Page 77 of Kazimir

“I have many.”

“The one that means you have done something significant and are trying to pretend it is merely practical.”

I felt the corner of my mouth threaten mutiny. “Come here.”

She crossed the room barefoot, the hem of the robe whispering over polished wood. Firelight painted honey along one shin where the robe parted with each step. When she stopped before the table, I put my hand on the lid.

“This arrived an hour ago,” I said. “Archon sent it under seal.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. “For me?”

“For you.”

I opened the case.

The sword lay on dark velvet as if the room had been built to reveal it. Not large enough to be unwieldy, not slight enough to be ornamental. It was a weapon for a fighter who understood speed and precision better than brute force. The blade held a pale gold sheen rather than polished steel’s colder brightness, as though sunlight had been disciplined into an edge. Fine markings ran along the fuller—angelic script, subtle but unmistakable, not loud with sanctimony but old with authority. The crossguard curved like outspread wings reduced to elegance. The grip was wrapped in pale leather over something firmer beneath, shaped for a hand neither broad nor small. At the pommel sat a single clear stone no bigger than a thumbnail, lit from within by its own reserved kind of fire.

Devon did not breathe for a moment.

I reached in carefully and lifted it. The blade made almost no sound leaving its bed. That pleased me. Good weapons do not chatter for attention.

“I asked Archon to forge it for you,” I said. “He was happy to do it. Not as a gesture. As correction.”

She looked at me then, eyes already brightening.

“He agreed that injustice should not be answered only with defense,” I continued. “When I explained to him that a woman cast down by corrupted authority ought to rise with something in her hand that remembers the difference between judgment and abuse, he thought the sword was fitting.”

The fire popped once behind us. She swallowed.

I turned the weapon and offered it to her hilt first.

For one heartbeat, she only stared. Then her fingers closed around the grip.

The fit was immediate.

I watched the recognition move through her body in a visible shiver. Her wrist adjusted by instinct, her elbow easing, her shoulders aligning around the balance as if the sword had been waiting all its existence for this exact hand. She lifted it slowly, testing the weight, the center, the promise of it. The golden edge caught the fire and gave it back cleaner.

“Oh,” she whispered.

There were tears in her eyes now, though none had fallen. I had learned that with Devon tears did not always mean fragility. Sometimes they meant truth entering too fast for her body to process with dignity.

“It knows me,” she said softly.

“Yes.”

She gave the blade a cautious, experimental turn. Smooth. Economical. The point drew a bright line through the chamber and stopped precisely where she intended. Her mouth parted on a breath that sounded almost like grief relieved of a burden. “It fits.”

“It was made to.”

Her free hand rose to cover her mouth. For an instant she looked younger—not childish, never that, but struck clean through by being seen accurately. The sight touched something in me I had once believed calcified.

“You had this made because of what happened to me?”

“Yes,” I said. “And because what happened to you will not be permitted to define the terms of your power.”

At that, one tear escaped and tracked down her cheek.

She laughed softly at herself, a little wrecked. “I am trying very hard to be dignified.”