the angels, but princes and kings are not allowed to wander off into the wild looking for beasts no one has seen in an age. Fortunately, I am no longer a prince or a king, or anything but a man alone.”
—Journal of Ilmaire Lysleva, dated December, Year 999 of the Second Age
Audric dodged Evyline’s sword. Then he spun and parried, sending Illumenor’s blade slamming into hers.
Evyline had recommended they fight with wooden training swords, but both Sloane and Audric had disagreed. If Audric was going to impress the Mazabatian troops and perhaps persuade some of them to meet with their senators before tomorrow’s vote, he needed to show off properly.
He also needed the Mazabatian Senate to vote yes on his petition for military aid. And if Sloane thought a public fight in the barracks courtyard would help achieve this, Audric would do it.
He just wished Illumenor wasn’t so damned heavy.
Another swing, another parry. He and Evyline danced around each other, their crashing blades glinting in the morning sunlight. For all her bulk, Evyline was fast, her footwork impressive. She thrust her sword; Audric deflected, but it was inelegant. She bore down on him, using the weight of her sword to press him toward the ground. He pushed against her and scrambled away. His boots kicked up dust as he spun around and desperately swung his sword to block hers.
He was beginning to regret declining her offer to use the training swords. Fighting hadn’t always been this difficult.
But after eight weeks of grieving, Audric felt thin and fragile, his muscles weak, his stamina eradicated. When he had pointed this out to Sloane, she had dismissed his worries.
“You’re the Lightbringer,” she had said with a small smile, trying to cheer him. “A few weeks in bed hasn’t ruined you.”
She was right; he wasn’t ruined.
He was, however, exhausted.
And Evyline was tireless. She flung her sword around as though it weighed nothing, dealing one ferocious overhead strike after another. Audric blocked all of them, but only just, and then he turned oddly, and his knees wobbled, making him stumble. He felt the fight’s tide turn and saw in Evyline’s pale brown eyes that she felt it too. Another shift of her weight, one more blow of her sword, and she would beat him.
Audric glanced over Evyline’s shoulder, meeting Sloane’s gaze. She stood against a pillar, her arms crossed. He knew very well the worried scowl she wore.
Then Evyline relented, dealing a clumsy, ineffectual blow Audric easily deflected, allowing him to regain some ground. She was letting him win, but he was too tired to care.
She dodged him, but not quickly enough. He spun and caught her blade with his own, pressed his weight down against her. Their audience would think he had trapped her under the pressure of his sword, but it was a lie. This needed to end.
“Do you yield?” he called out.
“I yield,” Evyline replied, and they stepped apart, breathing hard. Evyline sheathed her sword and bowed.
“Well fought, Your Majesty,” she announced for all to hear.
But no applause followed her declaration, and when Audric dared to look at the soldiers scattered around the yard watching the fight, his stomach sank.
Dozens had gathered—at the barracks windows, in the breezeways at the courtyard’s perimeter—and none of them were smiling.
Don’t worry, came Ludivine’s reassurance, there will be other opportunities to impress them.
He resisted the urge to swat her away like a fly. I asked you not to talk to me like this. This is my mind, and not yours to enter as you please.
Without another word, she was gone, and the little twinge of pain in his heart infuriated him. Every time she spoke to him, every time he dismissed her, it was like being presented with the full breadth of her lies all over again: Rielle had killed his father, killed Ludivine’s father, killed her own father—and both Rielle and Ludivine had kept these secrets from him. They had promised him only truth and then continued to deceive him.
Princess Kamayin kept trying to convince him to forgive Ludivine. They would need her as an ally in the war to come, she pointed out.
Audric didn’t disagree. He would accept her help when the time came.
But he didn’t have to forgive her.
A voice from the gathered soldiers sharply cried out one word in Mazabatian: “Traitor!”
A shocked silence. The word rang in Audric’s ears like a struck bell.
Evyline withdrew her sword and took two furious steps forward, making the soldiers nearest her stagger back.