On the western front, everything was stairs. Stairs cut into the mountain, narrow and steep, switchbacking up to the watchtowers. Stairs down to the armory carved straight into the rock. Stairs to the wall walk that had no rail on the outer edge because apparently the mountain itself was supposed to do that job.

  Kylar’s calves hated it. The rest of him didn’t mind. Elevation training meant strong legs, better wind, and less time in cramped city corridors.

  “Again,” Darius called from above, boots planted on the landing like he’d been carved there with the stone. “You fall, you die, so don’t fall.”

  Tessa glared beside Kylar, rolling her shoulders. She looked like the stairs offended her on principle. Zen, two steps down, muttered, “You say that every time, Dare”

  “And when we get through this, we can go visit that town we talked about.” Darius said. “Up. Shields higher this time. I don’t want to see a single helmet crest.”

  They moved. Shield drills on the mountain stairs were a special kind of misery. Formations had to adjust to uneven footing, to blind corners, to the fact that if you tripped on the third step from the top, you took everyone below you with you. Kylar’s shield arm already burned. His left shoulder had ached with a dull, familiar stiffness all week—too many blocks, not enough rest—but he pushed through, boots finding the worn dips in each stone tread without looking.

  “Up!” Darius barked. “Guard the turn! Assume you’re being shot at from above.” They brought shields up as one, angling them to cover the exposed flank.

  “Better,” Darius said. “Now down. Rotate. Zen, stop staring at the sky and watch your footing.”

  “I am watching the sky,” Zen said. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Not yet,” Darius snapped. “Right now the only thing trying to kill you is gravity, and gravity’s winning.”

  They were halfway through the next ascent when the horn sounded. Not the training horn. The other one. Short, sharp bursts that snapped every spine on the staircase.

  Darius’ head whipped toward the outer wall. “Positions!” he barked. “Shields up! Eyes up!” The mood shifted in a heartbeat. Training muscle burned in Kylar’s arms, but there was a different edge to his focus now. The sky over the western ridge had gone wrong. Tons of birds scattering, a brief glint of metal where no patrol should be.

  “Saebrian raiders,” Zen said grimly, squinting. “They’re early this year.”

  “Or late,” Darius said. “Doesn’t matter. They’re here.” He jabbed a finger toward the next landing. “Kylar, Tessa, up front. Zen, with me, you’re covering the archers. MOVE.”

  They moved. The upper stairs opened onto a narrow walkway cut along the cliff face, a sheer drop on one side, fortress wall on the other. Kylar’s boots hit the stone, shield already lifting as the first arrows hissed down from the ridge opposite.

  “Shields!” Darius roared. They needed to get off the stairs and into cover. Watchmen were already shouting for cover fire for them.

  The world narrowed to sound and angle. Arrows clattered off the wall, whined off shields, snapped when they found wood instead of flesh. Kylar raised his shield just as one struck, the impact juddering through his already-tired arm.

  “Front line, creep forward!” Darius shouted. “Don’t give them the same target twice!” They pressed along the walkway, step by careful step. The Saebrians were just shapes and flashes on the far rocks, using the higher ground the way they always did, testing, probing, not committing yet.

  One arrow went wild, sparked off stone, and spun down toward the lower stairs where a pair of younger guards were scrambling for cover.

  Kylar didn’t think. He shifted his shield, pivoted just enough to angle it toward the falling shaft. He never saw the arrow that came in from the other side. Later, he would remember three things in perfect detail. The sound it made. thunk. very small, very ordinary, as it buried itself in his left shoulder from behind.

  The brief, white-hot bloom of pain, sharp enough to imply his arm had just been nailed to his own spine. And the fact that his foot missed the next stair.

  For a heartbeat, the world tilted. His boot slid on stone he didn’t quite hit. The weight of his shield dragged right; the new fire in his shoulder yanked left. He felt the sickening lurch of this is how I die, the long drop singing in his bones. She won't know what happened to me.

  Tessa’s hand caught the back of his coat, hard. She yanked him sideways, slamming him into the inner wall before gravity could decide anything else. His vision blew white at the impact; his teeth clicked together. For one vertiginous second, the only thing keeping him upright was Tessa’s grip and the arrow still lodged in him like an extra joint.

   she signed in front of his face.

  His brain tried to catch up. “That—” he ground out, breath gone thin, “—was not… part of the lesson plan.”

  Her other hand came around to steady his shield, keeping it up as another arrow clattered off the rim. He held.

  Pain radiated from his shoulder in hot pulses, syncing with his heartbeat. His fingers tingled. He could feel the shaft jutting from the back of his leathers, a wrong weight that every instinct screamed to get out. He ground his teeth and locked his knees instead. Above, Darius bellowed orders, voice cutting through the ringing in Kylar’s ears. Archers found their marks; Saebrian shapes ducked back behind their rocks. A horn sounded again, this time farther away, retreat, or regroup, hard to tell.

  Kylar’s world had shrunk to the span of one shield and the breath-by-breath calculation of stay upright, stay useful, don’t you dare fall.

   Tessa asked hands moving in front of his face. He managed a nod. “Down,” Darius called, not to him but to the line as a whole. “Second rank, trade out, we hold the stairs. Injured, get off the wall.”

  Tessa didn’t wait for him to be slow about it. She shifted under his good arm, weight compact but steady, and half-guided, half-shoved him toward the inner steps. Every jolt of his boots on stone sent a new flare of pain through his shoulder. He focused on counting—five steps to the next landing, twelve to the door, three from there to the healer’s cot if they were lucky.

  “Arrow?” Zen’s voice, breathless, as they passed him on the landing.

  “Decorative,” Kylar muttered. “Thought the uniform needed more… detail.”

  “Idiot,” Zen said, but his face was pale looking at it. He looked away from it finally.

   Tessa signed quick and sharp.

  They got him inside before his legs made good on their threat to buckle. The fortress healer, a narrow-faced woman with ink on her fingers, took one look and swore creatively.

  “Table,” she snapped. “On yer stomach. Don’t bleed on my notes.”

  “I’ll aim for the floor,” Kylar said through gritted teeth.

  Tessa helped him shrug the shield off, then started on the buckles of his ruined leather. Each movement tugged the arrow. By the time he was flat on the table, the edge of the wood digging into his ribs, he had to concentrate on not shaking.

  The healer leaned over him, fingers probing around the wound with brisk efficiency.

  “Through and through,” she pronounced. “Lucky.”

  Kylar made a noise that conveyed how lucky it felt from his perspective.

  “Not yer artery,” she clarified. “Could have been worse. As long as ye don’t panic when I pull it out.”

  He swallowed. “I never panic.” but the thought of pulling it out sounded awful.

  Tessa snorted. The healer frowned. Kylar translated. "She said I panic quietly"

  “That’s allowed,” the healer said. “Bite down on this.”

  A folded strip of leather appeared under his hand. He hesitated, then took it in his teeth.

  “Ready?” the healer asked.

  “No.” He muttered around the leather and braced himself.

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  “Too bad.”

  The world narrowed to the sensation of something leaving him, wood scraping bone, fire turning to sudden, bright tearing pain. He bit down so hard the leather creaked. The room went white at the edges, then came back in a rush of blood and breath and the healer’s voice saying, “Done.”

  He let the leather fall, chest heaving. “That,” he managed, “was… unpleasant.”

  “Yer’ll live,” she said, already packing the wound with something that stung in a different way. “Which is more than I can say for half the idiots who don’t duck in time out there. This will scar.”

  “Fine,” he rasped. “I need something to talk about with girls in a couple years”

  Tessa muffled a small laugh. The healer just grunted and went on wrapping.

  “Yer off heavy drills for at least a week,” she said. “Light duty only after that. If I see ye on those stars before I say so, I’ll throw ye off them myself.”

  “Stairs,” he corrected weakly.

  “Stairs, stars, same thing if ye fall,” she said. “Yer lucky ye had someone catching yer coat.”

  Kylar turned his head just enough to see Tessa’s boots by the table. He meant to say thank you. It came out as a muffled, “You’re very rude for a woman who saved my life.” She snorted.

  “Training accident,” he muttered.

  Her gaze flicked past him, toward the door, toward the strip of sky visible beyond. She signed one quick word by the side of the table where the healer couldn’t see.

  

  He hesitated, then signed back with the fingers of his good hand where she could see them resting on the wood.

  Her mouth quirked. she signed.

  Tessa bullied him as far as his narrow barracks room before she trusted his legs.

   she signed, jerking her chin at it when he tried for the chair instead.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” he muttered, but he sat. Carefully. The mattress was thin, the kind that remembered every previous occupant, but at that moment it felt like luxury.

  Tessa fussed with the bandage one more time, fingers checking the knots at his shoulder, then stepped back, eyeing him like she might nail him to the bedframe if he tried to stand.

  , she signed, sharp and simple. “Yes, Tessa,” he said. “Where are you going?”

   She signed. She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “I’ll do my best from this very dangerous horizontal position,” he said.

  She flipped him two quick signs as she reached the door, and then, with the faintest grin, , and slipped out. The room went quiet, save for the low murmur of the fortress beyond the walls. Kylar let his head fall back against the cool stone. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He’d just decided he might risk closing his eyes when knuckles rapped twice on the door and then ignored waiting for an answer. Zen stuck his head in first, dark hair wind-mussed, eyes too bright.

  “That really twisted my stomach,” he announced instead of a greeting, stepping fully inside. “Seeing it all the way through like that.”

  Darius followed, ducking his broader shoulders under the lintel as if the doorway might suddenly shrink out of spite. He shut the door behind them and crossed to the bed with the easy authority of a man who’d hauled too many recruits off too many fields.

  Kylar snorted. “Glad my suffering was a full-body experience for you,” he said to Zen.

  Zen dragged a chair over, turned it around, and straddled it, resting his arms on the back. “Some of us don’t enjoy looking like pincushions,” he said. “That thing was in there like it was paying rent.”

  Darius ignored the commentary for the moment and sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle Kylar’s left side. His gaze went automatically to the bandage, assessing.

  “We’ll help you regain your movement once it’s healed up,” he said. Not a promise—an operational plan.

  Kylar managed a crooked grin. “Much appreciated. I was worried you’d leave me to waste away, tragically beautiful, useless arm and all.”

  “Tragically annoying,” Zen corrected.

  Darius’ mouth twitched. “You’ll do light drills when the healer allows it,” he went on. “Footwork, right side work. Once she clears the shoulder, we’ll start slow. Scar tissue’s going to pull if you don’t treat it right.”

  Kylar sighed. “So no climbing the south wall tonight.”

  Zen gave him a flat look. “So, bedrest for the prince.”

  Kylar shot him a glare sharp enough to cut. “Say that louder,” he said. “I don’t think the far tower heard you.”

  Zen spread his hands, unrepentant. “What? It’s just us, Dare, Tess, the healer, half the stairwell, most of the archers…”

  “Zen.” Darius’ tone held warning and fondness in equal measure. Zen grinned and subsided a fraction.

  Darius leaned back, bracing his hands on the mattress, shoulders lining up with Kylar’s as if they were both just resting after a drill. “Don’t tease him,” he said. “He’s the only reason we get to go to these outposts all over. I’m sure His Highness wouldn’t approve our requests as quickly as he approves his.”

  Kylar groaned and let his head thunk gently against the wall. “If Ryder heard this,” he muttered, “he wouldn’t approve my requests anymore and ruin all my careful planning.”

  Zen’s brows climbed. “Careful planning?”

  Darius tilted his head, considering Kylar’s profile. “He’s slowly learning the entire country,” he said, deadpan. “Being a wonderful prince and learning his people.”

  Zen barked a laugh. “Something like that,” he echoed.

  Kylar didn’t deny it. Not directly. He stared at the ceiling instead, following the faint cracks in the plaster like lines on a map.

  “I like knowing what I’m protecting,” he said finally. “Not just on paper.” He shrugged his good shoulder. “Fort’s different than the northern front. Western villages don’t talk like the lake towns. Mountains don’t move the way rivers do. I’d rather make mistakes where people can throw snow at me than in a council room where they bow instead.”

  Zen blinked. “That was almost profound.”

  “Write it down,” Kylar said. “We’ll pretend I meant it that way.” Darius’ gaze softened for a moment, something like pride and worry tangled together. “You picked the western,” he said. “You could have stayed comfortable in Carlbrin. Or gone north again. Or east, where the worst thing you’d see is bored merchants.” Kylar’s jaw worked. “We were due a rotation,” he said. “And you’ve been wanting to drag us up a mountain for years.”

  “Flatterer,” Darius said dryly. “There’s still a mark on the request ledger from when you put this fort in as your third choice instead of your tenth.”

  Zen whistled. “Third? Ambitious.” Kylar didn’t flinch. “The west is closest to Saebria,” he said. “I wanted to see it.”

  Zen tilted his head. “See the enemy?”

  “See the line,” Kylar said quietly. “Where ours stops and theirs starts. Where people cross it anyway. You can’t understand a border if you only ever stand on the palace balcony and squint.” Darius huffed a slow breath. “You keep talking like that and I’m going to feel bad when I make you march stairs again.”

  “I’m injured,” Kylar reminded him. “It’s in your best interest to be kind to the wounded.” Zen leaned forward on the back of his chair. “Think the Crown Prince will let you out again?” he asked, a little too casually. “After you nearly swan-dive off his western mountains?”

  Kylar made a face. “He will if he wants decent reports,” he said. “And if he doesn’t, I’ll… be very responsible about my recovery and remind him that keeping me penned up in Carlbrin is worse for everyone’s sanity.”

  “Whose?” Zen asked. “Yours or his?”

  “Both, I can be very annoying. Damon is a great teacher.” Kylar said.

  Darius chuckled. “You might be grounded for a bit, cub. Princes don’t get to fall off things without council members writing letters about it.”

  “If they write letters, they’re not watching the stairs,” Kylar muttered.

  “Training accident,” Zen said, trying the phrase out loud. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  “That’s what it was,” Kylar said. “We were training. The arrow just… made a more persuasive argument than the stairs did.” Darius snorted. “You planning on telling that version to anyone in particular?” Kylar thought, for one sharp second, of a meadow under a willow and a girl who would be able to feel that something more had happened even if he never said the word arrow.

  “Maybe,” he said lightly. “Training accident sounds better than ‘did something heroic and nearly died, please worry about me all night.’”

  Zen and Darius smiled a little. "Did they finally push a noble lady on you that you like?" Zen probed.

  Darius was quiet but attentive. Kylar stared at the ceiling. "No. Don't worry, when there is a girl, I'm sure to make sure one of you are her personal shadowguard." He muttered.

  Zen’s grin faded a fraction, sincerity peeking through. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m glad you’re the kind of idiot who moves his shield like that.” His fingers tapped an unconscious rhythm on the chairback. “Those kids on the lower stairs… they had no idea it was coming.”

  Kylar’s throat tightened. “They’ll learn,” he said. “If we do our jobs right.”

  Darius pushed himself up, joints creaking. “Speaking of doing our jobs, we should let you rest before the healer comes back and orders us all out for making your heart rate spike.” He clapped Kylar gently on the uninjured shoulder. “You did well today. Stupid, but well.”

  “High praise,” Kylar said.

  Zen stood too, chair scraping. “We’ll bring contraband from the mess later,” he said. “Something that doesn’t taste like boiled leather.”

  “Tessa’s already on that mission probably,” Kylar said. “Race her and she’ll knife you.”

  Zen considered. “Worth it,” he decided.

  Darius shook his head, heading for the door. “Sleep, Dato,” he said, quiet now that it was just the three of them. “Dream something that doesn’t involve falling.”

  Kylar bit back the instinctive answer—not my choice—and just nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  They slipped out, voices dropping to low murmurs in the corridor. The latch clicked. The room shrank again to four walls, one bed, one heartbeat thudding a little too loud in his ears.

  He shifted carefully, testing how far he could move before the shoulder protested. Not far. The healer’s poultice tingled, heat sinking deep into the joint.

  “Training accident,” he murmured to the empty room, tasting the words. They felt… mostly true. True enough that he could say them without flinching. True enough that he could tell a girl in a dream that it had been stairs and not be entirely lying.

  He let his head rest back against the wall, staring at the ceiling until the cracks blurred.

  Somewhere beyond mountains and borders and stairs, a meadow was waiting for him. She was waiting for him.

  He counted the breaths between now and sleep the way he’d counted steps on the stairs.

  Five. Twelve. Three.

  When he finally drifted, it was with the phantom feel of Tessa’s hand in his coat, Darius’ weight on the bed, Zen’s nervous humor in the doorway—and the distant, stubborn thought that if the world wanted him dead, it was going to have to try harder than one bad arrow and a set of stairs.

  Training accident...Stairs. It brought friends.