My father said, “He is already on the way. His ship arrives on the morrow to collect supplies for his voyage. I’ll send Mizendrel to speak with him on my behalf.”

The Blood of the Sun, an ancient artifact that hadn’t been seen in so long few doubted it was real, stood between my father and whoever had escaped our prison. I crouched then launched back into the air. No way was I going to Lendre now. Not while so much rode on Uncle Melroc finding something as important and powerful as the Blood of the Sun.

Father had treated me with such respect tonight that I felt it was my duty as a knight-to-be to aid Uncle Melroc in his quest for the stone. A knight needed to be able to put aside his own selfish desires to help others, and while I yearned to train under Lord Veren’s son as a page and prepare for my life as a squire, this was far more important. To prove myself worthy of being a knight—and not just any knight, but one of the best—I’d need to leave with Uncle Melroc in the morning.

I closed my eyes and hoped Father would still respect me when I returned.

The vessel Melroc captained had yet to arrive, though clouds rolled in over the ocean, and the waves grew larger and larger with each minute. Mizen and I strolled toward the lapping tide as groups of amüli gathered on the beach with barrels of fresh water and crates of food.

“You were supposed to go train with Lord Veren’s son,” Mizen said, “not to go on this... this senseless voyage.”

My stomach knotted, both in guilt and uncertainty. Not many amüli my age could attempt leaving home and get away with it. Of course, I had to hope Mizen wouldn’t say anything and Uncle Melroc would believe the letter I carried in my pocket with my passport.

“It’s not senseless,” I replied. “Besides, you’d do the same thing.”

“Not even close.” Mizen crossed his arms over his chest, flexing his drake wings until they fanned wide to catch the earliest rays of sunlight. “I’d do as I was told.”

“More is at stake than just my father’s reputation,” I said. “What if they can’t find who broke into the ‘Combs? What if the intruder comes back and breaks someone else out?”

“You don’t even know if anyone got out.”

“There were footprints in the sand—two sets.”

“No, there were divots in the sand that might have been footprints.”

I shook my head. “Do you think people will accept that? Because I don’t. If our fathers can’t track the person who did this and the people find out, it could lead to chaos.”

Mizen exhaled. “Fine. I still don’t like it, though.”

“Look.” I pointed toward the sky, where the first rays of dawn touched the clouds above. The light shimmered and glowed unlike any I’d ever seen before. Then, upon closer inspection, I noticed a ship emerging from the heavens, its massive decks similar to thick sand dollars piled on top of one another, the flat side facing up. Pillars of smoky clouds held roofs in place, and when I squinted, I spotted individual chambers with wispy openings that looked a lot like carved scrollwork windows.

“Astounding!”

“You said it.” My hands clenched, and my stomach curled in on itself. In that moment, I was glad for the decision to skip breakfast—it might have come up when I realized this massive cloud-city was what I’d be using to traverse the ocean. Would I have to fly the entire time? That seemed foolish. Certainly, something—rocks, wood, or another solid substance of some kind—would give me a place to roost at night or when my wings grew tired.

As Mizen and I gawked, the vessel dropped from the sky toward the soaked sand, where it finally came to rest. The amüli around us hauled their crates and barrels over their shoulders and made their way toward the lowest of the sky-ship’s giant disks.

“Want me to escort you?” Mizen asked, probably due to curiosity more than wanting to act as an escort.

I shrugged. “Sure. Let’s go.”

Mizen took the lead. Since our Uncle Melroc captained this massive vessel, Mizen would be the better one to suggest I join the trip. His drake wings got him places I could never dream of reaching. Only one drake per generation was born to House Krune, and Mizen would eventually take my father’s place as the lord of Drüssyevoi and become one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. Every other Krune had the wings of hen mallards, and we were destined for... well, it was hard to say. Some of us became knights. Others, like Uncle Melroc, joined the Order of Kravaldîn and set forth to explore the world.

As we hopped up to the first deck, I managed a closer peek at what the vessel was made out of. Clouds were my first guess, and the swirling structure confirmed my suspicions. Instead of us sinking down into softness as I’d expected, the cloud disk we walked across was as hard as stone. I paused to tap the toe of my shoe against it.

How the sky-ship was made and how it floated on nothing but air was beyond me. How were the decks solid enough to walk on while looking fluid underfoot? What about the weight of it? Did it always fly like it had before touching down? I shook my head and hurried after my cousin.

As we strolled by a large group of amüli, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck prickled. The down on my wings stood straight. My chest constricted, and for a few seconds, the air felt so heavy I feared I’d never breathe again.

And I knew why.

Even Mizen stopped walking, and we both watched the group of men work. These amüli were casters, quickly pulling the power of the gods from the ground below and working the energy into new forms with artful commands. The majority of the forms became fat arches of swirling color, which glowed and cast fractured light across the deck. Blue and teal made up most of the arches, but every few moments, a swirl of red would intermix with it, though the energy never became purple. One of the casters guided the blue energy up to a higher deck, and others above caught it before forcing it into the clouds, like a waterfall running backward. While some of the casters stocked away the water and food, the majority of them forced fresh magic into the sky-ship.

A crack of light followed by a dampened boom shook the ship beneath my feet. Within the confines of the clouds, a storm brewed. Despite the bright colors, this wasn’t a display of casting finesse. This was magic in its raw form, and it spun with a hundred new shades of blue and red.

Without magic to fuel such a massive spell, the entire ship would collapse and we’d all end up in the ocean. I was glad for the gods’ aid, since swimming wasn’t something I was good at. Wings made it difficult to move through deep water.

The ocean was no place for an amüli, but my aunt Nymdre used to pace the beach every morning and evening. When I was younger, she had an accident while on one of her walks and was lost at sea. But she didn’t actually die. Thanks to her Soulbound human keeping her soul safe, she stayed alive but drowned over and over again. I recalled her sunken cheeks and the lines of black veins that webbed her pale skin when Father pulled her from the waves. After she came to, all she did was scream over and over again, until Father forced her into a Soulless silence to end her suffering.

It was not a pleasant memory.

Soulless amüli lost their souls, and in a sense, their lives. They survived in a state of nonbeing, and though their bodies never truly decayed, their veins would congeal, their eyes would become blind, and their wings molted. Some scholars claimed Soulless amüli were still somehow alive, though I doubted it.

I pushed the thought away and urged Mizen to keep going. The sooner I met with Uncle Melroc, the better. I had vague memories of him from childhood, but I hadn’t seen him since my fifth birthday. Father and King Urudel always seemed to find a use for him, and that use rarely kept Melroc in the city.

As we walked across the deck, I realized the floor of the ship glowed with every step we took. Most of the time, the clouds pulsed with blue, but occasionally, red would crack across the surface.

I knew about the gods, of course, but not much. Matrisk fueled the red magic, since she was often associated with anger and offensive spells, and was warmer than the other gods—almost searing hot, according to my texts. Batrisk was the bluish-green magic, colder than the wintery wilds to the far north; he was used for defensive spells, and I figured he also fueled whatever spell these casters used. There was a third god, one I understood little about.

I hurried after Mizen through a doorway into another room formed from clouds, and from there, we flew up to another clam-shaped level. Some of the lower levels had stairs between them, for amüli who were injured or too young to fly. After we touched down, Mizen indicated an enormous door, which was wide enough for us both to pass side by side without complaint. The character for captain was emblazoned above it. The word glowed in the clouds, a cool, inviting blue-green.

“Should I go in with you?” he asked.

“I hoped you might. Uncle Melroc hasn’t seen us since we were children.”

A fond smile crossed his lips. “All right.”

He approached and knocked, which surprised me. Part of me had expected the door, also made of the strange clouds, to merely vanish beneath his touch. Instead, it sounded like a solid surface to my ears.

“Enter,” a heavy voice called out from the other side.

The door vanished, and we slipped inside. Within was a wide open chamber, and in the center stood a massive table made from the same clouds as the rest of the vessel.

Uncle Melroc shut a massive tome as we walked in. His periwinkle eyes glinted when he noticed us, and he stood, opening his mammoth arms. Unlike Father and my other uncles, who were tall and thin like Mizen, Melroc was stout and strong, like a moving mountain. He ran fat fingers through his thick, wild beard. Beads of jade and polished wood and some tiger’s eye gems glinted in the light that seeped through the cloudy walls.

I recalled Melroc striding into our feast hall years ago—wide, tall, grinning, his hair less peppered with gray back then, his face painted in bold hues of green and copper. Whenever he turned, his hen wings had almost always hit someone. When Father called him up to stand beside him on a raised dais of rock, Melroc had jumped into the air. The second his wings snapped open, I thought he’d fall, but somehow his girth glided safely to the dais. Though Uncle Melroc was enormous, he wasn’t fat—not even back then. Every ounce of him was muscle.

“Lads, lads, to what do I owe the visit? Come now, a hug.”

Mizen hugged him, though quickly, as if someone might see. He pulled away and motioned to me. “Uncle, you remember Frendyl.”

“Ah, Ilbondre’s youngest.”

I smiled but shook my head. “No longer, sir. I have two younger brothers now.”