Long after everyone else drifted to sleep, I lay there, eyes wide open, staring at the night sky. It had been decades since I had last slept so far beyond the Pales, and even back then, I was a little Teirness housed in the most luxurious places the world had to offer.
Now? Now, I was alone beneath the sky. I looked up at the stars and had never felt so small, so exposed. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the bloodied faces of Caduan’s kin.
By the time I heard rustling in the forest, I was grateful for the distraction. My eyes snapped open. Slowly, I rose. The fire was low. Siobhan was asleep, even at rest looking ready to leap into action, lying on her side with her fingers close to the blades that lay beneath her bedding. Ashraia was sprawled out like a sleeping bear, limbs escaping his bedroll at all directions, snoring loudly. And Ishqa was completely still, like the stone carving on a crypt, his hands laid gracefully over the hilt of his sword.
And then, there was an empty bedroll.
I followed the sounds off into the woods. I found Caduan in a clearing. A ball of fire lingered in the center of the clearing, hovering and self-contained — clearly magic, though it occurred to me that I’d never asked if Caduan was a magic speaker. His back was to me. It took me a moment to realize that he held his sword.
I froze. My hand went to the hilt of my own weapon.
“You don’t need to worry.” His voice was barely above a whisper. He peered at me over his shoulder, offering me a half smile. “I have no ill intentions.”
“What are you doing?” My hand was still at my belt. Caduan’s eyes slid down my body, landing there.
“It’s embarrassing, honestly.”
My gaze fell to the ground. Years of training made recognizing patterns in the underbrush second nature, and it took seconds to recognize the pattern of the footsteps in the dirt. The same steps, running back and forth.
Exercises.
“You’re practicing,” I said, letting my hand fall from my sword. I joined him in the clearing. The weapon he held was a Stoneheld sword, the artisan craftsmanship matching the beauty of his crown. It was impossible not to admire it — elegant and delicate, yet clearly lethal, copper etchings on the hilt and beautiful ancient Stoneheld writing carved into the steel of the blade.
He glanced down at it. “For a long time, I saw swordsmanship as nothing but sport, and a largely useless one at that. But given present circumstances…”
I winced. He did not need to say more. I glanced to the fire hovering above the ground.
“You are a magic speaker.”
“Yes.”
My brow furrowed, thinking back to the conversation earlier that night. “But you do not pray.”
“Not typically.”
“So who gives you the magic if not the gods?”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Are you a magic speaker?” he asked.
I patted the hilt of the sword at my hip. “Magic is for the patient. Steel is for the rash.”
It was not an answer. But I didn’t want to give him one, especially not when mine was so complicated. And especially not when he was looking at me like he saw right through me.
I looked to the ground, following the markings of his footsteps. “Show me your drills.”
He hesitated. I cocked an eyebrow at him in a silent challenge, and moments later, he was showing me the exercises. To my surprise, he certainly knew how to wield the weapon — his movements were graceful and technically impeccable. It was the sort of thing that surely had served him well in a marble training room, where a sword was meant to be a dance partner rather than a weapon.
Pretty. Impractical.
When he finished, he turned back to me. “It’s what I know,” he said. “But useless against them.”
Did he know from experience? Did he try to fight them and fail? I thought of his wounds — worse than any of the others. Not the wounds of someone who had been fleeing.
“Do it again,” I said, and he obeyed. But this time, he made it three steps in before I slid in front of him, my blades raised, countering one of his strikes and forcing him to adjust. He stumbled and I took that opening, too — low, beneath the elegant strike of his rapier. But he recovered quickly. Another strike I had to dodge, and then one I blocked, our blades locked between us.
“You can’t practice alone,” I said. “You need to learn how to make the movements effective, not elegant.”
Caduan’s eyes searched my face. I had to resist the urge to look away. Mathira, it was uncomfortable to be observed so closely. Even if there was, too, an odd excitement in it.
“If only what I had learned in the House of Stone had been more practical,” he said. “Perhaps things would have been different. And perhaps…”
The gaze that had just been so sharp it carved me apart now drifted far away, and I felt a pang of pity for him.
“There is no use in dreaming of realities that do not exist,” I said — echoing my father’s words before I even realized it. “Not unless we follow such dreams with action.”
He blinked. When his gaze came back to me, there was something in it that was so unfamiliar and yet oddly pleasant. No one wore that expression when they looked at me.
“Why are you not the Teirness?” he asked, quietly.
The tension broke. I pulled away, shoving my blades back into their sheaths.
“Because my sister is.”
“I know the order of succession of the House of Obsidian. The power passes from mother to eldest daughter—”
“My mother is not well.”
“Then what of—”
I’d had enough. I whirled around. One breath, and I’d disarmed him, his rapier in my hand. I pressed him to the leaf-covered ground, his own blade at his throat. Our panting
