Page 76 of Kazimir

Her armor had been made for her after three failed attempts by a human craftsman and one offended lecture from Lucia about the difference between decorative female plating and actual battlefield use. The final version had come from hands educated enough to respect function. It fitted close through the torso without flattening what it should protect, articulated cleanly at hip and shoulder, and left precise accommodations where her wings emerged from her back. Tonight the metal gleamed darkly over deep plum leather, almost black in shadow until the moon found the edges and turned them cold silver. Bracers guarded her forearms. Greaves hugged her calves. At her hip hung a practice blade. Another was already in her hand.

Her white-blonde hair had been woven into a thick braid that reached between her shoulder blades when her wings were furled and disappeared into the line of them when they opened. Sweat dampened the hair at her temples and the hollow of her throat. Her skin shone with exertion. Her mouth was set in concentration, not strain. There was a difference. Strain begged the body to keep going. Concentration commanded it.

Around her, four of my household guards formed a widening arc.

They had started six nights ago with the careful condescension competent men sometimes offered a beautiful woman they expected to protect rather than be tested by. They no longer made that mistake. I could see it now in the way they adjusted their grips before engaging her, in how none of them looked at her wings as ornaments anymore. They watched them as they would watch a drawn blade—with respect, calculation, and the sober understanding that underestimating them would cost blood.

One of the guards lunged first, a feint to her right designed to force a turn into the second man’s reach. Devon did not retreat. She leaped.

Her wings extended in one swift, muscular flare that displaced air hard enough to stir dust from the court. The sound of it rose to me a half-second later—that rich, cutting rush I had come to know. Not harsh, not soft, but exact. She gained height with one powerful beat, folded the left wing slightly tighter than the right, and rotated in the air above the first attack. The feint failed immediately. His blade met emptiness.

She came down behind him.

Not heavily. Not clumsily. Grace was too small a word for what she had learned to do with that body. She landed on the balls of her feet, pivoted, and struck the flat of her practice sword against his shoulder at the exact angle that would have disabled the arm with live steel. Before he could recover, she snapped one wing open behind her to block the third attacker’s line of approach. Feathers and strength together made a temporary shield. His practice blade glanced off the armored span with a dull crack.

“Nice,” she said. “Continue.”

Her voice carried across the courtyard. Cool. Level. Not asking.

The men reset without argument.

I rested my forearms on the stone balustrade and watched with a focus I usually reserved for campaigns.

She looked proud.

Even from above, I saw it.

It did something dangerous to me, seeing that. Seeing men who had served my house for decades offer earned deference to the woman I had once found frightened and furious and starving in my club. Not because she had become mine. Because she had become more wholly herself, and they recognized it the way soldiers always recognized competence when vanity no longer blinded them.

As if she felt the weight of my attention, she lifted her face toward the balcony.

Distance meant nothing to the bond when it wished to be intimate.

Her eyes found me immediately.

I did not wave. I did not smile like some soft human fool watching a lover from a veranda. I stood with both hands braced on old stone and let everything I could not decently shout across the courtyard travel the quieter road between us.

Pride. Desire. Concern sharpened into resolve.

Her mouth curved anyway, small and fierce.

Then she folded her wings with a rustle like silk drawn over a secret blade and walked from the ring as if the moon itself had cleared the path.

Chapter 22

Kazimir

By the time she came to our chambers, the house had quieted into that rare hour when even old estates seemed to breathe through their walls instead of creak. I had changed out of my suit, banked the fire lower, and set the long wooden case across the table before the hearth, where lamplight could touch the grain and turn the brass fittings warm as old coin.

I stood waiting when the bathroom door opened.

Steam drifted ahead of her, carrying soap, heat, and Devon beneath it all. She wore a satin robe the color of dark cream, belted loosely, the fabric clinging here and there where droplets had not yet been absorbed. Her hair hung damp and loose around her shoulders in pale waves, ends darkened by water, curling against the satin. Fresh from the bath, stripped of armor and sweat and the hard discipline of the courtyard, she should have looked delicate.

She did not.

Soft, yes. But softness was not the absence of force. It was force at rest.

Her gaze came first to me, then to the case on the table. Curiosity sharpened her tongue. “You have that expression.”