Evie
The sun rises as the Pillars of Hercules emerge from the morning mist.
They’re two massive rock formations, one on each side of the strait, so tall they seem to scrape the clouds. According to Maritime Passages of the Lost Islands, Hercules created them during his tenth labor, tearing apart a mountain to connect the Lost Islands to the mortal realm.
I extend my heat sense without thinking about it, because with every new location passed, I search for Oliver’s thermal signature.
He wasn’t here. He was never here.
But I can’t stop trying. Because stopping means accepting that the trail ended on the Crown, and I won’t accept that until I have proof.
“Everyone up,” Kieran says, cutting through the early morning quiet as he emerges from below deck. “We’re here.”
Jade stumbles up from below deck, and Logan follows close behind, positioning himself slightly in front of her. Callie’s last, with more color in her cheeks than she had yesterday.
Jade moves to the railing, frowning down at the calm surface. “The water isn’t moving.”
A closer look shows she’s correct. The sea’s surface has gone stagnant, reflecting the clouds in a mirror image.
Then, three columns of water surge upward, one directly ahead, one to port, and one to starboard. They twist and spiral until they’re towering above us. Twenty feet. Thirty. Forty.
And then, they solidify. Not into ice, but into beings.
The first has a stone-like form covered in scars that look older than civilization itself. His eyes glow ember-gold, and when his gaze sweeps over our ship, the pressure on my chest is immediate and immense.
The second is muscular and armored, built like a warrior god, with eyes that burn bright red. It’s like looking into the heart of a volcano.
The third is ethereal and shifting, his form flickering at the edges like he can’t decide what shape to take. His eyes swirl silver, and looking at him makes my brain hurt, as if I’m trying to solve an equation with too many variables.
“We are Geryon. The Three Who See.”
The ancient one’s voice resonates through my bones, through the deck, through the water itself.
“I am the Seer of Origins.” His ember-gold eyes fix on each of us, and when they land on me, every pretense I’ve ever built burns away in a single breath, like he’s seeing every secret I’ve ever kept.
“They are the Seers of Essence and Consequence.” He looks to the red-eyed one first, then the ethereal one. “You seek passage through our gate.”
The armored one speaks next, his voice booming like thunder.
“But passage requires judgment.”
Then the ethereal one, his layered voice echoing in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
“And judgment requires truth.”
Kieran’s hand moves to his blade, his shoulders tense, his weight shifting to the balls of his feet.
The red-eyed one—Essence—looks at him with an intensity that makes my skin crawl. “Mortal weapons cannot harm us. Witch fire cannot burn us. We are judgment itself, and judgment cannot be destroyed.”
Jade steps forward, and I have to admire her courage, even if it is incredibly stupid. “What do you want?” she asks. “What do we have to do to pass?”
“Each of you will be judged by all three aspects,” the Seer of Origins says. “There will be no lies.”
“No masks,” the Seer of Essence adds.
“And no mercy,” the Seer of Consequence finishes, his silver eyes swirling faster.
My pulse hammers in my throat.
Oliver. The Crown. The heat signatures that ended in a blast pattern with no trail leading away.
The Seer of Origins—who seems to be their main spokesperson—continues, “You cannot leave this strait until judgment is complete. This is the price of passage. This is the cost of returning to the mortal realm.”
“And if we refuse?” Kieran’s grip is so tight on his sword that his knuckles are turning white.
The three of them smile, and the expressions look wrong on faces that old, like cracks forming in stone.
“Then you remain in the Lost Islands until the stars burn out, the sea runs dry, and time itself forgets your names,” the Seer of Consequence says.
All right. Refusing isn’t an option then.
I look around at our group. Jade’s electricity is crackling from her fingertips to her elbows. Logan’s face is blank—always controlled, always calm. Callie’s swaying on her feet. Kieran’s coiled and ready for a fight he can’t win.
Then there’s me. Evelyn Thorne, the girl who thought she could find her brother by following heat trails across impossible seas.
I’ve spent my whole life searching for truth in books, in patterns, and in the thermal signatures that tell stories no one else can read. Now truth is being demanded of me, and I’m terrified of what it might reveal.
“Fine.” The word comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Judge us. Do whatever you have to do so we can get home.”
Jade whips around to stare at me. “Evie—”
“What choice do we have? They said we can’t leave until it’s done. So, let’s get it done.”
The Seer of Origins tilts his massive head, studying me with those ancient ember-gold eyes.
“The scholar hungers for truth more than she fears it,” he rumbles.
No, I think. I fear it plenty.
But I need it more.
The Seer of Essence’s attention swings to Kieran, those burning red eyes locking onto him with predatory focus.
“We begin with the warrior.”
Kieran’s hand stays on his blade, and his posture remains steady, but I’ve spent enough time watching him to notice his subtle tells—the tension in his jaw, his breathing going shallow, and his knuckles turning white from gripping the hilt too tightly.
What his heat’s showing me now, however, is new.
It’s pulling inward instead of pushing out, like his body’s trying to protect his core. I’ve seen his heat flare in anger, surge in combat, and burn like a furnace when he’s close to me, but this is none of those.
This is his fire retreating.
He’s afraid.
Kieran Cross—who has seventy-three tally marks inked onto his skin, fights like violence is a language he was born speaking, treats his blades like other people treat prayers, and held me on the Crown while I fell apart and stayed by my side through deadly seas—is afraid.
And somehow, that terrifies me more than the giants surrounding our boat.
“Do not resist,” the Seer of Essence says, low and final. “It will only prolong the pain.”
His red eyes flare, and Kieran takes a sharp breath in.
The Seer walks closer without causing a ripple. “There is a hunger here,” he announces, his booming voice carrying across the water. “A thirst for violence that goes beyond training, beyond duty, and beyond skill.”
My throat tightens. Because this is exactly what Kieran told me below deck when he cooked me the fish.
“You do not fight because you must.” The Seer’s lips curl into a sneer. “You fight because only violence makes you feel alive, and when the violence stops, you lose who you are to the beast you keep caged.”
Kieran’s face goes white, like the words were carved into his soul and gutted him entirely.
The Seer of Origins glides forward, staring at Kieran with uncomfortable intensity.
“Now we will examine your past and understand why violence poisons your soul,” he says, and when his ember-gold gaze intensifies, Kieran’s body goes rigid.
“The reason is clear—your mother is a mortal woman who caught the eye of a god.”
A god.
If the Seer’s insinuating what I think he is, then Kieran’s father is a god.
My brain immediately starts cataloging.
Gods who interact with mortals. Gods associated with combat. Gods whose children might inherit violent tendencies.
The answer arrives a second before the truth is confirmed.
“Ares came to your mother in the guise of a soldier,” the Seer of Origins continues. “He stayed for one night of passion and power. Then he disappeared, as gods tend to do, leaving a child growing in her womb.”
Kieran’s hand drops from his blade, and it clatters to the deck.
“You carry divine war-blood in your veins.” The Seer’s ember eyes seem almost sympathetic now. “You are the son of Ares. That is why violence feels like home, why peace feels like a cage, and why the hunger for violence never stops. It is not a choice. It is not a flaw. It is simply what you are.”
Son of Ares.
Kieran’s the son of the god of war.
The information slots into place in my mind, rearranging everything I thought I knew about him.
Because Ares is a god of rage, passion, bloodlust, and obsessive love, all of it cranked to a volume that shakes the ground.
He’s raw feeling with a sword in his hand, and Kieran’s been carrying that weight without knowing where it came from.
His thermal signature runs hot because everything he experiences hits his system at divine intensity.
I thought he was suppressing emotion, but it’s more than that.
He’s drowning in it. He’s been funneling it into discipline and steel because the alternative is letting all that feeling loose, and a man with Ares’s blood who stops controlling himself is a man who levels cities and doesn’t stop until there’s nothing left to burn.
“That explains it,” he says quietly, almost to himself, and the calm in his voice is worse than if he’d screamed. “I always thought the need to kill was a choice I made. Turns out it was made for me.”
His thermal signature plummets, and that scares me more than any spike ever has.
Because being the war god’s son means the violence isn’t his fault.
The hunger was hardwired before he ever picked up a blade.
But Kieran doesn’t want an excuse—he wants ownership.
And the Seer took that from him by telling him the most terrifying thing a man like Kieran Cross could hear—that he never had a say in what he became.
The Seer of Origins tilts his massive head, studying Kieran. “Your mother kept her secret,” he says. “And now you have inherited the consequences.”
With that apparently complete, the Seer of Origins steps back, and Consequence drifts forward. His shifting, ethereal form makes my eyes water if I look at it too long, so I focus on his swirling silver eyes instead.
“And now,” he says, his layered voice sending chills down my spine, “we speak of what will be.”
Kieran’s eyes are wide and unfocused, like a man whose foundation cracked beneath his feet. I want to go to him—I want to help—but there’s nothing I could do to help right now. This is a moment he needs to experience on his own.
“The war-blood demands its due.” The Seer of Consequence stops in front of Kieran, leaving trails of silver light in his wake. “You have contained it, controlled it, and channeled it into teaching young warriors. But containment is not elimination, and the blood grows restless.”
I take one step forward. “What does that mean? What’s going to happen to him?”
Those swirling silver eyes turn to me, and it’s like the future is opening beneath my feet, showing me infinite possibilities, all of them equally as terrifying.
“The scholar asks questions while she fears answers.” The Seer sounds almost amused. “How fitting.”
He doesn’t wait for me to reply before returning his attention to Kieran and continuing to speak.
“Your fate-thread shows transformation. The hunger you feel now will seem like a mild craving compared to what is coming next. You will be forced to choose between the man you are and the demigod you were born to be.”
“What will I become?” Kieran asks, and it comes out as barely a whisper.
The Seer of Consequence smiles, and there’s nothing comforting in it.
“That, son of Ares, I will not say. Some truths are too heavy to be carried before their time. Know only that it is inevitable. The blood of war cannot be denied forever. And when it claims you...” He pauses, his silver eyes swirling faster. “Everything you love will be tested.”
Kieran stands frozen, not even reaching for the blade that’s on the deck next to his feet.
I never thought I’d see Kieran Cross break.
But the man who has seventy-three tally marks on his ribs just learned that the need to put them there was never his choice, and I can see the exact moment the knowledge lands, because his thermal signature does the one thing I’ve never recorded from him: it goes cold.
My fingers extend across the space between us. I want to anchor him, to remind him he’s not alone, to—
I stop myself.
Because what comfort can I offer? How can I fix this? I can’t. Especially not right now, with the others watching and the rest of us soon to be judged.
Kieran doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at anyone. He just stares at the deck like he’s seeing the monster he’s destined to become.
The Seer of Origins speaks into the silence.
“The warrior’s judgment is complete. Who will be next?”