“Even the ones with cannibalistic chickens?” Levi asked.
“The point is, you two need to get along,” Sophie said, sounding as exasperated as any teenager could possibly be. “If you want to make fun of Staria, at least you’re doing it together.”
“Truly, a worthwhile bonding experience,” Iason said.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Chickens have tiny brains,” she said. “It’s not their fault.”
“So you’re insulting our intelligence.” Levihmmed. “Someone’s asking to be thrown in the ocean again.”
“Really? Can you do it farther this time?”
“No,” Iason said, before Levi could pick her up. “She’s right. We weren’t thinking, back there. If I’m to examine this connection we seem to have, I need to do it safely. That means we need something in place to cut off my ability to siphon your power. Or a spell to put the power into, like the tree.”
“Like when a ship takes on water, and you need to pump it out with the bellows,” Sophie said. Iason frowned at her. “It’s a sailing thing. My father was a captain. If you didn’t pump the bellows every day, the ship would sink.”
“Okay, yes.” Iason said, mind racing. “I need to let out enough magic to prevent it from becoming too much, while keeping enough to work with the connection. If we were in a garden, perhaps, and I placed… fifteen is a lucky number in Mislia… if I put fifteen seeds in a circle around us and fed the excess magic into making them grow, you could cut me off from your power when the tenth flower blooms, and the rest could absorb whatever was already…”
“This feels like a math problem in disguise,” Sophie said, as they started to walk, Iason continuing to mutter to himself.
“I’ve never had to deal with any of that,” Levi said. “Math. Numbers. No need.”
“Really? You don’t have any openings for a junior god anywhere, do you?”
Iason let their voices drift into the background as he thought through the possibilities, creating and discarding a dozen plans. It would help, he knew, if he had even a rudimentary education in magic, but despite the memories slowly unfolding from the chaos of the earlier exchange of power, he was nowhere near unlocking the empty patches in his mind. If he’d had magic, his mother would have known. So why didn’t she do anything to prepare him to use it?
“And this is a stingray,” he heard Levi say. It was enough to shake Iason out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see Levi up to his waist in the water, showing Sophie how to pet a ray.
“Don’t do that,” Iason snapped.
Levi gave him a bored look. “It won’t hurt her, and she won’t hurt it, as long as she’s gentle. We petted a lemon shark while you were away.”
“Youwhat?”
“It wasn’t as soft as I thought it would be,” Sophie said, grinning as the ray swam off into the surf. “Did you figure out the magic math problem?”
“Not quite.” Iason waded into the water after them. “We’ll need more practice.”
“Which means more time stuck like this,” Levi said.
“Oh no.” Sophie rolled her eyes. “Stuck being super tall. My heart bleeds for you.”
Considering how irate Levi had been before, Iason tensed, expecting a darker turn of mood. But Levi shrugged and patted her head like shewas another curious fish in the ocean. “You’ll get bigger.”
“So people have been telling me,” Sophie said, arms crossed. She looked out into a low, oncoming wave and raised her brows. “What are you summoning this time?”
“Summoning?” Levi frowned. “I’m not summoning anything.”
Sophie pointed, and Iason tensed as an iridescent fin sliced through the water. The fin was shaped like a billowing fan, so thin it could be a butterfly’s wing, and Iason grabbed Sophie as a slender, snakelike creature flung itself out of the water, jaws open to strike.
It landed with a soft thump on the sand ten feet from them, whistling and flopping uselessly as its rainbow fins fluttered in the air.
“Whatisthat?” Sophie asked.
Levi didn’t even blink. “Water dragon. They eat foam—and they’re about as clever as foam. You’d be amazed how many beach themselves while trying to bite clouds.”
“Oh, that’s awful!” Sophie ran to the ridiculous creature, which had seemingly decided the best course of action was to lie pathetically on its side and wheeze like a broken kettle. She dumped a handful of foam and seawater over it, and it nearly choked on the foam, mouth open like a baby bird’s.
“Just chuck him back in,” Levi said. “He’ll probably beach himself again in a minute, though.”
