by Natalie Mae
Hook, line, sinker. Kasta’s shoulders drop, and he searches my eyes with something like disbelief, maybe relieved that he’s won, that he’s finally turned me to him. It’s everything I have to hold his gaze. To convince him that I’ve yielded and am thinking only of our cooperative future.
He pushes a hand over his hair. “Fine.”
He doesn’t even bother to change, just closes the door and joins my side. At which point I’m certain I’ve now gone way past the line. Anyone who can add lured a boy who just lost his father out to cut him during a fake sword practice to the list of things they’ve done is not a hero, and then I have to tell my brain to shut up, because I need to focus. Boy who just lost his father or not, he’s still dangerous. And I still have to stop him.
The training arena waits on the northern side of the palace, a wide, sand-filled stretch settled at the corner of the eastern wall. As we step onto the flagstone path, stone sheds come into view, all freshly built and filled with gleaming weapons that look as new and out of place as scabs. An iron fence circles the arena in curled gods’ symbols, and I imagine on a regular day soldiers would pack the space, but with the coronation and the Mestrah to grieve, it’s empty.
Kasta approaches the nearest shed and pulls two blades from the rack. The sun flashes from their curved, jagged edges, and unlike most weapons that come alive with flame or ice when touched, these stay unchanged. I take the one he offers me—and nearly drop it.
“Apos.” I heft the tip up. “Are they all this heavy?”
Kasta, who jerked back to avoid me slicing his face in half, gives me a look. “If they’re not imbued with magic, yes. And watch where you’re swinging that.”
“Sorry.” I wrestle back a stressed smile. I didn’t mean to do that, but I think it’s set the stage nicely for what’s to come.
Kasta moves for the arena. “If we were doing this the right way, I would start you off on targets and wooden swords for at least a week. But seeing as we have a few hours, I’m going to try something else.”
I follow him through the arena gate. Kasta points with the sword where he wants me to stand, and I step to it, awkwardly turning the hilt in my hands.
“Keep your grip firm but not clenched.” He shows me with his own hands. “If you hold too tight, you’ll be stiff when a blow lands, and it could strain your wrist. Tighten when you’re attacking, and relax again when you pull back. You should be constantly shifting your grip.”
“That doesn’t sound complicated at all,” I mutter, frowning at my hands. I turn the hilt until it feels comfortable and hold the sword out. “Is this right?”
He shrugs. “Let’s see.”
He twists and slams his blade against mine, sending mine flipping over my head and into the sand. My hands sting from the vibration. I blink, incensed.
Kasta smirks. “No. That wasn’t good at all.”
“That was foul.” I turn angrily for the blade. “This is the first time I’ve held a sword. You have to tell me what you’re doing.”
“Your attackers won’t. You should expect them to fight dirty.”
“But you’re my teacher. Don’t I at least get to learn some basics before you humiliate me?”
I swear I hear distant snickering, and my gut twists when I notice the many windows that surround the space . . . and the people steadily filling them. No one is brave enough to step outside and openly watch, but I can only imagine how fast news of us sparring will spread. At least I’ll have plenty of witnesses should this start going poorly.
Including Jet, who I can only pray will forgive me later.
I bite my lip and yank the sword free.
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” Kasta says. “If you want to be pampered, you’ll have to appeal to Jet.”
Right. Or rather, he’s trying to show all his soldiers why they should turn to him when it comes to the war. I huff and raise the blade. Kasta waits, sword down, long enough that I wonder if he’s expecting me to attack—until he darts forward. I clench the hilt. The blow sings off the blade but I hold on to it, and just as I’m exclaiming that I’ve done it, his second strike comes for my neck.
And stops centimeters away, the wind from it feathering my hair.
My breath catches. Kasta’s face is unreadable, neither angry nor smug, and slowly, he lowers the sword.
“Assume they’ll strike again.” He steps back. “Assume the first attack is meant to open you up for another. Keep your blade in my way and widen your stance.”
I look down at my hands, already aching from holding the weapon. Kasta moves to show me how to stand, nods when I mimic him, then turns his grip so I can see how his hands are positioned. Which he would not do at all if this were truly about humiliation.
I raise the sword—and lower it.
“You’re taking this seriously,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re actually trying to help me.”
He straightens. “Shouldn’t I?”
“No,” I say, the frustration of these weeks boiling to the surface. “You hate me. I’ve been in your way since the beginning. I stopped you from being crowned weeks ago, and from ever ruling on your own, ever. You think I tried to kill you. You disagree with my approach to pretty much everything . . . you should be giving me bad tips. Something that will get me hurt, so you come out as the savior again.”
Kasta lowers the blade. “That’s what you think of me?”
“What else am I supposed to think? The last time I hoped for you, you chose magic instead. So yes, that’s what I think.” Which is already more than I wanted to say. I should have just said yes. I should not be mentioning hope, like I had nearly been there again before yesterday.
He sighs. “You think I’d do it again.”
“Obviously. What’s that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .”
“I told you, I’m done with that.” His blue eyes flash, and the blade glints. “I was desperate then . . . I thought you’d do worse to me. But now I understand what the gods meant me to see. I want to start over. We can help each other.”
“Stop it!” I lift my blade and start for him. This is not the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but I can’t waste any more time. “Quit messing with my head. I know what you’ll do the next time you feel threatened. I can prove you wrong right now.”
He eyes the sword but doesn’t move. “You don’t even know what you’re doing.”
I jab forward, and he easily deflects. No, I have no idea what I’m doing, but if I strike at him enough, I should be able to hit him once.
“You’re leaning too far,” he says, stepping out of reach. “Don’t stab forward. That’s your natural instinct, but it leaves you open. Slice at me instead.”
I seethe. “Stop. Helping. Me!”
I whirl and slice, and again he parries, deflecting to the side. I strike for his leg, and he shoves the attack up, eyeing my ribs as if he might kick me. He doesn’t. He shoves back on our crossed hilts, and I stumble to catch my balance.
“Too predictable,” he says, twirling the blade. “Trick me. Do something unexpected.”
In answer, I charge for him—and at the last second, when he twists his blade to deflect mine, I jerk sideways and circle the sword down. The blade slices the bottom of his forearm. Kasta swears, and my heart leaps at the line of crimson—
Kasta slams into me, hooks his arm around mine, and yanks the hilt out of my grip. The swords go flying to the side. I grunt as we fall, and in a blink Kasta rolls, straddling my torso, pinning my wrists against the sand.
For a moment we stare at each other, chests heaving, his face shadowed and that strange, quiet emptiness sinking into my veins.
“Zahru,” he growls, flexing his grip. “Why does it seem like you’re more interested in hurting me than in the actual lesson?”
I laugh and squirm; he’s far, far too close. “I�
�m not. I’m just . . . angry.”
That much he should understand. The blood from his forearm slides earthward, bright red against his sand-dusted skin. In a moment it will drip onto my sleeve, and I go still.
Something changes in Kasta, too. His grip softens, but he’s not looking at the blood.
He’s looking at me, and the way I am beneath him.
“You believed in me, once,” he says softly. “Have I not done everything you asked?”
I shift beneath him. The longer he holds my wrists, the more I drop into that quiet, and where before it felt like shallow water, now it’s starting to feel like the deep.
“You have,” I acknowledge.
“What else can I do to convince you? How much more can I yield? I can be everything you wished I could be.” His eyes are bright; agonized. “I know what I did. I know I can’t undo it. But I swear I will do everything in my power to make it up to you anyway.”
My blood lurches. “Kasta—”
“You were angry, in the desert.” He swallows. “When I couldn’t answer whether I’d spare you. Because even though I wanted to, I didn’t want to lie. Which is how you know I’m telling the truth when I say I will never do anything like that again.”
His blood trickles onto my sleeve. My heart pulls between anguish and disbelief, splintered between the stubborn conviction that he could do again what he’s done once . . . and the true pain on his face. The heaviness in his words. The teacherous part of me I’ve tried so desperately to bury that wants to believe, even after everything—or maybe especially because of it—that he means what he says, that I am worth the change.
“Rule with me,” he says, and my stomach drops. “Fight beside me, and we will be unstoppable. I will do everything you ask. Let’s start over, and become what we’re made for.”
I close my eyes, fighting the drug-like emptiness in my bones. The traitorous ache in my chest. How aware I am of everywhere we touch, that even now feels like the edges of lightning. This is what I wanted him to tell me in the Crossing before everything went so wrong. This is what he’s telling me is now possible, if I want it to be.
Maia, I think. Remember Maia.
“You won’t harm me,” I say, flexing my hands. “What about everyone else?”
“I can’t promise it for our enemies. Not if Orkena is to survive. But for you, and everyone you care about . . .” He lets go of my wrists. “Never again.”
My throat pinches. Doubt is creeping in again, slick as rain. Maybe he actually did say the name of the antidote aloud and I’m just not remembering right. Maybe the quiet bird Jade thought she saw was just that, a bird that wasn’t thinking, and I’d freaked Jade out telling her to watch for Shifters. Maybe Kasta is that much stronger when he fights now, because he’s no longer afraid.
Maybe I’ve only seen what I wanted to because I’m so terrified of being wrong again.
He’s been calm these past weeks. Thoughtful. He’s focused on Orkena, and even with his Influence not working as he wants it to, he’s deferred to what would work instead. To me.
All of this, for me.
He starts to rise, but I catch his wrist. I have to know. It’s risky to ask, but if the answer is not what I’ve been assuming . . . I don’t know what I’ll do.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m already touching him. I don’t need to be closer to try and push my Whispering abilities past whatever wall blocks me from his thoughts, but I sit up anyway and reach for his face. Aware that everyone’s watching. Aware of the way he goes still, but doesn’t move away. I slide my hand over his cheek, tuck my fingers around his rough jaw, searching for secrets. He closes his eyes, but hard as I try to reach, I get nothing. No thoughts, no emotion.
Except for the pounding of my own heart.
“Kasta?” I whisper. He opens his eyes, that silver-blue that has ruined me. But the question about Maia lodges in my throat. Something glows on the back of my hand, a tiny circle like the reflection of sunlight off a coin. His clothes don’t seem to have any metal. It must be coming from under his collar. I prop myself higher and slip my hand down his neck, fervently ignoring the way he shivers, the way he inhales.
“Zahru—”
I hook the leather necklace and pull it up.
Six frigid, heavy forsvine beads glint across my fingers. Enough metal to neutralize his Shifter magic . . . and the magic of anyone standing close to him.
Of course. This is why his touch feels so empty. Why the Mestrah couldn’t read his mind and he hasn’t advanced in Influence; why I could read his thoughts during the assassin attack, the only time he took the necklace off to ensure I could use my magic. Because he doesn’t have Influence at all. He would have had it, if he’d waited, if he’d left those caves without hurting anyone else. The knife had marked him. His Influence would soon follow, as mine did.
But even divine power is no exception to the rule of the Shifter’s curse: that if he kills for the magic, it erases anything else he had.
I close my fist around the necklace. “Where’s Maia?”
He grabs my wrist. “It’s not what you think.”
“It’s not?” I try to rip it free, but his hold is iron. “Then take it off. Take it off, and we’ll see what the truth is.”
“I was going to tell you. After the coronation, I was going to confess—”
“That you killed her?”
“Never,” he snaps, prying at my fingers. “I didn’t want this. I would never—” His voice cracks. “Maia did this to me.”
I tighten my grip. “Odd way to put it, since you’re the one alive.”
His fingers dig into my arm. He glances at the windows, and I’m suddenly grateful for our audience. He can’t do anything to me without them knowing about it.
“She forced me,” he growls. “You didn’t know her. To her, this curse was worse than death.”
“I don’t believe you.”
His eyes burn, and he tips closer to ease the pressure I’m putting on his neck. “Let go of me, Zahru.”
His voice is quiet, deadly. But I know now which of us is more dangerous. I could make him confess. I could make it his idea. And he knows it.
I feel the necklace loosening, and I smirk. “Or what?”
He reaches behind my head and pulls my mouth to his. I gasp in surprise—except his lips move with mine, and he kisses me, and heat jolts through me, wild and wrong and tangled with memories, and he pulls back just as fast, except he’s still too close, he’s looking at me like he’s waiting for me to wake up—
“I didn’t!” he says, shaking me a little, and I feel like I should slap him, I feel like I should want to slap him, but I don’t, and he notices, and the fire shifts in his eyes and then—
Oh gods, then—
“I didn’t,” he murmurs on my lips. He kisses me again, softer this time, slower, and I groan in protest . . . but I don’t move away. “I didn’t.”
Another kiss. Longer, heavier, because I’m starting to move but it’s all wrong, it’s my lips, it’s my mouth opening with his, but I tell myself it’s nothing, that I’m only letting him because this is how I’ll figure out if he’s telling the truth—but his fingers shift through my hair like the wind drawing me toward the edge of a cliff, reminding me of what we were, of what we could be if I would just trust him, like this strange reversal of the Crossing where I’m the one in the shadows and he has the light and I feel myself slipping, fire splitting through me as he kisses me harder; I need to pull back, I need to think, but he presses my palm to his chest, and slides it down his thin tunic, and guides it down his stomach, and it’s when a new kind of hunger twists through me that I finally snap awake, I remember where we are—
And I panic at what I’m doing and shove him—
And Kasta jerks to his feet with ease, smiling as he adjusts the necklace a
nd turns for the iron gate.
For a moment, I can only stare at my open hand.
Funny how I compared that to getting free of him in the Crossing, because that’s exactly the kind of distraction he intended it to be.
With everyone watching.
My blood boils; I would tackle him if I thought I had even the smallest chance of not humiliating myself in front of the palace more than I already have. I suppose he enjoyed that, dragging that reckless part out of me, making me show him how far back he’s pulled me—
But I focus my rage. I have what I came for, and it won’t matter much longer.
I shove to my feet and whirl for the southern exit.
“Zahru,” he says. I don’t look back. “Don’t do anything rash. I meant what I said. Think it through.” The swords slide free of the sand with a metallic hum. “Don’t make me your enemy again.”
I shake my head to block him out. I won’t listen, I can’t, and I slip through the arena fence, my blood on fire.
When I reach the eastern wing’s stone archway, I break into a run.
XXIX
I don’t see anything but a blur of faces as I enter the palace. They part for me like gazelles for a lion, and I imagine I don’t look too far off from that, with sand in my hair and blood on my jole and every muscle in me coiled to spring. Whispers follow me like flies. Murmurs thread Kasta’s and my name together. Kasta’s own words work at me like broken glass, cutting, churning.
Have I not done everything you asked? Let’s start over.
I didn’t want this.
Rule with me.
His kiss burns on my lips. I slow my pace, trying to get him out of my head, but I’m not paying attention to where I’m going, and when I round a gilded corner into the main foyer, I collide hard with Jet.
“Gods,” I say, gripping his armor for balance. Jet grabs my shoulders to steady us—and steps away just as fast.
“Jet!” I say this as brightly as I can, like I wasn’t just thinking about Kasta, like guilt isn’t still eating me alive for what I did to Jet last night.
