They separated. Circled. Rhaezon attacked, a combination he had been running since they first sparred together, and Davn read it the way he read everything — completely, without fuss.
"I don't know."
"Then we find out before we assume."
Strike. Parry. Rhaezon drove forward with his shoulder, using mass, and Davn gave ground and turned it into a flanking angle.
"And before you do anything else to his throat."
The blades rang. Rhaezon did not smile but something shifted in his jaw, an acknowledgment that the observation was fair.
They worked through it in the language of the room — steel and footwork and the measured breathing of two men who thought best while their bodies were occupied. Increase the perimeter patrols. Pull Davn's network contacts for anything on recent Varek movements. Cross-reference Caeden's travel records against the timeline of November's capture. Watch the southern road.
"I don't want to tell her," Rhaezon said.
Davn's blade came low. Rhaezon stepped back.
"Not all of it. Not yet. Not until we know whether the threat is real."
"She'll notice."
Rhaezon blocked a strike that would have opened his guard. "I know."
"She notices everything."
"I know."
They circled again. Davn lowered his blade a fraction — not surrendering the exchange, just creating space for what came next.
"Tell her enough she's not blindsided. Not so much she can't sleep."
Rhaezon nodded. It was good advice. The next exchange was faster, both of them pressing, blades singing in the stone room. Sweat tracked down Rhaezon's chest, following the seams of old scars. The compromised wing on his left side hung partially extended, the membrane pulling at damaged tissue with each rotation of his shoulder. He ignored it as usual.
They disengaged. Stood breathing. Davn wiped his blade on his forearm and set it back on the rack.
"Do you want to talk about... her?"
"No."
Davn nodded once. He crossed to the bench and picked up the cloth he'd left there and started wiping down. The silence between them was comfortable and honest. Neither of them reached for more words.
Then Rhaezon heard her footsteps come down the corridor. Heard her pause at the doorway.
He turned.
November stood at the threshold holding a breakfast tray. Two plates, a pot of tea, a small bowl of the candied fruit he had bought her in the market. Her hair was loose — still tousled from sleep, falling past her shoulders, the one strand he had catalogued escaping across her face the way it always did.
Her eyes found him and went still.
He watched her gaze travel across his body. No shirt. The full map of his captivity laid bare in the training room's morning light. The burns that crawled from his left jaw down his neck and across his shoulder. The lattice of old scars — blade marks, whip marks, the specific puckered lines of wounds that had healed without care. The scales still surfaced along his forearms and across his chest from the sparring, dark against his skin, catching the light. The compromised wing membrane along his left side, the tissue visibly thickened and twisted where it had healed wrong, the evidence of a fire that had been designed to break him permanently.
She did not look away.
She did not flinch. She did not arrange her face into something manageable. She looked at him the way she had looked at him in the hold of the slaver ship — clear, unafraid, taking inventory. Not of the damage. Of him. All of him. The scars and the scales and the broken wing and the sweat still tracking down his chest and the man underneath all of it with his history written on his skin and nowhere to hide.
She held up the tray.
"Hungry?"
