The storm blew itself out by morning, leaving behind a sea of bruised purples and a sky scrubbed clean. Hadrian's stomach settled, though a profound weariness remained. True to Seraphina's prediction, focusing on a task helped. Kaelen assigned him the midnight-to-four watch on the aft deck, a solitary duty involving little more than logging instrument readings and watching for unlikely hazards in the empty seascape.
It was during this silent vigil on their fourth night at sea that he found her. He was checking the salinity sensor when he saw a silhouette against the star-dusted horizon, leaning on the rail near the ship's stern. He knew her shape, the set of her shoulders, even in the dark.
He approached quietly, not wanting to startle her. She was still, gazing at the bioluminescent wake churning behind the ship, a trail of cold, green fire.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asked, his voice low.
She didn't turn. "The data from the first preliminary trawl is… grim. Worse than the models predicted. My mind won't quiet."
He came to stand beside her, not too close, copying her posture. The only sounds were the ship's engine and the shush of water. The romantic void was here, too, but it felt different under this infinite sky. It felt shared, rather than separating.
"Tell me," he said. "Not as a prince or a liaison. Tell me what the data says."
She was silent for so long he thought she would ignore him. Then, she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper, as if confessing to the sea itself.
"It says we are too late. It says the necrosis isn't a disease we can cure. It's a systemic failure. The water is too warm, too acidic. The symbionts are leaving, and when they go, the coral doesn't just bleach… it starves. It's a slow, hungry death. And we are sailing toward a graveyard."
The despair in her words was absolute. This was the unspeakable truth she carried, the weight Rian had shared. Hadrian didn't offer a solution. He had none. Instead, he asked the question Rian might have asked.
"What does it feel like? To know that?"
She let out a shuddering breath. "It feels like being a doctor on a battlefield where everyone is already dead. You move among the bodies, taking notes on the patterns of their wounds, and you know nothing you do will bring them back. And the people at home… they keep asking for a miracle. They want me to build a seawall against the apocalypse."
He nodded, watching the phosphorescence. "I used to think my purpose was to build things that lasted. Monuments. Now, I wonder if I was just building beautiful tombs."
This time, she turned her head to look at him. The starlight caught the wet track of a tear on her cheek she hadn't bothered to wipe away. "Why are you here, Hadrian? Truly. Not the council's reasons."
He met her gaze. "Because I saw you drowning. And I realized I'd been so busy designing the perfect shore, I'd forgotten to teach you how to swim. Or to swim out to you." He paused. "And because I am tired of the silence."
"There's plenty of silence out here," she said, gesturing to the encompassing dark.
"This silence is different. This one we're inside together."
She looked back at the water. A faint, sad smile touched her lips. "Rian would have given me a hopeful quote about resilience. About life finding a way."
"I'm not Rian," Hadrian said, the name hanging between them like a third presence on the deck. "I can't offer hopeful quotes. I can only offer… presence. In the graveyard. To take notes with you."
Another silence, but it was not empty. It was filled with the acknowledgment of their shared, hopeless task and the fragile, new truth of his being there.
"It's cold," she said finally, rubbing her arms. "I should go below."
"I have two more hours on watch," he said.
She nodded and turned to go. Then she stopped. "Hadrian?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you," she said, her voice thick. "For not trying to build a seawall just now."
She disappeared into the ship's interior, leaving him alone with the stars and the glowing wake. He felt a strange, melancholic peace. He had not fixed anything. He had not closed the void. But for the first time, standing in the middle of it with her, he hadn't felt entirely alone. The connection wasn't a bridge yet. It was just two people, acknowledging the same devastating view from the same deck rail, in the middle of a sleeping ship, in the middle of a dying sea. It was a beginning, wrought from an ending.