Morning came gray and honest. Mist hung between the pines, and the meadow that had been a camp was already shedding the night: saddles thumped into pce, horses stamped clouds into the cold air.

  Selene and Isolde stood together, Saint Eryndor standing with them, his cloak thrown back, his hands at his sides. From here, they could see the unit moving through its chores. The usual bustle of the camp was nowhere to be heard.

  Men and women who had slept like stones before a march now moved like people trying to keep from breaking. In three tight days: Malcolm’s horror and the demonkin he had made of ordinary men; a witch cutting that horror down, where it should be supporting it; Devotion—a witch’s relic—finding a bearer of the Church; and then, the prior night, a story that refused to file itself under “heresy” or “hysteria,” no matter how hard anyone tried.

  Eryndor felt the mood like a draft down the spine. He had seen battle-silences: the taut, bristling kind that hummed with fear and purpose. This was the other sort—the hollowed silence that comes after someone has changed what you thought a word meant. Saint. Witch. Corruption. Obedience. He turned his head and found Selene watching the line of horses.

  “They move like people in the st chapter of a book,” Selene said, almost to herself. “They’re not sure how to start the next one.”

  “Most of them are flesh,” Isolde answered without thinking. “They’ve faced things that would break a seasoned company.”

  Aelun joined them with that pcid tread of his. “Most of them haven’t marched long enough to hammer their faith into zealotry,” Aelun said. “And now, they’ve faced too much, too fast—things that don’t test faith so much as break it. These past days would shake even the most devout.”

  Darius walked up behind the group, listening in on their conversation. He watched the lines for a long beat before speaking. “Don’t be surprised if some of them leave this unit,” he said.

  “Good,” Selene said. “Better the weak are weaned out now than break under weight and take others with them.”

  Darius’s mouth twitched—nearly a smile, not unkind. “That almost sounds like concern. It would be beneficial for you to be more honest with your feelings. You don’t have to py the wicked witch every hour of the day.”

  “That is the title that steadies them,” Selene replied. “Comfort is a costly drug. Let them have the image that calms their hands. I need them steady. Their pity and warm feelings are unnecessary.”

  Isolde sighed under her breath. “That was always your problem,” she murmured. “You shoulder everything alone.”

  Selene’s eyes cut to her. “Because there are few strong enough to share my burdens. Those who could choose to hide themselves. When that stops being the case, perhaps I’ll reconsider.”

  She turned and walked off the rise, dropping lightly down to the marshy edge where the frost still crusted the mud. The world seemed to open a path for her. She took it without looking back.

  Darius watched her go, then looked sidelong at Isolde. He didn’t bother to dress the question. “How strong are you, really?”

  Eryndor found that he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly so it wouldn’t make a sound.

  Isolde studied the camp, “Not as powerful as Meme,” she said at st. Then, after a beat that changed the air: “But… if you had fallen to Malcolm, I would have had no choice but to deal with him in earnest.”

  Darius didn’t move. “And?”

  “And I would have made quick work of him.”

  It rang too simply to be a boast. Darius narrowed his eyes. Eryndor felt the hair lift on his arms. Only Aelun did not flicker.

  Isolde’s eyes grew distant. “There was never a time Lucen was more powerful than I,” she said quietly. “Only beneath me or my equal.” She frowned, as if annoyed with the confession for existing, and turned away into her own thoughts.

  Darius touched the bridge of his nose, a man staving off a headache. “If she’s as powerful as Saint Lucen and counted him a friend—why hide it?”

  Calder arrived in time to hear the question. “Rumor says she and Lucen had a falling out after their ordination,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “Rumor also says most of her earnings go straight to her family.”

  Darius snorted, disgust and understanding tying together across his face. “We ride in thirty minutes,” he said, turning away.

  Eryndor watched him go, then looked to Calder. “Why does it bother him that she sends coins home?” he asked, genuinely.

  Calder’s smile was almost gentle. She didn’t answer.

  Aelun did. “She isn’t a noble,” he said, as if remarking on the weather. “If the Church learns the full strength she hides, the easiest shackle is blood. Use the family to leash the saint. Best to shackle yourself first and keep the chain in your own hands.”

  The words went through Eryndor like a splinter. He tasted iron, realized he had bitten the inside of his cheek, and turned away before he said something unbecoming of a saint.

  He left the group and went after Isolde. He found Isolde at the edge of the pines. She stood with her arms folded, gaze on the lines of movement below.

  “How dare you?!” Eryndor said.

  She turned a fraction, one brow rising. “Excuse me?”

  “How dare you insult my resolve?” The heat surprised him; the words did not. “You think I need a half teacher? That I can’t bear the cost of the road I chose?”

  Her mouth opened, then closed—the first time he’d seen her actually wrong-footed.

  He pressed on; if he stopped, the courage might drain, and he didn’t know when he’d find it again. “I’m the youngest son of a duke,” he said, and the title sounded smaller than the weight he meant. “That’s not a boast; it’s context. I was born with the kind of safety that makes a man dull if he lets it. I started too te—ter than most—learning my Gift of magic. The gods, at least, were tender enough to give me decent blood. I cast aside the name and the velvet rooms and the soft work.”

  He made himself look at her, not past her. “I started te, but was ordained quickly. Too quickly. Of the Saints ordained with me, I was the worst. But I knew—I know—I have more in me than most. I wanted a mentor who would see my potential flourish. And when they gave me you, I was disappointed.”

  Isolde made a small sound, halfway to a ugh, and not kind. “Truth at st.”

  “Listen,” Eryndor said, and the word surprised them both with how it carried. “I wanted to shine. Selfish. I wanted someone strong to make me great. But now I see the injustice. You, shackled by fear that isn’t even yours. You deserve recognition. And the people deserve your best now.”

  He took a breath that hurt. “If you’re afraid of what the Church might do to your family, fine. Then use mine. I will write to my parents. We can protect them, or hide them if we must. Use my house as your shield if your name is a chain. Stop using them as your reason to bury what you are.”

  She stared at him, the frost-light in her eyes like something being weighed on an old scale. For a heartbeat, he could see the temptation to sneer—little lordling—but it passed. He realized his hands were shaking and pressed them into his cloak so she wouldn’t see.

  “I was disappointed when they assigned you to me,” he said, softer, because the truth had gotten easier now that it had a path. “I told myself I needed more. That if I had the right teacher, I could become what I was meant to be.”

  He shook his head. “But my supposed potential is irrelevant when others can save lives today. It is unjust that you don’t receive the support you deserve, and it is unjust that you don’t give your all to the work—whether that’s teaching me or cutting a demon’s head from its shoulders.” He swallowed. “The empire deserves the best, not the safest story.”

  Isolde’s eyes closed. When she opened them, the sharpness had softened into something that looked too much like grief for Eryndor’s comfort. “Lucen and I used to wonder,” she said, voice gone low, “if we hadn’t held back so long… whether the pressure on Meme would have been less. Whether she wouldn’t have… done what she did that day.”

  She looked down at her hands as if only now remembering that they were the instruments of both caution and its opposite. “After that, Lucen decided to stop hiding entirely. I decided to bury it deeper.”

  “Saint Lucen was an orphan,” Eryndor said, and the old defense sounded as brittle as gss as soon as it touched the air. “He had nothing to lose.”

  Isolde shook her head. “That’s what I told myself, too. The truth is uglier. I was a coward. Unfit for the mantle. Unfit to be her friend.” She gnced toward the camp. “Every coin I send to my parents is a nail in a box I’ve been building around myself. It’s time I stopped building it.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Earn it,” she said simply. “Earn my pce as a Saintess, earn the right to call her friend again.”

  Eryndor nodded once, too quickly. Courage came back with a rush, sharp and bright. “Then I’ll send word to my parents,” he began, “to take your family into—”

  “No.” The word was firm, not cruel. “I’ll handle my affairs. If I’m to be feared, let it be for something besides who shields me.” She breathed in and let the air out as if making room inside her ribs. “It’s time the world learns to respect—and fear—my name for what I do.”

  Eryndor felt something unclench in the middle of his chest that he had not known was knotted. “Then let it begin with me,” he said. “Don’t hold back your knowledge. Not with me.”

  Isolde looked at him for a long heartbeat and then—finally—smiled. It was a small thing and looked like a bde she was offering hilt-first. “Then try to keep up.”

  They returned to the meadow as the thirty-minute call went down the line. Men and women swung into saddles; the first breath of an organized ride went through the horses as if the sound of leather and steel were a spur.

  Selene stood by the cart where the st bundles were being shed. She tossed the staff in front of her, and it floated there. She swung onto it sidesaddle. She lifted higher into the air and hovered there.

  “I’ll meet you at the pace gates,” she said, not loudly. It didn’t need to be loud.

  She tilted the staff forward and began to rise.

  Wind gathered from everywhere at once. It pressed the snow ft and sent a thousand pine needles whispering down like green rain. Eryndor felt it wrap his ankles, warm and intimate, and then it wasn’t wind anymore but will. The air took on the quality of hands.

  Isolde didn’t jump. She stepped onto the invisible as if it were a stair only she could see, and the wind bore her up, taking her cloak and making it a banner. She rose until she hung there, facing Selene, level with the witch on her staff. Her hair, unbound, snapped once behind her and then settled into a ripple.

  Eryndor’s breath went out with a sound he could not have disguised if he wanted to. The wind csped him at the waist—firm, careful—and lifted. The air itself fit his frame. His stomach had a moment to think about protesting; then the rest of him convinced it to be quiet.

  Isolde turned her head, and her voice rode the wind down and across like a smooth stone skimming water. “We will meet you at the pace gates.”

  Selene’s mouth quirked. “Think you can keep up, Soso?”

  Isolde’s eyes sharpened; there was a fsh of something like the girl she had been. “Between you, me, and Lucen—you were always the slowest,” she said. “Try not to embarrass yourself.”

  They shot forward together, Selene leaning into the line of her staff, Isolde a figure cut from air, Eryndor helplessly along for the ride. The first burst of speed stole his breath and then returned it doubled. Below, Darius gave the order; hooves struck snow in rhythm; a line of steel and leather followed the two figures carving the sky.

  The shadows of witch and saint raced across the snowfields. The Inquisitors rode into the slipstream they made. And the wind, at st, did not hide what it could do.