A little silence fell between us, broken by the dry click of your throat as you swallowed. “Th-there are always casualties, in war.” The words had an echoing quality, as if you were quoting someone else. “But, for Dominion, it’s worth—”
“The queen stitched the wound herself.” My voice was a blade scraping from a scabbard. “She spoke as she worked. She told me—everything I wanted to hear. How proud she was. How well she loved me.” Colder now, and sharper, a flash of naked steel: “How glad she was that it would be spring when we returned to Cavallon, so there would be fresh flower petals for the court to strew before us.” Now, the killing blow: “And I knew then why she’d been so impatient for the Bastion to fall. So there would be flowers for our victory march.”
I had looked up into the queen’s face—the face I had loved since the day she found me in the woods—and felt the tipping of a scale in my chest. The next morning I went to the smith’s tent and shattered my sword on his anvil.
Your voice, nearly frantic now: “It doesn’t matter. I won’tletit matter.Una, please—don’t cry—” I hadn’t known I was crying, but I could feel my shoulders heaving, my spine rounding. It was only your hands holding me upright. Your palm found the nape of my neck, fingers cupping the curve of my skull. “In a thousand years, they will sing your name in the streets. They will raise their children on stories of brave Sir Una Everlasting, the Red Knight, who fought for crown and country. You may not have lived as a hero, but I swear: You will die as one. Just—” Your voice split. “Just do this last thing.”
It had the cadence of a myth or a prayer, mesmerizing in its simplicity. Die, and be redeemed. Die, and be remembered. Die, and live forever. My destiny, and the last request of my queen.
I looked up into your face, made fractal by tears but still so familiar, too familiar. I knew those glasses, perched lopsidedly on the arch of your nose. The fine angle of your jaw, scruffed now with the beginning of a beard. The wide black pools of your eyes, full of guilt and want.
I could deny my destiny, and even my queen. I could never deny you.
I closed my eyes. “As you will.” You made a small, strange sound, as if the words wounded you in some way, but your hand left my nape.
I did not look at you as I swung into the saddle and rode toward the gates. You walked beside me, unspeaking, even when Hen nipped you affectionately on the arm.
The shadow of the wall came over us. This was where you ought to fall back and send me on alone—I was always alone, at the end—but you didn’t. You clutched at my stirrup instead, breath heaving in and out of your lungs. Another of your fits, I thought, and wished keenly that I could hold you one last time.
But you said, wonderingly, in a voice that did not shake at all, “I can’t. I can’t do it.” And then, “Fuck.”
Your head tilted up, and I knew that face. It was the face of someone whose scale had tipped, who was about to break every oath and bond. “You have to run, now. There are twelve Hinterlander traitors waiting for you. They’ve taken Cavallon.” You wet your lips. “If you ride through those gates, you die. Your story, Una—it’s a tragedy.”
I think you kept talking—you so rarely stopped—but I wasn’t listening. A heady warmth was spreading through my limbs, settling in my stomach, like strong wine. You were trading away everything you cared about—your book, your future, your country’s future—for my sake. Because you wantedme,more than you wanted the legend I would leave behind.
My fathers had loved me like that, just for being alive. Later, Yvanne had taught me that love was a thing received in trade, for the purpose I served. My survival did not serve your purposes at all—and yet there you stood, begging me to run.
I could not help it. I bent low over the bow of my saddle, took your face in my hands, and covered your mouth with mine.
The first kiss is like the first blow in a fight—a test, an invitation, a wordless question. But it seemed to me we already knew all the answers.
I already knew the way your lips would part for me, instantly, without hesitation, and the way your breath would catch. I knew how it would feel to kiss you in hunger or in comfort, sweetly or sorrowfully, early in the morning or long after moonrise, quietly, so we wouldn’t wake the—
I pulled away, panting a little. I had to.
I loved you by then, or would soon, or always had. It was inevitable, foretold: When I look up, I will see the sky; when I fight, I will win; when I meet Owen Mallory, I will love him.
And you must have loved me, too, at least a little—but it wasn’t me that you needed. It was Una the Everlasting, the Drawn Blade of Dominion, the hero, the saint, the story. For you, I would become her, just once more.
I unbent your fingers carefully from the reins.
“Una, did you hear me? There area dozen menwaiting for you. It’s a trap.”
I shifted my weight in the saddle and Hen took two high, prancing steps. He was old, but not so old that he had forgotten what it meant when I rode in full armor.
“What are you doing?”
Hen tossed his head as he broke into an eager trot. I was eager, too—how sweet it was to die, knowing someone wanted you to live.
“They havearchers—God damn it.”
Do not ask me to recount the battle. Every battle is the same, anyway: There is a beginning, and there is an end, and between them there’s nothing but butchery.
There were arrows flying down from the ramparts, then there were three strangebooms, and then there were no more arrows. There were enemies, then there was blood, and then there were no more enemies. There was screaming, then there was begging, and then there was quiet.
In the quiet I stood, breathing hard, returning reluctantly to my body.I felt very little during battle beyond a vague, muscular satisfaction at my own skill, but coming back always hurt like the devil. That was when I felt, all at once, the arrows that had not missed, the bruises that bloomed beneath my armor. That was when I saw the bodies around me, their faces frozen in pain or terror or childish confusion, and remembered what I was and always had been.
I looked for Hen before I looked for you. Forgive me—I had learned over the years not to look for people, after battle, because they were not always there. But Hen was. Ancel liked to say that Hen would live forever because Heaven didn’t want him, and Hell didn’t want him back. Everyone always laughed no matter how many times they’d heard it before.
