The bitch was a witch.
She might not have been a bitch exactly, she seemed perfectly nice, in fact, and she might not have been a witch either, but Edward had met enough water and celestial creatures in his life to recognize when a fella or a lass were not exactly a human.
Of course her interest in Isla Rhea had been disconcerting, the existence of the island was not common knowledge in the slightest, which means she must have been high enough in the pecking order of the Nereids if she'd heard the name of Isla Rhea, much less knew that the island could provide a cure to whatever plague had befallen her twin.
By the looks of him, he didn't have long.
If he even was her twin. They had been floating in the open sea, running from someone or something, perhaps Salacia's law. Maybe they were cursed lovers. They didn't look much alike anyway. He looked frail, gentle, blonde, fair skinned, while Milada burned, her toughness radiated off of her and bounced off of the walls of the Lioness. Salt blowing from the seas caught in the wild crown of her dark hair when she stood by his side at the helm, peppered it like snow, which made her look even more like a Nereid.
Once upon a time, if his heart didn't belong to Neppie, he might have courted her, made her queen of the ship.
But, alas.
Time was irreversible. It was time to get to know Milada the Sea Witch.
***
The ship's timbers creaked ominously as Captain Edward Kinsley barked his command, his voice cutting through the salty sea air like a serrated blade. "Bring him up! Now!" His gaze was an unyielding iron as it fixed upon Milada, whose heart hammered against her ribs in silent protest.
"Please, Captain," Milada implored, her voice quivering with desperation, "don't do this." Her plea dissolved into the stormy winds, disregarded, as two burly crewmen shuffled past, dragging the limp form of her twin brother from the bowels of the vessel to the unforgiving surface above.
Upon the deck, the assembly of sailors parted like the Red Sea, making room for the unconscious man to be laid out on the slick, wet plywood. Each droplet of rain seemed to strike the wood with an accusatory tap, a foreboding rhythm that mirrored Milada's dread.
"Milada, step aside," came the gruff voice of Bonnie, Captain Kinsley's unwavering first mate. Yet even she could not hide the tremor of uncertainty as she watched her captain unsheathe his pistol with a grim resolve. The metallic click of the hammer being pulled back was a chilling prelude to what was to come.
"Edward, think about what you're doing," Bonnie challenged, stepping forward only to be met with the captain's scathing glare, a gaze that had commanded storms and men alike.
"His name," Captain Kinsley demanded, the muzzle of his gun coldly trained on the prone figure of Milada's brother. His finger rested on the trigger, a hair's breadth away from calamity. "Tell me his name or I'll blow him to pieces right in front of your eyes."
Bonnie's hands clenched into fists at her sides, but her captain's will was the tide none could turn. Milada's breath caught in her throat, the weight of the moment pressing down on her chest like the depths of the ocean itself.
Milada's lips parted, a name perching on the tip of her tongue but never taking flight. Kinsley's impatience erupted in a thunderclap that shattered silence and restraint. The pistol barked, and the bullet burrowed into her brother's leg with an eerie silence, as if the world itself held its breath.
There was no blood—only the surreal sight of skin rippling like the surface of a disturbed pond, glowing with an internal light that escalated to a blinding radiance. Then, as if the gunshot had tapped into some ethereal vein, gold began to seep from the wound, pooling onto the plywood in liquid splendor.
The crew, hardened by gales and warfare, faltered before the miraculous, their knees buckling like timeworn masts in a gale. Bonnie's eyes, always so sure and steady, were wide with horror. A whimper, soft and disbelieving, escaped her as she witnessed the impossible.
Kinsley's features, hardened by years at sea, softened into a semblance of awe only for a fleeting moment before settling back into his habitual sternness. He expelled a weary sigh, one heavy with the weight of secrets confirmed. "I fucking knew it," he uttered to himself, to the rain, to the cosmos that bore witness to this revelation.
"A Celestial," Bonnie whispered, her voice a fragile thing lost amidst the storm's howl and the crew's murmurs of astonishment.
Milada, her spirit once teetering on the precipice of despair, now surged forth with newfound fury. She closed the distance between herself and Kinsley with determined strides, her eyes ablaze, reflecting the incandescent glow of her twin's otherworldly blood. Her face was inches from his, close enough to feel the bristle of his beard, the warmth of his breath mingling with the cool rain against her skin.
"If you know who we are," Milada's voice was iron-clad, resolute, "then it would be in your best interest to get us to Isla Rhea as soon as possible." Her gaze never wavered, demanding, commanding, willing him to understand the gravity tethered to her words.
"On the contrary," Kinsley barked, his pistol finding the refuge of the sleeve in the hidden pockets of his coat. "You never show to the humans unless you are protecting them, or violated the law."
"You know us awfully well," Milada said curtly.
"You have no idea," Bonnie muttered. Edward splashed her with a terse look.
"What are you looking to get on Isla Rhea? The truth, please," Edward demanded.
"Or what?"
"Or you're free to return to the water and die. I know you cannot be too far from Milennia without compromising the core of your planet and exposing the people to danger."
Bonnie hushed him, begged him to be quiet. Just because he knew how the universe worked, didn't mean the entire universe was ready to hear it.
Kinsley ordered the men to return the Celestial below deck, in fact, he explicitly directed them to put him in his lodgings and arrange for tea.
Milada and Bonnie followed him there, as the Captain graciously allowed Milada to take a seat next to her brother and cradle his head while Jera served the tea, all googly-eyed, trying very hard and failing not to stare at the literal 'being from the sky', as the legends said on Valorian.
"Leave us, Jera," Bonnie dismissed the attendant, hoping the young man would be able to sleep without nightmares.
The door clicked behind him and Kinsley, standing with his arms crossed, defiant, gladiatorial in his stance and poise. "So, which one is he? The kleptomaniac or the prude?" he nodded toward Milada's twin.
"I'm not telling you anything until you tell me the truth," Milada said.
"Well, there must be people on your world who know of the Celestials too," he argued.
"There are," she said, more measured now that his violent tone had eased a little and gave way to civilized conversation. "But there is evolved interstellar travel on Tripolis with neighboring planets. The people are more equipped to … hear and learn about us in order to help us provide for them. It's a cooperative effort."
Edward snorted. "Right, and us Valorians are too far behind your intelligent race to grasp the concept of witches."
"I am not a witch," Milada said, offended. "I am the Anchor of Tripolis."
Edward rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. "So you've put your world in great danger in order to save a Celestial who is half-dead anyway?"
"We are called Sensitives where I come from. And what's it to you?"
Edward furrowed his thick black brows in faux confusion, walking slowly, menacingly toward Milada and his own bed which she currently occupied.
"Because, lady, I helped you. I am now a party to this, and I don't need to get involved in another supernatural feud."
"What feud are you involved in?" Milada asked, curious.
"He fucked the king of the Twelve Seas and his wife got pissed, so she killed him and took his throne. Now she's on a quest to kill us," Bonnie said, unimpressed.
"Bonnie!"
"Oh," Milada uttered, looking down on her brother. "So you know what it is to love someone beyond anyone's understanding. Perhaps even your own."
"Yes, except your familial love seems a bit tad extreme. You feel passionate toward him, like a lover."
Milada recoiled immediately, then eased her spirit back into her body when Bonnie cushioned the blow of Edward's words by hitting him in the ribs with her elbow.
"No," she insisted. "He is my other half, it's purely …"
"It's not forbidden in the Nereid Realm," Bonnie said, as if that changed anything.
"It's a matter of custom," Edward agreed. "But on Valorian's land it is mortal punishment."
"Good thing there isn't much land on Valorian," Bonnie laughed to herself, amused by her own joke which seemed to land with Edward particularly well as they bent over and laughed themselves silly together.
"Well, what about you two? Is there more than platonic love?" Milada tore them from their funny little hour.
"No, of course not," Bonnie said, sticking out her tongue as if to suggest vomiting.
"Well then you are familiar with love other than the romantic kind. Why is it so hard to believe I love my brother as a brother?"
Edward sighed, sitting down next to her with deliberate, slow movements as if he were about to break some horrible news to her and it required a gentle approach in order not to startle this poor, terrified bird into flying far, far away.
"Because you very well might have just sentenced your entire world and surrounding constellations to death due to your 'platonic, familial love.'"
Milada swallowed around the lump in her throat and stroked Areilycus' heated cheek.
"Without the Lord of Light, there won't be much life on Tripolis anyway."
Edward let out a puff of air that was unconsciously strangling his throat. "Your twin is the Lord of Light?"
"What's a Lord of Light?" Bonnie asked.
Edward stroked his beard, the remnants of the acidic rain summoned by Salacia meant to decompose his flesh slightly tickled his skin.
"It's a being created from stardust absorbing the world's suffering," Edward said. "Every Celestial or Nereid has a role in protecting their world, but without a Lord of Light, planets die, explode from the overabundance of energy. And when one planet goes, it upsets the balance, triggers a chain reaction, entire systems die out."
Bonnie frowned. "Why did you never tell me?"
"Did you ever ask?" Edward threw back at her. "Besides, it does not concern our world. Neppie's son became the proverbial Lord of Light. We're fine."
"Oh, we're fine, are we?" Bonnie crossed her arms, smacking Captain Kinsley on the head. "Look how fine we are, dealing with acidic rains every day and having a Celestial dying in our bed. We are so fine!"
"Those rains cannot hurt us, and you know it," Edward reminded her.
"They're hurting the Lioness."
Milada sighed, exasperated, like she longed to do nothing more than kick them out of the cabin, but since these were technically Captain's lodgings, she was out of luck and out of options.
"What exactly is it on Isla Rhea that's supposed to bring your brother back to life?" Edward asked.
"What is wrong with him, anyway?" Bonnie ogled the man, strangely fascinated.
Milada's fingers gently caressed his matted hair, curls plastered to his neck and forehead as if willing him back to consciousness.
"Areilycus is... trapped, Captain," she replied, her voice a whisper that carried an undercurrent of steel. "He's caught in a locked state of becoming."
"Caught?" Kinsley furrowed his brow, stepping closer to the bedside.
Milada finally lifted her gaze to meet Kinsley's, her sapphire eyes reflecting a universe of knowledge that stretched far beyond the confines of the ship. "Don't you know how stars die, Captain?"
Kinsley remained silent, prompting her to continue.
"Stars are constantly in motion," she explained, her hand pausing in its movement through Areilycus's hair. "They draw fresh hydrogen from their outer layers down into their core, where it fuels the fire that keeps them alight." She glanced back at her brother, a pained expression briefly crossing her features.
"But when a star accumulates too much radiation pressure," she continued, her voice barely a murmur now, "it can no longer withstand the force. It implodes—"
"Radiation pressure spikes," Kinsley finished for her, the realization dawning in his eyes.
"Enormously," Milada affirmed with a slow nod. Her focus returned to Areilycus, her protective stance resolute as she stroked his hair once more, conveying a silent promise to defy the fates that threatened to claim him.
"Ari was exposed to the Diamond Storm that plagues Tripolis every ten years. It's deadly to humans. And to Ari."
"Exposed?" Edward asked, his focused face drawing conclusions. "Who exposed him?"
The parallels between the celestial phenomena Milada described and her brother's fragile condition hung heavy in the air. Captain Kinsley, a man accustomed to the tangible, grappled with the enormity of the metaphor—a star's life and death mirroring that of the young Celestial before him. Was it strange he felt kinship with this woman? He kept his passions to himself until he couldn't anymore, and Bonnie, however understanding couldn't possibly imagine the enormity of loving a Nereid, or a Celestial, in Milada's case.
Whether it was their divine nature, or just plain grandness of their state of being, they poured something into a person when they opened up to them, poured a little bit of that sacred element that keeps them immortal into whoever they chose to love, and the divine expanded inside that person, grew exponentially until one all but burst with the affection large enough to go mad.
To do insane, irrational things, perform miracles, abandon all reason.
Like trying to revive a dead Nereid or … abandoning duty to save a Celestial.
Milada adjusted the blanket around Areilycus, her fingers lingering on the fabric as if to weave her own strength into its fibers. She turned to face the others, her eyes reflecting a cosmos of worry but refusing to answer Edward's question.
Edward shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the weight of unanswered questions heavy in his voice.
"Aren't all Celestials made of stardust?" he asked, seeking some foothold in the vast unknown that was Celestial existence.
"There is a divine element included that we are not allowed to question," Milada explained with an air of reverence that commanded respect. Her gaze drifted, lost in thoughts of unfathomable depths. "Not all of us are cut from the same cloth. My brother Ros is the patron of reason and logic, he maintains order on Tripolis. I've never seen him worried about radiation pressure or anything else that can hurt a star."
Bonnie, who had been watching Areilycus with a mix of fascination and concern, turned her attention to Milada. "And you?" she asked, her curiosity piqued by the enigmatic nature of their companion. "Are you made of stardust?"
Milada's expression tightened, a ripple of annoyance breaking through her otherwise composed demeanor. "Don't you worry about what I'm made of," she said tersely. The sharpness in her tone was uncharacteristic, hinting at personal boundaries not to be crossed again.
"Please," she added, her voice softening as she cast a beseeching look toward the group, an echo of vulnerability in her stoic facade. "Just get me to Isla Rhea so I can help him."
There was a beat of silence, the request hanging in the air like a plea to the stars. Bonnie exchanged a glance with Edward, their decision unspoken but mutual—they would see this journey through, not just for Areilycus, but for the fierce, mysterious being who had become their unexpected charge.
"You're hiding something," Milada said. "Whenever I bring up Isla Rhea, you look at me as if I asked you to kill your kin."
Bonnie scratched her nose, the Mistress of Stealth.
"Isla Rhea is a deathtrap," Edward said. "I cannot imagine pitching this idea to my crew, there would be a riot."
"Well, then," Milada said. "Take me to someone who will take me there."
Bonnie placed a hand on Edward's shoulder. "We'll see what we can do."