Kasira had always been a good fighter. When you grew up onthe streets, you learned to defend yourself. But more than that, you learned what your body was capable of, and hers had been capable of quite a lot. Her training alone would have made her a formidable foe, but when combined with the magic in her veins, her opponents hardly stood a chance.
The bloodbath she had anticipated became entirely one-sided as she and Allaster cut through the Ryveren. Just as quickly as they had entered the battle, it was over. The fighting dwindled, the remaining Ryveren fleeing. The man Kasira was dueling thrust his dagger at her as a distraction and bolted across the square. The surprise of the action resulted in her only wound as she reflexively caught it by the blade, slicing her hand.
She turned the knife over. “This is good vylor steel.”
The clang of weapons echoed nearby, and she lifted both blades, but it was only Allaster engaging a redheaded woman who had yet to realize she had been abandoned. The fighter was good, her skill evident with every block and counterstrike of her sword. Against a normal opponent she might have won. But Allaster was not a normal opponent.
He brought his bow down, the sharpened tip slicing her across the thigh, then back up, catching her across the stomach. When he pulled back to strike again, the woman turned, and Kasira saw her fully.
Revna.
Kasira moved before she had time to think. She flung the dagger, knocking Allaster’s bow off target. Then she was between them, her arms outstretched. “I know her,” she exclaimed to his bewildered expression. “She’s a friend.”
“Kas?”
Kasira turned slowly, taking in Revna’s freckled face and unruly red curls. Her white skin showed evidence of faint bruising, the color having turned yellow-green with age, but it was the X branded into her neck that turned the adrenaline pumping through Kasira’s veins to ice.
The brand of a traitor dishonorably discharged from the Malikinar.
Revna’s lips parted as recognition blackened into fury. With a roar,she tackled Kasira to the ground. They fell hard, the cobblestones knocking the air from Kasira’s lungs. Allaster lurched toward them, but Kasira held up a hand. He drew up short but didn’t lower his bow, an arrow nocked.
“You left!” Revna screamed, her hands fisting in Kasira’s uniform. “You left, and they blamedme.” It was all the story Kasira needed. No one would employ her now. The Ryveren was how she had stayed alive, something Kasira couldn’t fault her for. Not when Kasira knew the cost of survival.
“How could you?” Revna’s voice broke. “I thought we were friends.”
“We were,” Kasira whispered, and so they had been, in the only way she could be friends with someone after Belvar. In silence. In presence. She hadn’t been capable of more than that. She didn’t know what it meant that she felt like she could be now.
Revna’s grip loosened, the strength draining from her. She looked tired and careworn, nothing like the vibrant woman Kasira had known, whose laugh had carried across the camp and who always had a quick word at the ready. What did Kasira expect? The Malikinar had meant everything to Revna, and Kasira had taken it from her.
“Is this what you left for?” Revna twisted Kasira’s uniform in her hands. “Blasphemy and magic?”
“It’s not like that.” Kasira’s hand closed around Revna’s wrist, and the girl jerked back as if she had been burned. She scrambled to her feet, backing away. Allaster moved as she did, offering Kasira a hand up. She took it, but her attention stayed squarely on Revna. The hurt in Revna’s eyes, the betrayal—it had broken her.
Revna trembled with fading rage. “Everything I’d worked for,” she breathed through clenched teeth. “My father wouldn’t even look at me.” This was as far from the future he had wanted for her as she could get. Her entire life she had striven to become what he’d asked, been the dutiful daughter at the expense of her own autonomy, and Kasira had gone and set the whole thing on fire.
“Rev, I—” But Revna had heard enough. With a shake of her head, she turned and fled after the rest of the Ryveren, the only peopleshe had left thanks to Kasira. Only when she had disappeared between two sandstone buildings did Allaster relax.
“What was she talking about?” He looped the bow over his chest.
“It’s none of your business.”
“Kasira—”
“I saidno!” She rounded on him. “I had a life before you, before any of this, and you are not entitled to it just because you don’t trust me.”
Allaster’s jaw set, and she practically saw him dig his heels in. “What happened to asking you anything?”
She snorted, the lie so easy on her lips. “Maybe if I thought for a second you were telling me everything, I would do the same.”
Ignoring his bewilderment, she surveyed the square, then stalked toward one of the injured Ryveren. A thin-faced Kalish man with rough-hewn features, he had propped himself up against a building wall, grimacing. His leg was a bloody mess, but he would live. Assuming he cooperated.
Allaster followed, his face set in an impassive mask. Kasira gestured at the man. “Captain Falder Zardoc, the Librarian of Amorlin. Librarian, the former leader of the Ryveren.”
Zardoc spit blood onto the ground. “Former?”
Kasira gestured to the square, which now consisted only of town guards and civilians tending to the wounded. “Do you see anyone coming back for you?”
He winced. “What do you want?”
