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I hear the distant hoofbeats a moment later. Only one set, from the sounds of it. Not anything like an army.
Still, we stay braced and waiting as they approach the estate. If it isn’t an ally, we don’t want them seeing me or Stavros here under Baron Cyris’s roof.
My own magic unfurls through my chest, reminding me of how easily it could spring to our defense if need be.
The hoofbeats slow. The guard posted on the other side of the gate calls out. “Who are you, and what business do you have here?”
A dryly feminine voice replies. “I’m looking for a woman named Ivy.”
The tone is so familiar and yet so unexpected that for the first second I remain frozen. Then I reach to open the gate.
It swings open to reveal the last person I’d ever have expected to see outside her home. The woman who taught me what I know about controlling my riven power—and who insisted it would never be safe for people like us to return to society.
Sulla meets my gaze with a tentative smile, her hands tight around her horse’s reins. “There you are. I thought… I thought it was time I came down from my mountain.”
Twenty-Eight
Alek
The smell of the forges taints the air even half a mile away. Memories come flooding over me with it: the nights when I tucked myself away in the attic so my parents wouldn’t notice how late I stayed up reading, the ache in my muscles on the days when Dad insisted I take a turn with the hammer and anvil as if that might wake up some love of weaponry in me.
The disapproving glowers when not even a flicker of interest ever lit.
As I ride on toward our family’s sprawling shop at the edge of the small city, the breeze washes over my face. The air is starting to warm with the first hints of spring, but I’m starkly aware of the currents catching on the ridges of scar on my face.
I’ve thought about my deformity less and less over the past few months since I first started removing my mask. Even the stares of the nobles we’re allying ourselves with barely matter anymore when I can simply look at Ivy and have her beam adoration at me.
But my family already has a picture of me in their heads, and I don’t fit it anymore. I haven’t been home since I was expelled from the temple school.
They may have heard some of the details of my teenage disgrace, but that’s different from seeing it in front of them.
I can already picture my mother wincing in horror, my father’s lip curling with disgust. They’ll probably blame my ruined face on my strange inclinations toward books and scholarship, as if my studies warped my morals.
I glance down at the small bag attached to my saddle. I brought a mask with me in case I decided it was best to cover the consequences of my long-ago crime.
My fingers itch to reach for it, to shield my face from judgment like I did for so long.
But what difference will it make, really? They’ll imagine something terrible lies behind it regardless.
It isn’t as if my family is unfamiliar with how ravaged a human body can become. I remember plenty of scarred figures crossing the shop’s doorstep.
The difference is those figures earned their scars in battle as badges of honor.
I suppose I received mine in a battle of a different sort—one with my personal flaws. As much as the shame of my actions might have marked me, I did win in the end.
I’ve come a long way from the boy I was.
So when I reach the hitching post down the street from the shop, I leave the mask in my saddlebag. I walk over to the shop through the thickening smells of smoldering coals and hot metal with all the confidence I can bring to my stride.
The clang of a hammer striking steel rings through the doorway. I know before I reach the threshold where to look for my father.
He still has his personal forge and anvil in the same corner of the workshop. He hefts the hammer and brings it down on the blade he’s working, presumably a private commission for a particularly moneyed client.
The rest of the front room is dedicated to displaying the results of his craft and other pieces of weapons and armor he’s carrying in his inventory. Most of the arms he and my mother deal in he doesn’t make himself. He oversees multiple apprentices in one of the back rooms and sources more from other blacksmiths who don’t have quite the same business sense.
He has his back to me, his broad shoulders flexing as he lowers the hammer to examine the sword. It seems like as good a time as any to make my presence known.
I clear my throat. “Dad.”
