Spade Organization Headquarters, Sub-Level 9 03:14 p.m.
Roy stood in the centre of five smoking craters, and something inside him quietly died.
The Neptune trident, his birthright, his childhood bedtime story, the weapon his mother had sung him to sleep with, lay broken like a child's toy. Sea-salt glittered on the steel like tears that had forgotten how to fall.
He tasted the ocean in the back of his throat and felt someone else's heartbeat inside it.
Elisa's heartbeat.
His cousin. His blood. His thief.
For one terrible second he was eight again, watching his mother press the trident into his small hands and whisper, "One day this will be yours, little prince. Guard it with your life."
He had guarded it with his life. And Elisa had stolen it with hers.
His voice came out small, wounded, lethal.
"You took the only thing that was ever supposed to love me back."
Cold cobalt fire exploded from his crest, freezing his tears before they could fall.
"I was going to bring you home alive," he told the dark, voice shaking with centuries of lonely pride. "Now I'm going to bring you home in a box small enough to bury under my childhood bed."
Molten gold erupted beneath him. Gravity crushed him to his knees.
The Golden Hand leader stepped out, immaculate, merciless.
"Roy Valdis ar Spade. Kneel."
Roy's bones cracked against steel, and the sound was exactly like a child's promise breaking.
The man's smile was winter itself.
"Your princess sang with your family's weapon. Bring me the girl. Bring me the boy whose heartbeat the trident now obeys. Alive or in pieces."
The light vanished.
Roy stayed on his knees long after, forehead pressed to the broken trident, whispering over and over.
"I just wanted it to be mine."
Dawn's First Light The Celestial Palace – Gates to the Human Realm
Gluf's hand trembled above the portal, white fire flickering like a father trying not to cry in front of his soldiers.
Aurora knelt, half her soul sealed away, guilt burning hotter than the void core at her feet. Rika clung to a pillar, each sob tearing another piece of her heart out through her mouth.
Then the ocean screamed.
Roy stepped through dripping brine and childhood nightmares. Salt hissed into frost on sacred marble. His eyes, once bright with lonely little-boy dreams, now cold as drowned moons, fixed on Gluf.
"I came to tell you I'm going to kill your daughter," he said, voice soft, almost apologetic. "She stole the only thing that was ever meant for me. I have to take something back."
Gluf's aura detonated, white fire born from every sleepless night he'd spent imagining Elisa hurt. Roy answered with a tidal wave of centuries of being second-best.
The collision cracked the palace itself weeping.
Gluf's roar broke in the middle, raw paternal terror spilling out.
"She's my little girl, you bastard! I sang her to sleep! I counted her breaths when she had fever! You will not touch her!"
Roy's laugh cracked like thin ice over deep water.
"She sang my trident awake while I was on my knees. I think the sea chose wrong."
Rika collapsed, whispering Elisa's baby nickname between sobs.
Aurora threw herself in front of her queen, half-powered aura flaring black and desperate, blood pouring from her eyes.
"I failed her once," she choked. "I will burn to nothing before I let you reach her."
Roy looked at the portal, at the fragile world holding the girl who had taken everything from him.
"I'm sorry it has to be this way," he whispered, and for one heartbeat he sounded like the child who just wanted his mother's promise kept.
Then he stepped through.
The rift sealed with the sound of a father's heart breaking in real time.
Gluf fell to his knees, white fire dying to embers, hands reaching for a daughter he couldn't touch.
"Her father still breathes," he said, voice small, shaking, unbreakable. "And as long as I do, no one in any realm will take my little girl from me."
He looked at Aurora, tears finally falling, furious and tender and ancient.
"Go. Bring her home. I'm not ready to stop being her dad. Not today. Not ever."
Human Realm – Steve's "Mansion" Late morning, sunlight doing its best through the grimy windows
Elisa's eyes fluttered open. The ceiling above her was cracked plaster and a suspicious brown stain shaped like Australia.
She rasped, "…Where am I?"
Steve, sprawled in a lawn chair that definitely lived indoors, grinned like a gremlin.
"Welcome to Château de Steve, Your Highness. Five-star accommodation: one working toilet (sometimes), complimentary dust bunnies, and a fridge that only bites half the time."
The door creaked. Jack stepped in, hair a mess, eyes red from no sleep and too much worry. He froze when he saw her awake.
"Elisa?"
Their eyes met.
The room went quiet.
Elisa felt sunlight after a lifetime of winter bloom in her chest. Jack felt his heart doing cartwheels it had no right to do.
Steve cupped his hands like a megaphone.
"Attention, Hornyville! Romeo and Juliet from separate dimensions are having a moment. Please keep your arms and legs inside the sexual tension."
Jack flipped him off without looking. Elisa's lips twitched into the shyest smile the God Realm had ever seen.
Steve muttered, "Great. Now I'm the third wheel in my own house. Somebody get me popcorn."
Jack knelt beside the bed.
"Steve… this is Elisa. The one I kept sneaking off to see. The night you swore I'd been catfished by a silver-haired scam bot… yeah, that's her."
Steve's jaw dropped.
"Discount Legolas is actual royalty? Your Majesty, I apologise for every forehead joke. You were very mysterious and very blurry."
Elisa laughed, weak but real.
Jack brushed hair from her cheek.
"How did you get here?"
Her smile died.
"My cousin Roy tried to murder me through a portal. I felt you, Jack. Your heartbeat was the only light I could find. So I stole his trident, broke it, and fell to you instead."
Steve whistled.
"Welcome to the cul-de-sac of chaos, princess. Population: three idiots, one goddess, and one very salty cousin booking a tidal wave. Wi-Fi's trash, but the drama is five stars."
Jack didn't hear a word. He just looked at her like she was the only real thing left in any realm.
"You chose me," he whispered.
Elisa's fingers curled around his.
Steve fake-gagged.
"I'm moving out. This place is too cute to live in."