And there were three of us, one of whom had never been in a physical confrontation in her life.
I was working through the problem, strategizing the best angles for success. There weren’t many.
The first variable was the tower itself. We needed to leave it to fight effectively. The interior spaces were too confined for Thane’s weather magic to operate at scale, and forty men could not attack inside the walls. The confrontation would happen outside. Fighting from inside the tower meant ceding every tactical advantage and accepting a siege on the king’s terms.
But the tower had sealed behind us when we arrived. It had repelled the portal. It had made its opinions about entry and exit abundantly clear over the past several days, and its opinions were oriented entirely around one consideration.
Aveline’s safety.
I doubted it would let Aveline walk outside to confront her father. I suspected it would consider that a direct threat to her safety, especially since she had never been allowed to leave in almost a century.
Footsteps on the stairs behind me.
Thane came through the low doorway and straightened and scanned the horizon with the same instinct I’d used. His eyesfound the movement in the trees immediately. He was quiet for a moment, reading what he was looking at, doing the same calculations I’d been doing.
“Two hours,” he said.
“Closer to ninety minutes if they push.”
He came to stand beside me at the parapet. The wind up here was harsher than below, cold air with the sharp taste of metal on it. It moved through the upper branches of the broad trees, but did not penetrate through the dense forest canopy.
“We can’t fight from inside,” he said.
“No.”
“The tower sealed us in.”
“Yes.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Will it let her go? If she’s walking toward danger?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the first problem.”
“What’s the second?”
“Forty trained men against three people, one of whom has never thrown a punch, and a power set we don’t fully understand yet.” I kept my eyes on the tree line. “Our assets are your weather magic, Aveline’s amplification, and whatever tactical advantage we can build before they arrive.” I paused. “My contribution has historically been strategy and command. Neither of those stops a sword.”
The mark had been present for over ten years. A binding my mother set on me to protect me from being taken as a magic-user by the king, broken only when I met my true mate. I had once hoped it would be Thane, but that had not been true. I had despaired of ever losing the mark. It had sat at my wrist like a coal ever since, suppressing everything beyond basic function. I had learned to work around it the way you learn to work around any permanent injury, and had restructured my entire approach to the rebellion around its limitations.
“Your mark,” Thane said.
I looked at him.
“How long since you’ve felt it?” he asked.
It always burned when I tried to access my power. When I sensed wards, reviewed sigils, or sensed magic of any kind. It blocked me from doing anything more. However, the burning sensation had not occurred since I explored the tower some days ago. I looked down at my left wrist.
The mark was gone.
Not faded, not diminished. Gone. The skin was clean, unmarked, the same as the other wrist.
The heat. Somewhere in the heat, in the three days of waves and breaks and the bond finally setting, I had stopped feeling it and hadn’t noticed because there had been something else demanding my attention.
Thane stared at me.
“It’s gone,” I said.
“Does that mean you’re free?” He spoke carefully.
