her with one word.
“Go.”
Nico snarled at Adela one last time and vanished into the dark. If Adela was surprised by this, her face didn’t show it.
“Quite the little monster you’ve got there, Thereson,” she said. “Are you sure it was wise to send her away?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m the prince of Osera. It’s my duty to finish you myself.”
“Duty? You?” Adela laughed with delight. “The murderer prince who ran away?” She paused. “Actually, you were the only variable. When Theresa gambled the treasury to bring you home, we never thought you’d actually come home. But I’m glad you did, husband. Having the marriage bed for an alibi gave me more freedom to move than I could have hoped for, and your presence made my mother’s job easier. The queen gets herself very excited when you’re around. Such exertion makes it so much easier to explain her worsening fits.”
Josef’s eyes widened. “My mother’s not sick at all, is she?” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “You’ve been poisoning her.”
Adela shrugged. “Hard to say, at this point. After close to ten years of drinking my mother’s tea, Theresa’s condition has become quite real. I doubt she’ll last out the week, especially once she hears that her son, her last, ridiculous hope, finally gave in to his violent nature and had to be put down like a mad dog.”
“If that’s how you see this playing out, you haven’t been paying attention,” Josef said, raising the Heart as he stepped into position. “I may not be much of a prince, but I am the best and, unless you surrender now, the last swordsman you will ever meet.”
“We’ll see about that,” Adela said, stepping into first position.
Josef looked her over. His instincts during the proving had been right. The stance Adela took now had none of the stiffness from before, and her fingers gripped her sword with a master’s assurance. But even so, even if she somehow was a master duelist, there was no way she could hope to beat the Heart of War with an infantry short sword.
He glanced down at the Heart. It was a pity to use it for a fight like this, but he didn’t have the luxury of a handicap. He needed to end this quickly and warn his mother. If he moved fast enough, he might even be able to save her. Josef gripped the Heart with both hands, sliding his feet forward across the stone. Finish it fast, he thought. Finish it now.
The Heart hummed in agreement, and they moved as one, bearing down on Adela like an iron wave. The princess’s eyes widened at his speed, but she didn’t try to dodge or spin away as she had in the Proving. Instead, she lifted her short, stocky blade and braced for the Heart’s impact. The short sword looked so pathetic before the Heart’s monstrous weight, Josef almost laughed. But Adela didn’t break her guard, even as the Heart struck her sword with the force of a mountain.
The two blades met with a scream of metal, and Josef watched in satisfaction as the short sword crumpled. He could feel the impact moving through her blade like the Heart was an extension of his own arm, but as he stepped in for the follow-through that would shatter Adela’s ribs, he realized something was wrong.
The short sword was still breaking. The metal was still folding in on itself, still crumpling like ash as it absorbed the Heart’s strike. Josef’s eyes widened. He could feel the blow spoiling even as he carried it, feel himself slowing as Adela slid backward, letting her sword break and break and break, drinking in the blow. Before the force could fade completely, Josef abandoned the strike. He swung the Heart back and turned midstep, using the last of his spoiled momentum to step out of her range, coming to a stop a few feet away with the Heart between him and Adela as he tried to figure out what had just happened.
Adela straightened with a smile and raised her sword, holding up the crumpled blade for Josef to see. Josef didn’t see how there had been enough metal in the sword to crumple as much as it had, let alone enough to absorb the enormous power of the Heart. He was still trying to make sense of it when Adela’s sword began to change. The etched words on the blade flashed with blinding light, and the crumpled blade began to straighten. The metal moved like a living thing as it pushed out of the stocky, confined shape of the short sword, growing longer, sharper, and slightly curved. The whole process took no more than a handful of seconds, and then Adela was holding a sword that looked nothing like the one she’d held a moment ago. The new blade glowed with a light of its own. It was delicate and straight now, without a single mark from the crumpled mess it had been moments before. Even the handle had changed, pushing out of the squat single hilt to a two-handed hold with a thick guard chased all around with stylized waves that seemed to dance across the glowing steel.
Josef kept his face neutral, refusing to let her see his surprise. “An awakened blade,” he said. “Are you a wizard as well as a traitor and a spy?”
“I could scarcely be a sleeper if I was a wizard,” Adela answered, swinging her newly changed sword in a whistling arc. “Wizards attract attention. To serve the Empress, we must be invisible. But this blade is not the crude, half-alert spirit you people call ‘awakened.’ Like me, it is a servant of the Empress.” She held the sword out for him. “What you see before you is one of the Hundred Conquerors, a treasure of the Empire given only to those who serve behind enemy lines.”
“Really?” Josef played along. “What’s it made of that it crumples like trash when struck? Tin?”
“Steel,” Adela said. “A mile of steel compressed into a blade by the Empress’s own hand.”
This time, Josef couldn’t hide his surprise. “A mile of steel?” he cried. “How can a mile of steel become a blade?”
“All things bow before the Empress,” Adela said. “Metal is no different. It followed her command as everything does, becoming her soldier, just as I am. The Hundred Conquerors have served thousands of soldiers in countless battles, passing from sleeper to sleeper as the Empress conquers the world. Each sword has been trained over hundreds of years to follow pressure commands so that even the spirit deaf can use it to its full potential. This blade cannot be defeated, it cannot be escaped, and, as you just saw, it cannot be broken.” Her eyes flashed with a cruel light. “Not even by the Heart of War.”
Josef’s mouth twitched. After all her revelations, he shouldn’t be surprised she knew his sword. But… “If you think a mile of steel will be enough to save you from the Heart, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Adela sneered, but whatever she meant to say, she never got the chance. Josef was already flying toward her. This time, he kept both hands on the Heart’s hilt, letting the blade guide him. He could feel the Heart’s spirit moving through him, filling him until he could see the mountain behind his eyes, the great peak cutting the clouds, the deep roots holding up the world. An awakened blade was nothing. A mile of steel was nothing. The Heart of War moved with a mountain’s rage, and Josef gave himself to it, letting its strength take him over with a furious cry.
Again, Adela raised her blade to parry, but her smug look faded as the blades collided. As before, her glowing sword crumpled, the metal folding over on itself so fast it sparked, but this time, it wasn’t enough. Josef’s cry became a roar as the Heart’s power thundered through him, forcing Adela and her collapsing sword backward. They crashed together into the wall of the watchtower with an explosion that carried them through the stone and out into the air. As the blow finally left him, so did the overwhelming will of the Heart, and Josef realized he was falling. In front of him, almost lost in the enormous cloud of dust and broken stone, Adela was falling as well, her face a mask of shock and horror as the last of the Heart’s force ran through her crumpled blade to finally hit her body. As he felt the strike connect at last, Josef got one final glimpse of her face screwing up in pain before the blow sent her flying out of the dust cloud like an arrow.
Josef was still trying to see where she’d gone when he crashed into something hard and brittle. He grunted as he hit and rolled on instinct. The landing hurt far less than it should have. The echo of the Heart’s power was still crashing through him, drowning out every other sensation. He’d joined with his sword before, but never like that. The black blade had moved not with him, but through him. Its power was his power, its will, his will, and as it began to drain away, Josef felt emptier than ever. But as he lay still and fought to steady himself, the Heart’s hilt pressed against his hands, warning him that the fight was not over.
Like a man waking from a deep sleep, Josef shot up and the world returned. He was in a crater on the roof of the palace’s western wing. The watchtower, what was left of it, loomed above him. Its entire north face was gone, the stone sundered by the force of the Heart’s blow. There were great holes in the tile roofs of the stylish buildings around the castle where the blown-out chunks of the broken tower had landed, but Josef’s eyes skipped over them, looking for his target.
Adela lay in the ruins of what had been the top floor of the most prestigious bank in Osera, her body cradled
