Chapter 45: Sailor Song.

“Ezra?” Guy repeated, tilting his head slightly, as if the name itself amused him.

“Yes. Ezra,” Helios said again, voice firmer now. “Your captain. Where is he?”

Ezra did not leave posts unattended. He did not disappear without a word.

If he had stepped away, someone would have already informed him.

“Oh.”

That was all Guy said.

’Oh?’ Helios thought, a sharp crease forming between his brows. ’That’s it?’

His gaze slid past Guy, toward the knights standing behind him.

They were smiling.

Every single one of them.

Not the easy kind of smiles soldiers shared after a clean drill. These were slow, stretched, wrong. The kind that did not reach the eyes.

A chill crept up Helios’s spine.

’This is bad,’ he thought.

His fingers twitched at his side as he assessed the distance, the numbers, the way Guy was slowly stepping backward, retreating toward the others without ever turning his back. Still smiling. Still watching him.

“Guy Man,” Helios said, narrowing his eyes. “Did you do something to Ezra?”

He hoped the question was absurd.

He needed it to be.

Ezra was more than capable. That was the reason Helios had trusted him here. Ezra had commanded larger groups before. Far larger.

And yet.

’Five years,’ Helios thought grimly. ’Five years away from this.’

Guy blinked, then laughed softly, returning to his place at the front of the formation. “Do something?” he echoed. “No, Your Highness. We would never.”

As he spoke, Gareth shifted.

Then Rowan.

Then another knight.

They moved side to side, slow and deliberate, as if in rhythm.

Helios’s stomach tightened.

No.

It was not just a few of them.

All of the knights were swaying.

Back and forth.

In perfect, unnerving unison.

For a moment, Helios genuinely did not understand what he was seeing.

His first thought was the simplest one.

’Are they drunk?’

The movement was loose, unsteady at first glance. But the longer he watched, the more wrong it felt. The swaying had rhythm. A pattern. Not the careless stagger of exhaustion or injury, but something measured, almost practiced.

As if it had been rehearsed.

Another thought slid in, colder and far more unsettling.

’Or are they being controlled?’

They moved together. Not accidentally. Not loosely. Each shift matched the next, bodies aligning with unnatural precision.

It looked deliberate, as though some unseen force guided them from beneath the skin, nudging muscle and bone into place.

Then someone started singing.

“We docked at dusk with salt in our hair,

Boots on the floor and rum in the air,

Laughing loud, pockets thin,

Till she walked in and the noise fell dead.”

Rowan’s voice rose first, rough and unpolished. Reth followed, then Varric, their voices weaving together with unsettling ease.

The tune struck Helios immediately.

He knew this song.

“Hair like the tide, eyes like wine,

Smile so sweet it felt like a sin,

Every man swore she looked at him,

Every man thought, She’ll be mine.”

An old sailor’s song.

The kind sung in dockside taverns long after midnight, when the ale ran cheap and judgment ran thin.

Helios remembered older knights humming it under their breath when he and Ezra were younger, laughter low and knowing, as if it were nothing more than harmless tradition.

But the lyrics were never harmless.

Sailors finding a woman in a bar.

A woman impossibly beautiful.

A Siren dressed in flesh and smile.

Men fighting for her attention. Breaking for her gaze. Drowning gladly if it meant she would look their way one last time.

’This song,’ Helios thought, unease tightening in his chest. ’Why this one?’

As the singing continued, the swaying shifted.

It became dancing.

Not graceful. Not skilled. Just wrong. Movements snapped too sharply, steps landed half a beat off, as if the bodies remembered something the minds did not. Arms lifted. Feet turned. The pattern unfolded without hesitation.

Every knight knew the dance.

That was the most horrifying part.

Helios had no memory of it ever being taught to the younger generation of knights.

And yet, here they were, moving as one.

Their faces twisted as they moved. Smiles stretched wide across their mouths, teeth bared, while their eyes told a different story.

Pain. Strain.

Something trapped beneath the surface, pressing outward with nowhere to go.

’What in Aurethys…?’ Helios thought, a sharp knot of helpless frustration tightening in his chest.

“Oh sing for the girl by the candlelight,

Sing for the smile that steals your sight,

Hands on the table, coins on the floor,

We’d drown ourselves just to hear her roar.

Drink for the Siren, dark and fair,”

Guy stepped forward.

The others parted without question, opening space for him as if the movement had been agreed upon long ago.

A loose circle formed around him as he took the center. His body swayed with exaggerated confidence, hips rolling in time with the song. His grin was wide, reverent, almost devotional.

’Is Guy Man meant to be the Siren?’ Helios thought, disbelief mixing with unease.

“She hums, we follow, we don’t care,

One kiss promised, one breath gone,

Sing it again till the night is long.”

As the verse carried on, the knights pointed toward Guy as they danced. Arms extended. Fingers trembled, not with fear, but with something disturbingly close to adoration.

As if they were offering him up.

Guy tilted his head back, eyes half-lidded, letting the song wash over him. His movements grew more pronounced, more deliberate, every motion inviting attention.

He was not mocking them.

He was reveling in it.

A cold weight settled deep in Helios’s stomach.

“This is unsettling,” he said quietly, uncertain whether the words were meant for himself or for the knights who continued their performance without pause.

“Isn’t it funny, though?”

Helios did not flinch.

He knew that voice far too well.

He turned.

Ezra stood a short distance away, pale-blonde hair slightly disheveled, pink eyes bright in a way that immediately set Helios on edge.

His face was flushed, as if he had been laughing hard enough to leave him breathless. Tears clung to his lashes, threatening to spill.

’Ezra…?’ Helios thought, his unease sharpening into something colder.

“Ezra,” he said aloud.

Ezra smiled, wide and unguarded, and very familiar to Helios.

“Do you like the show, Your Highness?”

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