It sounded like there was more he wasn’t saying. Jakobav had known Bryn his entire life and had never heard him this cryptic.
Why in the gods’ names was he pushing her so hard?
What did Bryn know that he didn’t?
Everything in the infirmary fell silent. Long enough that Jakobav felt it sinking into her, and she had been through enough. He wanted to cut through it, break it open with his hands if he had to.
“Tell me how they are,” Ella said finally.
Bryn studied her and then relented. “Savina’s already back on guard duty, stubborn as ever. She woke up mid-stitching and threatened to hex me with a blade to the thigh if I touched her boots, then marched out like nothing had happened. Soren barely said a word, which means he’s fine. Maeren’s got cracked ribs and an injured leg, probably more, and she’s pretending it’s just tight muscle tension. And Thane…”
Jakobav leaned forward before he could stop himself.
“Thane?” Ella asked, almost too quiet.
“I heard you stole his favorite blade, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
“Thanks,” she said, a ghost of guilt shading the word. “But I do actually feel a little bad about it.”
“Then go return it,” Bryn said, stepping aside with exaggerated courtesy. “They might still be in the training wing. And try not to make anyone cry, or at least don’t tear any stitches open, which would only make more work for me.”
Jakobav exhaled slowly.
A vicious and wordless heat stirred in his chest that did not care for reason or duty, only for the sight of her moving away from him and toward the people who had bled for him.
He didn’t move, not yet, tracking her as she walked down the corridor. The names she had listed thudded through him likesteps on stone. His best soldiers. She cared about their wounds; she wanted to see them.
His people.
Were they now hers too, by some strange twist of fate?
Jakobav slid from the archway and moved like smoke along the wall, keeping to the darker seams of stone as Ella disappeared into the old training wing. He shouldn’t have followed, not when dawn would bring the final preparations and dusk would demand everything he was. But she’d named them and claimed them, and that damned blade, the one Thane had carved a kill count into with pride and reckless flair, still hung at her hip like it had always belonged there.
His jaw flexed until it ached.
He wasn’t used to this, this merciless kind of wanting that gripped low in his gut just from watching her exist. He’d been angry before, but not like this, not possessive, not with a hunger that didn’t give a fuck about the Claiming or the kingdom or the cost. Usually so steady, he had become something mercurial, unpredictable even to himself, pulled into Ella’s orbit.
The old training wing lay half-lit, a cathedral of stone and shadow, and Jakobav found the alcove near the southern arch, the same quiet pocket he had used as a boy when spying on older trainees, old habits clinging like older ghosts. He’d arrived first and hid out of sight; it helped that he knew a faster route.
He saw her before she saw Thane.
She stepped into the chamber and stilled. The room was thick with sweat, steel, and years of echoing grunts, yet she moved through it like it recognized her, like this wing of the castle had been waiting for her return.
Thane sat beneath the window, sharpening a long dagger with slow, practiced strokes, the light catching on the blade and along the cut of his jaw. He looked up.
“No cloak this time,” Thane said. “I barely recognized you without the dramatics.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Ella murmured.
Thane’s gaze dragged over her with unhurried weight. “You don’t.”
Jakobav’s fists clenched until the bones protested.
She walked forward slowly and unhooked the blade from her side, turning the weapon once as if considering its balance, then held it out, handle first. “I think this belongs to you.”
Jakobav knew that blade better than most men knew their own hands, a Velmirian steel meant for Thane’s grip, yet in her hand, it looked different, as if the weapon had chosen her and not him.
He could barely breathe.
