Page 45

“That sounds like Kairyn.” I look up at Wrenley. She’s scowling, and it’s as if I can read the words on her lips: And where do you think he got that notion?

But then her face relaxes, and she sighs, wandering away from me. I suppose we’re both tired of fighting each other.

I notice she’s changed since we arrived at the monastery. Gone is the human clothing, and she’s now wearing the Nightingale’s armor. She must have had an extra set stashed up here. The setting sun pours in through the window, reflecting off her iridescent steel, causing her to shimmer like the rainbow of an oil slick. She takes a step out of the sunlight, back into the shadow.

One of her wrist bracers has come loose, and she fumbles with the buckle. “Did you find what you needed?” she asks.

I stand and begin loading the notebooks into Farron’s massive backpack that he lent me. “What I needed and more. Kairyn’s theories are just that…theories. But he’s detailed exact techniques for working with mythkarite. If we can find the forge, if we can light it…” I shake my head, almost unable to believe the words myself. “I could craft divine weapons of pure mythkarite and reinforce the ones we already have. If Kairyn’s theories about Rafael’s techniques are accurate, then I could make them stronger than even Faustrius’s sword. Stronger than any weapon the Vale has ever seen.”

“Great. Can we get out of here then?” Her words shake with the same cadence as her hand, fingers fumbling with the buckle. An exasperated growl escapes her throat.

I drop the notebook, then drift over to her. She shies back, but I extend my hands out, palms up. Her lip curls, then she relents, giving me her wrist.

The buckle slides into place easily. I move to her gauntlet, tightening the pieces, then to the straps of her chest plate. It’s as natural as breathing to me, for I know the make of this armor better than I know my own skin. This is how my mother forged armor.

How she taught Kairyn and me to forge.

“In our culture, it is a great honor and responsibility to forge armor for another person.” My voice is soft, as if I may scare her away. Her nostrils flare, and I can only imagine how hard it is for her to trust me to adjust her plates. “But to forge armor for your mate… It is said you put part of your soul within the steel so you may protect them wherever they go.”

Wrenley’s jaw tightens. “Mate. The word is meaningless to me.”

“Is it?” I pull a strap at her shoulder. “It is to find the one person who sees the world in the same light as you. To know that every part of you is understood.”

“How can he understand me,” she breathes, “when I don’t understand me?”

“A question I asked myself about Rosalina. To me, everything about her heart made sense, while my own was clouded in darkness.”

Wrenley jerks away from me, staggering over to the bed. She lays a hand on the bedsheets. “I left him. Not once but over and over again. Now he’s nothing but one of Sira’s puppets. I’m a terrible mate, just like I’m a terrible sister. A terrible person…”

She’s like a sword during tempering, at its most fragile yet red-hot and dangerous. Slowly, I reach for her other wrist. She lets me take it, and I adjust the buckle on this one, making it just the right size. “You came back. You’re going to help us reclaim the rose. Then we’ll free Kairyn.”

“And what? Kairyn and I can ride off into the sunset as perfect little mates? My life doesn’t work like Rosalina’s,” she snaps. “And Kairyn’s doesn’t work like yours. We’re fucked-up. Broken. Two people like that... We don’t fix each other.” Her wrist goes limp in my hands. “We only ruin each other more.”

I take a deep inhale of the ancient air. It must be so familiar to Wrenley. What would have become of my brother if Wrenley hadn’t come to the monastery and whispered in his ear? Hadn’t given him promises of grandeur, of a world of his making?

He would never have become Emperor of the Green Rule.

But also…he may never have become Kai again. The brother who fought by my side and saved my life in Frostfang. The one who worked side by side with me to understand the secrets of mythkarite. Who found healing in the words of a human man. The one who found his mate and trusted Rosalina to check on her.

Wrenley destroyed my brother. But she also brought him back to life.

I guide her away from the bed, pulling her toward the window.

“What are you doing—” Her words stop as she steps into the beam of sunlight, and she tugs away, trying to retreat back to the shadows.

I hold up her hand in the light, the gauntlet catching every fractal. The armor shimmers like thousands of diamonds, dark and prismatic all at once.

“All of it is a part of you and a part of him. There’s beauty in the darkness. You only have to let yourself catch the light.”

Wrenley’s eyes widen. The luminescence reflects in her gaze, and I wonder if this is what Kairyn saw when they would sit together, painting a sunrise.

In her eyes, there is hope.

14

Rosalina

This place is old. Very old. It’s not just the crumbling stairs or the strange writings and pictures on the walls. I feel it, the way I can feel the heat or cold.