When Lucas opened his eyes, the first thing that reached him was sound of waves, steady and unhurried, breaking somewhere nearby. Then warmth across his face. Then the particular roughness of wet sand pressing into his palms.

He blinked several times while his vision sorted itself out.

Ocean ahead of him. Palm trees further up the shore. Pieces of broken wood scattered across the sand in no particular order. Sunlight coming from the wrong angle for it to be the same time of day as when the cruise went under.

"...What."

He pushed himself upright slowly, sitting on the shore of an island he had never seen in his life, and looked around at the complete absence of anything that explained how he’d gotten there.

Both hands came up in front of his face automatically. He flexed his fingers. Touched his cheek. Pinched his wrist hard enough to produce a genuine reaction.

"Ow, okay. it’s real."

He rubbed the back of his neck and let the memories arrive in whatever order they wanted to.

The cruise tilting. The floor giving out. The fall. And before that or maybe after, time had gotten strange, the darkness. The throne. The figure whose face he couldn’t make out properly. The red eyes.

’How does he know my name.’

Not the name he was using. The one before. The one that belonged to a life on the other side of whatever had happened to bring him here.

A chill moved through him that had nothing to do with the ocean breeze.

’Just who was that.’

"You awake, Lucas?"

Lucas left the ground.

He spun toward the voice with the full-body reaction of someone whose nervous system is already running at elevated levels, and found Nova lying flat on the sand approximately two feet away from him, hands folded over his stomach, eyes half-open, looking like someone who had chosen this specific patch of beach and was content with the decision.

Lucas pressed a hand over his heart. "You scared the life out of me."

Nova turned his head toward him with the minimum amount of effort required. "Good morning."

"How long have you been lying there?"

"Long enough to decide I’m never moving again."

Lucas looked at him for a second — the complete horizontal commitment of it, the resigned expression — and pointed. "Get up."

Nova looked deeply wounded by the suggestion. "I genuinely would if my body agreed with that."

Then he shifted slightly to demonstrate and immediately made a sound that confirmed his point, grabbing his side with both hands, his face going tight.

"Okay," he said through his teeth. "Yeah. Every single bone."

Lucas sighed with the exhaustion of someone who has accepted that this is simply the person they’re dealing with, bent down, and grabbed Nova’s arm. "Come on."

Nova reached for him with the dramatic reaching energy of a man in the final act of something. "Brother—"

"Stop that."

Lucas pulled him up, took his weight, and got Nova’s arm over his shoulder. The moment Nova tried to put his full weight on his legs, they trembled in a way that was clearly not performed.

"Huh," Nova said, with a pale face. "The island is moving."

"That’s your head."

"I don’t like it."

"You weren’t complaining about your head when you launched yourself off the cruise."

Nova’s expression shifted immediately to offended. "That was a rescue."

"Nobody asked you to rescue anyone."

"She was falling!"

"She stopped herself."

"I didn’t know she was going to stop herself!"

"She was Sylvia."

Nova opened his mouth, thought about it for a second, then closed it again. Then opened it. "That’s—" Then winced as the movement cost him something. "Okay," he said, quieter. "We’re not yelling for a while."

"Then you can shut up," Lucas said, already steering him along the shore.

"You’re a cruel friend."

"You’re heavy, so just shut up."

Nova gasped with genuine offense. "I’m injured."

"Not my problem"

They moved along the shoreline, Lucas scanning the island properly now — dense treeline, no visible signs of academy staff anywhere, broken debris from the cruise washed up at intervals along the beach.

No other cadets visible yet, though the shore curved far enough in both directions that there was plenty of island he couldn’t see.

"Did you see anyone else when you woke up?" Lucas asked. "Gideon, Celia, Sylvia?"

Nova’s joking expression settled into something more straightforward. "No. Just you." He glanced around the beach. "When I got consciousness, it was only us."

Lucas nodded, his thoughts already moving ahead. If the cadets went into the water together when the cruise broke apart, they could have washed up anywhere. Same island, different parts of it, different islands entirely. There was no way to know from here.

"Lucas!!"

Both of them turned toward the treeline at the same time.

Through the palms, two figures came into view moving quickly, waving. Gideon and Celia, both upright, both apparently in one piece, relief already on their faces as they closed the distance.

"There they are," Nova said, and the grin that arrived on his face was the real kind.

Lucas felt something loosen in his chest.

Then his eyes moved to the figure between them.

Sylvia. One arm over Celia’s shoulder, Gideon supporting her from the other side, her pace slightly careful in the way that suggested she was managing something she wasn’t advertising.

Lucas moved forward while still keeping Nova steady. "Are you all okay?" His eyes went to Sylvia before he’d finished the question. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"We’re fine," Celia said, adjusting her hold on Sylvia’s arm. "Sylvia got hurt in the crash but she’s—"

"It’s fine," Sylvia said, with the calm authority of someone closing a conversation. "Nothing major."

"It’s not nothing if you can’t walk properly," Lucas said.

"I said it’s fine, Lucas."

The tone of it was the one she used when she had decided something and didn’t need the topic revisited.

Gideon’s eyes moved to Nova, taking in the arm-over-shoulder arrangement and the general pallor of him. "Nova, you look terrible."

"Thank you, Gideon, I appreciate that."

"That wasn’t a compliment."

"I know. I was being sarcastic."

"Were you?"

Nova stared at him. "Yes."

Gideon considered this. "You looked like you meant it."

"Because I’m in PAIN—"

Celia pressed her lips together very deliberately, staring at a palm tree to her left.

Nova looked at her. "You’re laughing."

"I’m not laughing."

"Your face is laughing."

"My face is doing nothing."

"Celia—"

"I’m thinking about how you flew past Sylvia," she said, losing the battle completely, a laugh breaking through despite herself. "You just — you went right past her. She was already holding the railing and you just kept going."

"I didn’t know she’d grabbed the railing—"

"She’s Sylvia."

"Lucas said the same thing! Why does everyone keep saying that like it’s an answer!"

Lucas was not paying attention to any of this.