believe it either, at first, but… Kraden says vows made by a Proxian are stronger than law, and they go beyond death—their families will carry it on for them if they die. They rescued our parents and swore to take care of them while we completed our quest."

"So I'm just supposed to take the word of my enemies?" Isaac says. "The word of my enemies, and the word of a man that I counted among those enemies until about twenty-four hours ago?"

"Well if you won't take my brother's word, take mine," Jenna says, but Felix holds up a hand.

"No, he's right. There's no reason for him to trust me after everything I've done," he says. "But my memories won't lie, will they?" He looks at Sheba, then at Ivan, and they both nod.

"You'd have to try really hard to change your own memories into something we wouldn't recognize as fake," Ivan says.

"So do it," Felix says, reaching his hand out towards Ivan. There's silence, a couple seconds feel much longer than they are, and Ivan finally moves forward, taking Felix's outstretched hand and placing his other on Isaac's shoulder.

"Ready?" he asks. Isaac closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and nods once.

Ivan's body pulses bright with Psynergy, the glowing light wrapping itself around Isaac as well. Nearly thirty seconds pass in absolute silence—Sheba can't even hear anyone breathing and imagines that they, like her, are all holding their breath.

"Stop, that's enough," Isaac says suddenly, his voice thick with tears, and Ivan, startled by the emotion there, withdraws his hand. Felix looks down at the floor and steps away, and Isaac rubs his hand over his face. "He's telling the truth. They're alive."

Everyone else in the room exhales as one, and Garet finally looks up at Felix again. "Why didn't you tell us from the start? We could've worked together to save your parents, couldn't we?"

Felix shakes his head. "Saturos and Menardi… They were too powerful. They wouldn't have wanted other people dragging them down."

"And there's another reason," Kraden says, and Sheba, by force of habit, tunes out. She knows what's coming—Lemuria, and the fact that the whole world is going to be destroyed if they don't light all the beacons. She's heard it ad nauseam at this point. Kraden was very proud of his role in developing the theory, and the fact that he'd been proven right was one of the biggest joys of his scholarly heart. Sheba loves the old man like a grandfather, but given enough prompting, he could ramble.

So she zones out and lets the others carry the conversation, and instead focuses on Felix again. He still looks tense, hands at his sides and flexing in his leather gloves. But that sharp edge he had earlier is softening, he's not on the balls of his feet like he was before. He's relaxing, bit by bit. She can't help but feel a little proud of him.

She feels another presence seconds before the door opens, and turns at the same time as Ivan, who had probably sensed it as well. A tall, slender woman with purple hair slips in, and says, "Now that we know all this, shouldn't we be going?"

"Master Hama!" Mia says, and Ivan's just staring. Sheba can practically see his brain working, trying to figure something out.

"You...know Isaac?" Kraden says, and Isaac, who at some point had recovered his composure and was standing with the others again, nods.

"We met in a temple at the edge of the Lamakan Desert," he says, and the woman smiles at the rest of them.

"I am Hama, descendant of the Anemos. I was born here in Contigo, and inherited their power."

Sheba gasps as pain lances through her head again, but no one else notices. They're all trying to adjust to Hama's sudden appearance, on top of all the new information to grapple with.

"We just found out Ivan was born here, too, and I guess he's got a sister," Garet says.

Sheba's mind races a mile a minute. We have the same hair. We're both Jupiter Adepts. I don't know my family, he doesn't know his family, we could be—I could be—

"You don't mean..." she says, but Master Hama looks at her, smiles slightly, and misunderstands her question.

"That would be me, yes. I am Ivan's older sister."

Sheba feels it when Ivan reacts, which says something about the strength of his reaction because he's several feet away from her, and Sheba's own disappointment has set her head spinning. It takes her a moment to push her feelings down and away to deal with later. Ivan steps forward, but Hama shakes her head at him and he falters.

"Not now, Ivan. The elements are out of balance, and you must light Mars Lighthouse before it's too late."

"Agatio has the Mars Star, and he's on his way to light it now," Felix says, and Sheba blinks—Agatio having the Star was news to her—but Hama shakes her head.

"He will fail. There is a powerful force that does not want to see Mars rekindled."

"So we have to take over," Garet says, rolling his shoulders.

"But," Hama says, and they pause. "You all will fail as well, unless you pool your strengths together and fight as one."

In the back of her mind, bitterly, Sheba wonders if Hama rehearsed that before she said it, or if she'd made it up off the top of her head.

"It doesn't look like we have much of a choice—we have to go, now!" Kraden says.

"I hoped you would feel that way. I'll meet you out at the inlet with your ship." With that, Hama exits the house, and Ivan seems to deflate a little when she leaves, his shoulders slumping. Sheba realizes a split second later that she's done the same thing, and straightens up hurriedly.

Jenna turns to Isaac and Garet. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry we left Venus Lighthouse without seeing you, I'm sorry we never had a chance to explain—" She's cut off as both the boys move as one, enveloping her in a hug. "I just can't believe you two idiots managed to survive," she says, and it's muffled, but Sheba thinks she might be crying. Both Isaac and Garet are. As she watches, Piers nudges Felix toward them, and he shakes his head, but Jenna reaches out for him and pulls him in close, too.

Sheba takes that moment to cross the room and rest a hand on Ivan's forearm. He looks at her, and doesn't move away, so she reads his mind.

Are you okay? she asks, and feels the whirlwind of confusion and hurt in his mind as her answer.

My sister... I never even knew I had one until today. I thought they meant you, at first, too. Are you okay?

I'm disappointed, honestly. You remember that conversation we had on Jupiter Lighthouse about why I came… She shakes her head. It's not important. They must have had a reason for not telling you. When this is all over, you can come back here and meet up with her, right? Get to know each other properly.

Assuming she even wants me for a brother.

Why wouldn't she?

She didn't contact me for fifteen years, even though she must have known where I was. The greatest merchant in all of Gondowan took me in—not exactly a low profile.

Look, everybody has reasons. We had reasons for not joining up with you guys sooner, right? Misguided though they were. You just have to talk to her, and I'm sure you'll figure things out.

I just hope we're all still alive by the end of this.

We will be. Felix will keep us safe. Sheba makes the mistake of letting her mind rest on Felix for a second too long, and she watches Ivan's expression morph into something a little like surprise. She fumbles to change the subject even though she knows he's already caught it. Do you need help, Ivan?

I'll be okay, Sheba, but are you—

She smoothly lifts her hand from his arm and breaks the connection, and he glares at her.

"Were you two just—?" Piers waves his hand between the two of them. "Mind-speaking?"

"We were having a private conversation," Sheba says, masking her embarrassment with haughtiness, and turns to walk outside the house where she sees Jenna, Isaac, and Garet have already gone. Felix had hung back, but he looks even less stressed than before, so she thinks that's progress.

"Oh, dear. If your Ivan is anything like our Sheba..." she hears Piers say, and Mia laughs.

"It's trouble, all right. We'll have to keep an eye on them."

She follows a ways behind Jenna and the others as they head for the docks, just so she can make sure she knows where she's going. They reach where Piers's ship is waiting, but even before getting too close to the docks, it's obvious the ship has been doctored by way of massive wings made of canvas and steel attached to the sides; the ones they'd seen when they first came to Contigo. It had seemed like a silly, cartoonish thing when she first imagined it, but seeing it in person was something else entirely—it looked downright majestic.

"I knew his ship was the one from the prophecy," Sheba hears Jenna saying excitedly as she catches up to them.

"Do you think he'll be mad?" Sheba asks, and Jenna turns to her and shrugs.

"I guess we'll find out."

They don't have to wait long. Luckily, Piers seems pretty calm when he arrives, even conceding that the wings look "fittingly grand" for a ship like his. Sheba's honestly a little disappointed that she doesn't get to see Piers have a fit—just the idea of him throwing away that calm face he always seems to wear is enough to make her smile.

"This does raise a question for us, though," Mia says, as they're all hanging around the dock. "What are we going to do with our ship?"

"That's a good point," Isaac says. "I think it makes sense for us to all take your ship, Piers, but I don't want ours landing in the wrong hands..."

"We could give it a Lemurian sendoff," Piers suggests. "Sail it out into the middle of nowhere and set it on fire—"

"Yes," Jenna says, at the same time that Garet says "I knew I liked you."

"Of course you two would be all for it," Felix says, sighing and running a hand through his hair. "Piers, did you really think that one through?"

The Lemurian shrugs. "I don't see the harm in it."

"Now hold on, it's still a perfectly good ship," Isaac protests. "I feel kind of bad just burning it to cinders."

"No, no, you said it yourself, you don't want it landing in the wrong hands," Garet says, clearly already too attached to the idea of burning it on the water. "If we just set it adrift somewhere, it's definitely going to end up on some coastline and somebody's going to try and mess with it. Like Alex."

They all grimace, and if it hadn't been decided before, the mention of Alex's name had done it for sure.

Felix turns to Garet and Jenna. "We're taking off anything explosive first, clear?"

"You never let me have any fun," Jenna pouts, and Felix rolls his eyes.

Sheba notices Master Hama standing off to the side with another one of her mysterious smiles, and thinks, Well, it's now or never. Hama's expression doesn't really change as Sheba approaches—she just says, "Hello, Sheba," despite the fact that she would have no reason to know Sheba's name.

"If you're trying to freak me out, it's not working," Sheba answers, and Hama actually laughs.

"Did you want to ask me something?"

Sheba blinks in surprise, she's not used to people cutting straight to the chase like that. Master Hama in particular seems like she's the type to speak in nothing but riddles, but maybe that's not the case. "What did you mean when you said you were a descendant of the Anemos? Is that just another way of saying you're a Jupiter Adept, like me and Ivan?"

Hama pauses. "In a way. All those who inherit Anemos's power are Jupiter Adepts, but that inheritance is not by blood alone—not all Jupiter Adepts are Anemosian. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," Sheba says, as her heart sinks. Maybe that was what Ivan meant when he said she 'felt different'. He meant she wasn't a descendant, so she had no connection—she'd just picked it up through other means, like the werewolves in Garoh had picked up their powers thanks to Air's Rock nearby. "Is there an easy way to tell if it's one or the other?"

"Were you born here in Contigo?"

"I... I don't know." Sheba bites her lip. "Can you read minds? That might be easier."

Hama's laugh is like a bell. "Of course I can." She touches Sheba's arm, just a light brush of fingers, and Sheba immediately feels it when she enters her mind. There's a silence, and then Hama's eyes go wide and she withdraws her hand a bit too quickly.

"Is everything okay?" Sheba asks, and Hama just looks at her for a second.

"My child..." Hama says, and Sheba freezes for a moment when she thinks Hama might mean that literally. But then she continues: "You are of Anemos. But not in the same way that my brother and I are."

"What?"

"I—"

"Sheba, we have to get going!" Jenna's voice carries across the docks, and Sheba glances back and forth between the two of them. Hama, after a moment, nods at her.

"You are special, Sheba. Do not doubt that." She smiles again. "Find me again once the final lighthouse is lit. I'll explain everything then."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes, of course. Now go, your friends are waiting."

Sheba nods and hurries off, turning once she reaches the deck of the ship to give her a little wave. As they get the ship going—they even manage to make it fly—Sheba watches Hama's figure shrink into the distance. But even through all the excitement, Sheba notices Jupiter Lighthouse looming over them again, and she's reminded of how much she missed. She'd been looking forward to walking out of Jupiter Lighthouse a different woman, more knowledgeable, stronger, but all it left her with was confusion.

Jenna, even through her excitement about the impending ship-burning, notices. "Sheba, you've been awfully quiet. Are you okay?"

Sheba meets Felix's eyes, and he gives her a gentle little nod. She lets it all spill out—her insecurities and her weakness and her sadness, and the way she'd built Jupiter Lighthouse into something that it wasn't. She doesn't cry, but it's a close thing. The only thing that keeps her from it is the thought that an emotional torrent of information is probably enough for their new party members to handle, they don't need to see her crying on top of that.

Kraden, of all people, empathizes. She can't quite believe it, but the old man has more in common with her than she thought. And she knows she's lucky having foster parents like Faran and Aisha, but at the same time she thinks it might have actually been easier for her if she didn't have them. Or at least, if she hadn't had the rest of Lalivero. Kraden didn't have Psynergy to grapple with as a child, but he did have his intelligence... They're both odd ducks, she decides. And after they've had the ship out on the ocean for a while, she hugs him.

"Thank you," she says, and the old man smiles at her.

"Any time, my dear."

They manage to remove everything of interest from Isaac's old ship, which includes a very large stash of alcohol that apparently no one but Garet had known about. He shrugs and says "It was in the basement of Hammet's palace, and he told us to take anything we wanted, yeah?"

Ivan's flabbergasted—"You stole alcohol from Master Hammet!?"—and Mia has a sort of long-suffering look on her face as she watches them bickering. Isaac and Jenna, meanwhile, are sitting on the deck of the ship sorting through the bottles.

Piers announces that the old ship is clear, and Jenna and Garet are immediately on their feet. There's a certain amount of pomp and circumstance before they actually light the thing up—Isaac gives a brief eulogy, but it's only brief because Garet hassles him into cutting it short.

It's exciting at first, but Sheba can't stay interested in the burning ship for too long. She notices Felix slipping inside the ship and follows him, catching the door before it swings shut behind him.

"Whatcha doing?"

"I'm going to make lunch," he says, and then pauses as he remembers the time. "Or I guess it's dinner now. It's food, at any rate."

"Want help?"

"You don't want to watch them anymore?"

"Nah. It got boring after a while."

"I tend to think of cooking as sort of a one-man job," he says. She gives him her best puppy-dog face, and it apparently works because he immediately changes his mind. "Could you find that fish we had downstairs? There's something I saw in Tolbi when we passed through that I wanted to try replicating, but I was saving it for a special occasion."

"Pasta?" she says excitedly. She had mixed feelings about Tolbi, but the food had been amazing. He nods.

"I think the version I saw involved clams, or some other kind of seafood, but I'm not sure if that fish is going to be good for much longer, so... Might as well use it."

As they get into cooking, she starts to realize why he thinks it's a one-man job. He's all over the place, gently nudging her out of the way so he can check on the doneness of the fish while stirring the sauce with his other hand. She tries to take the spoon out of his hand so she can stir it for him, but he shakes his head and tells her to watch the vegetables instead. She pokes them around the frying pan until they start browning, and without even being prompted he takes them and combines them with the pasta.

He's splitting one of the pieces of fish in half to check for doneness when Sheba realizes they've drawn a crowd, presumably because of the scent of the food. "How much longer on that, I'm starved," Garet says, and Sheba glances at Felix.

"Thirty seconds," he answers, tossing the pasta, vegetables, and fish together and dumping the finished result into a large serving bowl. He grabs another stack of individual bowls from a cabinet, drops them on the counter and turns with a flourish. "Done. Tolbi-style seafood pasta, if you were curious."

"Tolbi had the greatest food," Ivan says, grinning.

"I can only assume," Felix says, and then shakes his head when Garet moves for the food. "Ah, no, did you help? Sheba goes first."

Sheba grins and sticks her tongue out at Garet—it's funny how natural that feels, even though she only met him twenty-four hours ago. She serves herself and Felix watches when she takes a bite.

"It's perfect," she says, and he smiles. A natural smile, one that makes his eyes lighten and her heart flutter in her chest. She flops down on the couch and watches as the rest of their strange little band lines up for dinner.

Ivan settles next to her on the couch, and after a moment says, "I think there's a name for this."

"For what, the food? It's just pasta, isn't it?" she says, watching as Felix pours himself a glass of something from Garet's alcohol stash.

"No, for when a person falls in love with their captor," Ivan says, and there's a wicked little grin on his face. Sheba chokes on a piece of tomato as he laughs, and she downs her water before jabbing her elbow into his side.

"He's not holding me hostage," she whispers sharply, and he shrugs.

"But you're not denying you're in love with him?"

"It's not like that," she stammers, fighting back a sense of déjà vu and a fierce desire to apologize to Jenna for every crack she ever made about Isaac. "He saved my life, you know."

"Yeah, we saw. And I don't think he'd jump off a lighthouse for just anybody," Ivan says, twirling his pasta around his fork.

"Maybe he would've, you don't know," Sheba says stubbornly, and then it hits her. "Wait, are you saying you think that he—?"

"There's an easy way for us to find out if he does," Ivan says with a shrug.

"It's an invasion of his privacy," she says weakly, and stabs at a piece of fish.

"What does talking to him have to do with invading his privacy?" Ivan asks, being deliberately obtuse, and she groans.

"You know what I mean," she says.

"But I saw you reading his mind on the aerie of Venus Lighthouse," Ivan says. He does sound honestly confused, so she explains.

"They all found me in the Suhalla Desert, and right off the bat he told me I could read his mind whenever I wanted. So I did...back then. But I haven't done it in months." She leans forward to set her now-empty plate on the low table in front of them. "It got easier to just trust him rather than read his mind all the time."

"Saves you a headache," Ivan says, and she nods, laughing a little. A shadow falls over them, and she looks up to see Garet with two glasses in one hand and a bottle in the other.

"You two want anything?"

"What is it?" Sheba asks, and Garet turns the bottle around so she can see the label. It's some kind of wine, but she doesn't understand much beyond that. She shrugs anyway and says "Sure," and Garet wastes no time in pouring out glasses for both her and Ivan. She takes a sip and isn't entirely sure what the big deal is—it's good, but it's not so great that she'd drink enough of it to lose her wits.

"Sorry about him," Ivan says, grinning as Garet tries to hassle more people into drinking. "He's always like that."

"Yeah, it doesn't seem like he's changed much from Jenna's stories." She grins. "But I like him. He's fun."

Ivan snorts, but there's fondness in the derision. "Fun. Yeah, I guess that's one way to put it. I'd put him more towards 'obnoxious,' though."

"Well, maybe I'll start to see it that way after we've all been cooped up on a ship for a bit," Sheba says, and then realizes Felix is gone. She takes another sip of her wine and glances around the room to see if maybe he just moved somewhere, but doesn't see him. She tosses back the rest of her wine—there wasn't much in the cup—and sets it down, then stands up abruptly enough that her head spins a bit.

Ivan raises an eyebrow. "What's up?"

"Did you see where Felix—"

"Outside," Ivan answers, with a smirk on his face that says he was just waiting for her to notice.

"Thanks," she says, and he makes a shooing gesture at her. So she goes.

He's not at the wheel like she was expecting, instead he's just leaned over the rail of the ship looking up at the sky. She joins him, and after a moment, asks, "What are you doing out here by yourself?"

"Fresh air," he says with a shrug. "For all the fuss Hama was making about an elemental imbalance, it's not a bad night out. Good for stargazing."

She cranes her neck back, trying to pick out constellations, but she was never any good at it. She ends up just looking at him again, until he notices and meets her eyes.

"Felix," she says, and raises a hand. He doesn't move away, and lets her hand graze his face, stuttering across the two days worth of stubble on his cheek. She's surprising herself with her boldness again, but hopefully it'll work in her favor this time, too.

"What are you doing," he asks, and his voice is so quiet she barely hears.

"I'm doing what you always do," she answers.

"Hm?"

"You know." She strokes her thumb over his cheekbone and he blinks. "The thing where you touch me kind of like this, and you look at me like you want to say a million things all at once but then..." She drops her hand. "Then you walk away and you pretend like it never happened."

He stares blankly at her for a moment, and all she can think is, I really messed this up.

She turns to leave, but he grabs her wrist before she can take more than two steps away. "It's an anchoring thing," he says. "I'm reminding myself that you're still with me."

"Where else would I be?" she says, and he lets out an exasperated breath.

"It's not like I'm the only one doing things like that. You put your head on my lap and told me to play with your hair..."

"I—that's different," she stammers, and starts to pull away, but he tightens his hand at just the right time so he's holding her hand now, instead of her wrist.

"Different how?" He's not wearing gloves and his hand is warm in hers. His eyes—oh no, she really shouldn't have looked him in the eyes, because they're soft and filled with concern and it hurts because she can't explain this to him, not now.

I'm doing those things because I might be in love with you, she thinks, and you clearly don't feel the same. Oh,Thor, I can't do this!

Something snaps inside of her, and she sparks him with a jolt of Psynergy. He releases her hand, more from surprise than anything, and she turns on her heel and runs inside before he can stop her. The others fall abruptly silent when she comes in but she keeps running, overshooting her room and going to Piers's library instead, slamming the door shut behind her and locking it.

She distinctly hears Jenna say "Felix, what did you do," and then another door opens and closes—presumably Jenna going to talk to him. Sheba doesn't know exactly how to feel about that.

It's only when Piers clears his throat that Sheba realizes he's in the library with her. She'd completely missed him at first, sitting at one of the tables with several books open in front of him.

"Is everything all right, Sheba?" he asks, and she nods, then shakes her head.

"I just..." She takes the unoccupied chair next to him and pulls her legs up on it, hugging her knees to her chest. "Can you just talk to me about something for a bit, please? What are you reading?"

"They're sort of hand-made almanacs from Lemuria—research notes, basically," he says, pushing one of the books closer to her so she can see. The pages are completely covered in notes and scribbled diagrams, and it takes her a moment before she can even decide what to focus on. "It might have seemed like a closed-off place when we visited, but thanks to King Hydros, we all tried to keep as much detail recorded as we could."

She's interested in spite of herself. "So like, weather predictions and stuff?"

He nods. "Exactly. We noted crop forecasts and wave patterns, based on what little we could see of the ocean."

"You kept it on the ship?" she asks, and Piers shakes his head.

"Not normally, but I packed it when I was getting ready to leave," he said, flipping idly through. Sheba sits forward to watch, letting her legs drop from the chair to sit normally.

"What's that chart?" she asks, and he pages back to get the full-page spread completely covered in one large diagram, with smaller graphs crowded in the margins.

"These are weather patterns from inside Lemuria. If you look, you can actually pinpoint certain events, though I didn't know at the time what they symbolized." He gestures to a specific point where the temperatures drop suddenly, and then even out again, becoming lower on average. "You can see where the sudden drop in temperature occurs—that coincides with Mercury Lighthouse's lighting."

Sheba follows along the table, pausing in confusion when the data suddenly stops. "Wait, what happened there?"

"Do you remember how I left Lemuria?" he prompts.

"You said it was because of that tidal wave, by accident—oh! So this right here was Venus Lighthouse," she says, and he nods. She's starting to understand why Kraden loves science so much. It's like putting together pieces of a puzzle.

"Exactly," Piers answers, then gestures to the blank columns. "And I then stopped updating because, of course, I was no longer in Lemuria."

"Except here," she says, pointing to a short series of entries, followed by more blank space. "We were only in Lemuria for a few days, and you updated it even though you only had a small amount of information? How come?"

"Well, King Hydros sent me to do research, so I thought I might as well continue what I was already doing to use Lemuria as a comparison point," he says with a shrug, but something about the way he says it rings a bit too hollow in Sheba's ears.

"No," is all she says at first, and Piers glances at her in surprise as she works through it. "I think... I think you're homesick." She chews on her lip for a moment as Piers's expression doesn't change, but she decides to stick to her guns. "Yeah. You might've been bored to tears of it, but Lemuria's the only home you've ever known, and you wanted to record all you could about it while you were there, even if it was for a really short time. Even if it's just a weather report."

Piers finally smiles at her, but she doesn't miss the sadness that's there in his eyes, too. "You're exactly right. And even without mind-reading, you figured that out. I didn't realize I was being so obvious about it."

"You should have said something while we were there, we could've stayed longer! You know Kraden would've died for it."

"To be honest," Piers says, "I knew I couldn't ask for that. Our mission is incredibly time-sensitive, and I would have felt incredibly guilty had I asked for more time. And I knew that trying to explain my own guilt wouldn't help, so I simply avoided the subject. I wasn't sure if you would understand my reasoning."

"Well how are we supposed to understand if you don't talk to us," she says, and Piers smiles a little.

"I do agree that a lot of the problems on this journey so far could have been solved if we'd all discussed things," he says, and then pauses. "Incidentally, I don't think you ever told me why you came barging in here."

Sheba just looks at him for a second. He has a sort of knowing look in his eyes, and raises one eyebrow at her.

"Oh, fine," she says finally, shoving her chair back and standing up. "And I thought I was the mind-reader in this group."

"I was young once too, you know," he says, smirking. She shakes her head and starts to head for the door, but turns around at the last second and hugs him, with a quick 'thank you', and then leaves to go back up on deck.

As she's making her way through the now-deserted living room, it occurs to her that Felix might not even still be on watch. Her conversation with Piers hadn't taken that long, but maybe Jenna had chased Felix downstairs after going out to talk to him. Something in her hopes that Felix won't be on watch anymore when she goes out, so she won't have to face him.

But of course he's there. He must have heard the door open, but he doesn't react as she cautiously walks across the deck towards him, heart racing.

"Felix?" she says, and her voice comes out too quiet. He hears her anyway, half-turning in her direction, moonlight casting shadows across his face.

"Hey," he says, matching her in volume, and then: "I'm sorry."

She stops, still a ways away from him. "What?"

He turns more fully to look at her, an apologetic sort of half-smile on his face. "Sorry. Sometimes I'm harsher than I mean to be."

"What are you talking about?" she asks, utterly mystified.

"I scared you, right?" he says, and she just stares at him. "You ran off, and then Jenna came out here wanting to know what I said, and I wasn't sure, but..."

"Felix," Sheba says again, starting to walk closer to him, but he either ignores her or doesn't hear.

"It's part of what we've been doing, all this traveling, I think I'm sometimes more intimidating than I—wait, wait, what are you doing?"

She's almost toe-to-toe with him at this point, having to tilt her head back to look into his eyes. "I thought you were intimidating for maybe the first hour after we met."

"And then?" he says, and is it her imagination or is his voice a little shaky?

"Then you opened your mouth," she says, and then she reaches for the front of his cloak and uses it to pull him down to her level, and kisses him.

It's clumsy and awkward and not at all romantic, more like their faces bumping together than anything. It's not the first kiss she thought she was going to get. But she's okay with that, she decides. Her life is not a romance novel, and she doesn't want it to be. She's been a captive princess before, and once is enough.

His eyes are still closed as she pulls back, and she realizes with some fascination that his eyelashes are actually very long. How she could have ever looked at him and not thought of him as beautiful, she's not sure.

"Read my mind," he says, eyes still closed, and the two of them are so close that he doesn't need to raise his voice above a whisper. But the way he says it reminds her so much of the first time they met that she hesitates for a moment. He notices it, because of course he does. "Do it," he says, and he puts his hands gently on her waist.

When she finally steps into his mind, it feels like coming home.

I'm not afraid anymore.

"Of what?"

Of storms. She feels it when he tries to hold back the rest of his thought, but it slips through anyway: I fell for you, after all.

"I'm a storm?" she asks.

"Of course you are." He falters, and his thoughts continue for him once again. All the storms I've ever seen have been these uncontainable raw forces of nature, and you're just the same. For a little while I doubted your strength, and I'm sorry for that. We need you. I need you.

"I need you, too," she says, but he shakes his head.

No, you don't. You'd be fine without me.

She jerks away from him, and leaving his head is almost painful. "How can you say that, Felix? Are you going to leave us?"

"I just told you I need you, didn't I?" he says, and he looks a little embarrassed, confirming her suspicions that he'd revealed more than he planned on.

"You can't leave," she says anyway, stubbornly. "You're mine." It slips out before she catches it, and her face flushes red the instant the words leave her mouth. Serves me right, she thinks. Now we've both said more than we meant to.

But he smiles, closes the distance between them again by taking her into his arms, and she slides back into his mind. He dips his head and kisses her again, and this is the kind of kiss that had always shown up in her foster mother's romance novels, with his arms tight around her waist and tingles rushing across her skin.

I am yours, he thinks. And there's no one I'd rather belong to.

His hand glides up from her waist, tracing along her spine, and she feels his fingers sliding into her hair. When he pulls back again, he leaves his forehead pressed against hers. She's lightheaded and a little dizzy, and for a second she thinks that's normal, before she gets a familiar, piercing pain in the back of her skull, shoving its way forward.

She pushes him away, squeezing her eyes shut, and there's a ringing in her ears that almost drowns out the startled, panicked way he says her name. Her legs buckle and Felix lunges to catch her, shouting for Piers.