GUARDIAN

ON THE WIND

BOOK TWO

SAM BURNS

W.M. FAWKES

Copyright © 2024–present by FlickerFox Books.

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No AI was used in creating any part of this book.

Content Warning: violence, war, death

Cover art © 2023 by Natasha Snow Designs; www.natashasnowdesigns.com

Editing by Clause & Effect

CHAPTER ONE

HECTOR

After being poisoned by my own people, my condition was improving.

It was thanks, in no small part, to settling with my brother and sister in the lands of the Hawk Clan of Nemeda, and in particular, Lady Rosaline’s excellent cooking, which I had never once had reason to question the safety of.

Certainly, I was more cautious on the days that Paris helped her in the kitchen, but even then, I’d been forced to admit he had some skill at a stove that I never would’ve predicted.

Unfortunately, I’d begun to realize that I would never be sure if I was fully healed, or simply better compared to the wheezing, rotting thing I’d been when Paris had come home to find me in bed, hardly able to maintain consciousness long enough to plan our escape from Urial. I’d been so sick, unable to eat much at all, and on the path toward my own untimely demise. The only thing that’d kept me hanging on was knowing that Paris and Helena would be alone in the world then; I couldn’t leave them.

The poison had buried deep in my chest. It had taken something from me, but I was half mad, questioning whether it was physical or mental, sure that I was weak but unclear on the manner of it.

Perhaps it was the shadow of merely knowing my own people wanted me dead that hung over me. Perhaps it was that I had left everything behind—everything that was mine and had promised me a future. And here I was, on the coast of Nemeda, watching my brother grasp his future in both hands.

Literally. He was smiling and chatting to the wedding guests and just then, he gripped Chief Brett’s face in both hands and kissed him sweetly and I looked away, swallowing something bitter at the back of my throat.

Beside me, someone clicked their tongue. “Not pleased for the happy couple, are we?”

I turned to see a man with golden-brown hair, amber eyes, and a sharp, crooked nose. The Falcon.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Though I smiled, I spoke through my teeth, which had far more to do with the man questioning me than either my brother or his husband. “Of course I’m happy for Paris. We should all be so lucky as to find such a loving, devoted partnership. I couldn’t wish better for him.”

Once, I feared he’d wind up the shadow behind Prince Tybalt’s throne, forgotten and whispered about, undervalued and used.

Now, he was husband to a clan chief in Nemeda, far from the southern border wall and the war that raged beyond it, and assured the plenty that the Hawk Clan had to offer. Truly, I couldn’t have found a better match if I’d scoured all of Urial myself.

And Paris had built this all on his own.

The Falcon’s lips twitched, and he raised a second wine glass my way in offering. He might’ve meant it as an olive branch, but I was too tired to look for double meanings and far too thirsty to refuse him. I snatched the glass and drank deep, the wine like a balm for my frayed nerves, smoothing the edges of all my scattered worries.

“Well,” the Falcon said, “I suppose there is some comfort in knowing your family is taken care of, isn’t there?”

I snorted into my wine glass, taking another large sip.

Gods knew I’d done a terrible enough job of taking care of them.

Paris was little when his mother, my stepmother, had died. Helena had never even met her, at least not that she could remember. And Father? Well, he had his grief and his duty to the king and, frankly, the deflection of both to distract him. It had made him a sometimes-fun parent to both my siblings. He was quite keen to play with them and make them laugh.

But when it came to practical things, he preferred not to think too hard about them. A poor harvest? Mismanaged accounts? Those problems were mine to deal with, even at the tender age of thirteen.

I had always given myself credit for keeping the mechanism of my family working, but then Father had died. Within months, I lost everything—the land, our holdings, whatever wealth we’d had back in Urial. Almost all of it was left behind when we fled south for Nemeda, and it was only the generosity of strangers that had kept us housed and fed.

The reality that I was half as responsible, as pragmatic, as capable as I’d assumed myself to be had settled over me like a wet cloak, heavy and impossible to move.

For the first time, I had nothing to offer my family—no safety, no potential future, nothing. What we had, Paris had scrambled to bring together, working only with his own goodness and a heart that anyone would value. That Brett could see his worth—well, we should all be so lucky to find someone to love us, even when they saw the whole of us.

Helena and I had simply lucked out, that Brett was the sort of person who would open his doors to us when we were in need. I wasn’t exactly surprised, given that my brother had fallen for him so thoroughly.

No, though my heart was strangely heavy, I was happy for my little brother, and the Falcon would not take that away from me.

It seemed, however, that he was determined to try.

“Though, I do wonder when our new Nemedan will serve his year on the wall,” the Falcon mused.

My head snapped toward him. “What do you mean?”

When he looked my way, his eyes were wide, lids fluttering, feigning innocence. “Well, don’t you know? Every Nemedan spends time fighting on the wall. It’s how we earn our place here. You must’ve realized that this place isn’t like Urial. We must all pull our weight.”

My jaw ticked as I finished off the wine. There was no way in any hell that I would allow my little brother to be taken from his new family and made to fight.

But I did not trust the Falcon to tell me the truth of things, and there was Killian, who knew the matters of this war better than anyone. He’d tell me all I needed to know.

Luckily enough, he wasn’t hard to spot. His long white hair, threaded with a thousand feathers, was impossible to miss. He stood out, shining and handsome, swathed in white and blue.

I’d not spoken to him since arriving in Heron lands. In fact, hadn’t spoken to him since we’d settled with the Hawk and he had left to see to his people.

And here, now? Well, I wasn’t avoiding him, precisely, simply the way my mouth went dry when I looked him. I’d meant to greet him eventually, perhaps after another glass of wine.

The Falcon had put me on edge, however, and I was after answers from lips I knew to be honest and honorable.

“Excuse me.” I drained my glass and pressed it back on the Falcon before marking my target.

Just marching through the wedding guests and Nemedans simply in attendance for the clan meeting, my need for assurance was more urgent than the strange warmth that rushed beneath my skin when Killian met my eye and tipped his head.

If the slant of his lips made me pause mid step? It was only for a moment.

CHAPTER TWO

KILLIAN

Brett was happy for the first time since we’d gotten word about his father’s illness. Rosaline was happy, despite her youth and innocence being ripped at by the viper Clio and her equally poisonous father, Memnon, thankfully both of whom were dead. Paris, while I knew him rather less than the others, was happy, and the beautiful, pleasant young man who made my friend happy deserved that. Paris’s sister Helena was happy, flirting with Minerva, the two of them seeming like there was no one else present at the wedding, turned toward one another, eyes wide with excitement and speaking fast.

Me? I wasn’t so thrilled.

I didn’t mind leaving the wall for short periods, to attend meetings of the clans. I certainly didn’t mind attending the wedding of a dear friend, or seeing Brett so damn happy.

What I minded was seeing Otus, shamed head of the Falcon clan, speaking to Paris’s brother Hector.

Not that I was jealous. Jealousy was a strange creature, foreign to the Crane Clan, that I’d never experienced. No, I didn’t like Otus speaking to Hector, but it was more because it was Otus than because I didn’t want Hector speaking to men.

Even handsome men.

That bastard Nestor had spent almost an hour flirting with him the day before, and it had been funnier than anything else. Especially since Hector had been adorably oblivious to the Duck’s ardent efforts.

But Otus wasn’t flirting. He didn’t want Hector. What he wanted was to sow discontent. He’d been an ally of that murderous bastard Memnon, and while he didn’t have Memnon’s killer instinct, he still wanted to twist his dagger in whatever way he might be able to.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Hector broke away from him, looking pale and wan, his eyes darting around the crowd. Oddly enough, he headed straight for me.

He didn’t greet me when he reached me, just blurted out, “Paris doesn’t have to go to the wall, does he?”

I stared at him blankly for a moment, confused. Paris on the wall? The boy was getting married. Why would he be coming to the wall? Even if he’d been younger, he’d never been the type of person the clans sent to spend a year on the wall. He was the type of person the clans sent someone else to proxy for on the wall. Someone like Brett, who’d spent nearly five years fighting at my side, four of which had been taking the place of four other members of the Hawk Clan. Or Orestes, who’d been on the wall almost a decade. Admittedly, his was more because he wanted to be there than because he had specific clan members to proxy for.

I shook the thoughts from my head and looked back to Hector. “No, of course not.”

“But the Falcon said he did,” Hector countered. Fuck, but he was cute when he looked at me like that, all suspicious and maybe even a little annoyed. “He said everyone spends a year on the wall.”

“Well,” I said, lifting my hands defensively and nodding, “I wouldn’t say it’s wrong, exactly. Nemedans all either spend a year on the wall, or someone does a proxy year for them.”

“So he’s right.” Hector was breathing hard, like he was considering panic, then he stopped and looked at me. “What’s a proxy year?”

I motioned toward where Brett was sitting with Paris. “Brett did Rosaline’s year, so she wouldn’t have to go. People sometimes do it for family. But really, you don’t have to worry about it. You⁠—”

“Are you saying we’re not Nemedans?” he demanded, his back going straight and annoyance glinting in his golden-brown eyes.

Fuck, but I wanted to kiss him. He was something else, even the first time I’d seen him, trapped in bed and suffering, but full of steely resolve. His hair had spread dark against his pillow, his beard unkempt, and still, he’d compelled me.

Instead, I shook my head. “Of course not. But it’s sort of . . . a coming-of-age thing. Most people do their year on the wall when they’re twenty, and Paris is past that.”

I wasn’t sure how else to say, simply, that I didn’t expect it. Technically, yes, they should probably all three spend a year on the wall. But I thought maybe Hector and his family had been through enough, having paid their dues by the misfortune of being born in Urial. Hector had almost been poisoned to death by his own people, for fuck’s sake. So yes, I was ignoring the rules for their sake. Because they were unique among Nemedans, having come from elsewhere, there was no precedent.

It wasn’t as though I would get in trouble for it. My clan was the one people did those years for.

Hector wasn’t budging, though. He shook his head, looking like nothing so much as a bull about to charge. “If all Nemedans spend a year on the wall, then we’ll do our duty. But . . . but proxy years.”

“You can have three of mine,” I offered, easily. I’d been on the wall since I was a child. My mother had first taken me up when I was ten.

His eyes narrowed even more, into slits. “I will spend three years on your wall. When should I come?”

A chill ran down my spine. Paris . . . well, he was the sort of man who someone proxied for on the wall, but I didn’t doubt he’d make my life hell if I put his brother’s life in danger. Somehow, I suspected that if I tried to tell Hector no, he’d do the same.

So slowly, I nodded. “Okay. Well, you can come whenever you like. You’re always welcome in Crane lands. If you and your family decide that you’re going to spend three years on the wall, I will place you. However, I’m going to need you to do me a favor first.”

The anger turned to suspicion, but he nodded. “What?”

“You’re going to have to tell your brother that I told you this wasn’t necessary, so he doesn’t murder me in my sleep.” I turned and gave Paris a bright smile over Hector’s shoulder, and he was giving us a suspicious glare that looked rather like Hector’s. Clearly, he knew something was going on.

But it wasn’t going to be my problem.

Except that I already knew it was, because Hector was going to make it my problem. I sighed and headed over to get another mug of mead.

CHAPTER THREE

HECTOR

It was a reasonable request, though an amusing one. When had my flighty brother become a man to inspire fear in the likes of Killian?

It was hard to imagine, but then again, I’d held him when he was a baby, watched him grow and discover the world. He could never frighten me.

I found him draped across his husband’s lap, his arms slung around Brett’s shoulders, and didn’t allow myself even a moment’s pang of jealousy. I was nothing but happy for my brother. He deserved love, not just because he’d saved us all, but simply because there was no greater joy in the world than seeing him smile.

“Hector,” Paris said, turning toward me with his cheek awfully close to Brett’s. “Have a drink. It’s a celebration. I’m married.”

You are, I thought, full of pride and loss and a thousand different feelings I couldn’t put a name to. I didn’t dare try.

But in this moment, it wasn’t about my feelings.

“I’m very happy for both of you,” I agreed, ducking my head. “But I was talking to that fellow from the Falcon Clan.”

Brett’s brows furrowed, and Paris’s scowl made a pinched mirror of his concern.

“He asked me when Paris was going to spend his year on the wall,” I said. “So I asked Killian what he meant, and he told me everyone is required to spend a year on the wall, defending Nemeda from the southlands.”

Paris cocked his head, then turned to Brett. “You’ve mentioned that before, people’s ‘year on the wall.’ I remember. Do I need to spend a year on the wall?”

Brett was just shaking his head when I jumped in.

“No. Because I told Killian I’m going to do everyone’s year on the wall. Yours, mine, and Helena’s. I’ll purchase what I need, and go right away.”

Paris’s brows shot up toward his hairline. “Excuse me?”

Killian had only asked one thing of me, and it was so very reasonable, but I still hesitated to give Paris an out of all this. He . . . sometimes saw the world as if it was covered in a field of flowers—that Tybalt was a dashing prince and Urial was glorious and fruitful and our Father had nary a single imperfection. He would not see the necessity of it.

But I knew the world for what it was, the ways that people built walls and held others apart.

My nose flared, and I nodded. “Three years. One each for Helena, for you, and for me. Killian said—” I blew out a breath but forced myself onward. “Killian said that it was unnecessary, but I think you know better.” Now, I was looking at Brett, trusting him to know his own people and to hold Paris’s best interests at heart just as I meant to. “My family is going to rely on the acceptance of the Nemedan people—not only your clan, but all of them, particularly if relations with Urial remain tense. It would be all too easy to turn us out as strangers to avoid further conflict, and that would go poorly for us.”

Brett’s frown deepened. “I would never allow that to happen.”

His arm tightened around Paris’s waist, and I sighed.

“I know. But I would not have you risk conflict with your own people for our sake when there’s such a simple solution right here in front of you. Three years of my service will prove us Nemedan. Already, the Falcon has tried to expose our lack as a weak point and press on it. I’d nip that line of thinking in the bud before it can spread.”

I saw resignation fall over Brett’s features with and felt a thrill of victory. He knew I made sense, that this was the best way to protect my—our—family.

Only Paris was not yet convinced. He sat up straighter and clapped his hands on the table in front of him, still perched on Brett’s lap. “Then we will each serve.”

I liked Brett all the more when he winced at the idea of it.

“Absolutely not,” I snapped.

Paris stuck out his chin. “I’m not sending you down there alone.”

“You are.” I leaned in across the table, holding his eye in that way that’d always trapped him. “You are, because you have a life here already, and I do not. You have a husband to care for, a people to look after, and moreover, you wouldn’t know what the hell you’re doing on a battlefield.”

Paris’s laugh was sharp. “And you would?”

“I’ve held a sword,” I snipped defensively.

“That’s not the same and you know it.”

“Perhaps not, but I’m Father’s firstborn son, and I’ve trained in all the ways a firstborn son of Urial ought to. I’m prepared to fight.”

This time, he scoffed. “Please. You’ve prepared for every despairing eventuality that you can concoct. That hardly makes you a warrior.”

I reached across the table, taking his hand and squeezing it. “No, you’re right. But I’m closer than you are, and no one has ever expected Helena to fight with anything more than a sharp word. And—and please, Paris. You know that I’ll be useless at this if I’m worrying about you all the while.”

He sucked in his cheeks, looking for just a moment like my little kid brother rather than a man full grown. “But I don’t want you to go.”

“Three years,” I whispered. “That’s nothing. You’ll go home, enjoy the first blooms of marital bliss, and then we’ll—we’ll be settled. Nemedan in truth. This is how we earn a place here on our own right.”

“You already have a place here,” Brett offered, voice quiet and serious.

I sat back, letting go of Paris’s hand and staring straight at his husband. “Tell me my brother did nothing to earn his place here,” I pressed.

Brett gave no response.

“He saved a woman’s life,” I reminded them both. “That was his service, and it won him the acceptance of the Hawk. This will be mine, and not only will it make us more secure in our place, but I will feel less like a burden once I’ve paid my dues.”

Brett’s gaze drifted up. It seemed that Minerva of the Raven Clan had stood and was preparing to make a toast. “Perhaps we should discuss this more tomorrow?”

“There’s nothing to discuss,” I said, snatching Paris’s hand and kissing the back of it. “You need not worry. I will be safe.”

Paris’s lips parted, like he wanted to protest further, but Minerva began to speak, and he fell silent. I slipped out of my seat before we could gripe at each other anymore, certain all the while that we’d both dig deeper into our positions overnight.

After Minerva’s toast, there was more feasting, drinking, and dancing, but I stayed largely out of it, nursing cup after cup of sweet wine. In time, people began to tire, settling around tables or at the high bar where drinks were being served.

And there, a shimmer of white behind a man who stood above all the rest. Killian had not yet retired for the night, and I drifted to his side.

“I’ve told him,” I muttered once I got there.

He glanced at me, silvery eyes shining with mirth. “And he took it well?”

“Oh, not at all. I fled while Chief Minerva made her speech, but Paris knows the weight of this decision rests entirely on my shoulders.”

Killian turned my way, resting his elbow on the bar beside us. “And why are you making it?”

I tilted my head at him, raising a brow. “Why?”

“Mmm, yes. I don’t know many wise men who’d seek out a war, and you don’t strike me as either ignorant or bloodthirsty.”

I took a moment to wave down the man serving drinks and got myself another while I mulled it over. In the end, I could come up with no better excuse than the truth.

“This is the best way I can think of to protect my family.” I took a sip of wine, allowing myself a moment to enjoy the buzzy, lightheaded feeling I’d been building all night. “We cannot rely exclusively on Brett’s good will⁠—”

“Brett has a number of significant friends in Nemeda.”

I glanced at him, unconvinced. “Yes, and how will those friends feel if King Albany decides our escape was too great a slight to ignore any longer? What if he spins a tale that your people kidnapped Prince Tybalt’s intended? The story of a damsel in distress goes quite a long way in Urial. I would have us more firmly established, more firmly Nemedan, before anyone else is called upon to decide if we’re worth the trouble.”

Killian hummed. “Quite the pragmatist.”

“I like to be prepared.” I took another sip, hissing at the burn in my throat when I drank too much at once. “In that spirit, perhaps you could tell me more about the southlands. What can I expect on the wall?”

Even when he went quiet, I didn’t realize my misstep until a muscle flexed in his jaw.

“Do you see a wall here?”

I raised a brow. “Any wall?”

Killian scowled. The effect was . . . jarring. Killian had an otherworldly kind of beauty—strong and handsome, yes, but also light and graceful, as if he could swing his sword through the air and summon not violence, but a glorious gust of wind.

It was hard to take him seriously when I was so awestricken, no matter that I knew he was a better warrior than me, a better man. But even when he was annoyed, all I could do was appreciate the silvery blue of his eyes and the long, silky white hair that hung to his waist, weighed down with so many feathers.

A feather for everyone he’d lost, Paris had said.

My brother had feathers now too—one each for Mother and Father. Had he, Brett, and Killian come any later, my little brother might be wearing one for me as well.

Another reason for me to serve on the wall—the Nemedans had saved me. I owed them my life, and I wanted my family’s position here to be unassailable.

What else was I to do in Nemeda?

“Don’t be a contrarian,” Killian said, turning away to take another sip from his mug of mead. “You know what I mean.”

“Then no, I don’t see the wall.”

“So don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow. Don’t bring the wall here, to my friend’s, your brother’s, wedding.”

Thoroughly chastened, I bit the inside of my cheek and looked down at Killian’s mug. For a moment, I considered slinking away, but if I truly meant to do this, I would need to be able to look him in the eye tomorrow.

Summoning what courage I had, I looked up. “I apologize. Perhaps this is as good a moment as any to tell you that small talk is not my forte. I do, however, have other talents.”

“Do you?” He grinned. “Please, illuminate me.”

I waved a hand at the boards set out on flattened sand for dancing. “I dance. Quite well, actually. Part of our education in Urial, you understand. There’s very little to do during the long winters and I was never much for escaping to nature. While I don’t know all the steps to Nemedan dances, I’m a quick study and follow instruction well.”

“Is that so?”

“Hmm, yes. Particularly with the right partner.” I glanced at the dance floor, the strangest feeling tickling up my spine, urging me to impress Killian, though I wasn’t sure if it was simply because I wanted him or because I’d soon have to prove myself to him. “You seem like a fine leader,” I mused, glancing up at him. “We could dance, if you’d like.”

Yes! The way a smile played at the very corner of his lips made my blood rush through my veins. He didn’t find me entirely loathsome! What did it say about me, that I’d fully expected him to?

“All right,” he agreed, setting his mug down. “We can hardly let the musicians play on for nothing.”

We weren’t the only ones on the dance floor, but I was glad for the sparse and drunken attention, because I really didn’t know the steps. I didn’t want anyone noticing if I made a mistake, and to my Urialian sentiments, it seemed impossible that the gathered crowd wouldn’t watch two men dancing together, even though we were at a wedding for, well, two men.

My nervousness hardly seemed to matter. When the next song began, Killian stepped close, and his hand pressed firmly into the small of my back.

He began the steps, his legs sliding against mine with such casual confidence that I hardly realized we were dancing. Each step was perfect, the fluidity of his movements making it so easy for me to follow along, dazed as I was to look into his shining eyes.

Gods, I wanted to touch his hair—feel it between my fingers, mixed in with so many beautiful feathers. I wanted to count each one while he⁠—

I caught myself on a gasp when he spun, and he smiled at me.

“I’ve been unfair,” he said.

“Oh?” Wonderful, that I couldn’t come up with anything cleverer than that to say.

“You like to be prepared. It’s only fair that I prepare you.”

I blinked. Prepare me? It was an inadvertent innuendo, obviously. And yet . . .

“I’d hardly be opposed to that.”

“I could tell you what I know of swordplay,” Killian offered, white brow perfectly arched. Creatures like him didn’t exist in Urial—shouldn’t exist anywhere. He was too beautiful. “We Nemedans prefer the spear, but I imagine being from Urial, you’ve learned the sword.”

Breathlessly, I nodded.

His hand swept across my arm like he hardly even thought of it—it’d simply happened by rote as he spun me away.

“It takes a strong arm,” he murmured in my ear as he drew me back, my shoulders briefly against his front before he turned around me. “And a limber wrist.”

The way his thumb grazed the inside of my write made my breath catch in my chest, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need air. Breathing was superfluous.

What I needed, well⁠—

I pressed forward, pushing up on my toes to catch his lips. They were perfect and smooth against mine, pleasantly firm.

But then firmer.

Killian froze in front of me, no longer winding us through a dance. He wasn’t—he wasn’t kissing me back.

My shoulders stiffened, rising toward my ears, even as I fell back on my heels, blinking up at him. He touched his lips, concern twisting his features.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I misread⁠—”

He dropped his hand. “You didn’t.”

“Then—why?” I didn’t understand. If he’d been flirting, and I’d been swept up in the moment, why not follow through? Was it that I was drunk? Nemedans were more careful to be decent than anyone I’d met in Urial.

Killian’s smile turned sad. “Avianitis.”

Avianitis?

A little laugh bubbled out of me, and I stepped back just a few inches before moving close again. “Don’t tell me you’ve already caught feelings for me?”

Despite myself, a little spark of hope lit in my chest. Was it really so absurd?

He’d come to Urial with Paris last winter, had worked to save my family. He’d even ridden in the carriage with Helena and me, a protector and company all at once.

And when I’d lain in bed, certain I would die, his assurance of my value had been a balm, easing the fear that I was nothing but a failure.

Only a few seconds after that spark lit, however, it died on a downturn of Killian’s handsome mouth.

“No, Hector.”

I stood there now, arms empty, heavy at my sides, gladder than ever that most of the guests had left already. This was a horror, and I couldn’t keep myself from making it worse.

“Then I don’t understand.”

“Forgive me, but I simply think the idea that love is tied to illness isn’t real at all. It’s simply that our people are insular and don’t risk getting close to others without the illusion of⁠—”

“Of genuine feeling?”

Killian breathed out slow, almost a sigh, but he didn’t seem sad. “Of love. The stories people tell themselves to make living easier, to make each other feel better.”

“So you think love is . . . a story? A fiction?”

He shrugged. “A comforting one, but yes.”

I turned half away. Why did that sting? It wasn’t as if I cared that a Nemedan didn’t believe in love. I wasn’t any kind of romantic myself.

And still, his words scraped like pumice over my heart.

“Anyone could pass on Avianitis,” Killian said, reaching out to touch my arm. “I wouldn’t risk you.”

Was that supposed to be a comfort? I jerked away.

“Oh, come on. Don’t be upset.”

“I’m not upset,” I snapped back, sounding thoroughly, well, upset. “I simply don’t understand why you bothered staying for my brother, your friend’s, wedding if you don’t believe in the very concept it was built upon.”

And like a man mastered by emotion rather than logic, I stamped my feet across the wooden boards of the dance floor as I marched myself to bed.

CHAPTER FOUR

KILLIAN

Ididn’t want to be the kind of ass who said someone was beautiful when they were angry, but also, it wasn’t quite right. Hector was always beautiful. There was something in his strength, his flashing eyes, his set jaw, that I found deeply compelling, but it wasn’t about him being angry, and it wasn’t about me mocking his anger.

It was about his passion.

Sometimes, I thought we were all out of passion on the wall.

What time did we have for emotions, when we were busy fighting every day for the lives of all Nemeda?

So yes, Hector’s emotions were something special. Something fiery hot and utterly breathtaking, and I wouldn’t let myself be the one who took him from the world. Just because Nemedans, as a whole, were a naive lot who thought love was real, and it alone could make someone find their wings, didn’t mean that was the truth. What that was, was a lot of fucking nonsense.

Still, I was up half the night worrying about Hector and his reaction. I knew people well enough to know that when they didn’t get what they wanted in one place, they looked elsewhere. He hadn’t fancied himself in love with me, after all. He’d just been looking for a bed partner. So why wouldn’t he have gone off and found someone else to scratch that itch, who could just as easily give him Avianitis as me?

I scrubbed my hands over my face and tried to shake it off, pulling myself out of my bedroll and dressing for the day as slowly as I ever had.

Almost forty, my joints reminded me. Almost forty years old, and not getting younger. The exceptionally cold winter we’d just gotten through had almost been more than my abused bones wanted to deal with. Old aches and pains had flared up; a knee I’d dislocated in my teen years, and the arm that I’d broken just under a decade ago.

I’d thought that arm would be the end of me at the time. I’d broken ribs at the same time, and it had been almost a month of recovery before the healer had deemed me fit for the wall.

I wasn’t in the habit of ignoring our healers, but it had been a struggle not to simply head back out. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling wasn’t something I was good at.

The only thing that had held me still had been the memory of my mother—not of her disapproval, but the fact that she’d made the same mistake, and died for it. She’d gone back to the wall after an injury before the healer had wanted her to, and it had been a mistake. Her reaction time had been slowed, her skills frayed at the edges from the long inactivity and continuing pain, and she simply hadn’t pulled her arm up quick enough to block that final blow.

Somehow, I didn’t think Hector had the same example. Or if he did, maybe he hadn’t taken it the same way. I didn’t know his family history, but there was something strange about his dynamic with Paris and their sister. More like he was their father than their brother. They didn’t respect him quite the same way one would a parent, but they accepted his caretaking easily enough, so I wasn’t sure what it all meant.

But then, I’d had a dozen or more fathers over the years, and respected only a small handful of them, all of whom were still a part of my inner circle. I didn’t think I had anything like a normal idea of what a father was. The Crane weren’t like other clans, in that. There was little pairing off and marrying, forming tiny family units that were entirely self-sustaining, in their own homes on their own farms, separate from everyone else.

The Crane lived in our palace, or a handful of forts along the border of Nemeda, and all of us were family. Hundreds of people living together, thousands in the case of the palace, and we were one enormous family, not one sweet little unit with two parents and three cute children. We all had to rely on each other, every day, to survive to the next.

So when someone I thought of as part of my extended family, Paris, marched up, glaring at me, I took it seriously. “What the hell were you thinking, telling Hector he had to serve on the wall?”

I threw my hands up in supplication, but before I could even answer, he crossed his arms over his chest, continuing to glare, but now looking hurt as well. “Esmerelda didn’t have to serve on the wall. She said so. Why would Hector?”

I hesitated, and that didn’t help. Esmerelda had done more than serve. She’d given us valuable information about the enemy, worth more than anyone’s year on the wall had ever been. But she hadn’t actually served. Her husband had served almost a decade, and we’d accounted one of his years on her behalf, even though truly, it hadn’t been necessary.

Esmerelda had been a miracle, and saved thousands of lives.

While I didn’t question that Paris and his family were wonderful, and so very important to Brett and the Hawk Clan, they hadn’t given us a fraction of what Esmerelda had, and I didn’t want to disrespect her offering. Even if I agreed with Paris in spirit and didn’t have any need for them to serve on the wall.

So I crossed my own arms. “Esmerelda defected from the southlands. She gave us information on their troop movements and war plans and leaders.” At his hurt expression, I sighed and softened. I let my shoulders drop a fraction, leaning down to meet his gaze head on instead of towering over him. “Paris, I don’t think you or your family owe me anything. This isn’t about me, or the Crane, or debts. I didn’t demand that your brother come to the wall. I think . . . I think he needs to. For himself.”

At that, Paris crumpled, leaning on me, eyes welling with tears. “I don’t want to lose him. He could—he might—we’re not fighters.”

I wrapped an arm around him, turning us so I could lead him back to his new husband. “We train all new people, Paris. I promise you, I won’t let your brother stand a single shift on the wall until I’m confident he can handle it.”

It didn’t fix anything, but he slumped against me, no longer glaring, and not crying. “Promise?”

“Promise. It’s no more than I’d do for anyone, Paris. We don’t just throw people’s lives away. I promise you that. No one is expendable.” No need to point out that just because we did our best didn’t mean no one died. But he needed to know that we’d do our best to send Hector back to him unharmed. And I would, I swore to myself. If it was in my power, Hector wouldn’t suffer so much as a single injury in his time with my clan.

Too bad that wasn’t a promise I could be certain to keep.

CHAPTER FIVE

HECTOR

Iwas avoiding Paris.

While I didn’t particularly enjoy his ire, I felt worse when he stared at me hard, not blinking for so long that his eyes began to water. Or—or maybe he was just on the edge of tears.

I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t give him what he wanted. Our family’s position in Nemeda had to be unassailable, and the only way to guarantee our safety was to serve as every other Nemedan had done before.

Things would get twisty and complicated, people whispering behind our backs that we were other, different, untrustworthy, until gossip became reality. If we weren’t Nemedan, it weakened Brett’s position. He’d be less able to shelter Paris and Helena.

This was how I kept them all safe. This was how I knew that they had what they needed. It was less than I could do for them back in Urial, but more than nothing.

And, well, I’d sent Paris south for the good of the family, hadn’t I? Now it was my turn.

Rather than sit there at the clan meeting and allow him to stare balefully at me while his new husband worried at his side, I made myself scarce. Right on the coast, the Herons boasted a large marketplace, fruits and vegetable of a thousand colors ripe and shining all around.

In Urial, we had had potatoes. Carrots. Sometimes hardy greens. There weren’t many vegetables that appreciated the cold, and just looking around the plenty here was overwhelming.

Only I wasn’t there for vegetables. My family and I had fled with only what we could carry, and while we’d recovered much while staying with the Hawk Clan, I intended to provide for myself rather than lean further on Brett’s generosity.

Only, as I moved deeper into the market, past stalls selling food, meat roasted on sticks, fried dough covered in caramelized sugar, I realized that I did not know what to purchase for myself.

Not only had I had servants in Urial to provide for the basics of survival, but I’d . . . well, I’d never been a soldier.

I knew how to fight well enough, if we were in a proper duel with rapiers or sabers, but I’d never truly fought for my life or anyone else’s.

Surely the Cranes would have preferred weapons I would have to learn, but I needed clothes of a more practical sort, and—and another pair of boots.

Shoes sounded wonderfully uncomplicated, so I headed in that direction. Only, at the cobbler’s stall, I came up short. There were dozens of styles, some intricate and some very plain, and gods, I couldn’t even do this, could I?

I wandered over to a leather set with fine stitching along the sides. They looked very nice. Handsome. I’d have admired a man in these shoes.

But did I want to stand out like that?

I reached for them, and then a throat cleared across the display counter from me. I looked up to see the giant eagle—Brett’s friend.

“Ah, little Hawk owl,” Orestes said, grinning with his hands on his hips as he looked down at me. “You don’t want those.”

I couldn’t help but flinch. I . . . wasn’t that.

Paris could transform himself into a beautiful snowy owl now, and Helena showed absolutely no fear at the idea of contracting Avianitis. Her boldness even seemed reasonable, given that she and Paris were full siblings?

But me? I only shared one parent with them. Half a bloodline.

Perhaps that was why I’d gotten so upset the night before. It wasn’t that Killian didn’t believe in love, and if I kept repeating it to myself, perhaps I’d believe that it had nothing to do with the fact that he’d rejected me—though that still stung.

No, it was the idea that I was more susceptible to Avianitis than Paris and Helena were, that I was different, that I didn’t really belong with them.

But gods, if not with them, where did I belong?

“Not a Hawk or an owl, I’m afraid.”

Orestes’s brow wrinkled. “Don’t know about that. At the very least, the Hawk’s claimed you.”

“I—” Truth told, I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I was grateful to Brett, and in a sour part of my stomach, I was bitterly jealous that he’d manage to save my family when I couldn’t. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Chief Brett has been exceptionally kind, and I shudder to think what would’ve happened to us without his aid. I only—I’m struggling to place where I fit in all of this.”

Orestes was silent for long enough that I looked up from the boots I’d been staring at. His expression was open, too patient. He was waiting for me to elaborate.

I sighed. “I’m not Nemedan, and I’ve—I’ve never been the sort for fairy tales like Paris and Helena. Only, come to find out, there is magic. Or something beyond my understanding. And it’s deadly. Except not for . . . Don’t get me wrong! I’m delighted that Paris is safe, that he has this—this whole new world to explore and a whole new way to do it. I simply don’t have as much faith in myself as I have in them.”

It was more than I’d told anyone, and the only reason I could do it? Orestes didn’t look like the sort of man who’d give himself over to grand emotional displays. I’d explain, we’d grimace awkwardly at each other, and it’d be over.

Orestes’s brow furrowed. “Why not? Paris took to Nemeda well—way I hear it, Avianitis wasn’t near as bad for him as it’s been for most survivors. And you don’t seem too worried about Helena.”

Weakly, I laughed. “Well, you try telling Helena what she can and cannot do. If I were to try and put her off following her heart, she’d only do it faster. But, I guess, it’s more than that.” I swallowed roughly, glancing back down to fiddle with some of the leather detailing on the right boot. “My mother died. Uh, years before Paris was born, and Helena shortly after him. Their mother was—was good to me. But whatever is inside them that makes them, well, them, I don’t have it.” Another uncomfortable laugh, and I waved my hand through the air, dismissing the thought. “Like I said, they have fairy tales. I have ledgers. But as long as they’re safe and happy⁠—”

My throat was too tight to go on. I shrugged, pressing my thumbnail into the leather. “Forgive me,” I croaked, “but I would let them keep their wonder if they can.”

Orestes hummed, and I regretted saying anything at all, until he lifted up another pair of boots and slid them across the counter to me.

“You want these.”

I stared at them. They were plain, but sturdy looking.

When I met his eye, he smiled.

“They’ll last you,” he promised.

“Thank you.”

CHAPTER SIX

KILLIAN

It was a relief to leave.

Not that Heron lands were anything less than beautiful. No, it was paradise. Sun and sandy beaches and palm trees with enormous green fronds swaying in the balmy breeze.

The Heron Clan was truly blessed.

But my people were home, in Crane lands. Fighting the south without me. Dying without me.

How much could a man be expected to lay back and enjoy himself when there was an endless war waiting for him, that might at that very moment be killing his friends and relatives?

I’d always joked that I would rest when the war was over, and well . . . Mother’s way had been rather less happy.

I’ll rest when I’m dead, birdie, she’d told me whenever I’d encouraged her to spend more time off the wall. I hoped if the soul extended beyond death, that wherever she was, it looked a lot like Heron lands.

I was still staring off into space at the beach, trying to imagine my mother lying in one of the Heron Clan’s ubiquitous net hammocks, slung between thick palm trunks. It was impossible. I could only imagine her as she’d been. Not relaxing on a sandy beach, sipping fruity drinks and swaying her hand gently through the air to match time with the Heron sitting in the sand nearby playing some kind of musical instrument.

The Herons were incredible musicians.

But Mother? No. I could only picture her on the wall. In her armor, head held high, glaring down at the southerners. It was who she’d been, and who she’d always be. If the soul survived after death, there was no relaxing sunny break for the likes of us.

There was only the wall, forever.

Just like in life.

“Killian?” I’d have worried he was coming to give me more of a dressing down, but Paris’s voice was hesitant. Concerned, even. “Are you okay? Maybe you should stay a while.”

I turned to find him looking up at me, concern in his eyes. Concern for me? Nonsense. I was Crane. We were the eternal warriors of Nemeda. We were never for concern. Only fighting.

“I’m sorry about Otus convincing your brother he needs to come to the wall,” I said, sighing, shaking my head. Because I didn’t think I’d ever been sorrier for a thing. Hector was a sturdier, more sensibly built kind of person than Paris, sweet little artistic dreamer that he was, but neither of them belonged in a war.

Most people didn’t. Though he’d spent five years on the wall, Brett certainly didn’t. He could fight, but he wasn’t a fighter. He was a farmer, and all the better for it. Orestes, too. He hadn’t spent a decade on the wall because he excelled at killing, but because he had been searching for a place to belong. He’d known he didn’t belong with his bloodthirsty, selfish kin, so when he’d been accepted without question among the Crane, for a time, he’d settled there. Felt at home. Since his family’s destruction, he’d been living happily with Brett and the Hawk Clan, learning about spinning and weaving and farming, and was as happy as a bird on the wind. I wished him luck finding a less bloody place to belong than Crane Palace. He deserved it.

Everyone did, really.

No one but the southlands deserved an endless bloody war, and I only wished it on them because they damned well demanded it, throwing their youth at us in bloody crashing waves over and over, every year, without end.

That, then, was my beach. The only one I could spend time on, waves of southerners trying to crest the wall, as we beat them back again and again, for as long as we were able.

They were like the ocean, though, and water . . . water was persistent. Eventually, it would break through the sturdiest wall. Even ours.

“It’s not your fault,” Paris said, sighing, pressing his forehead into my arm. It was strange, how he didn’t hesitate to touch me. I was Brett’s, and that was enough for him. It meant that I, too, was family to him. “I just worry about him. He almost died. You know. You were there. He’s not entirely healthy again yet. Maybe he won’t ever be. He struggles to breathe sometimes. And I wonder . . . it feels like something in him is changed since then, too. There’s something—something brittle in him. Maybe even broken.”

Of course there was something broken in him. Someone Hector had trusted—not just with his own life, but with his entire country’s wellbeing—had tried to kill him. A king was like the council as a whole. He was supposed to be knowing and loving and helpful—paternal and maternal at once. He wasn’t supposed to try to kill you for no crime at all.

He wasn’t supposed to be mad and selfish and hateful.

From what I’d gleaned, it sounded like Hector’s own father hadn’t much been a father to him. That it had been the opposite, in fact, Hector caring for the family while his father read Paris and Helena bedtime stories and played in the garden with them. So Hector was the father, and he was still filled with the need to protect his family. Especially after his own near-father figure had betrayed him entirely.

I turned to face Paris. “I promise you, I will do my best to protect him. I won’t let him out on the wall until he’s ready, and I’ll make sure the others watch over him.”

I didn’t wince at the statement, but it was a close thing. The wall worked because all the fighters there could count on each other to watch out for them. Never before had I suggested that any of them watch over one man more than another. Could I do it even now, even having promised Paris that I would?

There was no question, really. I had promised.

More than that, I realized as I turned to where Orestes was showing Hector the saddlebags on the horse my people had given him to ride, I wanted to do it. I wanted to protect Hector, the way no one before me ever had. The way everyone before me had failed at.

He’d given so much, over and over, to everyone in his life. It was time that someone protected him.

It didn’t hurt that he was beautiful to look at while I did it. Those dark curls of Paris’s, but not on a youth, on a man full grown, with a square stubbled jaw and stubborn determination in his golden eyes. I looked back to Paris, smiling at him. “All I can do is my best, Paris, but I will give you that. Give him that.”

He sniffled and nodded, but didn’t say anything else, just left me to my thoughts, as I prepared to leave paradise and ride back into battle.

Back home.

“Can’t leave someone be when they need guidance, can you?” I called to Orestes.

Orestes turned his great wide grin on me. “Might as well, if I’m riding with you, don’t you think? Besides, our saddlebags are different from the ones in Urial.”

Riding with us. It seemed I’d been wrong about Orestes making his escape from the wall. Damned place was like a whirlpool, inevitably dragging everyone in closer and closer, until they couldn’t fight the pull any longer. Eventually, it would kill us all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HECTOR

The Crane Clan, those that’d come with Killian, were preparing to fly south. Many of them were returning to the wall. Determination fell over their features, lowering their brows and setting their lips in a firm line. They were preparing for war, I realized.

It wasn’t something I’d ever done.

Urial didn’t engage in wars. The winters were too long, the weather too bitter, for the movement of armies. Most of the lower classes’ labors were put into surviving the cold.

No one wanted to take anything from us, and Urial had been too proud to raid from people the king thought so little of.

Now, I’d be expected to learn these same heavy scowls, the proper way to wear a sword while on horseback.

I’d only ever shot an arrow across the lawn in summer to hit a still target.

Gods, I was going to be a disaster.

At the very least, I should’ve felt more serious, as determined as my new comrades. Instead, I was lost. A little worried.

Not of battling. I hadn’t delved deep enough into my anxiety to acknowledge that I would have to fight.

For now, I was simply worried about the trip.

I’d never taken on this kind of journey by horseback alone. Any travel that took more than a day in Urial, we’d done by carriage. It was long and bumpy, not terribly comfortable, but it was less effort than riding horseback hours on end over the course of days.

Without knowing exactly what trials to prepare myself for, I was left confused and empty-handed, dreading how my thighs would ache and the way my lower back would protest after long hours on the road.

And then, I noticed Killian was among the few of us readying to take the long way south.

For some reason, I’d expected him to fly ahead with the rest, return to the wall triumphantly, a true warrior.

Instead, he led an enormous white and gray mare by the reins to my side.

“Do you have everything you need for the trip?”

I stared at him, my eyes wide and unblinking. “I think I do.”

The day before, in the market, I hadn’t let Orestes leave my side until I was well satisfied that I had all I needed to get me to the Crane lands and situated. He was an invaluable resource, having spent years on the wall despite not being born to it, so he knew what it meant to have to prepare.

“Are you . . . traveling with us?”

Killian arched a brow. “How else am I to get home?”

I looked pointedly at the Crane Clanspeople shedding their cloaks and shirts, preparing to take flight. “I thought you might. Well, you don’t have to take the slow road.”

Killian huffed through his nose, but he had this strange way of looking dissatisfied that didn’t wrinkle his smooth skin or cause lines at all, like he was used to being annoyed and it wasn’t worth the effort of a real frown.

“I’m aware,” he said. “But as chief, it’s my duty to see all of my people home safely.”

Right. Obviously it had nothing to do with me personally. I wasn’t simply holding everyone back with my distressingly Urial ineptitude. Damn me for my lack of feathers.

Even as I ducked my head, Killian tilted his in an attempt to hold my eye.

“If you are coming to serve on the wall, that includes you.”

I couldn’t help staring at him. This man was . . . strange. Stubborn. Terribly responsible and utterly unavailable and⁠—

“I’m sorry.” The words toppled out of my mouth and heat rushed up my neck. I wasn’t taken to blushing often, and my skin was dark enough that it didn’t look half so dramatic as it did on Paris. Still, I hated it.

Killian’s head stayed tilted, a curious arch to his brow.

“For the other night,” I explained. “For throwing myself at you, and—and for any sourness that followed. I . . . don’t want to make this awkward or—well, I’ve been in a strange mood and it’s nothing to do with what you—with what you believe in. And really, it’s . . . I should appreciate that you . . . that you look after . . . ”

Me? That was absurd.

Still, he could’ve taken me to bed, thinking all the while that he might infect me with Avianitis, and not care that he’d sent me to my deathbed.

Instead, he’d pulled away, which was a kindness, little as I’d wanted to be treated kindly when there were so many other ways he could’ve treated me.

“Hector,” Killian said softly, holding my eye with his gleaming silvery ones, “it’s fine. You weren’t sour.”

Oh, I certainly was. In fact, I remained so, given that I had been denied my birthright, my home, or even a tumble to take my mind off it all.

Wryly, I smiled. “In any case, I apologize. You don’t have to look after me, though. I can take care of myself.”

Finally, he frowned. Perhaps he didn’t like that. Maybe he was getting ready to tell me that I was a useless mess who’d squandered all my family’s potential and that I very much did need someone watching my back.

I didn’t want to hear it, so I dipped in a quick bow and excused myself to say goodbye to Paris and Helena and—and leave them behind.

Riding on horseback was worse than I’d imagined. My legs ached, the going was slow, and I regretted not demanding a seat on the wagon that rolled along with us.

The creak of its wheels behind me should have been proof enough that Killian had a reason to join our convoy beyond my uselessness, but I couldn’t convince myself it was true. He was simply coddling me. I was holding him, holding everyone, back.

If I’d been a true Nemedan, I could’ve flown ahead with the others, made myself useful, belonged.

I let out a long exhale. What I needed was to calm down and get myself in order. Before Father had died, I would not have suspected there was anything beyond me, and now—well, perhaps I’d failed on many fronts, but that didn’t make me entirely incompetent.

Rather than fall into despair, I gave my horse a little kick and cantered to Orestes’s side.

“Little Hawk,” he said with a nod.

I might’ve felt sorry for his horse, but his seat was fluid and balanced, and he didn’t seem to give the creature any more trouble than the rest of us gave our mounts, though no Nemedan seemed as comfortable in their seat as anyone from Urial. Why would they, when they could fly?

“May I ask you a favor?”

He turned my way, his eyes narrowed skeptically. “Probably.”

“When we stop for the night, would you . . . I want to train. Before we arrive at the palace. I don’t want to hold anyone back, and I’m not conditioned. Not for travel, not for war. But if I am a weak point, it’ll only—I’ll belong less than I do now. Will you help me? Show me how Nemedans fight and tell me what to look for and⁠—”

As I rambled on, Orestes’s grin spread. “Yes, yes,” he interrupted when I was rushing toward sputtering. “After supper, I’ll show you how to fight. Though . . . ” He glanced at my sword, belted at my hip. “Have you ever used a spear?”

A spear? Killian had mentioned them. Gods . . . I was doomed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

KILLIAN

Orestes was teaching Hector the spear.

It made sense. They had the same sort of body, in a way. Orestes was taller—Orestes was taller than almost anyone—but he had the same compact feel as Hector, because of the thick, corded muscle of him.

Most people born to the Crane Clan were cursed with the same willowy long limbs and slender frame that made it difficult to pack on any muscle at all. I’d spent my whole lifetime working on gaining the muscle I had, and it remained a constant struggle.

I watched as we ate dinner, Orestes walking Hector through a simple practice routine. It had most of the useful maneuvers the spear required on the wall. Stabbing, naturally, and slashing, but more importantly, the end sweep that we used to swipe southerners off their ladders, and the end butt to shove them back when they came close enough to make use of their swords.

Our spears were an advantage, and one we needed to use to their fullest. It was one of the reasons we kept beating them back—we had spears, and those gave us better reach. We had the wall, an immovable obstacle, covering the whole of our border from coast to coast.

For some reason, the southerners insisted on making war in very specific ways, and never seemed interested in learning new techniques that might help them prevail. They used only their swords, even bows most often relegated to grappling onto the wall, not combat, never any other weapon that might help them overcome the reach of our spears. I shouldn’t complain, since it saved the lives of my people, but it had always seemed odd to me.

We Crane were constantly trying to better our tactics. To find new and smarter ways of killing the invaders.

Why didn’t they do the same?

“You should offer to teach him,” Nia said as she sat down next to me, an extra bowl of stew in her hand for me, which she passed along before she started eating.

I shook my head and tried to focus on my food. “Orestes is better for him. He’ll teach him how best to move for someone who has the same limitations on his flexibility.”

She hummed what sounded like an agreement, but shook her head anyway. “So? You can teach him the same, you just have to think about it.”

“Orestes is a good teacher.”

“Sure he is,” she agreed, cheerful and smiling. “But the Eagle doesn’t want to fuck him, and you do.”

I let my head fall back and groaned. “So obvious?”

“I grew up with you, old man. I know when you want a shiny thing. I just can’t figure out why you’re denying yourself.” She turned away from them, facing me in her seat, waiting for my answer.

Like it mattered.

“If you grew up with me, maybe you shouldn’t call me old,” I mumbled, and before she could cheerfully tell me she was perfectly comfortable being old, I went on. “He’s susceptible to Avianitis. And we both know that nonsense about love is just that. Nonsense. That misbegotten son of the Crow infected that last envoy from Urial. He’s not capable of love.”

She made a face, and we fell into momentary silence. The Crow . . . they had been the first clan broken after the pact that had formed Nemeda, and unlike the overreaction of the breaking of the Gull, no one felt bad about the Crow’s end. They’d created it themselves, as sneaky and ill-intentioned as the Eagle had been when they’d been broken the year before.

Even now, being a child of the long dead Crow Clan brought nothing but shame. And he who would have been the chief of the Crow Clan, Xanthos, was a conniving bastard. Better to call him fox than crow, the way he’d been constantly trying to sneak into the hen house the whole time he’d been on the wall as a young man. He was technically part of the Pelican Clan, and he’d come to spend his year with us through them. He’d spent the whole year fucking anyone who’d have him.

Normally, the Crane respected that, but Xanthos had taken it to a different level. I wasn’t one to insult a man’s ability to sleep with many partners and also feel emotions, but in three-hundred-odd days on the wall, the man had slept with at least four hundred people.

“I suppose . . . That’s a good point,” Nia finally said, with a sigh at the end. “I always liked the story about love, because at least if it’s love, it means people aren’t just dying for nothing. Love is always worth something.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I just shrugged.

She leaned in and bumped her shoulder against mine. “I know, I know, oh fearless leader, you don’t believe in love.” She affected a deeper voice that was clearly supposed to approximate mine and said, “Who has time for love? I have to go bleed for Nemeda.”

It was . . . well, it wasn’t exactly right. But it wasn’t wrong, either. I did believe love was real. Brett was in love. Paris was doubtless in love. It was just that love meant something else under pressure. Love could be sweet and perfect and eternal when you were a farmer and nothing ever tested it. When you lived every day under threat of death? Everything was different. Love had to be perfect, or it would crumble.

And if I’d learned one thing in my years of life, it was that nothing was perfect.

Not, I realized as I sat there eating my dinner, even the wall. Because as I sat there, bowl in hands, I watched a small boat pull up on the rocky shore beneath where we were traveling, bearing the standard of one of the south’s warring city-states.

What was it I’d just been thinking, about how the southerners were too bound in tradition to think of simple ways around their obstacles, like spears to match ours, or . . . boats to go around the wall and land on the other side?

Fuck.

Immediately, my eyes turned to Hector. How could I keep him safe and handle the fucking invading southerners at the same time?

CHAPTER NINE

HECTOR

At first, no one seemed to know quite what they were looking at. Sure, a number of warriors had watched me and Orestes train as they’d eaten supper, but one by one, they turned away from us, until Orestes’s spear arm went slack, and he too turned to stare at the coastline.

We were between the rest of the clan’s warriors and the water, on the wide open grassland where we stood no danger of hurting anyone as I struggled to find the proper form with such a long weapon.

The spear left me feeling exposed, despite theoretically being able to keep my enemies at a distance. When I fought Orestes, it felt like I had no firm defenses. What I’d earned in proximity, I gave up in control.

“Shit,” Orestes hissed as he watched the men crunch over the rocks at the waterline.

“What?” I stepped closer to him. I didn’t recognize the banner these men flew, but Orestes’s expression had gone hard.

“They never use the sea.”

“What?”

Already, he was stepping forward, lifting his weapon. Most of the men below abandoned their boat to the one poor sod trying to drag it up the shore with a thick rope, and when they turned to Orestes, they grinned at each other and shouted in a tongue I didn’t know.

“The southerners,” Orestes growled out, only seconds before the strangers started running for him.

The men saw Orestes and rushed him. It was like he was a cake in the summer heat, left out for the flies to swarm around. And I couldn’t understand why they only fixated on him.

Yes, he was large, arguably more likely to kill a man than I was, given that I’d never done it before and he was, well, enormous and trained and formidable. Still, it was absurd of them all to rush him, like they were racing to see who could take him down first and didn’t give a damn for the rest of us, no matter how well armed and formidable we were. Or at least the Crane warriors were.

I might not know how to wield a spear properly, but I still had a sword on my hip, and I was far from completely useless with it. Moreover, the southerners seemed to favor swords themselves, and that put us evenly balanced.

The southerner nearest me was struggling to get past his comrades into striking distance of Orestes, who held them off with strong, sweeping blows, leveraging the sharp edge of his spear to slice through any who dared get too close. The nearest southerner, instead of turning to the next target, surged forward when he saw an opening.

I grabbed him by his shoulder and jerked him around. With a roar, he spun my way, his sword arm stretched long.

I was barely able to jump back, and even then—I felt the tip of his blade dance across my skin. It tore more at the cloth of my shirt than at my body, as harmless as a paper cut at first. Then the stinging pain spread.

His arm swung wide, his balance undone by the unexpected attack, and I lunged forward. There was no need to make a dramatic gesture, just sink my blade in and⁠—

It slid in so smoothly, like cutting a well-cooked potato. The blade was sharp. But then, a bone. The impact jarred up my arm, and I twisted my sword and slashed it out to the side.

The man screamed in fear and pain. He dropped to his knees, suddenly paler than he’d been, clutching his open stomach. And I⁠—

I’d killed him. He breathed still, but even then, he was swaying, trying to hold in his punctured organs, his split skin. He fell to the side, gasping for air, blood bubbling past his lips.

I stared.

I’d never⁠—

Gods, I felt sick.

As a nearby southerner realized that they had more to deal with than just one rather oversized Nemedan, he rounded on me, fingers flexing around the hilt of his blade.

I glanced at my own, at the blood on gleaming metal, and I wasn’t sure that I could do it again. My heart pounded, my stomach rolled⁠—

And the next second, the rest of the Crane crashed past me with a roar.

It was all of them, moving together as if they shared one mind. Their spears lashed out, and the southerners broke.

Me? All I could do was stagger back, get out of the way. Orestes’s laugh rolled through me as he tossed one of the southerners aside.

My breath caught, the metallic tang of blood rose from the back of my throat as if I’d swallowed it. I⁠—

I stood there, dazed, lost, until Killian’s pale, furious face took up my field of vision.

“What the hell were you thinking?” He jerked the cut on my shirt open to inspect my skin, gauge the seriousness of the damage. Only once he’d seen with his own eyes that it was hardly more than a scratch did he straighten and meet my gaze.

“You do not,” he growled, “rush into a fight without thought.”

“They were all going at Orestes. I was nearest to hand.”

Killian scoffed. “Orestes knows what he’s doing. We know what we’re doing.”

The tilt of my lips turned sharp and bitter. Clearly, the only one there who had no idea what they were doing was me. I was the next best thing to useless.

And still, I did not think I had done wrong. I might’ve been an ignorant, useless fool, but I’d still tried to do right in the moment.

“Are you asking me to standby and allow a friend to get attacked?” I arched a brow, and Killian’s jaw flexed, his fury spiking.

He couldn’t ask me that. If he was the man I thought, he wouldn’t dare—particularly not in front of his people.

Nemeda might be a strange place to me, its ways anathema to the values held in Urial, but I’d learned enough. They worked together, in balance, serving and served by each other.

Killian’s eyes narrowed. He shoved forward, closer, and I inhaled in time with his step, stubbornly planting my feet to the spot.

His arm lashed out and he gripped me by the back of my neck. His fingers dug in hard. “Half an inch closer, and that man could’ve gutted you,” he hissed, his silvery eyes flashing bright.

His other hand slipped beneath my shirt, past the bloodstained score in the fabric to belabor his point by pressing against my torn skin. I gasped, but it was more than just the sting of his touch against the cut. I was caught in his arms, in his gaze, in his anger, and my thoughts went fuzzy. Blood rushed to my head, down to my groin, and everything went blank around us.

There was just him, me, the sting of a cut and the rough feel of his calluses against my skin and—and this moment with his concern and fury glowing in his eyes. Truth told, I didn’t care if he was angry with me. That was better than holding himself apart, better than being alone in a strange land.

“Yes,” I whispered. Suddenly, my mouth was dry. My lips were too. I smoothed the tip of my tongue between them and swallowed, trapped in his furious glare. “I’m not ignorant of the risks in coming here, Killian.”

For a breath, we were trapped like that, so close. I didn’t quite dare grasp the front of his shirt and hold him there, haul him in like I wanted to. But I’d kissed him once and been rebuffed and—and now his people were there, eyes on us, and I couldn’t⁠—

With a growl, Killian released me all at once. His fingers flashed red with a smear of my blood as he jerked away. I stumbled back into balance as he stalked off, fuming.

CHAPTER TEN

KILLIAN

Fucking southerners.

Goat fucking, ass-pain southerners.

I cursed every single one of them that had ever been born, and went about the field of battle and stabbed each in the heart once more, just to be sure not a single one returned to his awful land in order to tell the tale of landing on the other side. Maybe next time they’d think twice about taking a boat around my wall.

I had to contact Minerva, since the area we were in was between Crane and Raven lands, and she’d want to know about the change. It was unsettling; a group of people who’d never tried to go around the wall in years upon years of fighting, and now they thought of it. What next? New tactics against the wall? Weapons I’d never seen before?

The southerners proving able to learn was a nightmare scenario that could end in the destruction of everything I loved, and I couldn’t allow it.

Not that I could actually stop anyone from learning.

Like Hector.

No, he wasn’t anything like the southerners, no threat to my people and their future, but I still didn’t like it. Didn’t like him learning to fight, because I didn’t fucking want him fighting.

I twisted my spear as I pulled it out of the last southern asshole, and spun back to look at my own people. No one was seriously injured, thank fuck. What a great introduction to the fight that would have been for Hector, dead Cranes.

On the other hand, the look on his face had been . . .

I remembered the moment I’d killed my first man. I’d been rather younger than Hector, but that was inevitable when one grew up on the wall. But in the end, age didn’t make that much difference.

I remembered it too well, the arrogance of innocence, the conviction that I would be able to be better than other people. I was the future clan chief, after all. I had been raised to defend Nemeda.

Then I’d thrown up.

I’d been . . . eleven, I thought. Maybe twelve. Mother hadn’t wanted me to be there, and I’d been determined to prove myself. Prove my iron will.

The gore had been rather more overwhelming than I’d expected. The smell of opening a man’s bowels up with my spear, the slick flow of his blood over my hands. More than that had been the shock writ large on his face. His enormous round eyes, lips gaping open. He’d called me a child with his dying gasp, and I’d never been sure whether he’d been horrified at the indignity of being bested by a child, or horrified at the idea that Nemedans let children fight.

We didn’t, and mother had blistered my hide for sneaking up onto the wall without permission.

I, much chastened and still on the queasy side, hadn’t argued with her. I’d accepted my punishment and then after that, waited until she decided I was ready.

It’d been too soon.

It was always too soon, for everyone.

Hector was easily in his late twenties, maybe even thirty, and it had been too soon for him.

Orestes was bandaging him, the giant oaf having escaped with hardly a cut, as usual, and everyone was paying more attention to Hector than their own issues. Oh, they pretended otherwise, busying their hands with bandaging and salvaging supplies and changing clothes and washing up and the like. But to a person, every one of them would pause every few seconds and sneak a glance at him.

We all recognized it. We’d all been there and felt it ourselves. The sick rush and horror of killing for the first time, and how it left you gasping for breath, trying to figure out which way was up and whether the sun still shone or if everything in the world was just a horrible trick. The tiny hope that perhaps this was a nightmare.

“He did well,” Nia said, coming up beside me. She whispered the words, not wanting anyone else to hear them, least of all Hector.

Rare was the man who wanted to hear that he killed well.

“He shouldn’t be here.” I went to wipe my face, and realized my hands were still covered with blood. I sighed at them in annoyance and headed for the water. When were my hands not covered in blood?

An ancestor of mine had been a painter. He’d specialized in a kind of line painting that involved not lifting the brush from the canvas until you’d completed an image. I imagined it had been rather easier to live with hands constantly stained black with ink.

“He shouldn’t,” Nia said, having followed me down to the water’s edge. “But he is. He made a choice, and I won’t pretend it wasn’t a sensible one. He’s too much like you for his own good, Killian. All he cares about is protecting the people he loves, and he puts them before anything. He’s not just taking his brother and sister’s years on the wall; he’s making it so people like Otus can’t make trouble for them. We both know he’s right. Nemeda has become insular over the years. We don’t like outsiders. The Hawk can accept Brett’s husband all they want, but the other clans don’t recognize his contributions the same as a year on the wall. A year on the wall is currency we all recognize and respect.”

She wasn’t wrong.

I hated more than anything that she wasn’t wrong. They did think of it like currency, the other clans. People fighting and dying, and because most of them only ever spent one year on the wall, they could leave and put it behind them. The Raven and Crane understood better, but they still acted as though a year of fighting for their lives was something . . . expected. Normal.

It was indeed something that brought us together as a nation, since the majority of us had it in common, and could speak with authority on the subject of risking their lives.

That didn’t make me hate it any less.

And for some reason, I hated it most of all for Hector of Urial.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HECTOR

“Hector?”

I looked up, eyelids fluttering as I came back to myself. My eyes stung like I hadn’t blinked, but for the life of me, I couldn’t say what I’d been staring at.

Killian was frowning at me like he’d tried to get my attention for a while. “How are you feeling?”

I was sitting on a log at camp. Apparently, the sun had gone down. We’d sheltered in place while the wounded were tended to.

“I’m fine,” I insisted. “It’s just a scratch.”

“An ill placed one.” His gaze dropped to my middle and the intensity of it brought heat to my cheeks. “And a scratch can still get tainted.”

I scowled down at my lap.

“Get infected?” Killian suggested.

“No, I understand. Just—” I pressed the heel of my palm against my belly. It stung—uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

After a moment, I shook my head. “It’s nothing. I, ah, appreciate your concern.”

That was the problem though: I didn’t understand it. He must’ve thought me useless as a babe in a fight if he thought I couldn’t endure one scrape of a blade across my skin. I didn’t like it, certainly, but I wasn’t going to fall apart.

“Well, keep it clean.” He stood, pulling out a small bottle. “Put this on the cut twice a day and the skin should stitch back quickly.”

I pulled out the cork and took a sniff. The salve had a fresh smell, almost minty.

“Thank you.” I put the cork back in and tucked the bottle away. “I’ll admit, we’re not so careful with every wound in Urial.”

“We’ve learned to be careful here. No sense risking a man’s life when we have the means to save it. I take it your people don’t fight many wars?” The wry tilt to Killian’s lip struck me. I wasn’t sure what to make of it—if he was simply chagrinned or if he thought I truly was useless.

“Some. It’s been a while, really. Mostly, our ‘wars’ amounted to infighting between royals. Small skirmishes. Nothing that’s lasted more than a year or two. My grandfather fought at the king’s father’s side to secure his throne. It’s why King Albany favored my father as he did—they grew up together. But that was the last conflict of note, squiring for their fathers on the edges of battles they were too young to understand. It’s difficult to maintain a fighting spirit when the very earth freezes over for half the year. People want stability, and even Urial’s sturdiest hunters don’t want to bunk in a tent during a blizzard.”

Just the thought seemed to make a shiver run through Killian, and I felt a swell of satisfaction to see it. Perhaps we weren’t as weak as he imagined.

“I’ll never understand how you all live with it. The cold.” He shook his head. Was a bit of snow all that terrible?

“Well, we favor warm drinks—spiced cider and one made with melted chocolate that is quite good—and when it’s still too bitter, we seek out each other. A thick blanket shared with the right person is often cozy enough to distract from the worst weather.”

I held Killian’s eye, and with every word I said, his gaze got more intent. For a long time, I sat there, wondering what came next. The air between us was charged, and I couldn’t be the only one who felt it.

And then, he was up.

The way he’d stood was so liquid, so quick, that one moment I was trapped in his intense stare and the next, I was blinking at his hip.

“Sleep well, Hector,” he said tightly. “We’ll be home tomorrow.”

Home . . . He might be, but this wasn’t mine.

My first look at the wall was . . .

It took me a moment to place the feeling of horror dropping in my gut like a pile of bricks. The wall was enormous, huge, sturdy. It stretched on as far as I could see in either direction, long before we reached the city beneath it. As the sun moved across the sky, the wall cast enormous shadows out across the whole settlement.

I’d never seen such disparate architectural styles pressed against one another. Of course, any building done in Urial was a constrained endeavor, done only on the order of the king. The stone that made up the castle was the same that was used to build all the manor houses scattered across the countryside—gray and dense, taken from one of the quarries that littered our mountain range.

Father had owned one of those quarries.

I supposed that meant I had as well, though I’d not been in a position to manage it after his death. Between the poisoning, Helena’s engagement to Prince Tybalt, and every other concern that’d fallen on us, I hadn’t gotten my bearings as patriarch before we were fleeing the kingdom.

Briefly, I wondered if I’d have done something different from my predecessors, given the chance—something creative or innovative with all that stone.

Doubtful. Creativity for its own sake had never been my strong suit.

Clearly, the same could not be said for the Crane Clan.

Tucked in a curve of the wall was the most elaborate city I’d ever seen. There were tall buildings, towering high with roofs that curved out and upward in decorative points. Tiny streams ran between streets, stones placed meticulously among them to keep the flow of traffic steady despite the gardens on either side.

Notably, those gardens were overgrown, entirely ungroomed, but here and there, stubborn flowers of a powdery purple shade stuck out from the weeds.

We came across an arched bridge. The horses’ hooves were loud against the sturdy boards beneath us.

And ahead, there was an enormous building with white walls, round windows, and intricate carvings on every corner and tucked into every recess.

“Is this the palace?” I asked Killian, who rode beside me.

He stared at his home for a second too long before answering me. “Yes.”

“It’s beautiful.” Even wrapped in shadow as it was.

“Thank you.” Killian’s mouth formed a straight line as he considered me. At the end of the large bridge, there were people waiting to take our horses, unpack the wagon.

Killian dismounted smoothly and, before I’d thought to move, came to my mount’s side. He held out a hand. “In the early days of the war, Southern incursions into Crane lands were common. Ten years before the wall was completed, an enormous section of the palace burnt. We did our best to rebuild, but⁠—”

Even as I gripped his hand for balance to dismount, he looked at the palace and sucked in his cheeks. “It was before my time, but I’ve often wondered if it’s the same now as it was. We did our best, but—” He shrugged, his arms bunching up when he crossed them.

“It’s like a scar.” I withdrew my hand, flexing it at my side as a tingle swept up my arm. Yes, there was attraction there—at least for me—but he’d been clear enough that we weren’t going to act on it, so I needed to restrain myself. I was there for a purpose, not to fawn over someone who didn’t want me.

He arched a brow my way.

“How the skin around an old wound can turn thick and hard?” I explained. “Healed, but the mark of pain endures even when the hurt has passed.”

Killian’s lips pursed. He looked down, a tiny pucker on his smooth forehead as he considered it. “I suppose, yes. We should find you a room, and I would like a report on what I’ve missed once I’ve had the chance to wash the road off.” This last, he said to one of the people from the palace, and they nodded swiftly and went to work.

It sounded less like an order than just pushing a cog to make it spin.

When Killian turned away, his long hair fanned out around his shoulders and he led me from this large bridge toward another delicately arched one over a beautiful frog pond toward the Crane palace. This bridge was smaller, like it was meant for private use instead of to bear the weight of every member of the Crane Clan daily. In the middle of the pond, an enormous, delicate crane, sculpted of swirling metal that looked more like water than anything solid, stood tall against the palace backdrop.

I hurried after him. “Don’t I have to—the wall?”

Killian froze, and it brought me up short. Everything about him was strange. Not quite human, at least in the way that I was used to.

He was controlled and furious, beautiful and deadly, and a tingle at the back of my skull said I ought to stay alert around him, like I was in the presence of a predator instead of a man.

“No,” he said. “Fresh off the road, you’d be more of a liability than a help, and you have more training to do. Tomorrow, we worry about all that. Today, we recover from our travels.”

“We?” I hated the hopeful note in my voice.

Killian seemed to have noticed too. His lips twitched. “Every link in our armor must be firm. So yes, a good night’s sleep in my own bed would serve me well before I ask my people to rely on my spear to protect them.”

Gods, all this talk of beds and spears made it grate all the more that he refused to share either with me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

KILLIAN

The report was largely a good one, and I only wished I could have returned the favor to the leaders of various sections of the wall. Instead, they had to be informed to be on the lookout for southerners trying new tricks. Getting into fucking boats and coming around the wall.

It wasn’t the easiest prospect, since the coast where our lands joined was rocky and rough, but clearly, they’d found at least one path.

I could only hope that the party not returning convinced the others that they hadn’t made it at all, since we had a weakness I hadn’t previously known about.

I didn’t like it, this new hole in our armor. I didn’t like any hole in our armor, because it inevitably ended in losing people, and every death was a failure. Whether I’d failed to see an attack coming, or failed to properly train someone, or failed to plug a gap like this one, they all sat uneasily on my shoulders.

Yes, yes, it was sheer hubris to take responsibility for everything. I was one man, and a fucking tired one at that. But at the same time, all these lives were put in my hands, whether by other clans or my own people. While I wasn’t ridiculous enough to think I had killed every Nemedan who died defending us, it didn’t change that they were all, in a way, my responsibility. All of these people were putting their lives in my hands, and I had to do my very best to respect that, and minimize loss of those lives.

Inevitably, that led me back to Hector.

Everything now seemed to lead me back to those honey-gold eyes and dark hair. That too-serious countenance that I not only understood, but felt down deep in my soul. Hector was a man who knew something about feeling the burden of too much responsibility.

He wouldn’t have come to the wall if he didn’t.

When Otus had tried to press him at the wedding, he’d have ignored it, or refused responsibility, or come up with some glib reason it didn’t apply to him. It wouldn’t have been bad, but it also wouldn’t have made me feel like we knew each other, deep down in my bones.

“Does he at least already have some muscle?” Abram was asking, looking at me like I was his mother demanding he eat his vegetables, because the Hawk worked hard to grow them, dear. He hefted a box of metal scraps, meeting my eye meaningfully. “They sent me that little hummingbird boy last year, and he couldn’t even help with fetching and carrying.”

I remembered the Hummingbird. He’d been sweet and earnest and ready to do anything he could, truly wanting to be of service during his year. I’d wanted to send him right back where he’d come from. After enough years in my position, it wasn’t hard to tell who could handle the never-ending fight on the wall and who could not. If I’d sent the boy into the fray, we’d have sent him home in a box, for his family to scatter to the winds.

So he’d trained half the year, and helped Abram the other half. After his training, I’d given him a week on the wall proper, just to make it so he’d defended Nemeda, not left out, and he’d also known full well it wasn’t for him. He’d been through a single major skirmish during his week, like the one Hector had already lived, and he’d jumped at the chance to assist Abram after that.

But Hector had already been through a fight, and he’d killed an attacker. He’d been horrified, yes, but every decent man was, when he was forced to kill for the first time. And the fiftieth. It got easier, but it never got better. And if, winds forbid, it started to seem fun, then that person didn’t belong on the wall any longer either.

But Abram.

He was asking me about Hector, since I’d come to ask him about taking him as a sort of apprentice.

Abram was . . . well, he was possibly the closest thing I had to a singular father. It was possible he was my father, though I didn’t look particularly like him. No, I looked just like my mother, and her father before. But Abram had been one of her pack of half a dozen lovers everyone at the time had called the Crane’s consorts, so it was possible. He was the only one of that lot I’d ever thought of as family, most of them simply being Mother’s men, never particularly interested in me.

I hadn’t blamed them, since I wasn’t father material either.

“He’s sturdy,” I promised Abram. “At least twice the size of the Hummingbird. And clever. Paris said something about him fixing locks back in Urial.”

Abram stopped and looked at me, considering. The box he was holding in his arms probably weighed more than the Hummingbird had. I’d actually half hoped that Abram would be taken with him when I’d assigned the pretty young man to his workshop. He’d been alone since mother’s death, and I hated that.

“Then why give him to me at all?”

Of course. The bad part of trying to get anything past Abram: the old bastard knew me too well.

So I justified it to him the same way I’d been justifying it to myself. “He’s going to be here three years. That’s a long time to spend on the wall. Besides, if he’s really that clever, he’d be wasted as a line fighter.”

He continued watching me a moment before turning back to put the box on the shelf where it belonged. He kept his workshop in perfect order, and I thought, somehow, without even knowing Hector all that well, that they would fit together. I had a moment of concern that Hector would be the one Abram fell for, after years of me trying to send him attractive prospects to help in his shop.

He knew me too well.

“He’s handsome, I suppose?” He leaned against a bench, crossing his arms and lifting his brows at me.

I flushed. “I don’t . . . that is, I’m not planning for you to fuck him. He’s from Urial. He could get Avianitis.”

“Afraid I’m going to fall in love with him?”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “We both know falling in love as a prerequisite to illness is nonsense. Sicknesses don’t know shit about love, and neither do most people.”

He bent his head to one side, then the other, letting his neck crack loudly, then sighing. “I suppose it is rather farfetched to think love causes Avianitis. But love isn’t pretend, boy, and you need to stop trying to convince yourself it is. If I hadn’t loved your mother, do you think I’d have put up with her shit for twenty years?”

I sighed, shaking my head and then dropping it to stare at the workshop floor. Abram was, in fact, one of the few people I believed that from. I truly believed he’d loved my mother. He’d stood by her side through it all, despite the daily war they’d fought. Despite the fact that he’d lost three fingers and nearly his life, and she’d banned him from the wall after that. She’d said it was because a person needed to have all their fingers to properly fight on the wall, but we’d known the truth.

She’d been terrified of losing him, and so she’d put him in a safe place.

Abram, nearly forty at the time, had willingly gone and stayed off the wall. The almost twenty years he’d spent on it at her side had been more than enough fighting for any man, let alone one whose heart was that of an artisan. A blacksmith.

And now he made our weapons. He made it so we could continue the fight, since he couldn’t anymore.

“I know you loved Mother,” I finally agreed, dodging the whole subject. “I’m just saying I wasn’t trying to set you up with Hector. I truly think he could be helpful in the workshop. And . . . he’s planning to spend three years here, Abram. I can’t have him on the wall for three whole years.”

Abram snorted. “Why the fuck not? The Hawk baby was there for five, at least. The lone Eagle even longer. Fuck me, I think I saw his enormous ungainly shadow up there again this morning. Why not this boy from Urial?”

I couldn’t meet his eye, and the silence stretched out between us.

I startled when I felt his shoulder nudge against mine, turning to meet his eye. I hadn’t realized he was moving, let alone coming to stand next to me. “It’s like that, is it?”

Instantly, I scowled back. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about, I just think he’ll be an asset in the workshop. Now stop making my life harder and teach him to make spears, old man.”

His laughter followed me as I stomped out of the workshop. Damned old men who thought they knew me so well.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HECTOR

I’d expected barracks, gruel, the scent of sweat and fear.

Though I’d never lived to see war, I read enough, and the southern man near the border⁠—

I shuddered. I’d killed that man. His blood was on my hands, and I still hadn’t figured out whether I was meant to be proud or horrified, but at the very least, it’d brought the horror I could expect on the wall into stark relief.

And then, I’d been set up in a comfortable and well-appointed room, with a window overlooking a garden that had no place on the front lines. It felt like a dream. I was too tired, too dazed, to make any sense of it, but surely it would start to make sense in time.

A night’s sleep did me little good, admittedly, because I hadn’t slept well.

I was nervous, unsure what to expect next, so when I woke in the morning, I prepared for the day and assured myself that tomorrow—tomorrow I’d feel more at ease.

A knock on the door came as I was fastening my boots.

When I opened the door, Killian was standing there. “You look tired.”

Wonderful. That was precisely the impression I wanted to make on a man I admired, who looked exactly like a man ought to after sleeping in his own bed for the first time in weeks.

No, he looked better. I’d never seen any man with features as straight and striking, or hair like a white silk curtain.

I waved a hand between us to dismiss the very idea. “It was a long journey.”

His brow rose higher.

“And it takes me a while to settle into a new place,” I continued.

It rose higher still.

But I’d be damned if I were going to tell him that I still hadn’t figured out how to settle in Hawk lands or that I hadn’t slept particularly well since Father’s passing—less well still after fleeing Urial while poison still worked its way through my body.

“I’m fine,” I insisted, swallowing down the urge to cough that so often took me first thing in the morning.

Killian’s pursed lips said he remained unconvinced, but he was kind enough to move on. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet if you’re ready for the day?”

He looked past me, as if a heap of belongings and chores might’ve manifested there overnight.

“Of course,” I said, smiling. “Lead on.”

The man he’d wanted to introduce me to was a smith—a large man with rough hands and missing fingers, ruddy cheeked from the heat. His name was Abram, and he sized me up in a way that reminded me far too much of the shrewd glare of King Albany.

“You know how to swing a hammer?”

I sucked in my cheeks. “I must admit, I’ve rarely had occasion to, but I’m a quick study.”

“In Urial you are a . . . ?”

“Lord. I . . . mostly managed my family’s holdings.”

Abram made a quiet sound that I struggled not to take as disappointment. “Well, we’ll see how you do.”

That was it—I was to be a smith.

I supposed it wasn’t the worst way to earn my keep on the wall.

That simply, I fell into step. Abram began to work, and I shadowed him, doing my best to offer up tools he needed before he asked for them. More than once, he’d narrowed his eyes at me and asked, again, if I was familiar with this sort of work.

Truly, I wasn’t—or not beyond the passing familiarity of any lord who’d taken his horse to the farrier— but the processes took on patterns that made sense.

“Have you always been a weapon smith?” I asked Abram over a break. We stepped away from the scorching forge and sat on a low wall outside, eating strips of dried meat. “Is that how⁠—”

Despite myself, I glanced down at his hand. I’d been fixated the whole day, concerned that it was the missed swing of a hammer that’d crushed the digits.

Abram had softened up quickly, and now his laugh was loud and boisterous. “No, boy. Lost these on the wall. But I’ve spent my time at the forge since then. Years. It’s dangerous work, but if you keep your eyes open and your head on straight, you should keep all your parts.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised, but for some reason, the knowledge that he’d lost his fingers to fighting picked at me all afternoon.

Just as the sun began to turn the sky a burnished orange, Orestes showed up at the open front of the forge. “Hawk owl!”

I looked up, wiping the hair from my sticky forehead with the back of my wrist.

I’d never kept my hair as long and luxurious as Paris had, but in the heat of the forge it was both too long and too short. When I pulled it back in a strap of leather, the relief of a breeze was marred by locks of hair that fell from the binding and plastered onto my skin.

Orestes, grinning, folded his arms and leaned against the tall counter where Abram usually took his orders. “I thought you might like to train again, if the old man hasn’t worn you out.”

Abram scoffed, but the workday was winding down, the fires in the forge stifled, the tools put in their proper places. It’d been a hard day, and the heat and weight of the hammer both had made me sweaty, but I felt ill-at-ease in my own skin, and I could stand to work out some of my anxiety.

“Are we finished?” I asked Abram.

He nodded. “Go on. Try not to bruise the behemoth too badly.”

But on the training yard, I was even more helpless than I’d been when we were on the road.

Every fumble, every smack of the blunt side of Orestes’s spear to punctuate an opening I’d left, ratcheted my frustration higher.

“You’re clumsier than usual today,” Orestes said as he stepped back from a bout and returned his spear to a ready position. His lips were tilted in a smirk. “Upset about something?”

It hit me all at once, the shame bubbling up and making space for a sharp awareness of all my failings so far.

“Years,” I ground out between my teeth.

“I’m going to need you to elaborate a bit.”

“My mentor. He served on the wall for years before he became a smith.”

“Ah, Abram? Good man. I take it you’re not pleased with your assignment?”

“I—” That brought me up short. “It isn’t Abram. It’s not even the work.” I liked the work—the tools, the intricacies, thinking through the problems presented. It was meticulous—the kind of projects I could throw myself into almost meditatively.

“Okay, so it’s . . . ” Orestes held a hand out, inviting me to elaborate.

With a huff, I shoved the butt of my spear into the ground. The impact reverberated up the shaft and through my arm.

“Am I really so useless?”

“You think smithing is useless?”

“No!” It was interesting, hard work. No Crane could fight this war without a decent weapon. “But I haven’t—I haven’t served my time. The Crane doesn’t trust me in a fight. I’m a child who’s been put in the corner so I don’t distract the others.”

Orestes rolled his eyes. “The Crane—Killian,” he corrected almost instantly, as if the formality were anathema to him, “is giving you the chance to familiarize yourself with our tools and ways. There’s not a soldier serving who was shoved up onto the wall on his very first day.”

“But Killian doesn’t think I can fight at all! This isn’t about learning or preparing. It’s about—” I grimaced. “He’s getting me out of the way.”

“He’s ensuring that our defenses are solid. It’s war. Every part of our army needs to work together.”

“And I don’t fit. I’m a weak point.”

Orestes frowned. “That’s not what I said⁠—”

With a curse, I snatched up my practice spear and stabbed its blunt tip into the sand. “You didn’t have to.” My jaw ached from clenching my teeth, my shoulders were tight, and there was no way I was going to manage the long, fluid movements the Crane Clan fought with. “I’m done for today.”

I turned and marched off the training grounds and back to my room. Rest would, perhaps, make this feel better.

At the very least, making myself scarce might convince me I wasn’t a bit of grit in the bottom of everyone’s boot.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

KILLIAN

Fifteenth inspection of the day.

The inspections weren’t a waste of time, but since I had to do them on everyone in every group, not just the new people who might be struggling, they took far longer than I liked. But at the same time, singling people out and making them feel small was never a good idea.

Besides, sometimes veterans on the wall made mistakes too.

“New spear, now.” I glared at Vincent, the fifteen-year veteran who damned well should have known better.

He . . . pouted. He fucking pouted at me. “But this one’s my favorite. It’s been with me for five years.”

“And it’s hanging on by a thread,” I answered, poking at the enormous divot in the wooden shaft, likely made by an invader’s sword. “What happens when it breaks in the middle of a fight and you can no longer defend yourself? When your partners die because you didn’t replace faulty equipment when it needed replacing?”

He dropped his head, sighing, but nodded after a moment. “I’ll go see Abram in the morning.”

“You’ll go see him now.” I pointed in the direction of the forge, handing the man his nearly broken spear back. “And this will never happen again.”

I turned, fuming, just to almost run into Orestes.

Fuck me, had the asshole just never stopped growing? Not many people on the wall got bigger than me, but Orestes was starting to seem like an ancient oak tree, who’d simply keep getting bigger and bigger until he would no longer fit inside houses.

“I thought today was your day off,” I said, moving to go around him.

He stepped in front of me. “It is.”

I started to move around him again, but when he pivoted toward me, I stopped. “I take it you want something from me?”

He ducked his head, finally sheepish, but nodded. Then, he stopped and looked around. “But not here. In private.”

In private? Honestly, I hadn’t thought the man knew what private meant. He had no personal shame, something he’d probably—for better or worse—learned from me. He was willing to talk about everything that had ever happened to him in front of anyone, including both his father’s betrayal of the clans, and the time he’d gotten so drunk that he’d fallen down in the middle of a palace hallway, puked, and then slept in it.

Like I said, no shame.

So this was . . . odd.

Still, it was an earnest request, and one I didn’t see a reason to deny, so I motioned him toward the stairs. “I have paperwork to fill out in my office anyway. Time to make the monthly food requests so Brett knows what we need.”

He turned and headed toward my office. Other than members of my own clan, Orestes was one of the palace’s longest residents, so he knew full well where he was going.

I almost tried to prod him on the way, to see if he’d speak up while we weren’t standing in front of a group of warriors, but something about his posture made me think this was important. At least, it was definitely important to Orestes.

Was he finally, truly leaving? As I’d been thinking, he was one of the longest-serving people on the wall and, other than time off to mourn his sister and recover from his father’s duplicity, had been a steady presence at my side long enough to earn my full trust.

He’d spent years as proxy for . . . well, quite a few people, some of whom were dead now, like his sister. I’d always refrained from loudly proclaiming my happiness that little viper hadn’t come to my wall, at least in front of Orestes. As much as I despised every other person related to him by blood, he was my brother in every way that mattered. I would never try to hurt him by poking at his soft spots.

Perhaps he wanted to join the Crane.

A pain shot through me at that. I’d already been informed that wasn’t going to be allowed. I’d wanted to offer him a place among us, but at the winter clan meeting, some of the other chiefs had expressed hesitance to allow Orestes to join another clan. He was too strong, they had argued. His addition to any clan might throw off the balance of power in Nemeda, and after the Eagle’s betrayal, we were already reeling. We couldn’t handle another blow so soon on the heels of losing an entire clan.

I’d railed against the decision. Reminded them that I already had more people than any other clan, and they trusted me with that. Pointed out that we, the Crane, had spent hundreds of years defending Nemeda with our lives, and we weren’t about to turn on the country because of a single man.

Good, they’d said, and refused to further discuss the matter.

Fucking bureaucracy had made it so that I could do little for my friend.

I hoped he wasn’t about to ask for something I couldn’t give him.

We reached my office and I feigned nonchalance, heading over to lounge in the chair at my desk, throwing my feet up. Orestes paced in front of the desk. That was odd.

“A bandage is just a cover,” he said finally.

I blinked at him.

He sighed, scowling, and took a deep breath before starting over. “If you get a bad wound, and you put a bandage on it, you’re still wounded. The bandage only covers it up. It doesn’t heal it.”

“I am aware.” What I wasn’t aware of was where the hell he was going with this attempt at a metaphor, but I decided not to prod him too hard, since whatever was happening, it was clearly bothering him.

“So if you go out on the wall and try to work as normal, you’re still injured.”

I, of all people, knew that. It was how my mother had died, which Orestes knew full well. So I just stared at him.

He groaned. “Hector is never going to believe he’s one of us while he’s held apart. He’s going to be here three years. He can’t spend them all in the smithy.”

I wanted to disagree. Of course Hector could spend all three years in the smithy. Abram had already sent word that Hector had done quite well; better than he’d expected. Frankly, it had felt like the world telling me I’d made the right choice, and I’d hoped to leave him there until it was time to send him home.

When I managed to speak up, though, my voice was strangely rough. “You don’t think you’re being a little dramatic?”

“He’s not a child, Killian,” Orestes said, finally spinning to face me. “He’s a grown man, who was barely a child when he was a child. You’ve spoken to Paris. You know Hector practically raised his own siblings. He’s not going to appreciate being coddled.”

I sighed. He wasn’t wrong. We’d had people like Hector on the wall before. People with no practical experience fighting, but who were prepared to give their all if they needed to. Orestes had been one. He would know what it was like.

“How could I explain to Brett, if⁠—”

“Brett has been on the wall. You know he’s preparing Paris even now for the worst. Everyone knows what might happen. You’ve never struggled with this before. Why now?”

But he was wrong.

I had always struggled with it. Every single day I had to send anyone into danger, including long-term combat veterans, was a bad day.

On the other hand, he wasn’t wrong about the rest. I wouldn’t put up with being coddled if I were Hector. Why had I expected him to be any different?

When Hector didn’t show up for dinner, it confirmed Orestes’s suppositions. He was angry, or offended, or at least bothered enough that he wasn’t interested in socializing with the others. So what the hell could I do to fix it, without getting him killed?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

HECTOR

I’d cloistered myself up for the evening when there was a knock on my door, and while I wished I could ignore it, I couldn’t stand to leave someone waiting when they knew I was there. Where else would I go? The whole palace and its surrounds were foreign to me, and in trying not to step on any toes, it was easier to hide away.

Though my shirt was loose, my jacket abandoned, I didn’t bother righting myself before I opened the door, and there was my leader, a clever smile on his face.

“You have to eat,” Killian said, lifting the plate between us with a smile.

I scowled, crossing my arms. “You have better things to do than bring me supper.”

Killian’s lips screwed up like he was considering it. “Given that everyone here needs sustenance, I’m not sure I do.”

“But are you sure you don’t?” All right, perhaps I was digging my heels in, but it was silly. No doubt there were many in the Crane Clan who went without a meal without having one hand delivered by Killian himself.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Just fucking eat.”

He shouldered past me into the room and set the plate on a small table in front of the fire, going so far as to shift the whole thing over in front of the wing-backed chair.

I lingered there in the door for a moment, but when Killian flopped into the chair opposite mine, I had to admit defeat. He wasn’t going to leave, so I shut the door and joined him.

He wanted to see me eat? Fine. I’d clear the plate and be done with him and back to my sulking in no time.

Though I was determined to give him nothing while I ate, Killian broke the silence first. “Why didn’t you come to supper?”

I sighed, taking another bite of my food. If I took a bit longer to thoroughly chew than I needed, well, I was trying to pull my thoughts together.

“I’m in a sour mood and didn’t want it to infect anyone else.”

Killian only hummed. I didn’t like the way he looked at me then. He was sizing me up.

“I thought Nemedans preferred to show their feelings?” I snipped.

“We do.”

“So mine should be no issue.”

“They aren’t.”

Silence fell between us again, but my skin began to heat. I was angry and I didn’t know why. Because he was there, watching me? Well, that was irksome enough. But there was something else that made my face so hot, and I despised it.

“Abram said you did well today.” Killian tilted his head to the side to try and catch my eye. “He appreciated the extra set of hands.”

I huffed.

“Is that the cause of your sourness?” Killian pressed. “Do you not like the work?”

“I like the work.”

“Is it Abram then?”

“Of course not!”

Killian arched a brow.

“Abram and I get along just fine. We’re suited to working together.” That, at least, was true, in so much as I could guess after a single day. Abram had a refreshing sort of frankness that didn’t leave me wondering what I had to do, didn’t make me guess how I could best serve his vision, but he lacked Killian’s grating bluntness. “I think he could teach me a lot about his craft.”

“So, I’m failing to see the problem that’s plaguing you so.”

I wanted to laugh. It had to be apparent that the problem in every instance was me.

“How will I ever prove my strength if you will not let me?”

“Hector, there’s nothing you need to prove⁠—”

“I must prove it to myself!” I leaned forward, shoving the small side table out of the way. “It is not about how you see me. I must see for myself that I am not a—” A failure.

I couldn’t say the words, couldn’t sit before this man who held all of Nemeda on his shoulders, and come up so wanting.

I grimaced, looking down at my empty hands and feeling more impotent than I ever had.

Killian didn’t rise from his seat, so much as slid out of it. One fluid move, and he was kneeling in front of me. Only from that angle could he have seen my face, and even then, I wanted to turn from him.

He gripped my legs, his long fingers curling around the backs of my knees. “It is not about your strength.”

My throat was so tight that my voice came out in a raspy whisper. “Then why?”

Killian’s gaze caught mine, fiery and intense. And still, he didn’t open his mouth to speak, like he couldn’t bear to say what he meant either.

Instead, his hands slipped up the tops of my thighs. My breath caught, but I did not stop him. Oh no, I only sank deeper into the chair, spread my legs just enough to make room for him to move between them.

My heart was pounding, my thoughts skewed, as he went for the ties of my breeches. I helped shimmy them down once they were loose, and he stared at me like perhaps he didn’t think I was entirely a waste after all.

I looked down into Killian’s eyes as his slick pink tongue darted out and flicked the tip of my cock. It was the tiniest taste, and still I bucked toward his lips, desperate for more.

With a smirk, he held my eye as he leaned in, his soft lips parted, sliding so sweetly over the head of my cock, sucking lightly before pulling back and lavishing me with a swirl of his clever tongue.

I gasped, gripping the chair as I watched him. Every move he made was so bold, so sure. I’d been with men before. In Urial, it wasn’t uncommon for men to find their ways into each other’s beds, but it was seen as nothing more than a dalliance, a youthful jest, something to laugh at and cringe from later.

Certainly, I myself had assumed I would settle with a woman, though I was more flexible in my preferences than Paris had been, and my heart had ached for him when he’d been trapped in Urial and in love with a man who didn’t deserve him.

But no man had ever stared at me so ardently as he teased my shaft with tiny kisses. Gods, Killian moved too slow.

“Should I stop?” he asked, his silvery lashes fluttering as he stared up at me. His eyes were strangely dark, his pupils blown wide.

Gods be good, I hoped I wasn’t the only one wanting. If this was all to console me in my pitifulness, I’d never recover.

“Don’t,” I hissed. “Please don’t.”

Needing no further direction than that, he slid his hand up my stomach and spread his fingers wide. Even they were strong, like with one digit alone, he could pin me to the chair and do as he liked.

Bless everything holy, what he liked seemed to be driving me to madness. He sank down on my cock, swallowing roughly when it hit the soft palette of his mouth.

I cried out, and he pulled back. Sucked me in again. Deeper now.

My toes curled in my boots and—and I couldn’t help be watch him, rapt. I wanted to⁠—

There was so much I wanted to do with him, but right then, what I wanted most was to touch him and feel that this was real.

My breath came sharp and quick as I reached out, spreading my fingers wide to comb through his hair. It was so much softer than I’d imagined, but heavier too, dense with feathers of his fallen.

His eyelids fluttered and he looked at me again and, I swear, my heart jumped in my chest. Surely this meant something. He saw me as I saw him. Wanted me as I wanted him.

How could he look at me like that otherwise?

When he hummed, I felt the vibration in my balls. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, shut my eyes, and let the soft heat of his mouth carry me on a warm summer’s wind until⁠—

“Oh—” I gasped. “Oh fuck . . . ”

My fingers tightened in his hair, my balls drew up tight, and I came. Pleasure zipped through me like lightning, and I sank into the chair, messy and sated and happy.

Before I’d thought a single thing, I surged forward, folding in half and cupping the back of his head and there—there were his lips, slick and salty and bitter and mine.

I was flushed, dizzy, and ravenous. If he would just grin at me like I wanted him to—that sharp, challenging flash of teeth—and tell me to take him, to give myself over . . .

Gods, I did not care, I just wanted more.

Even then, I had to know I wouldn’t get it.

All it took was a palm pressed against my chest, gentle but steady all the same, and I made a sharp sound of protest. I tried to hold him as he eased me back, and when my thoughts cleared enough to realize he was pushing me away, my arms went slack. I fell into the chair and stared at him.

“I can’t risk you,” Killian said, his eyes gently shut while I gaped at him.

He couldn’t mean it.

But he—he did. There was no doubt when he took a deep breath, set his shoulders back, and opened his eyes again. This time, they were shuttered. He’d thrown up iron walls between us and I⁠—

I was finished. Had I the strength to scale those walls, I didn’t have the heart.

“Get out,” I rasped.

He blinked. “What?”

“I will not be tended to while held forever apart. I may not be Nemedan enough for your wall or your bed, but I am man enough to draw the line somewhere, and my pride will not allow it.”

“It’s really not⁠—”

“I said get out!” My hands tightened on the arms of my chair, turning white and starting to ache as I set my glare on the fire.

He stayed there, trapped at the corner of my vision, long enough that my breath began to jump in my chest.

Then, the shadow of him moved, my door opened, and I was alone again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

KILLIAN

What the fuck was I doing?

Over forty years, I’d known who I was, understood why I did everything I did. Life hadn’t been perfect—quite the opposite—but I’d always been confident that I knew what I needed to do.

I did my job. I took care of my soldiers. I did what politicking I had to in order to make my clan run. I was cautious and focused and attentive.

And here I was, turning into a wishy-washy disaster.

Pushing Hector away because of the risk of Avianitis and then sliding onto my knees to suck his cock. Protecting him instead of doing my damned job—the same job I’d been doing for fucking decades.

Was this how it had been for Mother when she’d chosen to go back on the wall while injured, knowing it was a ridiculous decision? Had she been unable to stop herself, even while knowing she was acting inappropriately?

I slept poorly, barely touched my breakfast, and then spent an hour staring at the forms I still hadn’t sent to Brett. If I didn’t send them soon, he’d send a letter asking if everything was well.

Or given the fact that I had his husband’s brother in my care, he might show up to check on things.

Maybe he should, because I couldn’t seem to do anything right.

On my way to lunch, I took a different route than usual.

No, not one that led to the smithy. I wasn’t that pathetic. It was a route that let me cross paths with Abram on his own way to get lunch for the people working in the smithy.

Not pathetic at all.

He lifted a brow at me when I fell into step beside him, because he knew me. More than that, he knew I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t want something. The problem was that I still couldn’t define what it was I wanted.

I wanted someone to assure me I was doing the right thing even though I knew full well I wasn’t. Excellent leadership skills on my part. Clearly my people had made a good choice in making me clan leader.

“That bad, is it?” he asked after a moment of silence.

I sighed.

What else could I say? All the questions I wanted to ask him were answers in themselves—it was ridiculous, how much concern I was putting into a single man, and a single situation. I was in control of thousands of lives. I didn’t have the time to be obsessing over any one of them.

“He’s clever,” Abram finally said, because it was obvious what I was thinking about. Who I was thinking about. “Set himself up a little line, one thing at a time, and then moves to another as he waits for the first to cool. He’s already getting ten times as much work done as any of the other apprentices you’ve sent me in my time at the forge. Fuck, give him a few years, he could be faster than me.”

Clever.

I wish it surprised me that he was clever, but of course it didn’t. His room in the castle in Urial had shown it. Every surface had been covered in books and schematics, as though he needed to know everything. Needed to know how everything worked. Just like he needed to fix everyone’s problems. Needed to spend his brother and sister’s years on the wall. Needed to . . .

Well, fucking me didn’t figure into that. Part of me wanted to shove it into that same box and forget about it. Hector wanted to fix everything, and that included fucking me because . . . because I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to dismiss it, tell myself he didn’t actually want me, and walk away.

Walking away was always the easy answer to everything.

“I’ve been telling you for years that you should assign smiths who have brains, and not just incompetents like me who are too old to go back to the wall.”

In the moment, I wished my other form was a cat or a wolf, so I could growl at him. I turned to glare at him anyway, and he gave me a completely unconcerned shrug.

“You’re not incompetent,” I said. “You’re just an ass. You belong in the smithy. Mother should have moved you there years earlier, because it’s always been your damn calling.”

Instead, Mother had been selfish. She’d kept him at her side for many long years. It had almost ended in his death more than once.

Instead of defending her, he shrugged again. “It was worth the fingers.” He held up his hand before us, wriggling the fingers that were missing full knuckles. “Maybe I’m good there, but where I wanted to be mattered too. Maybe your mother was indulging me by letting me choose, but she did it for the right reasons. Can you say the same?”

I stopped dead, and he must have seen that coming, because he stopped and turned to face me, eyebrow raised in challenge.

Indulging him?

Where he wanted to be?

“You . . . wanted to stay on the wall all those years. You didn’t want to be in the smithy.” Somehow, it had never occurred to me that he’d wanted to be there. Wanted to fight. Wanted to put his life in danger every day.

Who would ever want that, and why?

“My place was at her side, boy. For as long as I could be there. I didn’t give a fuck about anything else. Fingers, the smithy, or even my life if it’d come to that.” He stepped in close to me, meeting my eye and refusing to let go. “Some things are important, and some things aren’t. Only I get to decide which ones are important to me. Only you get to decide which ones matter to you. I think you can probably see where that goes.”

Blinking, I swallowed and nodded.

“Good.” He turned and started walking again, clearly assuming that I would follow along. “Now, he’s got this notion we want to try out. So I need you to send for extra materials from the Owl.”

“Notion?”

He grinned wide. “A crossbow that resets without having to reload it. Imagine. Not just being able to shoot the bastards without having to spend a lifetime training, but being able to shoot one, then point and shoot another.”

It actually sounded sort of awful. Being able to kill one person after another, in quick succession. The death toll could be horrific.

But it might save Crane lives. Nemedan lives. In the end, that was all that mattered. That was the heart of my work: to preserve as many Nemedan lives as I could. My own wishes didn’t come into it. Maybe Abram was right, and I had to worry more about what Hector wanted, but I knew very well I would never get what I wanted.

I just wanted the war to be over. I wanted my people safe.

So I tore my mind from pointless wishing and nodded to Abram. “I’ll write to Balthazar today.”

It was damned impressive, if I thought about it. Hector and Abram had come up with something that might save countless Crane lives. It was the sort of thing that didn’t happen anymore. Early in the war, people had come up with new things, new forms of fighting, new ideas to stop the pointless southern aggression. Nowadays, everyone was simply continuing what our parents had done before us. Nothing new, nothing ingenious, nothing clever or creative or artistic. There was no room for that in the life of a Crane now. But there Hector was, new to the wall and still thinking that things could be changed.

And still, Abram was lecturing me on letting Hector do what he wanted to instead of coming up with clever things like this. What I couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, was why anyone would ever want to be on the wall.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HECTOR

It had never been so clear to me that I belonged nowhere. Of course, I’d never been so far from home, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t even that I had no home, such as I knew it, to return to.

The issue was that I was only half a brother to Paris and Helena, half a son to my father and half an administrator to him, the only non-Nemedan in Crane lands. Perhaps I was being dramatic, but having been denied the acceptance that might’ve anchored me to my new place and new role, I was sulking.

Which was, of course, entirely unacceptable, so I threw all my energy into this new project. Certainly, there were spears and arrow tips to make in the meanwhile, but Abram was surprisingly patient when I took to sketching in moments between work.

If he noticed, he’d sit across the worktable from me and we’d talk through the mechanism. I thought, if we allowed the bolts to drop into place, as long as they were well balanced and didn’t get caught on each other, a single soldier could shoot off half a dozen rounds before having to reload.

It was a project I enjoyed putting my mind to, because it was fiddly and meticulous and took the whole of me. I had no time at all to think about gleaming silvery eyes or long silken hair. I couldn’t spare a thought to the way he looked up at me, the way his hands felt on my hips, the scar that dragged my eye from his shoulder down his chest and⁠—

Fuck.

Staring into the forge, I clenched my teeth. I’d told him no, and I meant it. I didn’t want his pity and I⁠—

What? I couldn’t give myself over by half? That was decidedly untrue. In every affair I’d ever had, I’d kept my partner at arm’s length. I had too many responsibilities to commit to any one person.

So what bothered me now? Was it that I couldn’t return what Killian gave me, or something deeper?

No, no, it was simply that I couldn’t prove myself and I couldn’t stand to accept pleasure when I couldn’t give it, hadn’t earned it. That was all.

And damn it, I wouldn’t be pampered.

I pulled the iron from the forge and carried to the anvil. The strike of hammer on metal took over, the steady beat giving shape to my thoughts.

I lost myself to it, until⁠—

“Crane.” There was a note of amusement in Abram’s voice when my head popped up, but he wasn’t grinning at me.

He was grinning at Killian, whose serious scowl said that he had no patience for it.

The instant I looked his way, he met my gaze, and the intensity in his eyes stole my breath. I was stuck like a rabbit before a fox as he walked toward me.

How did a man walk like that, so languid and graceful and predatory all at once? My tongue felt clumsy and my hands went still around my tools until it was too late. He was close, and there was nothing I could do for the sweat and grime of work on my face, the hair falling from the tie at the nape of my neck. In a futile attempt, I wiped my hands on my apron.

“Crane?” I echoed. If Abram was erring toward formality, I meant to follow his example.

Killian’s gaze hadn’t softened in the slightest, and I hated how it made me stand straighter in front of him. “Abram told me about your crossbow. How’s it going?”

“Oh—” I hadn’t expected him to be interested in that, at least until it was done. Gods, I hadn’t expected him to know what I was working on at all.

Startled, I blinked at him for a moment. But work? I could talk through that.

I shook myself out of it and made my way to the worktable I’d commandeered. Killian followed me, and as I spread the diagrams out on the table, he leaned over.

“We’re waiting for more wood for the shafts. Getting the bolts to fly reliably, despite a shorter length—we’ve had to adjust material, and while we have plenty of fletching—” I smirked. There were some benefits to living among birds.

“We’d like the shots to hit their target,” Killian agreed.

“Indeed.” I picked up a crossbow—a prototype I’d been working on. It had a wooden container on top, but it was empty. I hadn’t wanted to risk leaving it alone when loaded. People needed training before handling new weapons, and gods knew I was next to useless with a spear.

I loaded three bolts one by one. Though I was hesitant to fire it in the forge, Abram jerked his head at a sack of sand we sometimes used to straighten warped blades when no vise was handy.

One by one, I shot, using the lever instead of the strength of my own arm to pull the string. As it drew back, a bolt fell from the magazine, then flew when the string was released.

Three pulls of the lever, and three bolts pierced the sandbag, but it was only a few steps away.

“We can’t count on these across a battlefield, but I’ll get there.”

Killian walked over to the sandbag and crouched down to pull the bolts out. He scowled at the sharp tips. “Could you design one larger?”

I frowned. “Larger?”

“To mount on the wall. Something that can be fired from a distance and deter the southerners’ approach. Would it be possible?”

I sucked in my cheeks and looked down at the diagram. There was no reason we couldn’t.

“If we had the supplies. Reliable metal. Sturdy wood with few imperfections. We’d be working in much larger pieces, but—yes, theoretically, it’s doable.”

“Good. Do it. I want it to shoot bolts four hundred meters out from the wall, be reliable enough to use quickly. I want the southerners terrified to even get near our boarder.”

I nodded, but my gaze was still stuck on the diagram. Whoever was using the weapon would need to be able to reach the lever to reload, so I’d need to be mindful about its position. Perhaps there was a way to mount it that lifted the user up, rather than required a smaller scale . . .

“Hector.”

“Hm?”

I’d have to inspect the walls again to see if it was doable. A larger weapon wasn’t always a more effective one, but if the purpose was to deter as much as decimate, making it visible from the far side of the wall could only help.

“Let us know what you need to see it done, and I’ll write the Owl.”

“Sure,” I muttered, reaching for the graphite and pulling out a new piece of parchment. “I will.”

If the bolts could separate and spread, or we could shoot something larger—one shot for multiple enemies—maybe something that fractured?

By the time Abram drifted over to Killian, I’d already lost the conversation in a haze of conversions and sketching.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KILLIAN

Hector was a sublime creature. Covered in sweat and soot and focused so deeply on his thoughts that nothing else penetrated—not my presence, not Abram’s voice, not even the clanging of metal throughout the smithy. He was like a muse of Crane legends, detached from humanity, yet standing among us, inspiring art wherever he went.

I wanted to paint him, which was decidedly odd, since unlike Cranes of old, I’d never once in my life set brush to paper.

It was just . . . something about the way the muscles stretched beneath his skin, the flex and movement of him, the light in his eyes . . . they made me want to turn my whole life upside down for him.

It sounded like one of those “romantic” tragedies people in the southlands wrote about people who abandoned duty in favor of love, and then died horribly. They were supposed to be lessons, I supposed, like fairy tales were supposed to teach children not to go into the woods alone, they were supposed to teach older people that abandoning duty for love could only end badly.

I’d never been tempted before, though. Never even considered the possibility of walking away from my work, let alone for a single person.

Fuck.

Was that what love was?

No, that was ridiculous. Hector would never even dream of asking such a thing. He was as mired in duty as I was. Duty to his brother and sister.

And now, as a citizen of Nemeda, duty to us as well.

Abram stepped between us, blocking my view of Hector, and part of me wanted to knock the old bastard down, but when I glared over at him, he was watching me, something akin to fascination in his eyes.

I cleared my throat, turning. “I’ll just get back to work then. You know how it is. Always a thousand things to do.”

“Indeed,” Abram agreed.

Hector didn’t even look up from his work, those beautiful brown eyes almost feverish with the racing thoughts beneath.

Fuck me entirely.

I avoided the smithy for close to a week, even after Balthazar came through and delivered the things we’d asked for. I didn’t want to see the way Hector’s eyes lit up at being given what he wanted, and supported the way everyone should have always supported him. Didn’t want to watch his so-nimble fingers run over his tools with determination and strength.

I didn’t find myself doodling those strong hands on the pages of budgets and requests I was filling out while working.

Not at all.

Crumpling the third ruined page that afternoon, I threw it in the fire. It would figure if I were the only Crane ever born who not only didn’t have the time to paint people, but didn’t have the talent for it either.

Not that making little doodles of hands and musculature and . . . other things when I was supposed to be working wasn’t bad enough, but they were never quite right. They didn’t capture the motion beneath them. The life. The beauty.

They were just lines on paper.

Giving up on focus for the day—I’d never been a man suited to long stints of mathematics and such—I headed out to the wall to do some of my weekly inspections. They were easy. I’d been doing them for over twenty years, and I could do them in my sleep.

Which was good, since muddleheaded appeared to be the only way I spent my life anymore.

When I got to Orestes’s small section of wall, though, the man himself wasn’t on patrol, but the men assigned to him weren’t focused on their work, so much as they were staring at Hector.

Hector, who was piecing together a very large crossbow-like contraption in their space.

I blinked, staring. It had been days since the supplies had arrived from owl lands. Less than a week.

How was it even possible to finish the plans in such a short time, let alone make the damn thing and be there, assembling it?

“Are you . . . finished?” I asked, coming up beside him. “Already?”

He paused in his work, looking over at me, then back at where he was nailing two pieces together.

I huffed, rolling my eyes. “I mean that I didn’t expect you to have a prototype ready for weeks. Months, even. It was an enormous project.”

His cheeks flushed pink, and he glanced away. “It’s . . . I do that sometimes. When someone gives me a meaty problem, I sort of . . . fall into it, and work until I figure out the answer. Sorry if you didn’t want me up here. I just had to get it done. I wanted to make sure I put it in a place with the best visibility, and . . . but you don’t want me on the wall at all, do you?”

I shook my head, and when his lips tightened into an annoyed moue, corrected the misconception with words. Or, well, tried to. I’d never been any better with words than math. “No, no, it’s fine. You’re fine. I’m not complaining that you’re here.”

His gaze brightened, and I turned a glare on Orestes’s men behind him. “Though apparently other people can’t handle the distraction.”

They both leapt back to work, on either side of where Hector and I stood, scanning the horizon for any sign of southlanders.

Hector frowned. “I didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble.”

“You did not.” I motioned to him. “You are doing precisely what I asked you to, only faster than I’d imagined possible. It’s their job to stand guard while you do your work.”

He still seemed suspicious, glancing to the men, who were hard at work now, but after a moment, he turned back to look at me and nodded. “Then it’s . . . it’s not a problem? That I’m here?”

As much as some small part of me wanted to hustle him right off the wall, get him away from any hint of danger, that was ridiculous. He was a grown man, and he knew what he was doing. Orestes and Abram had both been right, and I’d been acting an overbearing ass.

“Of course it isn’t. I appreciate you doing this. Can I help?”

For some reason, his eyes lit at that, and five minutes later, he had me holding pieces in place for him to assemble the very impressive piece of machinery. It seemed somehow more complicated than a normal crossbow to me, but what did I know about building things? I put my hands where he told me to, and held things when he ordered it. It was nothing new. I’d taken orders many times in the past, and was sure I’d do the same again.

My stomach was just starting to grumble for a meal break, and the relief guards were arriving, when Hector stepped back, smiling. “There we are. Do you want to do the honors and see if it works, or shall I?”

All four guards paused, and the woman whom I knew to be Orestes’s second-in-command stepped forward—Viola, I thought her name was. “Due respect, milord, what is it? I’d hate to think you’re giving us a new responsibility and we don’t know how to handle it.”

“It’s a bolt thrower,” I told her. “Like a crossbow, only—” I waved at the enormous thing, since I thought the difference was rather apparent. Then I turned back to Hector. “You should be the first, since you built it. Invented it and built it.”

Hector flushed and looked away, ducking his head, but turned to load the huge spikes into the thing. They were terrifying, frankly—as big around as my wrist and as long as my forearm. I was glad I wasn’t going to be on the other side of the wall.

“I didn’t invent it, really,” he mumbled as he worked. “I just used the plans for crossbows that already existed. And changed them a little.”

“I’m almost certain that means you invented it,” Viola said, cocking her head at him. “As my lord always says, take credit for everything you do, be it good or bad. People will listen when you speak, if you have a reputation for honesty.”

Fuck, she was quoting me. To Hector.

I cleared my throat, flushing, and turned back to him. “Is there any trick to loading it, different than a regular crossbow?”

“Not especially. It is a little more difficult, since the force we needed to throw the bolts is more, because they’re bigger. And the firing mechanism is a little different.” He smiled wide at all four guards, who were all still there despite the fact that I was sure two of them had just been relieved. They stayed, though, as did we all, rapt at his explanation of how his invention worked.

When, in the course of his lesson, he aimed the thing at a tree and fired, we all stood there with our breaths tight in our chests, staring . . . Until the tree exploded in a shower of wood chips, an entire branch knocked off. Two of the guards cheered, and a third leaned far over the wall, as though he didn’t believe what he was seeing and needed to get closer.

Viola gave a low whistle, nodding to first Hector, then me. “We’re honored you’ve chosen us to have the first one, milords. We’ll do our very best to prove worthy of your faith in us.”

Hector blinked at her in shock, as though it had never occurred to him that the people on the wall would be grateful for what he’d made.

I nodded to her. “Hector chose the spot, but I think he chose rightly. I’m sure you lot will do well.” Clapping her on the shoulder, I squeezed tight, then looked at the others. “Do you need Hector to show you again, or do you think you have it?”

“I think I’ve got it,” her partner said quickly. “But we could use more bolts, so we can practice some and still have ammunition for an attack.”

“Abram has someone working on them now,” he promised. “Poor Nym has just been making wooden bolts for days now. I didn’t bring them up because I had so much else to carry.”

One of the guards who wasn’t supposed to be on duty anymore perked up. “We’ll go get them.”

“As long as you have enough time off,” I cautioned.

He waved me away. “Tomorrow’s our day off. We’re fine. And I want to practice, see how it goes.”

I chuckled and shook my head, motioning Hector over to me. “Very well. Just be careful with it, everyone. I wouldn’t want Hector to have to come repair it right after installing it.”

But we were already gone in their minds, their attention focused entirely on the incredible boon Hector had given them. Given us.

Fuck, I wanted to kiss him.

But no. I wasn’t allowed that. He’d decided that if I wasn’t willing to be fully involved, he didn’t want me, and that was his right.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when the moment we were in the tower stairway, ready to head down to the palace, Hector spun on me, pushing me up against the wall, and kissed me with a fervor I’d never before felt in my life.

I wrapped my arms around him, pulling his body against me.

He was about to be in for a surprise, when I didn’t put up an argument at all.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HECTOR

He didn’t pull away.

I kissed him—a fool’s mission, to be sure. Each time I tried to get closer to him, he had pushed me back, created distance.

Only, this time, his mouth opened beneath mine. I pressed onto the balls of my feet to get closer to him. He was taller, but with his back against the wall, it didn’t matter.

His arms slipped around my waist and⁠—

Instead of dragging me away from him, his fingers pressed hard into the small of my back. Those same fingers had held huge boughs of wood so steady while I worked. The arms around me had been there when I needed help.

“Proposition,” I gasped against his lips.

“What?”

“I have a proposition, if you’d hear it.” When words took up the space between us, I dragged my lips across his jaw. That was how I felt him nod.

“I won’t ask you for more than you can give, won’t press,” I promised, voice strained with need. “But all that you do to me, I must be able to reciprocate.” I dropped back onto my heels to meet his eye. I didn’t want to watch resignation cross his striking features as he once again told me why it was impossible, but he had to see I was serious. There was room for us to compromise still. “I want to stand before you as an equal, a man, not a chore or someone to tend.”

He frowned. “Hector, you have never been⁠—”

“Please,” I whispered. “I know you mean to keep me safe but—Killian, please.”

Roughly, he swallowed. “All right.”

“Fuck,” I hissed, pressing into another kiss and running my hands up his chest. He was warm, even through his clothes, his body firm with muscle I wanted to squeeze and learn the shape of.

I let my hands roam everywhere as we kissed. He allowed it, his fingers tracing up my spine until I shuddered against him.

“I need—” A lump in my throat silenced me. Was this the same as pressing for more? Was I asking too much of him?

This was the first time I’d gotten to put my hands on him. I finally had him close, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin my chance before I’d even taken it.

The tilt of Killian’s lips went sly.

“What do you need?”

While he held my gaze, I could’ve answered. It might’ve made my skin crawl and heat rush through me, but I could’ve asked and Killian would’ve listened.

In the end, it wasn’t necessary.

Holding my eyes, he reached for the waist of my trousers and tugged me forward. My hips pressed his and—oh, I felt the length of his cock pressed against my lower stomach. Our kiss had seared through me, and I might’ve hoped for more, but I was still not convinced I’d get it.

I remained unconvinced, even as he loosened the buttons at my hips and his hand slipped beneath my clothes.

His rough callused palm dragged across my skin, down the shaft of my hardening cock before curling around it. “This?”

My lips parted. His stroke was sure and steady from the very first.

With a gasp, I nodded.

That. That, precisely.

Frantic and fumbling, I tugged at the ties of his trousers to get inside them. This arrangement had to be reciprocal, I’d said, but even still, I’d expected him to pull away, to tell me no. Fear and pleasure both made my movements harried, but when I touched his skin, the warm silk steel of his cock, Killian groaned. He thrust forward, into my touch, and a soaring tingle played at the nape of my neck.

I had him. His cock was in my hand, heavy and hard, and I wasn’t alone in all this yearning. He wasn’t holding me apart like I didn’t belong.

No, he stroked me fast and quick, and I whimpered.

Too loud, I thought, even before Killian’s free hand covered my mouth. He glanced toward door out onto the wall, but after a moment, was satisfied we were safe.

I softened my mouth to suck on the outside edge of his palm. It was just as rough as the rest of him, but wonderfully meaty beneath my tongue. When I nipped him with my teeth, Killian’s eyes darkened until his irises were just a silver sliver around the very edge.

I had him trapped against the wall, could’ve easily pulled back. Instead, I pressed into his hand. His fingers pressed hard into my cheek, his thumb beneath my jaw to hold me there.

Just like that, with him covering my mouth, me thrusting into his touch, we worked each other. His dick leaked pearly beads from the tip, slicking his flushed head.

I broke first, gasping into his salty sweet palm. I came in a rush of gleaming silver flashing behind my closed eyes.

And the only thing better was feeling his cock flex in my hand. He bent his neck toward my shoulder, and the only sound he made was a tiny, punched-out grunt.

Then he came, warm and sticky over my hand.

I wanted to laugh with—with relief or joy or⁠—

I didn’t know, but this was the first time I’d felt wholly and unashamedly myself since, well . . .

It was hard to say.

With a shaky breath, I edged back from him and looked at the mess on my hand. Killian caught my fingers in a swift move and had a silk handkerchief out the next, wiping me clean before I could even mull over what to do.

He was gratingly efficient as he tucked me back into my trousers and closed the buttons beneath my bellybutton. A stairwell wasn’t exactly the place I wanted to get more exposed, but it was a pity that he’d righted our clothes and we’d have to move on.

Was that it?

I wanted to ask him and didn’t have the heart. A few more moments under the haze of Killian’s acceptance wouldn’t do me any harm. No reason to rush toward disappointment.

I shuffled close and dipped forward, dropping my head against his chest. He was a hand’s breadth taller than me, his shoulders perhaps a little broader, or maybe that was just the effect of his damnably narrow waist. His tan skin was covered in scars that strangely suited him. His silvery hair was moonlight brought to earth.

For a moment, at least, he let me stay there. His heart pounded beneath my cheek and I shut my eyes.

“Are you hungry?”

“What?” Dazed, I lifted my head and furrowed my brow. Until that moment, I’d scarcely thought of it. I’d been too lost in my project, then desperate for something else.

On cue, my stomach rumbled. This time, when emotion curved Killian’s lips—gods, it was genuine amusement. My heart fluttered and my face warmed, even before he turned my hand over in his own and linked his fingers with mine.

“Come on,” he said, raking his free hand through my dark waves to settle them in the right place. “We’ll get something to eat, and you can tell me how you became so industrious as a lord in the frigid north.”

What choice did I have then? An orgasm, a meal, a conversation—it was all I wanted.

CHAPTER TWENTY

KILLIAN

We spent the entire afternoon talking, and then well into the night.

It was no great surprise to find that we had more in common than I did with most people—he’d been treated as an adult starting at a tender age, raised to be a parent to his own siblings and do the family accounts when he was barely tall enough to sit at his father’s desk and see over the top.

Hells, somehow, I’d had more of a childhood than him. Despite spending it all training to kill people, and then starting to do so when I was still a teenager, I’d been sheltered in ways he hadn’t. My mother and her men had treated me like I was a child before I’d become a warrior, not like it was my job to see to their needs.

He didn’t blame Paris or Helena, which made sense to me—they had been children as well, and hadn’t chosen the roles their family had fallen into. But he also didn’t blame his father, and I didn’t agree with that. I thought the man had died leaving a lot unanswered for.

But then, Hector thought it unconscionable that Mother had let me stand guard on the wall starting when I was thirteen, so clearly, there were things we would never quite agree on.

We had another . . . interlude . . . that wasn’t quite sex, but that let me touch him in the ways I’d been craving since I’d first seen him. Which was a little strange of me, since the man had been near death the first time I’d clapped eyes on his still form. I’d certainly never fallen directly into lust with a sick man before. I didn’t tend to lust after anyone.

Who had time for that?

I had duties to see to.

But for the first time ever, I had someone who understood that in Hector.

So instead of how to put him off without angering him, my mind turned to how one might stack the odds in favor of recovery from Avianitis. It was horrid and selfish of me, but I . . . I wanted him. I wanted him in every way, not just the paltry few moments we’d been able to steal.

The morning started with a knock on the door, which was rather unusual.

No one generally had time to need me before I’d slipped out of bed and off to work in the morning. But no, the sun was well into the sky, and Hector and I had fallen asleep atop my blankets after hours of talking.

He was mostly dressed, but I wasn’t interested in sharing his bare chest regardless, so I flipped a blanket atop him as I slid out of bed, reaching for a shirt to throw on myself.

“Who is it?”

“Abram.”

Somehow, that was better and worse than just anyone. He was going to be so insufferably smug. Still, nothing for it but to move forward and accept the rebuke when you were proven wrong. “Come in.”

Hector was blinking awake, looking surprisingly aware and interested, even as he pulled my blanket around him with a tiny smile.

Abram didn’t disappoint when he entered. His eyes focused first on Hector, and a smile twitched across his lips. “Hector. Good you’re here. I need to speak to you as well.” Then he turned toward me, brandishing a letter. “I’ve been discussing the bolt thrower Hector built with a friend in the Raven, and Chief Minerva has asked that we bring one to the next clan meeting in a few months for demonstration.”

I blinked for a moment, still slow with sleep and considering what such a thing would entail. Hector would have to come to the meeting, of course. He’d have to build a second one, which I imagined he’d been planning anyway, but then we would have to travel to the meeting in a wagon to be able to transport the large pieces of material. Even if Hector didn’t assemble it until we arrived, the pieces of the thing had been far too big to be carried as birds.

Hector seemed to be having the same thought process, eyes narrowed and darting back and forth, no longer focused on anything in the room.

So I turned to Abram. “Will you come?”

He shrugged. “I could, but it’s not necessary. Hector is the one who made the thing, so he’s the one who should get the credit when they see it.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Hector hedged. “I don’t need credit for anything. This is why we’re all here, isn’t it? Protecting Nemeda. Doing our time on the wall.”

I went to sit down on the bed next to him, leaning in and brushing our shoulders together. “This is more than most people do in their entire time on the wall. It’s more than you’re suggesting, and it’s very impressive. But if you don’t want to be in front and face the scrutiny of the clan leaders, we can have Abram come and show them. He’s dealt with them before.”

Abram nodded, a jolly smile blooming on his face. “It’s been a while, but I can face down the little bastards. They can’t even sneer at how I got my position because I’m one of the chief’s lovers anymore.” Then he cocked his head. “Though the worst offender at that was always the Eagle, and he’s gone now.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You didn’t take charge of the smithy until after Mother died,” I pointed out.

He waved me off. “I was a member of her honor guard. He was constantly needling about how fucking her wasn’t the position of honor I thought it was. It was mostly because he was jealous that she refused to ever fuck him.”

Now that, I believed. I snorted and shook my head.

Hector, meanwhile, was shaking his head, looking annoyed. “That’s not how it works. Everyone has to come here. They all spend a year here. They know that people get positions they deserve and are capable of doing here. It’s”—he ducked his head, cheeks flushing—“it’s kind of nice, when it’s not annoying me. Knowing everyone is in their position because they’re good at it. No accidents of birth or rank nepotism.”

Abram’s eyes narrowed. “Nepo-what?”

“Getting a position just because of who your parents are.”

Abram snorted, shaking his head. “Killian himself would have stepped down if he hadn’t been up to the job when his mother passed. We can’t afford incompetence here just to feed a bloodline’s arrogance.”

That was a good reminder for me, yet again. I turned to Hector. “It’s going to be a while, these bolt throwers of yours. We’re going to ask you to make a lot of them. Train people to use them. But after that, if you want, I’ll teach you the spear myself, to prepare you for your time on the wall.”

He met my gaze with an intense one of his own, though I couldn’t quite tell what was behind those beautiful dark eyes. Finally, though, he nodded to me. “I’d like it, if you taught me how to fight with a spear. Orestes has been trying but . . . ”

Abram snorted. “But Orestes is a giant, and he can do things with a spear no normal man could. Better to be trained by someone less mountain-sized.” He took a step back. “Now, since I’m sure you two have more important things to do, I’ll take my leave. I’ll be in the smithy when you need me. When you’re ready to get to work for the day.”

I turned a glare on him, but it only caught the back of him as he slipped out the door of my room, shutting it behind him. “Ass,” I muttered.

And then Hector was pushing me down onto the bed, and I forgot all about Abram.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

HECTOR

Ifollowed Killian’s lead, waited for his touches to guide my own. When I’d promised not to push for more, I’d meant it.

All I needed was what he could give me, and gods, but it was a relief to have him close. The distracting trail of heat his fingers left across my skin made it impossible to worry or spend hours overthinking.

I’d never slept better than after I thrust against his smooth skin, his grip flexing tight on my hips, and came messily between our bodies—when I collapsed against his chest and felt the hammering of his heart against my forehead and knew that I’d sated him too.

In bed beside him, I was lost to the world. I finally had a place that felt my own, that felt earned, even if it was all delusion.

In truth, it was his room, his palace, his country. There was no reason to think I was anything more to him than a clever distraction.

We couldn’t have more; I could only return what he gave, and I was most enthusiastic to do so.

Whether caused by love or proximity or something else, Avianitis was a mystery, beyond that my brother had survived it. As his half-sibling, I was not convinced that I’d be as lucky, and right then, I didn’t want to risk losing everything.

What I wanted was . . . more.

More of Killian. More of his hands on my skin and his quiet, hitched breaths and the weight of his hair, threaded with all those feathers, when I lifted it to kiss his neck and—and more of whatever came next.

More of this sense of belonging. More support and conversation and understanding.

A buzzing, bubbly kind of hope had suffused my chest, and it should’ve terrified me.

I’d watched my father fall apart after my mother’s passing, and while I did not mistake a bit of fumbling for a bond like they had had, my connection to Nemeda was more tenuous than my father’s had been to Urial. So much hinged on what Killian thought of me, whether or not he valued what I had to offer.

To find out that his estimation of me had lowered would shatter the ground beneath my already unsteady feet.

And I was no fool. Killian had been frank when he’d said he didn’t believe love was a factor in Avianitis, and I’d seen no proof that he believed in love at all, beyond a sense of duty and service to his people. That wasn’t to say⁠—

Well, the feeling in my chest was strange and light, but that didn’t make it love. I wasn’t that fanciful.

It was a physical sensation of relief, knowing that I’d brought something of value to Nemeda and, perhaps, at least for a little while, earned my place here as something other than a burden. That relief had just gotten twisted up in the pleasure of seeing the shrewd tilt of Killian’s head before he smiled or tasting his tongue against my own.

So I was determined to prove myself ever more valuable. The days that followed, I spent in the forge with Abram, working with the other smiths on bolts and weapons and—and whatever I could make that might give the Nemedans an edge in their unending war. We planned the wagon to transport the bolt thrower with as little trouble as possible.

And after the day’s work ended?

If Killian was free, more often than not, I ended up in his bed, admiring every inch of his bare skin. Each scar was like a masterstroke, interesting and bitter and beautiful all at once.

He let me run my lips across each one and said nothing, his eyes swimming with emotion I couldn’t begin to name. Nevertheless, I felt it, heavy and thick in my chest.

I might’ve wished to wipe away those scars, if they hadn’t made the man before me.

And if Killian was busy? Well, Orestes wasn’t getting out of training me quite so easily.

Yes, I was looking forward to learning from Killian, sparring with him. He’d been an exquisite dancer, and I could only imagine that power coiled to strike at me in battle.

I’d stand no chance, but we’d already established that I had lost myself to him already.

Still, he preferred that I only do a full day’s work, not press to train after one. Orestes wasn’t so particular, so even if training with him was a bit like fighting a polar bear in a blizzard, I meant to improve.

I thought I was getting better. Of course, when I asked, Orestes laughed and said that I was, and I could never quite believe him.

In a moment between bouts, as we caught our breaths, he leaned back against a rock wall. “I hear you’ll be joining us at the clan meeting?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Orestes frowned at me, so I felt I had to elaborate. “I’m not sure whether it would help Paris and Helena for me to put myself forward, or if it’d just draw attention to us.”

That, and I wasn’t sure that I had much worthwhile to say to the clan heads. What Abram had said had stuck with me—he’d been questioned about his relationship with Killian’s mother, and wasn’t I in a similar conundrum?

Paris was married to a clan chief. Helena had caught the eye of one. If this affair with Killian was made public, my family might earn a reputation for seducing powerful Nemedans away from duty and focus on their own people.

It was the kind of thing the courtiers in Urial would’ve whispered about. Loudly.

“Anyway, Abram is perfectly capable of explaining the bolt thrower. It’s . . . truly, it’s not that complicated. The mechanism is the same no matter who presents it.”

Orestes rolled his eyes. “To you, perhaps, but if you’re worried about Paris and Helena, don’t be.”

I scoffed. That didn’t even warrant a real response.

“Nemeda appreciates those who contribute to our wellbeing. There’s no reason not to put forward your accomplishments. It’ll only help them.”

That shouldn’t have sounded strange, but thinking back to how things had worked in the court in Urial, it was unseemly to appear a braggart. Too much pride challenged the king, or your father, or⁠—

Well, it was simply strange, to stand before anyone and . . . boast?

I wasn’t intending to boast. I didn’t think what I’d done was that special. I would simply be there to impart useful information.

There was no harm in that.

I could go—see my siblings at the meeting. Get away from the palace for a bit. And yes, if that meant spending more time with Killian, rather than going for days or weeks without him, all the better.

“Someone will need to travel with the bolt thrower, I suppose.”

Orestes grinned. “See? There you go, proving your value to the endeavor already.”

The next swing I took at him with the practice spear was, perhaps, harder than it needed to be. He only laughed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

KILLIAN

Ihad another day of inspections, and I was dreading it. I should have been grateful for the respite from my office, but suddenly, everything that wasn’t lying in bed with Hector seemed like too much work. Too much distraction from what was really important.

From deep, soulful brown eyes, feverish in their intensity as they looked on something he found fascinating. The forge. His bolt thrower. His meticulous sketches of his work. My body.

I did not sigh like a schoolboy after him.

It wasn’t as though I was in love.

Love still wasn’t real.

Right?

The pull I felt in my chest when Hector tumbled into my bed, clean and exhausted after his long workday and bath, begged to differ. The only thing I wanted in the entire world was to climb into bed next to him and pull him close.

For fucking? Sure, of course I wanted to fuck him. But also, I wanted to talk to him about his day. Hear him talk about logistical issues involved in making a hundred bolt throwers, and how the others who were working with him in the smithy were competent enough, but they didn’t understand his vision of how things would work. Well, except Abram, who was always a bright spot in every story, which was no surprise at all.

Something about listening to him was soothing in a way I’d never experienced before. I didn’t have the slightest urge to give him solutions to his issues, because he had them well in hand and didn’t need me to fix anything for him. It was just that I didn’t need to work at all with him, and it was . . .

Well, it was new. I could just be with him.

He didn’t ask about my work, only about me, giving me the opening to speak on it if I wanted to, but . . . I didn’t. It wasn’t as though my work was interesting, like his. Doing figures, filling out forms, writing letters, doing inspections . . . The most interesting thing I did was guard the wall, and even that hadn’t been terribly interesting lately, which I was grateful for.

When my job was boring it was good for everyone, and that was the way I liked it.

Hector’s work was fascinating. I wasn’t envious, precisely, since I had never been mechanically inclined. I’d done a yearlong apprenticeship in the smithy in my teens, so that I would know how things were supposed to go there and could properly do the job if I needed to, but I wasn’t terribly interested in going back. It was far more fun to listen to Hector talk about how fascinating it was, than to do it myself.

I wished I could spend my days doing something that captured my attention and passions the way the smithy had done for Hector.

But what?

Nemedan history said that my great-great-great grandfather had been a painter of no small renown, specializing in a style where one pressed the brush to the paper and didn’t lift it until the image was finished. It sounded like magic to me—nearly impossible, but for the fact that I knew he’d done it. I didn’t know why that even surprised me, as his own grandmother had been the genius who had created the great crane that was the focal point of the palace.

My clan had lost a great deal when the war with the south had started. Sometimes, I wondered if my ancestors would be ashamed of what their family had become.

“Stop that,” Hector murmured, tapping me on the nose. He’d turned toward me, still naked, just loosely wrapped up in my sheets, looking like temptation personified.

I lifted a brow at him.

“You’re thinking about things that make you sad. I can see it all over your face.” He leaned up and kissed me, trying to wipe the sadness off me, and as always, he was quite successful.

Who could think about misery when they were being kissed by a beautiful, clever, exceptional man? Not me.

So I gave in, falling into Hector. Spending the evening holding him, kissing him, listening to him talk about his work.

It was more settled, more satisfied, than I’d ever been with my life before.

Somehow, that glow of satisfaction lasted right into the next morning, even as I dressed and parted ways with Hector at the smithy door, heading toward the wall to do my inspections. It even lasted on the jog up the flights of stairs to the top.

Then at the door, a loud voice grabbed my attention.

“—pretty sure he’d give that Urial-Hawk the palace if he asked for it.” The tone was knowing, amused, an implied wink-and-nudge.

“Probably,” another agreed. “Never seen the Great Crane in love before. No wonder he’s taking him to the clan meeting. Can’t bear to be parted for even a week.”

Every muscle in my body froze.

Me.

They were talking about me, and about Hector.

And about how I was acting, like a lovesick ass.

“It’s good,” a third voice interrupted, and I recognized Viola’s deep feminine tones. “It’s been too long since Killian was happy. No one I can think of who deserves it more. But Hector’s not a Urial-Hawk anymore. He’s one of us. Maybe even a Crane, all the work he’s put into defending the wall.”

“Fair enough, that,” the first man agreed, and the ice inside me started to thaw. “That bolt thrower is something else. Orestes used it last night to destroy a tower. Smashed it to splinters right there. Suppose if Lord Killian were going to fall in love, it would have to be with someone as clever as him.”

I leaned against the wall, simply breathing for a moment. I’d never been naive enough to think the people didn’t talk about me when I wasn’t there, but I had also never put much time into considering what they might say. I did my job, and I’d always assumed that would be enough.

And now, Hector was doing his job, a better job than I’d ever imagined anyone doing in the smithy.

It turned out that it was more than enough. When I headed out onto the wall, none of my morning’s joy had evaporated at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HECTOR

If I’d had my way, I would’ve picked a nearer clan meeting to attend than the one in Vulture lands. If it weren’t for bringing the bolt thrower to show the chiefs, it would’ve been unreasonable for any Crane to make the journey by road to the northernmost clan in Nemeda.

Most of those joining us were flying after us, with only a couple of people heading out first to help me guide the cart to the north. Well, and navigate the land. I didn’t know the way.

Killian and Minerva had written back and forth and decided that it was worthwhile to bring the bolt thrower all the way to the north of Nemeda, even though their clans were nearer to one another. With so many hands in the smithy working toward making more of them, it was reasonable to leave this one in the north.

It had been my suggestion, actually.

The Nemedans weren’t concerned with Urial. There hadn’t been a real conflict between our countries in living memory.

I would feel better knowing the Vulture had some way to defend themselves, though. If a fight were to break out, my family could be at the very center of it. The least I could do was help secure Nemeda’s northern border. With any luck, the Vulture would never have to use the bolt thrower.

When Killian climbed onto the front of the cart as we were just tying the last lash, it brought me up short.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to him as Orestes and another locked everything in place.

“Coming with you, obviously.”

I scowled. “You can fly with the others. Or catch us up on the road.”

Killian arched one of his perfect silver brows. “Nia and Viola have things in hand.”

“We’ll just be traveling. Slowly. And if we face trouble, I’m sure Orestes can handle it.”

Killian . . . gods, he laughed. It was soft and brief, and my heart squeezed hard. Getting to see this side of him softened something inside me. It made me hope for impossible things.

“I’m almost jealous,” he said.

“Almost?”

His lips quirked. “I don’t have the luxury of scorning strong allies, so there’s no need to elaborate on Orestes’s many virtues. Come on. Sit with me.” He budged over on the bench beside him. “Won’t it be nice to travel together for a couple weeks?”

What could I do, with him looking down at me like that? His sly smile, his sharp gaze, all of him drew me closer. With a sigh, I climbed up beside him.

“I suppose being on the road will give you time to collect your thoughts before the meeting,” I mumbled. Surely I wouldn’t mind the warmth of his arm against mine as we bumped against each other on the road.

Killian scoffed. “The council would be startled indeed, if I suddenly started thinking before opening my mouth.” Before he pulled the reins, he leaned hard against me, nudging me to the side. “They’ll think you’re having a positive effect on the Crane.”

“The horror!” Orestes called from the back.

Heat rushed into my face and I shrugged. “Or perhaps I’m just making him prone to road weariness.”

Despite our jibing, we were all eager to get to the Vulture lands as quickly as possible. I was nervous to speak before the council, but eager to see Paris and Helena again.

It twisted me up and made me quieter than I’d been in a while. Only Killian was able to take me out of my twisted worries for a little while, but he let me lose myself in the golden planes of his skin and gave me a thousand other things to think about.

When we finally got to Vulture lands, I’d hardly set foot on the earth again before I heard my name shouted and saw Paris forcing his way through the clusters of Nemedans already gathering for a look at the bolt thrower.

He crashed into me, took me in his arms, and hugged me hard before pushing me back to look me over.

My brother had always been pale, but now his skin was lightly tanned, his arms bare and toned. He had feathers in his hair for Mother and Father, but after so long with the Crane, his hair seemed only sparsely adorned. His smile—it was unburdened in a way I’d seldom seen.

I still remembered Paris the way he’d been in Urial, hopeful, but with all the restrictions and expectations Urial forced upon us to keep him from being fully himself. When I’d stayed in Hawk lands after fleeing Urial, I’d adjusted to seeing him genuinely happy, but it was a surprise after so much time apart, to see him like this.

It seemed something about me surprised him too.

“You look like you’ve been eating well!” Paris clapped my upper arms and squeezed, beaming at me.

I scowled, battling against the urge to smile. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Paris’s eyelids fluttered. “Oh, ah, just . . . hale. You look good. Healthy. Like you’ve been active. The last time I saw you, you were still kind of . . . ”

Sallow and sunken, no doubt. I’d been recovering from poison, stewing in my own heartbreak.

When was the last time I’d felt like a failure? In the weeks since installing the first bolt thrower, since taking Killian to bed, I’d almost forgotten how useless I’d felt, not just after fleeing from the only home I’d known, but even coming to the wall and being unable to make myself useful in the ways I’d hoped.

Reminded now, a buoyant lightness suffused my chest, and no amount of angst could drag me down. I’d done something. Killian wanted me, at least as much as he was able to, and even if there were no promises for tomorrow, for the time being, I felt less alone.

A slow grin spread across my face. “I’m teasing you, Paris.” Before he could pull away, I dragged him into another hug. “I feel good.”

“It’s not too much? Being at the border, I mean.” He bit his lip. “You know you could return to us whenever you liked. I’m sure Killian wouldn’t keep you—” Paris sent a significant look over my shoulder, to where Killian was talking to the Vultures who’d care for our horses.

When I looked back at him, Killian was holding Paris’s eye. His chin inclined just enough that I wasn’t sure if he was agreeing or simply greeting my brother.

A rush of sourness filled my gut to think he’d let me go so easily.

“I’m happy where I am,” I insisted, turning back to my brother. “The work I’m doing is important, and I’m getting to know Nemeda where I’m needed.”

Dissatisfied, Paris’s lips screwed up. “If you’re sure . . . “

“Hector!” Helena cried, sparing us having to argue the tired point again. She threw herself past Paris and wrapped her arms around my side. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

“Me too, bug.” I kissed the top of her head, and the quill of a feather nudged my cheek.

She had feathers in her hair now too, but when I looked down at her, I saw that it was more than just that. Helena stood straighter than she had in Urial. She’d been engaged to a prince, but she’d never looked more regal. It didn’t matter that her clothes were plain and dark. It was just the way that she held herself.

As if she knew what I’d seen before I puzzled it out, she ducked her head and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I’ve been staying with the Raven,” she said softly.

There, between where we stood and where Paris had left Brett behind, there were others dressed as darkly as Helena was. In fact, she fit right among them, and the feathers in her hair were inky black.

“You and Chief⁠—”

“Minerva, yes,” she nodded quickly. “I—we’ve⁠—”

“I didn’t realize you’d already⁠—”

They were together.

Helena bit her lip. “It happened fast, and I—I didn’t want to worry you.” She and Paris shared a quick look. “And Paris and Brett were able to come while I was ill. It⁠—”

“It was so similar to what I went through,” Paris interjected. “We didn’t think she was in any danger. If things had changed, we’d have sent for you.”

“Of course,” Helena agreed with a tremulous smile. Now, she looked more like my baby sister than the Raven’s consort. “Everything’s fine. There was no reason to drag you in two directions.”

Everything was fine. She’d survived Avianitis. She and Paris both were happy and settled with Nemedans who clearly loved them, despite Killian’s protestations that love had anything to do with the disease.

I was happy for them.

My bitterness was enough to choke me.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, pulling her into another hug so she wouldn’t see anything in my eyes I didn’t want her to. “I’m so happy you’re safe and well and Minerva’s—” The only things I remembered of her were hazy and came from a time when I’d been too lost to my own failings to pay as much attention as I should’ve. “I look forward to knowing her better.”

Helena brightened at that. “She’s here. We’ll all—yes, I’m sure we’ll make time.”

“Right. Yes. Whenever suits,” I promised.

“It’s only a matter of time before you have wings too,” Paris said, some of that same stiff brightness he’d used in Urial’s court back in his voice. “There is . . . Hector, there’s nothing like flying. You’re going to love it.”

My heart sank. There was no way that I’d find a place in Nemeda as easily as they had. With my luck, it’d been their beautiful mother who’d given them the fortitude to survive the illness, and I’d simply wind up dead.

But that wasn’t something I ever wanted either of them to worry about, and no, that absolutely was not the same impulse that had led them to leave me in the dark while Helena fought through Avianitis. It was my job to protect them, not the other way around.

“I will,” I said with a measured smile. “I’m sure I will.”

Never mind that the only person I wanted to give me Avianitis wasn’t interested in love or anything half as serious.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

KILLIAN

Hector was in turmoil.

I had worried about him for lots of reasons since he’d come to us. The looming threat of Avianitis. The opposing lack of a bird. The wall, and the horrors that happened there. His obvious dissatisfaction with the scraps of humanity I could offer.

I was no Brett, full of adoration to heap on someone like Hector’s sweet, soft brother. I’d rather thought myself more like Minerva, but watching her pull Helena in with a grip at the back of her neck and kiss her passionately, well . . .

Was I somehow simply inferior to all the people I knew? Unable to have the same soft emotions after too many years on the wall?

Had I killed too many people? Was I simply broken, unable to love and unworthy of it in return?

“You’re being an ass,” Orestes said, coming up behind me and clapping me on the back. “That’s your stubborn face. In case you didn’t know. You’re asking yourself if you could possibly be wrong, and then saying no, no, it’s not possible. Killian is never wrong.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes at him. “Killian is constantly wrong. I’m just a man, Orestes. We’re all wrong, all the damned time.”

He gave me a small smile in return, nodding. “Good. Since you taught me that, I’m glad you remember it. So hurry the hell up and grab hold of what you want.” He turned to look at where Nestor of the Duck Clan was asking Hector questions about his bolt thrower. The flirty fuck was smiling at Hector like he was about to invite him back to his bed with his wife that night. “I know you’re worried about Avianitis. You don’t want to cause his death. But Killian, he’s Nemedan now. He’s going to get it. He can’t spend the rest of his life celibate and alone. That’s worse than dying of Avianitis. You wouldn’t do that to him, would you?”

A stone dropped in my stomach, watching that pretty bastard Duck bat his eyes at Hector.

Orestes . . . well, he didn’t think himself clever. A lifetime of his father telling him he was too large and unintelligent had done that. But Orestes was often wise beyond anyone I knew. Still sometimes, I thought it a tragedy he would never lead a clan in Nemeda, because he was a natural leader. He could have been a great one. His wisdom was more than simple cleverness, like Minerva’s quick mind. His was something deeper. An understanding of people and how their minds worked, and then being able to draw those understandings to their logical conclusions. To what people might do, which I’d always thought a puzzle beyond human comprehension until I’d seen Orestes simply . . . know.

It was, I thought, why he got along with Hector so well. They had much in common, and Hector also seemed to have an innate understanding of the world.

Take, for instance, the way he was inching away from Nestor as they spoke. Even though he still didn’t seem to understand that the man was flirting with him, he did understand that Nestor wanted something, and knew it wasn’t something he wanted to give. I stifled a grin at that.

Still, Orestes was right, and I had a lot to consider. After the meeting of chieftains. That was always a fucking annoyance and a half.

Naturally, the meeting didn’t fail to annoy me even more than usual.

“We need someone to do it,” Nestor was saying, his voice irritating, ingratiating and too-sweet, like the oranges his people grew. I preferred lemons, and right then, I wanted to smash an especially tart one into his glittering opal eyes. “Orestes will be perfect for the role.”

He wasn’t exactly lying, since the magic that had created the clans didn’t allow us to lie at all when the clan chiefs were all together. But his words were as slippery as his oily duck feathers, meaning absolutely fucking nothing.

Because the fucking assholes had decided to send Orestes off to Urial, to try to maintain peace with the stubborn bastards to the north. Not because they knew him and realized he was precisely the kind of man who should be a diplomat. Oh no. They simply wanted to be rid of him.

He was strong and wise and most of all, the former Eagle Clan members all still saw him as a kind of chief-in-waiting. Where he settled, many of them would follow. The chiefs were worried that having him anywhere in Nemeda would unsettle the tenuous balance of power among the clans, still teetering drunkenly after the death of Memnon and destruction of the Eagle.

“He’s been in Crane lands for years, and it hasn’t caused anyone any trouble,” I insisted.

Balthazar, clever Balthazar, who was supposed to be on my fucking side, gave a sigh, shaking his head. “His father was alive then. The people who were Eagle still see him as a symbol of what they want. As long as he’s right there, they’ll continue to see him. They’ll think there’s a chance he’ll take the reins and the clan will be rebuilt.”

“Forget that,” Otus the bastard Falcon sneered. “The Crane don’t get to have two clan chiefs. It unbalances everything. The Crane already have too much power without an extra clan chief.”

I rolled my eyes. “Orestes isn’t acting as chief among my people, and you all know it. I have more than twice as many people as any other clan, and none of you have ever complained about that. Is that a problem now, too? Maybe you should stop feeding us too, since we know how to fight. We’re a danger, while we protect you ungrateful⁠—”

Brett grabbed my shoulder, stepping between me and the others. “Orestes will do this well, Killian.” His face was serious and eyes soft as he met my spitting rage. His sheer calm drained some of my anger at the injustice of sending Orestes away as punishment for his father’s crimes. “Maybe some of the people here have decided this for the worst of selfish reasons, but we don’t have to. We know him, maybe better than he knows himself. Orestes would make a fine diplomat, even if that isn’t why the others want him to go.”

But Orestes . . . was my friend.

I should have been used to it, after thirty years on the wall. Shouldn’t have even batted an eye at losing yet another person I wanted to keep. It was the way of being a Crane.

Rather dramatically, I considered asking Orestes for a feather to tie into my hair, since the selfish fucks were taking him away from me.

Once again, politics played out behind everyone’s backs, slimy as eels, and the Crane lost.

The Crane always lost.

I gave Brett the briefest of nods, letting him know I had myself under control, even if it was only just. Then I snarled at the scheming snakes I’d thought would put Nemeda first. “Fine. Protect your power, since that’s all you care about. Orestes will make your peace. He’d have made a better chief than the lot of you.”

“Likely so,” Balthazar agreed, conciliatory fuck, but I refused to even look at him.

“Is that it, then? Or is there something else you’d like to take? Want the Crane palace? I’d gladly give any of you the wall.” I met the Falcon’s eye, since he was the greediest monster among them, but he looked away. “That’s what I thought. I’m done. You can go back to bullshitting each other, since you’d clearly be more comfortable that way.”

I stalked toward the exit of the great central tent where we were meeting.

“Melodramatic as always,” Otus muttered behind me, but I didn’t turn to face him. I’d have hit him in that moment, and as high as my temper was running, I knew that would cross a line.

“Melodramatic, perhaps,” Brett agreed, but then his voice went cold and hard in a way I’d rarely heard from him. “But he’s not wrong about any of it. Everyone wants rid of Orestes because he’s inconvenient, even though he’s spent more than ten years defending us with his life on the wall. We take the Crane for granted. We’re taking Orestes for granted. Maybe we all need to take some time to think about that. To be grateful for all we’re being given by those who are constantly in danger to give it.”

As I left the tent, Minerva’s strident voice pointed out, “Some of us didn’t even spend our own year on the wall, and I think that shows. Perhaps we should end the rule about proxy years for chiefs being acceptable. We, of all people, should know all the struggles of all Nemedans.”

I almost laughed at the idea.

Most of the clan chiefs wouldn’t have lasted a day on the wall. Distractible Balthazar, cowardly Otus, or tiny delicate Velma of the Hummingbird Clan—people like them were why the proxy years existed to begin with.

I’d never held it against them before. Some people simply weren’t suited to fighting, and that was fine. They gave something else to Nemeda.

I just wasn’t feeling especially generous right then.

Not when I had to go tell one of my best friends that his people were throwing him away because his existence was inconvenient.

He was with Hector, in the small area where the Crane tents had been erected.

Somehow, my people had known. Usually, they mingled with the others at the summer gathering. They went to the central bonfire, sat on the logs there, talking to people from across Nemeda, many of them catching up with friends who’d spent time on the wall or passing on messages from those who couldn’t join us to their clans of origin.

It was usually a celebration. Happy.

Today, they were waiting for me, somber and concerned. They’d set up our tents in a circle, away from the others, and started a small campfire in the middle, a pot cooking something atop it. One had a barrel of Hummingbird mead cracked open, and he handed me a goblet of it the moment I stepped into the quiet circle.

They all stared at me, as though awaiting execution orders.

I’d never been one to pull punches, so I turned to look at Orestes. “They’re sending you to Urial as a diplomat. They say they want you to make peace with the king.”

“They want rid of him, you mean,” one of the others muttered.

“Yes. They want rid of him.” I looked back at Orestes. “I’m sorry. I tried.”

He gave me a sad smile and came over to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “I never doubted it. But don’t go to war with the other clans on my account. I’ll be fine.”

Of course. Always, he was trying to make peace. He wouldn’t listen if I told him he would make a fine diplomat, but some things, I supposed, you could only learn by doing.

Hector marched up with two goblets of mead in his hands, and used the second to fill all the others—Orestes’s, mine, and after a big gulp, his own—to the top. “I think it’s time to drink that entire barrel of mead. If that’s all the other clans are going to give us, other than work they don’t want to do themselves, we should take full advantage.”

Orestes nodded, and we smacked the goblets together before downing the lot.

“We Crane have to stick together,” Orestes told Hector, putting his free arm around him and pulling him in so the three of us were all connected. “The rest of Nemeda don’t understand us, but that’s okay. We all have each other.” He looked up at the rest of the Crane in the small clear area. “The Crane!”

“The Crane!” they all shouted.

And we drank.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

HECTOR

My head pounded. The sunlight peeking through tent flaps might’ve been warm and golden, but to my eyes, it cut sharp and quick. I groaned, flipping onto my back and⁠—

I was alone. Yes, I’d been covered in blankets I recognized from Killian’s own bedroll, but he was nowhere to be found.

When I sat up and shifted the drapes aside to peer outside, I saw I wasn’t the only one amongst the Crane who’d slept in, but clearly, it was well past time to wake up.

Smacking my lips against the sour taste on my tongue, I scowled around camp. People were already eating, the large cauldron set out for everyone to come and get their portion.

Just like the night before, the Cranes sat apart from the others. And—yes, there, sitting on the ground with his back to me, was Killian.

His shoulders were stiff, even the tilt of his neck seeming angry.

Then, the night came back to me.

We’d drank so much mead. It was deceptively sweet, and I hadn’t realized how strong it was until it was too late. The world was spinning. Orestes’s laughter was loud and booming.

Killian had slipped away to relieve himself, and I’d followed him. I’d caught him on the way back, grabbed his arm, and kissed him.

Even standing in the middle of camp the next morning, a tingling feeling warmed my lips. I’d kissed him like I’d meant to devour him. I’d clung to him so tight he couldn’t pull away.

Still, he was taller than me. He’d broken the kiss, and I’d made a sound like a wounded creature.

“Killian—” I whined.

Stiffly, he shook his head. “Not tonight.”

“Yes, tonight.” I tugged at his wrist like I could pull him into me, but he stood firm. “Fuck me. Just once, and I won’t ask again.”

“Won’t you?”

I hadn’t known what to say then, because I was lying and we both knew it. I wanted more, and that wasn’t going to change. So I kissed him again. His teeth were sharp against my lip and—yes, the next morning, probing my bottom lip with my tongue, it was still swollen.

“Hector”—I could still feel the honey-sweet hiss of his whisper against my ear when he turned his head, the dizziness of not knowing how he’d gotten his mouth away from mine—“you’re drunk.”

“Not so drunk.” His skin beneath his shirt had been smooth and warm. I’d felt his breath hitch beneath my palm. “And it doesn’t matter. Drunk or sober, I always want you. Drunk, I’m just bold enough to say it.”

Killian had narrowed his eyes skeptically. “And it has nothing to do with your sister’s Avianitis?”

I’d drawn back, stricken, because . . . well, it did. I wanted to know. Either I’d die and know for certain that I wasn’t made the same as my siblings, or I wouldn’t, and I would never again have to doubt that I belonged.

With my luck, perhaps nothing at all would happen. I’d be neither dead nor truly Nemedan, and I’d get the bitter satisfaction of proving Killian wrong. Love did factor after all.

Right then, with his expression shuttered, feeling already like I’d been scolded, I had sorely wanted to prove him wrong.

“I do not need such an economical reason to want you.”

“But you have one,” he’d countered. “Come on.”

After that, I had a vague sense of flickering firelight and a cup in my hands. I remembered a cool bloom in my chest at the first gulp of water, and I may have pouted and groused.

“Hector!” Paris was calling for me, waving his hand from his seat on the ground. “Get your bowl and come join us.”

At least I didn’t have to face Killian that very moment, and I was grateful for it. Nevertheless, when I sat, Paris leaned over to look at the gathering of Cranes.

“Won’t Killian join us?”

Brett frowned, squeezing my brother’s knee. “His feathers got ruffled at the meeting yesterday. He probably doesn’t want to subject us to his foul mood.”

“His . . . fowl mood?” Helena snorted.

Paris groaned and wrinkled his nose.

“I think . . . ” I bit the edge of my tongue. No, I couldn’t tell them that I’d plucked at Killian’s feathers too, but I felt a rising need to defend him. “Foul or fowl, any one of us would be upset to have a friend taken from our sides, to say nothing of the insult of being mistrusted by the people he protects.”

Minerva arched a brow. Of everyone gathered, she was the only one who’d faced the wall and the war, day after day, for her whole life. I had no ground to stand on, challenging her about the reality of it. “Orestes has served his year on the wall ten times over. He’ll either stay until it kills him, or he’ll have to find a way to live without it.”

I . . . hadn’t thought about it like that. Sure, I knew that war was dangerous. People died.

So far, it’d hit me in an abstract way. Yes, I’d killed an enemy, but I didn’t know their name. I hadn’t grown to know them or miss them in my life when they were gone.

No doubt someone missed the man I’d killed.

Suddenly, I wanted to drag not only Orestes, but every Nemedan off the wall. We’d leave the war to the southerners and let them tear themselves apart if they wanted.

It might not be that simple, but I wished it was.

The worst thing was, no weapon I could craft for Killian would ever give him what he truly needed: peace.

Still, I owed him an apology. I could give him that much and hope that it was enough to make up for making a fool of myself last night.

Gods, I’d pushed myself on him so wantonly, even knowing that he didn’t want that. Killian had no obligation to prove to me that I was or was not part of my own family—that I was or was not Nemedan enough for him or his people.

It’d be all too easy to convince myself that was the only reason that I’d thrown myself at him, to prove a point, but a horrible, twisted nausea in the pit of my stomach said that was the least of my desperation.

I wanted him; my desire was that simple.

I wanted Killian to smile my way and mean it—yes, because he thought me clever, but even when he didn’t. I wanted to make him proud and keep him safe and hear every quiet moan that slipped through his controlled facade.

However much I hoped that I’d replaced one need to serve with another, I couldn’t fool myself. The moments I was happiest with him, felt the most myself, weren’t when he was grateful for something I had done, but when he rested his head on his bent arm and traced my hip with the lightest touch. The way he looked at me then, it was like he saw me beyond what I could do for him.

If I thought that, I was a fool. That wasn’t how relationships worked. Everything was give and take, measured in favors and skills and⁠—

I met Paris’s eye, and his smile turned soft.

Helena was talking about the texts of the south that the Raven Clan had written back when they still explored beyond the borders of Nemeda, but I hadn’t been listening.

Even now, her voice was hazy behind the stark revelations coming over me all at once.

Never in my life had I expected Paris to do anything for me or prove his worth so that I could love him. I simply did.

Catching Helena’s gaze next, it was like the earth had opened beneath me. No, I thought as she cocked her head curiously, there wasn’t a thing she needed to do to earn my devotion.

Service—that was just the standard I held myself to. I didn’t hold anyone else to it. Gods, any time they were generous with me, I took it as criticism, as if my kindhearted siblings thought I wasn’t up to the tasks before me.

It was absurd. They were kind because they were kind; it had nothing at all to do with my failings. Impossible as it was to believe, there might not be anything wrong with me at all.

Except that there was. I wanted more than I said I did, pressed Killian when he had been clear, and threw myself into solving surface problems while ignoring deeper ones.

“Hector?” Helena’s foot slipped out across the ground to nudge mine. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

She arched her brow like she didn’t believe it.

“I love you,” I blurted out.

Her brow puckered and she laughed. “I love you too. But are you sure you’re fine? You’re in a strange mood.”

I shook my head. “Just reflective. There’s, ah—” I glanced across the gathering, to the stark silver hair that reflected the warm morning sun. “There’s something I need to take care of. Could you return this?” I held up my bowl.

Paris, closer to me, took it. “No problem,” he said, beaming.

For a moment, I could only stare, dumbfounded at him. He was far too happy to⁠—

Fuck. To do me a favor. I’d asked for something so simple, and it had made him feel needed. For so long, I’d tried to do everything I could for both of them and this was what it took to make him happy?

I was a fool.

“Thank you.” I stood, flexing my fingers. Even then, I wanted to snatch the bowl back and say I’d take it myself and that he had nothing to worry about, but even I could recognize that was absurd.

Paris bit his lip and tilted his head toward the Crane Clan. “You had something you needed to do?”

“Yes. Right. Yes. Um, excuse me.” I dipped in something like a bow before Minerva and Brett, and turned away.

All the way through camp, I was sure I stuck out like a peacock, or one of those damned geese from Urial, squawking for everyone to see. Not a head turned toward me, but I was sure everyone could see me about to make a fool of myself.

The closer I got to Killian, the slower I got. What if I’d already ruined everything? He had to see now that I still wanted more than what he’d offered. Perhaps just knowing that would make it impossible for us to continue, which was a prospect that made me wish to never speak to him again, if only to hold us in this stasis where something between us was still possible.

But no—no I was not the kind of man who wheedled and pressed and ignored the boundaries of someone I cared for without taking accountability. If I’d ruined everything between us, fine, but I wouldn’t let it go without comment.

Behind Killian, I paused to take a deep breath and steel my nerves.

The shirt he wore wrapped around him one way, then the other, secured with a tie at his waist. If he needed to fly, it’d be all too easy to shed it and leap to the sky. Most Nemedan clothes were like that—not mine.

For weeks, I’d appreciated how easy they made it to access his skin. Now, my hand shook to touch his shoulder and the delicate cloth draped over it. Would it be the last time?

At the touch, Killian looked up at me, eyes wide and—and I couldn’t tell what was behind them. I jerked my hand back.

“Killian, may I have a word?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

KILLIAN

It didn’t make sense, to be both relived and angry at the same time.

Orestes was leaving. Not of his own volition, because the fucking arrogant clan chiefs had decided they knew better than he did about how he should live his life. But he’d be safer than he was on the wall.

I would never wake up to the news that the latest southland incursion had killed him.

That was good. Right? Even if I lost, Orestes was getting something good out of this. I’d have said Nemeda was getting something out of this ridiculous decision, but no, they were throwing him away. Urial was getting him, as much as they didn’t deserve him.

They had tried to murder Hector, after all. Who was to say they wouldn’t try to murder Orestes too?

If they did, by the winds, I’d fly up there myself and kill every one of them with my bare fucking hands.

I almost leapt at motion to my right, as Hector sat himself next to me. “Sorry to bother you, but I . . . I wanted to talk.”

It was ridiculous that here, surrounded by the people who were supposed to be my countrymen, my heart was pounding at someone coming up behind me. I should be able to trust my safety here, of all places.

But hadn’t yesterday’s meeting been a reminder that even the people I thought were my friends could easily turn their backs on me for the sake of their own convenience? Not Brett, no, but Balthazar had cared more about political bullshit than about Orestes.

As ever, I promised myself that I would never hold a single human life in lower regard than political convenience. Not even Balthazar, even if he’d done that very thing. Not even a southlander. Life was more important, always.

I’d held true to it.

What else had Carlyle been, after all?

I’d been a child, yes. So had he. We’d been the sons of respective war leaders, and we had both wanted to see an end of the fighting. We’d both been sickened by the constant war, the loss of generations of young people—men on their side, and everyone on ours—to sate some incomprehensible bloodlust. Because his people wanted to die of Avianitis.

They’d seen it as a trial by fire, he’d told me, and that was important to his people for some reason. Nemedans went to the wall because we needed to. Because we had to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Southlanders went to the wall to prove themselves. Their skill and valor and whatever other prideful nonsense their fathers demanded of them.

We had met in secret for months, trying to find a way to forge peace, but in the end . . . well, in the end, when his father had told him to prove himself or die, Carlyle had brought his father’s men against the wall.

I had killed him myself, with my own spear. I fingered the long white feather, from my own wing, that I’d tied into my hair for him. “You don’t bother me,” I told Hector. “You’ve never bothered me.”

“You’re angry, though.”

I snorted and shook my head. “With the clan chiefs. With myself. With the war and all the pointless fucking death. Not you.”

He pressed the length of his arm against mine, a warm line against me. Subtle. Quiet. No dramatic statements of intent, just simple support.

It was incredible, what a Crane the man was without even knowing it.

“Still, I wanted to apologize.”

I lifted my head, turning to raise a brow at him. “What do you have to apologize for? You’re possibly the only person in this whole damned camp who hasn’t done a single thing wrong. Well, you and the Hawk Clan.”

“Last night, I, ah, I came on very strong. You were right, I was drunk. It wasn’t appropriate.” He ducked his head, red suffusing his cheeks and making him look positively perfect. Not that he ever looked anything but perfect.

The first moment I’d seen him, even as he’d been—sallow and sweating, unconscious because he was being poisoned by his own people—I’d been struck by the beauty of the man.

I watched as my own hand reached out without my permission to caress his cheek. Not that I’d have stopped it; I simply didn’t recall telling it to do that.

“You did nothing wrong,” I told him. “Most of us drank, some more than you. That was fine. What would not have been fine was for me to take advantage while you were in that state.”

His flush deepened, and he didn’t look at me when he said, “I wouldn’t have minded. I know . . . I understand what you’re saying. Just, being sober now, I haven’t changed my mind. I know you don’t want that, but I do. I’m sorry. I really⁠—”

This time, I was fully in control of my own body, when I leaned in and pressed my lips to his.

He opened to me like a flower in the dawn, and I took every advantage. I slid an arm around him, pulling him close to me, running the hand that had cupped his cheek down his face, his neck, his shoulder, then his tautly muscled chest. His time in the smithy had done impressive things for his physique already.

Hector had been beautiful in Urial. He’d been born that beautiful, likely. He’d had more muscle than his slender waif of a brother since we’d met, but I’d always appreciated that in a bed partner. Strength, both internal and external.

Every single thing about Hector made me want him more. Made him sit there in my mind, stuck on the rocks while everything else flowed through like water.

I was finished pretending otherwise.

So I kissed him with all the passion I had in me. All the anger at the situation with Orestes and the clan chiefs. All the misery at the continuing fucking war. All the frustration at trying to make Hector see that I valued him even as I was trying to keep him off the wall. Most of all, with the passion I’d been withholding, trying to keep to myself because I didn’t want to be the one who gave Hector Avianitis.

Well fuck that. He was a grown man. I didn’t have the right to keep him off the wall to protect him if he wanted to be there, and neither did I have the right to force him to be protected from Avianitis by pressing him into celibacy.

Hector wasn’t a child, and I was done protecting him from himself. From me. If he wanted me, then that was precisely what he would get. I turned and scooped him into my arms, standing and turning toward the tents, all without taking my lips from his.

When we did finally break the kiss, he looked positively debauched, with swollen lips and blown eyes, panting for breath. My own voice was ragged when I spoke. “If you’ve changed your mind, tell me. Because I’m finished resisting. I mean to have you, and if you don’t want that, I have to know now.”

Instead of answering immediately, he grabbed my face with both hands and pressed into another devouring kiss. There were wolf whistles behind us, but I paid them no mind, focused on not falling down as I dragged Hector back to my tent. When he pulled away again, his eyes were wild. “I’m never going to change my mind. I want this. Want you.”

“Even with an audience of the whole fucking meeting?” I asked as another whistle sounded from behind us.

He snorted, and didn’t so much as glance away from me. “They’re just jealous. And they should be. Now take me to bed. Right now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

HECTOR

In Urial, fucking wasn’t something to be done in public. Perhaps, at winter fêtes that broke up the monotony of the long, cold nights, young couples fumbled in the halls, tucked inside nooks and behind tapestries. If you stumbled across them, the polite thing was to pretend you hadn’t.

With the entirety of the Crane gathering aware of what was about to happen, my skin tingled.

I . . . liked it?

Gods, what had Nemeda made of me, that I wanted every one of them to know that Killian was mine, that I wanted him so desperate for me that he’d stake his claim in front of everyone?

No, I didn’t want to bare my ass to all of them for his pleasure, but I wanted them to know.

Most particularly, I didn’t want to leave myself with any more space for doubt.

In Killian’s tent, I was tugging hastily at fabrics before he even set me down. His shirt was all too easy to loosen and push off. His trousers were a little more complicated, but soon, I had him bare as I’d ever seen him, his cock flushed and thick in a thatch of silvery hair.

He didn’t even look human—some other kind of ethereal being. Like the gods we worshipped in Urial, maybe.

He pushed me back onto his bedroll to remove my trousers too, and I was too busy staring up at him to feel self-conscious. Too busy reaching for him to care that I was anything but godly.

His next kiss pressed me down into the bedroll, and I groaned, dragging my hands at anywhere I could reach. This, this, this was what I’d been waiting for.

With a huff, I rolled him over and straddled his hips. The Crane had another think coming if he reckoned I was simply going to lay back and let him have me.

Killian’s long, strong body spread beneath mine as I kissed him, exploring his chest with abandon, dragging fingertips across his battle-scarred thighs. How had anyone ever gotten so perfect?

“How do you like it?” Killian rasped against my hungry kiss.

His hands on my hips were familiar, and still, a spark swept up my neck at knowing that this time, it’d be different. He wouldn’t hold himself back. Just knowing that felt like soaring.

“How do you like it?” I shot back at him.

Beneath me, Killian scowled. Strangely enough, the idea of telling him directly didn’t feel so foreign and impossible as it would’ve that morning.

“I want you,” I mumbled, rolling my hips and leaning over him for another kiss, “to fuck me hard enough to make up for making me wait so long. I don’t want to be able to sit upright without knowing you’ve claimed me.”

A possessive glint lit in his eye that stole my breath. Had I pressed too hard?

Before I could worry he was having second thoughts, he grabbed the back of my neck and dragged me down to him. His tongue thrust into my mouth, demanding entrance, staking his claim to territory I was all too willing to surrender to him, so long as he fought for it.

“Turn around,” he growled. The command flashed through me, and without consciously thinking about it, I’d turned in his lap, my legs spread across his thighs. When I sat back, my balls pressed into the dip between the base of his cock and his sack and—fuck, all I wanted was to grind down on him until I came.

But that was—that was for before. Today, I was getting more. Everything I wanted.

My breath hitched as I looked over my shoulder. He’d oiled his hand—I caught just the flash of light against all that slick before his fingers teased down my crack and he pushed one inside.

While he fucked me on that long finger, I rocked back. I wanted more.

With a growl, he reached over my leg and gripped the inside of my thigh, dragging me back and—and there, between my knees, his cock was flushed and full. If I shifted back just a little⁠—

There. Though I couldn’t sink down and take all of him in, I sucked the tip and used my hands on his shaft that I couldn’t reach. The effort curved my body awkwardly over him, but the sound he made was worth it.

Better still, the stretch was—was more. Another finger, delving hungrily as I sucked the bitter drop from the tip of his cock.

Fuck, I could come like this, grinding against his belly with his fingers inside, the taste of him on my tongue.

Not enough. It wasn’t enough.

One whimper from me was all it took for Killian to sit up, sending me toppling forward onto the bedroll.

I fell onto my forearms, ass high in the air, as he adjusted behind me. How was the man so damnably graceful, even now? He slicked his cock, and I felt the blunt intrusion pressing against my hole. There was resistance, sure, but the ache of it was so fucking sweet.

I whined into the bend of my arm, pushed back, and as he thrust forward⁠—

“Oh fuck!”

“Good, Hector,” Killian growled, trailing one appreciative hand up my side soothingly.

He held himself so still, every impressive muscle in his beautiful body absolutely rigid, even as I shook beneath him.

I was so full. It’d been—gods, it’d been so long since I’d done this, and never while knowing that every sound I made could be heard, just beyond the tent. Something about it was so damned delicious that I didn’t bother trying to hold back. When a low, needy moan climbed up my throat, I let it out.

Killian indulged me by starting to move. He was slow at first—deep thrusts that ensured I knew the shape of him claiming me. But soon, the wet, hard sounds of his hips hitting my ass filled the tent.

I gripped the bedroll and chased the feeling, rocking back to meet his every move, certain my world would blow apart every time his dick rushed into me.

Didn’t care. Didn’t matter. The only thing in the world that mattered was fucking him, sucking every bit of pleasure and pain and life that I could get from this moment I’d never thought would come.

When my strength began to fail, Killian reached around and his hand pressed flat against my chest. He drew me up and up and up. My lower back arched dramatically. My shoulders hit his chest. I craned, turning my head as much as I could to catch his lips in a messy kiss that drifted toward the corner of my mouth.

He left my lips as slick and swollen as the head of my cock, bobbing obscenely each time he rocked his hips.

“Is this what you wanted?”

The sound that escaped me was more whimper than word. I held his eye, steady as I could while he thrust into me, and I nodded.

In case he had the ridiculous notion that I was lying, I reached up and placed my hand over his. My fingers slipped between his when he spread them, and I held on, pulling his arm around me tighter.

I wanted him everywhere—covering me, surrounding me, filling me—all of it. As if he knew my every thought, he pulled me closer. His thrusts got shorter, but gods, so deep, like he meant to bury his way inside and claim every inch of me.

He let his free hand drift lower. At first, his grip around my cock was loose, but inside it, I was hot steel, needy and leaking and, fuck, he tightened his fingers and began to move. The slap of skin on skin, the jolt of every thrust, the oily slickness of his palm on my cock—it was all too much. My balls drew up tight and I spread my legs, bearing down and meeting each thrust, trying to push him deeper than his hips would allow.

Ecstasy crashed over me like a landslide, bowling me over.

I sobbed as my cock jerked in his hand, a string of sticky white shooting across his bedroll, coating his fingers. Gasping for air, even the sound of his groan, right below my ear where his teeth pressed into my neck, sounded muffled and distant, but his hips flexed, shoving his cock deep inside me, and he⁠—

He came, and I let out the relieved puff of a laugh. I hadn’t forced his hand; he’d met me here, in the middle of all my wanting, and matched it on his own.

Shivering, the strength in my limbs gave out. I toppled forward and Killian fell with me. His dick slid out of my ass, but when I bent to avoid the mess we’d made, he wiggled close behind me. My ass fit in the crux of his hips so perfectly, and his arm was there, still wrapped around my chest, his fingers spreading and closing slowly in the most blissful kind of petting motion.

I had him, could lift his hand to my lips and kiss his fingers while he rumbled contentedly against my back.

I didn’t have words, but neither did he, and in the hazy aftermath of pleasure, it didn’t matter. His arm around me was enough, his familiar skin against mine all I wanted.

Now, all I needed was to keep him—convince him that, love or not, whatever we had was better for both of us than the loneliness that’d proceeded it.

Since I’d won this victory, all I wanted was more. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I couldn’t think about what happened if our tomorrows ran short. Even with the threat of Avianitis, I had too much now to give up an ounce of joy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

KILLIAN

Leaving the meeting without Orestes at my side felt wrong.

I, of all people, knew that change was the only constant. That someone who had spent a decade at your side could be snatched away in a second. All it took was a moment of inattention, a too-long winter, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was used to losing people. It was the one thing I’d done more than any other in my life.

But Orestes had lasted longer than most. He’d been by my side for ten summers, through pain and joy and every other thing the world had visited upon us.

He had to leave or he’d stay till he died, Minerva had said.

Funny how no one ever said that about me. About any Crane.

Like it was a tragedy if someone else died on the wall, but that was simply the lot of the Crane, to die for Nemeda.

Still, Hector was with me as we packed things up to leave. We didn’t have to bring the bolt thrower with us, at least. It was staying as a single point of defense between Nemeda and Urial. It seemed reasonable, since the thing could fight off the entire nonexistent Urial army without even having someone who could operate it, and the Vulture could do that.

We were taking the wagon with us. Traveling through Hawk lands on the way, as Brett had offered to send food home with us, since we had to make the trek on foot anyway.

I gave a heavy sigh as I tossed my pack into the otherwise empty back of the wagon.

Hector raised a brow at me. “Something wrong?”

There was nothing wrong with him. He’d been sunnily pleased with the whole world since . . . well, since. I couldn’t blame him, because it had been incredible. The best sex I’d ever had, by a wide fucking margin. He was as beautiful as I’d always imagined him, his body lithe and quick, his ass hot and tight and⁠—

He lifted a brow at me, a tiny smirk playing around the corners of his lips. “You look like you want to go set the tent back up.”

“Fuck the tent,” I said, pressing him up against the side of the wagon. He’d seemed pleased enough to have me there, yes. Repeatedly, until my thighs had burned with the effort, and I hadn’t been sure I could even manage to get my cock hard again . . .

Not that it had failed me yet. Five times in a day, and every time he cut those honey-brown eyes in my direction, it stirred once again for him.

I grabbed the back of his neck, pressing hard against him and kissing him as though I were drowning, and he was my only source of air. Maybe he was. I’d known him less than a year, lived with him for a single season, and yet he felt necessary. Imagining him gone from my side was even harder than feeling the loss of Orestes, my most stalwart of companions.

But he was on his way to Urial by now.

That was enough to kill any mood.

I sighed and turned away. “I can’t believe we’re walking home. Like some sort of four-legged creatures.”

Somehow, Hector didn’t take offense. Or if he did, he hid it well, which would have been a first. No, he laughed. “Or like two-legged creatures. You know, humans. Which we are.”

I heaved a deep sigh and glanced up at the sky, where we could still see the Crane contingent in the distance.

“You could just go with them, you know,” he said, his voice soft. When I looked at him, his eyes were even softer. Sympathetic?

I shook my head. “The wagon requires two people,” I insisted. It was mostly true, at least. “Especially after we get to Hawk lands and they fill it with food. It’s harder to steer when it’s that heavy.”

He shrugged even as he reached out to cup my cheek. The motion was something new. Confident in a way he hadn’t been before. Proprietary. There, again, was the stirring of my cock in answer to him being the sexiest fucking thing in the whole of Nemeda. Or Urial, I supposed. “I’m sure Brett and Paris would be willing to send someone along to help me. I’d never keep you from your people deliberately.”

This, though, was my turn to be reassuring. Not because I thought him weak, but because I was sure he didn’t know the truth. Because he’d gotten too little reassurance in his life. He’d always been the one doing the reassuring. “You are one of my people, Hector. As much as you’re also more than that now, you’re mine. I would never leave you alone. Even if you know the way. Even if you’ll be okay on your own. It doesn’t work that way in Nemeda, and you’re one of us.”

He swallowed hard, as though the words were something entirely unexpected, and instead of speaking, he simply nodded. We climbed into the wagon in silence, and I offered him the reins. Not that I’d ever hesitated to let someone other than me take the reins in a wagon, but something about it felt symbolic anyway. Hector had been forced into the background, to do the dirty, unappreciated work, for too long. It was time for him to be in front. To do the glory jobs, like showing off his bolt thrower to the clan chiefs like had had on the first day of our meeting.

It was time for people to know that he was something special.

Also, we’d had sex.

Hector was going to come down with Avianitis.

It wasn’t really a question, but a matter of when, and how bad. I couldn’t leave him alone even if it was what we both wanted, because he was going to get sick, probably soon. It would kill me if he didn’t survive it—a fact that was running on a loop through my own lust-addled brain. Yes, his brother and sister had both survived it, which spoke to a predisposition to strength in their bloodline. And Hector had already survived poisoning that should have killed him. But this was different. I hadn’t given him the poison, and I had most definitely given him this.

I’d never believed love was a real thing to begin with, so that meant any outsider who had sex with a Nemedan was in danger.

But now?

Well, now I was starting to think it didn’t matter. Because if love was real, and it was what caused Avianitis . . . well, I was pretty sure I’d already saddled Hector with that, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

HECTOR

It simply wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to get sick.

Before Brett and Paris had flown ahead to Hawk lands, I’d spoken to Paris about his condition, how it’d presented, what I should look out for.

He’d been on the brink of death while he’d fought off Avianitis, and I’d been in Urial at the time, completely unaware.

To be fair, he’d also been largely unaware of what he was going through, and if I’d had the chance to talk to Brett before my brother had fallen in love with him, we’d have had words about that. But now, it didn’t matter so much. He obviously loved Paris, and as far as I could tell, there were no more lingering secrets. My indignation no longer had a place between them.

I still made Paris explain to me how he’d felt, what it had been like, so I could brace myself for whatever came next. It sounded as if Paris’s case was, relatively, mild. Brett’s furrowed brow when I broached the topic was enough to say the mere idea of Avianitis shook him enough that Paris waved him off to continue putting up camp while we spoke.

Through sheer stubbornness alone, I intended to forego the entire business.

Paris said his bones had hurt. He’d been feverish, and his memories from the time were hazy.

And, of course, he’d wanted to know why I was so interested.

“Do you think you’ll . . . ?” He’d lifted his brows significantly. Despite myself, a smile twitched on my lips. Poking around the subject at hand without addressing it directly was quite familiar to us both from a lifetime spent in Urial’s court.

“Killian’s convinced that any outsider who has sex with a Nemedan is at risk.”

Paris’s nose had flared in annoyance. “You’re not an outsider.”

“You know what I mean. I just want to be prepared.”

“Because you want him.” Paris had narrowed his eyes at me shrewdly, and there had been no choice but to tell him the truth—or part of it. I was still rooted enough in Urial that I wasn’t going to start sharing my sexual exploits with my baby brother. He didn’t need to know that I’d acted on my desire already.

“I do.”

Paris had nodded tightly. “I get it. Clear eyes. No harm in preparing. Just—” He’d raised his hands, flexed them like he was unsure what to do, and a second later, he was wrapped around me like a python.

“I’ll be safe,” I promised, petting his back. Letting him go was easier, knowing I’d see him again in less than a week. What happened in the interim? Well, I wasn’t going to think about it.

Not only was Paris relying on me to hold it together, but even before we left Vulture lands, Killian was on edge. He wouldn’t say precisely why, and I couldn’t tell him not to worry, but the source of his anxiety was apparent enough.

He thought he’d doomed me. Now, it was my job to prove to the most dangerous man I’d ever known that he wasn’t half so dangerous as he thought, even with his spear. He did look quite nice with a large shaft in hand⁠—

Wasn’t the point.

In the wagon, he sat, pressed against my arm, as we made our slow way through the countryside. The other Cranes would be back before we even made it to the Hawk lands, and Orestes was going the other way.

I . . . hated it.

Orestes was one of my closest friends amongst the Crane. It helped that he didn’t fit so perfectly among them, sure, but he was also frank and open in a way so contrary to what I was used to that it rattled my brain around in my skull just to speak with him.

He made me better, and I wished that he hadn’t gone.

I didn’t think he was in danger in Nemeda. It was one thing for King Albany to try and get rid of his own people when they were inconvenient, but to get rid of a diplomat?

Well, I didn’t think he was capable of it, but I hadn’t thought him capable of poisoning me either.

The first days on the road with Killian were nice, even if he was nervous and I was exhausted. We had long days together to talk about anything. He told me about his encounters with the southerners, and Carlyle, the southern man he’d met in his youth who’d nearly convinced him that peace was possible.

He told me about his mother and all her men, how Abram had been one of them. And when I’d asked if he preferred a similar arrangement, he’d laughed. His smile was like the sun when he turned it on me and said, “My appetites don’t run so ravenous.”

Then he’d slid his hand down my leg and taken my hand in his and my heart had ached at how perfect the moment was. Still, I tried to temper my expectations. Just because I took everything in my life too seriously didn’t mean that this was . . . that.

Still, I enjoyed having him all to myself, getting to sleep beside him like we were nothing but the merchants who drifted across Urial when warm summer winds broke up the last of the winter’s lingering snows.

We were only a couple hours out from the Hawk village when our conversation sputtered out. It wasn’t that we had nothing to talk about, only that I’d woken up with a headache that started right behind my eyes, and throughout the day, had spread until it felt like my whole skull was contracting.

“Are you all right?” Killian asked when he caught me squinting against the setting sun.

I nodded. “Just fine. Road weary. Traveling’s getting to me.”

Killian’s narrowed eyes belied a fresh wave of anxiety, and he fidgeted on the seat beside me. For the rest of the evening, he pressed water on me, handed me pieces of jerky, watched like . . . I honestly didn’t know if hawks or cranes had keener eyes.

“We should stop soon,” Killian said.

I nodded, and the movement shook my brain around in my head. Once I pulled the cart beneath a large tree, I hopped down from the front.

“I’ll start a fire.” We had wood piled up in the back of the wagon. We’d gathered a small store of it as we traveled the countryside, walking around in the evenings to stretch our legs and picking up tinder on the way. Usually, we set the fire behind the open back and slept beneath the tarp. That evening, I wasn’t looking forward to the hardness of the wooden slabs under us. My back was aching fiercely.

We’d arrive in my brother’s village the next morning, and it’d be nice to have a proper bed to sleep in, good food to fill our bellies. One decent night’s sleep, and I’d be fine.

I had to be fine.

Before I’d grabbed the first split log, Killian hopped down and grabbed me by the shoulder. His grip was firm and steady, in contrast to . . . to what? All of me?

“You don’t need to do that,” he said. In a sweep of his large hand, he pushed my hair from my forehead and set the backs of his fingers against my skin. “You’re warm.”

I jerked away from his touch and glared. “I’m not.”

I turned to the wood and began pulling it toward me with a heavy scratching sound. It was awfully heavy. Had it always been so heavy?

“Hector,” Killian pressed, grabbing my shoulder again and trying to pull me back around. I stumbled. “Be reasonable.”

“I am fine,” I insisted, summoning all the heat I could into my glare.

“Clearly not. You should rest. Take it easy. Sit in the back and I’ll make you something to eat.”

I growled. “Stop trying to coddle me!”

With a frustrated huff, Killian threw up his hands. “I’m not trying to coddle you. I’m trying to take care of you. You’re si⁠—”

“No!” My shout sent a bat screeching into the air overhead.

We stared at each other in shock, both our chests heaving.

When I knocked myself out of it, I shook my head. “I am not. I’m not ill. I’m fine. As fine as I’ve ever been.”

“Hector—”

The way Killian’s voice softened had me drawing my shoulders up around my ears. “No,” I insisted. It took another deep inhale before I summoned the resolve to meet his eye again. “I will not take up the next place on your list of regrets. I am fine.”

Killian’s lips fell slack and soft and oh-so-tempting. Then, he closed the distance between us. His palm, blissfully cool, cupped my cheek. His lips brushed over mine gently, fresh and sweet as any water I’d ever tasted.

“Hector,” he whispered. His forehead pressed to mine was all that kept the world from tilting. “You’ll never—Hector? Hector!”

His startled cry was the last thing I heard before the world gave up, sagged, and listed sideways.

CHAPTER THIRTY

KILLIAN

Fucking Avianitis.

I’d warned him. I’d told myself, over and over again, that I shouldn’t so much as lay a finger on him because it would endanger his life. Somehow, I didn’t want to crow about how I’d warned him.

Being right didn’t matter anymore.

Hector being alive was what mattered.

I did want to wake him up so I could yell at him, but that wasn’t going to do anyone any good. No, only actual care could help, and lying in a wagon, barely sheltered from the elements, wasn’t going to do it. Thankfully, it was high summer, so we didn’t have to worry about snow, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t rain.

Besides, we were eating travel food, and it wasn’t the healthiest. No fresh vegetables, not enough water, constant work to keep moving. Nothing about it was right.

It took nothing to get Hector into the wagon, but even with both blankets and packs under and around him, it wasn’t stable enough. He was going to flop around, his head bumping against the wooden slats of the wagon as I drove. So instead, I pulled him onto the bench and held him against me as I drove the damned thing. It still wasn’t good enough, but at least he wouldn’t arrive at Brett’s home with a head injury as well as Avianitis.

We clattered down the cobblestone streets of Brett’s little village in the middle of the night, but fortunately, it was summer, so a few people were already up. The cute kid—now a young man—who’d followed Brett around like a puppy every time I’d seen him before, Brandon or Brendan or something like that, jumped down the stairs of the house next door, rushing over to us.

I wasn’t sure why he was in a hurry, but it worked for me. “Get Brett,” I demanded, no time for pleasantries. “And a healer. He’s sick.”

The boy clearly took me at my word, because he rushed off a second later, almost leaping up the stairs of Brett’s home and throwing the door open, shouting for his clan chief as I was still pulling the horses to a stop.

By the time I’d managed to stop the wagon and wrangle Hector’s limp form to the street in my arms—without dropping him—people were hurrying out of the building. Brett’s lovely cousin Rosaline, Brett himself, and worst of all, Paris.

The man whose brother I had completely failed to protect.

I could have laughed in that moment. I hadn’t wanted Hector on the wall because I’d thought he would catch a stray southern sword, and I’d have to feel responsible for his death in an abstract, distant way.

Instead, here I was, having literally caused it.

He’s not dead yet, my brain reminded me. His brother and sister had survived it, after all. Why shouldn’t he? No offense to either of them, but I’d spent months with Hector now, and he was sturdier than both of them combined. Stronger, I’d assumed. He was certainly stronger in other ways—both of them like downy feathers on the wind, frail and fragile, blown where the wind took them. Hector wasn’t that. He was a flight feather. Soft, yes, and beautiful, but also sturdier than he looked. Capable of carrying the weight of his entire family on the wind for years before he’d left Urial.

Still, Brett was pale when he came to meet me in the street, motioning me to follow him.

And Paris might have seemed weak when he almost collapsed in the doorway to the house, staring at his unconscious brother as I carried him past, up the stairs where Brett led us to an empty bedroom . . . but he seemed rather less weak a moment after I’d set Hector on the bed, when he was throwing himself against my chest, striking at me as though it would change anything.

“You said you wouldn’t see him dead,” he shouted, his smallish fists carrying surprising weight as he beat them against me. “You lied. You . . . you . . . ”

Brett came up behind him, wrapping arms around his waist and burying his face in his husband’s neck, whispering soft, soothing nonsense into his skin as Paris glared at me as though he could run me through with his gaze alone. I almost wished he could.

Rosaline, slip of a girl she was, who hadn’t even spent a year on the wall, but been assigned one of Brett’s proxy years, took charge like I’d never imagined she could. She barked out orders to the puppy who’d followed us inside, pushed Brett and Paris into a chair in the corner, then gave me a hard look. “Are you going to be useful, or not?”

“Anything I can do,” I promised, trying my best to seem earnest, despite how Paris had just pointed out that this whole fucking mess was my doing.

She didn’t seem to hold it against me, simply nodded and motioned to Hector. “Strip him down to his underthings and get him into bed. I’ll be back with soup and water. Brandon is getting the healer. You can feed him while we work.”

“Of course,” I agreed. I’d fed people who were badly injured before, during my stint with the healers back home. I was no healer, so busy work had been the best I could do. If they let me do that now, I’d do it, and I’d be fucking grateful for it.

As Rosaline left us alone, I set to work on Hector’s boots, trying to ignore Brett’s soothing noises and Paris sobbing in the corner.

An hour—or maybe fifty of them—later, when Rosaline and the boy and the healer had come and gone, I fed him the broth they had given me, a spoonful at a time, first careful to get it into his mouth instead of down his cheeks and into the bed, then rubbing his throat to get him to swallow it down. It was slow work, but it wasn’t as though I had anything better to do.

Paris had stopped sobbing, asleep in Brett’s arms—or at least, I assumed so. I almost asked Brett to take him away, so I wouldn’t have to look at his slumped shoulders and messy hair. Wouldn’t have to be reminded that I’d failed him, just as I’d failed Hector.

Brett, though, wasn’t the sort who would hold it against me. He’d given Paris Avianitis without even warning his husband that it existed, before he had realized that his lover’s family could be trusted with our people’s most guarded secrets.

On the other hand, that didn’t stop him from twisting the knife in my gut in other ways. His soft voice came from across the room, aimed at me like an arrow, even though he was still looking at his husband’s sleeping face. “At least you can’t say love isn’t real anymore.”

I almost fucking hit him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

HECTOR

Iremembered being fourteen, trapped in bed every night with the worst cramps in my legs. At first, I’d been terrified. I didn’t know what was happening. But Father had said it was simply growing pains. He’d been unconcerned.

In a way, that had been a comfort. If the surgeon was going to have to take my legs, surely Father would’ve felt something about it.

And this pain, as I drifted on the edge of consciousness, was a thousand times worse. Even the marrow in my bones seemed to ache, pulsing and hot.

I tried to sleep, but it wasn’t restful.

Still, I must’ve managed, because I woke in a proper bed, a body curled up beside me, a face pressed against my arm.

I cleared my throat. It was dry, but not as terribly as it might’ve been.

The room—it was familiar to me. I’d stayed with the Hawk for months while I’d recovered from poisoning. Killian had gotten us here.

But it wasn’t him, pressed against my arm. That was Paris, and when I turned my head, he was already staring at me, waiting for something.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He snorted. He looked like he’d been crying, but he was warm there, tucked beneath the blankets with me, like when he was little and he’d had a bad dream. He’d wake Helena up and they’d both crawl into my bed to sleep for the rest of the night, which was the very last thing a teenage boy like me would’ve wanted but it was sweet all the same. I’d never forced them back to their own beds.

I’d missed having them so close. They’d grown out of it.

Apparently, the walls we’d put up in Urial had come down in Nemeda, though. He wiggled closer to me. “Do you want some water?”

I nodded, and he helped me drink before lowering my head back onto the pillows.

“Is Killian . . . ?” I glanced around, but there was no immediate sign of him. I didn’t think he’d leave me in Hawk lands⁠—

Well, unless he was berating himself for this whole mess and had made the unilateral decision that I was better off without him. That . . . did sound like something he might do.

Paris tucked his head deeper in the crook of his arm, only half his face peeking out at me. “I think I scared him off.”

“Back to the wall?”

Paris blinked. “I don’t . . . think so. He wouldn’t stop pacing, so Brett sent him off to try and sleep. I mean, it wasn’t quite that simple ”

I bit my dry lip against a smile. Paris cowing Killian was hard to imagine. More likely, the ramifications of the choices we’d made were hitting him hard, and he needed time to process them. Or regret them, little as I wanted that.

“What did you say to him?”

Nervously, Paris chewed on his bottom lip. For a few moments, I wasn’t sure he was going to confess at all. When he did, I had a feeling he wasn’t telling me the whole story.

“I . . . called him a liar. All but accused him of killing you.”

“Paris—”

“I know,” my brother huffed, flopping back onto the pillow at my side. “You were unresponsive and I— . . . It was the middle of night. I was disoriented. I shouldn’t have said it.”

I watched from the corner of my eye as his trembling lips disappeared between his teeth. His nose flared when he inhaled shakily.

“I was scared,” he whispered.

Like nothing else in this world, that prompted me toward action. The problem was that I could only reach for his hand and squeeze it tight. Just the idea of doing more, of sitting up and hugging him until he felt secure, or being there the way I always had been—it was too much.

“It’s all right,” I promised. “I understand. He’ll understand.”

Paris nodded. He closed his eyes, and a tear tracked down from the fan of his black lashes.

All of this, because I wanted more and more and more. I couldn’t simply satisfy myself that my family was safe and had a home, even after abandoning Urial.

I waited, brushing my thumb over his knuckles until Paris’s breathing evened out and he opened his eyes again. He looked at me with a wavering smile. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need.”

Paris’s gaze slipped over to his husband, snoring in the corner of the room.

I turned to look at Brett there too. “Do you blame him for your illness?”

Paris wrinkled his brow and stared at me. “Of course not.”

“And would you change anything if you could?”

He swallowed roughly. “No.”

With a slow breath, I let my eyelids slip shut. When I opened them again, Paris’s eyes were shining with tears.

“Good,” I croaked. “Remember that.”

Paris fell silent, and I couldn’t tell if he was pouty or contemplative, but I was too exhausted to put much energy into figuring it out. I’d simply wait for him to sort it out in his own mind.

“Do you love him?”

My breath caught. I’d expected questions, but somehow, not that one. How could I admit that to Paris if I couldn’t say it to Killian?

The easy answer was that admitting the truth to Paris required nothing in return—no guilt or reciprocation or refusal. I wouldn’t pressure Killian toward feelings he didn’t even believe in.

“I do. I mean, I want to.”

Paris frowned. Making sense wasn’t my specialty right then.

“It’s not that easy,” I said. “I’ve never had the kind of responsibility that presses down on Killian. He can’t afford distractions, or . . . I’d imagine that, when you face death every day and have, always, since you were a child, wanting something seems like tempting the gods to take it from you. His focus is on the war, on keeping Nemedans safe. It must stay there.”

“That . . . is bullshit,” Paris griped. “Even war doesn’t demand everything of all who fight it.”

“Yes, it does. What would you or I even know of it, Paris? Losing a life is losing everything—maybe not for everyone every time, but for someone? Always. It is loss upon loss upon loss.”

The weight of hundreds of feathers, threaded through Killian’s beautiful silver hair.

I sighed, trapped between an ardent argument and the heaviest exhaustion I’d ever felt.

“It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. “You probably don’t remember when you came back to Urial. There was much happening, but you brought Killian. Delirious as I was, he is . . . ethereal. Striking and otherworldly and so, so beautiful. And he said—he said that the work I’d done, the responsibility I’d shouldered, was valuable. That I was worthy.” Roughly, I swallowed. “He gave me a reason to pull myself back, to fight on. I’ll admit, I was . . . besotted, at first. Killian takes up all the air in any room he inhabits.”

“For you,” Paris snipped, petulant as he’d been at fifteen.

I laughed softly. “Yes, for me. I wanted him from the first, but then . . . He’s so careful, so diligent. Loyal and steadfast and capable and—now, it’s more than just wanting. I’m not in some kind of rosy-pink haze. I see him, as I think he saw me. So I do love him, as much as there’s space for love in the midst of a war. I want to make his life easier. I want to make him happy. I want him to look at me and see something other than the specter of impending loss. I wish I could be—” Everything he needed.

I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, right now, I wish I could be up, convincing him I’m not weak or a liability.”

“No one thinks you’re weak,” Paris said.

I glanced sidelong at him. “Then I wish I could show him that it wasn’t a mistake to let me close to him.”

But there I was, in bed, too weak to move, and it wasn’t even the first time.

“Will you do something for me?” I asked.

“Of course. What?”

“If anything happens⁠—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Paris insisted, pushing up on his elbow. “Helena’s fine. I’m fine.”

“I know.” I squeezed his hand. “I know I’m going to be fine. But if I’m not, please don’t let him carry the burden of this alone. From the first time I saw him, he was my choice. Not Avianitis, not feathers or birds or loss or any of it. Just him, and knowing that he saw me as I wanted to be seen. If I cannot tell him, you must. I have no regrets in this.”

Paris swallowed hard, again. A few seconds passed before he nodded, blinking too fast. “You’re going to be fine,” he muttered again.

“I am. Now,” I sank back into the pillow and shut my eyes. “I’ve talked too much. I’m tired.”

“Do you want me to go?”

I peeked one eye open. “Not at all. You won’t get off so easily.”

While Paris blinked at me, I settled back, some of my pain lightened by the smile that played on my lips.

“Tell me a story,” I said. “One of the ones Father read to you and Helena.”

The bed jostled as Paris sat up. He cleared his throat. “I can do that.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

KILLIAN

The Hawk children were sitting in a little half-circle around me, staring with wide eyes and open mouths like I was doing magic tricks at a celebration and not training drills with my spear.

Anything I could have said would have been rude, so I simply let them watch, and practiced.

It was all I could do.

I was no healer, to make Hector better. I could feed him, yes, but that only took so long. I could sit and hold his hand while he lay unconscious, but what good did that do anyone?

Probably as much good as it did for me to swing my spear around for the entertainment of children, but at least training drills felt as though I was doing something.

Beside all that, every time I walked into the house, Paris gave me a look like I’d kicked him. He tried not to, always busying himself with whatever it was the husband of the Hawk Chief did every day, but his accusing eyes always strayed back to me.

Telling him that I hated myself even more than he hated me wasn’t going to help anyone. That was just an attempt to feel better about what I’d done. Like a child who apologized for a wrongdoing and expected there to be no other consequences. We were living the consequences of our actions, and apologies would do nothing.

Brett had given Paris Avianitis. Paris had brought his family to Nemeda. Hector had come to the wall. And I had failed to keep my libido in check. We had all brought this situation into being, in one way or another. Now, we all had to live with whatever part we might have played in it. However good or innocent our intentions had been, however hard we tried to help now, we all had to watch Hector toss and turn and sweat and cry out, curling up in a ball with the pain.

His bones, Paris had said to Brett. That his bones had hurt when he’d gotten sick.

Perhaps it was a silly presumption on my part, but it made sense. I’d seen enough southlander bones to know they looked different from Nemedan ones. The notion that it was even possible to change, to gain a bird, seemed impossible. No wonder it hurt so much.

Combine that with the fact that the few people I knew who had survived Avianitis all had one thing in common: they were tiny. Paris was the biggest of the lot, but even he was short and slender, for a man. Esmerelda and Helena were both short and slim. There was a Crane who had come with a refugee family from the south who’d survived Avianitis in his teens, but he’d been a slip of a thing at the time, even if he was enormous now that he was twenty.

Hector? Well, he was no giant like Orestes, but he was taller and larger than anyone else I knew who’d survived the illness. He had impressive muscles, made even more substantial from his time in the smithy. If the illness was about bones, well, he was built sturdier than any of the others as well, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest.

It was one of the many things I liked about him—he was no wilting flower, and I’d never once been afraid he’d break if I held him too tight. Because that was what I did. It was practically who I was. I held onto everything too tightly, because I was afraid it would be taken away.

I was so fucking tired of everything and everyone being taken away.

Hector . . . no. I wasn’t going to dwell on that. I had a gaggle of children staring at me. If I broke down crying, that wouldn’t end well. It wasn’t the impression I wanted to leave the Hawk children of the Crane Clan as a whole.

Not that there was a single Hawk alive with a judgmental bone in their body. No, they would just worry over me and try to caretake me like Brett always did when he could tell something was wrong. Fortunately, they were children. They didn’t know me like Brett did.

As I practiced, I heard the flutter of wings—lots of wings—indicating an arrival. I didn’t break motion, but when I turned in the right direction, it was impossible to miss the glossy black feathers that screamed Raven.

Minerva’s lot, then.

A moment later, a feminine voice was raised in anger. “—out here playing with children while my brother—” It cut off with an anguished sob.

I didn’t turn to them.

Didn’t stop.

Nothing I could do or say would make things better. I couldn’t make Hector better. Couldn’t make anyone feel better.

Couldn’t do a single fucking thing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

HECTOR

“What are you doing?”

I’d barely set my bare feet on the carpet before Helena bustled into the room and shoved me back down.

I huffed, glaring up at her, too annoyed to admit that the sudden motion had made me dizzy. Her push had been firm—not quite enough to hurt, but enough to upend my fragile sense of balance.

It seemed my sister’s time among the Raven had made her bolder. Perhaps under other circumstances, I wouldn’t have minded the change.

As she loomed over me, it was less than charming.

“I cannot stay abed forever,” I grumbled, shuffling the blanket up around my hips.

Truth told, I had no business getting out of bed. I was still running hot, then cold, never sure how my temperature would turn. My body ached. I didn’t want to eat a damn thing that wasn’t carried ever-so-carefully by a spoon perched on Killian’s graceful fingers, and only then, so I could enjoy the sight of them.

But I was tired of being an invalid. If staying still did me no good, perhaps movement would. Or⁠—

Well, I didn’t know. I was simply restless, and I’d thought to sneak out of bed without anyone noticing.

Helena had been hovering since she’d arrived, alternating shifts with Paris and Esmerelda—a kind older woman from the Hawk Clan who’d recovered from Avianitis before. Once a day, the healer came to assess my condition, and Rosaline kept bringing me fresh, warm loaves of bread as if they’d cure any ailment.

But that morning, I’d woken up alone, and I’d thought to take advantage and see how far I could push myself. I hadn’t accounted for Helena’s quickness.

“You can,” Helena snapped, “and you will. You’ll rest until the healer gives you leave to do otherwise. You cannot risk yourself for nothing.”

“Paris thinks I’m past the worst of it.”

Helena’s nose flared. “Forgive me for not taking Paris’s blind optimism as law. We’re listening to the healers.”

I sighed, but right then, didn’t have the strength to argue with my sister. Had she always been so stubborn?

The door opened, and a flash of silver had me sitting up against the headboard, smiling.

Killian came in, carrying a tray with breakfast. It smelled warm and faintly spiced—probably oats.

Didn’t matter. What I wanted, more than food, was Killian sitting beside me. I hoped he’d stay long enough to talk some. I wondered if he’d written to Nia down south, if they knew why he’d been delayed.

If I weren’t so damn selfish, I’d have told him to go on, back to the wall, and I’d follow soon after. I just . . . hadn’t yet.

I wanted him there. The need was constant, tingling at the back of my skull. As long as I was stuck in bed, I had to keep him close.

“Good morning,” I said.

At the very same moment, Helena snatched the tray from him. “Nice of you to make time, Crane.”

I grimaced. “That’s what he’s doing now—making time.”

“Certainly,” Helena said. “That’s why he’s spent every moment he can out of doors with a weapon in hand⁠—”

“You mean training?” I asked.

Already, Killian looked chagrinned. He said nothing in his own defense, and I⁠—

This was absurd.

“He should be at your side,” Helena hissed, throwing her elbow out at him in a way that rattled the plates on the tray she now held. “He caused this. The very least he could do is care for you through it.”

“He has,” I insisted, holding not Helena’s eye, but Killian’s. “He has given me all that I asked for and everything I’ve wanted.”

Helena scoffed. “He drifts from your side as if he does not care in the slightest! Distracts himself with—with war games and⁠—”

“Helena!”

My sister straightened at once, taken aback by the sharpness of my tone when I turned to her.

“Do not presume to know the Crane’s heart or his mind.”

The sound of a door scuffing against its frame drew my eye, and Killian slipped out. I caught the briefest glimpse of his tight jaw before he disappeared.

I sighed, sinking deep into the pillows. There went my morning’s pleasures.

“He stands alone in currents we’ve never faced,” I said as I sank heavily into the pillows. “I won’t have you drive a wedge when I would stand beside him.”

Helena’s brow pinched. “You deserve someone who will care for you.”

At that, a soft laugh escaped me. How horrible it would be, to stay in bed and be tended. I could think of nothing worse than surrendering myself entirely to another’s care. It’d only been a week, and already it was driving me mad.

“He does, but in the ways that I wish to be cared for.”

Helena crossed her arms, her brow rising in an exact mirror of how Paris did it.

“He hasn’t let me on the wall,” I admitted. It was no point of pride for me, but with my safety-minded siblings, perhaps it’d do the trick. “Despite me being there to serve our years and fight the war with the southlands, Killian has arranged for me a place in the smithy, with work I like and work that matters. But it is not dangerous, the way I had imagined when I’d agreed to go south. He doesn’t risk me—doesn’t risk anyone—unnecessarily.”

“But you’re—” She waved a hand at my bedridden body.

I shook my head. “Not a risk he’d have taken if I hadn’t asked him to.”

She sucked in her cheeks. “I just think he should be here.”

It was my turn to arch a brow at her. “If he felt welcome, he might.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

KILLIAN

Hector was drifting. One day he would seem better, and the next, he’d curl up in a ball and sob for the pain in his limbs. No one was saying it aloud, but the illness had lasted longer than any of the others who had survived, and it wasn’t ending.

He was going to die.

Oh, Paris kept saying he was going to be fine, but Paris was like a child who believed in the phoenix of legend. He said it was true because he wanted it to be true.

I couldn’t blame him.

As with the southlanders, who believed that their gods would grant them a place of glory at their sides for eternity when they valiantly died in battle, I wished I could believe. I wanted miracles and magic and gods and love to be real.

The only one that might be real after all, wasn’t nearly as beautiful as it was in stories.

Love, as it turned out, was messy and painful and frightening.

The rest probably would be too, if they turned out to be any less fairy-story than each other. Gods would be horrific selfish creatures who stepped on people like they were ants, and the phoenix would burn us all to death with a sweep of its fiery plumage.

Helena . . . well, frankly, Helena seemed to hate me. Paris had gotten over his anger after that first night, but then, he’d also gotten over any anger he’d held for Brett over infecting him without even warning him beforehand. Paris was a forgiving sort of lad.

Helena was more like Minerva. Like a particularly ferocious wolf. She sunk her teeth into a thing and wrenched it around, throwing her head back and forth until it was torn to bits. It was no wonder they were together.

At the moment, I was the thing Helena wanted torn to bits.

I wasn’t sure if it was just worry over Hector, or true anger, but I tried to give her all the space I could. Unfortunately, that just seemed to make her more angry, because it meant I was outside with increasing frequency, practicing the spear and drawing my strange little crowd of baby Hawks.

I was a bit worried their fascination with the spear forms was going to lead them to romanticize the wall and the war. Send them all rushing down to spend their year on the wall instead of sending one strong proxy to cover years for many of them.

Get them killed.

It seemed to be what I was good at these days.

Hector’s fever had spiked during the day, leaving him trembling in his bed, unable to eat or truly rest, so I . . . well, I hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Helena was with him at the moment, so I couldn’t be there.

Proving her irritation true once again, I’d gone out to practice that evening. I’d taken to tiring my body out to the point of exhaustion, just so there was a chance I would sleep.

It wasn’t working all that well.

The Hawk village was a sweet place. Not built for tactical advantage in a war, but for the normal kind of advantage. Crane palace had been built for beauty back in its day, yes, but the Hawk’s main village was built at the fork of a river, which I thought worked better to bring water to potential crops than to protect them from potential invaders.

The wide, strong stone bridges leading right into the town across both rivers didn’t help. They didn’t have a wall, or gates, or really, any protection.

It made me feel naked, like I’d forgotten my armor and gone to stand a shift on the wall.

Or maybe that was the fact that Hector was lying in a bed dying of an illness I’d given him, and I couldn’t even be there with him, because ironically, his sister didn’t think I spent enough time with him, so she didn’t want me there at all.

I sighed and let my spear fall from guard position, rolling my neck back and forth, trying to expel the tension there. It didn’t work anymore, but I tried. If Orestes were there, he’d have reached down with one giant ham fist and squeezed my shoulders. He’d always been so good at that.

A strangely accented voice drifted to my ear, and every muscle tensed.

No, I was imagining things.

I wanted to be back on the wall, so my body was assuming I was. I expected to hear southlanders, so I did.

But then it came again. Their strangely stilted cadence, over the sound of the nearby river.

An image invaded my head—the fight on the way back from Heron lands. The southlanders using a boat to go around the wall.

Without another thought, I ran.

The same as before, it was just one boat. Less similar, I was alone and unarmored.

Still, I couldn’t allow them to invade this sleepy unguarded little village. Kill those innocent wide-eyed children I’d already been worrying about coming to the wall.

I kept silent, running on my toes, keeping to the grass instead of the cobbled roads. The moon was a sliver in the sky, so the shadows hid me well enough.

“Your father will be impressed,” one was laughing to another. “We’ll bring him back a bird as a trophy.”

Bastards. I’d kill them before I let them lay a single finger on one feather.

Without another thought, I rushed in. The first was dead before they even realized I was there, my spear through his back. I yanked it back out and spun to face the second, who yelled and reached for his sword, but not fast enough. A quick sidestep and slash, and he was spilling his guts all along the grassy riverbank, hand falling limp from the hilt of his weapon before it even cleared its sheath.

The other two, though, had time to draw their weapons. Worse, they weren’t unseasoned lads who came at me singly in hope of extra glory.

No, they stepped apart, flanking me, each trying to come around behind as the other distracted me. One had a wide scar down the side of his cheek and had the look of a seasoned warrior. The other was younger, but built like he was well-trained, and his steps were sure and steady. There was no weakness for me to exploit.

“Fuck me,” the older one said to the younger. “Do you think they all look alike? He looks just like that bastard general of theirs.”

He stepped in and slashed at my side, and I barely had enough time to parry the attack before the younger went for the back of my opposite leg. I spun forward fast enough to keep him from cutting my hamstring, but not fast enough to keep him from opening up the back of my thigh with his sword.

It burned, but that was good. That feeling meant it wasn’t too deep, and his sword wasn’t sharp enough to have hamstrung me without me immediately noticing.

I spun again and faced them.

The longer I let them draw this out, the likelier I was to make a mistake. To get myself gutted.

“I don’t think they all look alike,” the younger one said, and the expression on his face was shrewd. Knowing.

I spun again, whipping around the older one so that he was between me and the younger, and lashing out with my spear. It hit its mark, and a moment later a spray of arterial blood hit my face.

The younger, though? I hadn’t given him enough credit.

He’d recognized me. Worse, he seemed to have seen my tactic coming. He came around behind his compatriot, who had dropped his sword in favor of a fruitless attempt to hold his neck closed, and lunged at me.

It was artless and blunt as tactics went, but also, perfectly executed. Perfectly thought out.

His sword stabbed into my gut before I could leap back, and a feral light glinted in his eyes. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think, beyond the sharp memory that this, this was in the same spot as the wound that had eventually killed my mother.

“Maybe I’ll still bring Father home a bird after all,” he said with a smile. “A dead one.”

The ridiculous whirling movements of some of my spear drills came to me as easily as breathing, after so many years of enacting them. It didn’t matter that my lungs were frozen and my brain as sluggish as honey in the winter. My hands moved without needing orders.

My spear swished around behind me, since it was on the wrong side and I couldn’t slash through the dying man to get to the other. Bringing it from one hand to the other and pulling it upward with all the strength I had in me, I cut him from groin to neck.

We both fell.

My last thought as the world darkened around me and shouting started up in the distance, was that at least the Hawk children were safe. Also likely, any romantic notions they’d been forming about the war would be wiped away by this gory mess.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

HECTOR

Paris was keeping vigil over me. Presumably, Helena had to sleep sometime. The sky outside the cracked window was dark and inky, and the fire burned low in the hearth.

My little brother had taken up the habit of telling me stories. It was a nice way to pass the time—less because I paid attention to the movement of the plot and more because his voice was smooth, flowing constantly, and steady. With his gentle heart and hopeful outlook, perhaps Paris was more like our father than any of us had been.

As I drifted, it was almost like Father was there, reading to me as a father might any son. He had rarely had time for that with me. Or, well . . . it wasn’t a matter of time so much as circumstance. Grief had taken too much out of him, and I’d been witness to all of it.

Paris and Helena had been the bright spots that kept us both afloat.

Still, there was comfort in the stories now, and when Paris ran dry of them, he took books from the Hawk collection—simple stories of goodness and evil and what we could all do for one another.

I woke, not because he was speaking, but because he’d stopped.

There was a scuffle in the hallway, and Brandon came in, wild-eyed and alarmed before he saw Brett sitting in the corner. Almost as often as Paris had been at my bedside, Brett had as well. He cared about me, certainly, but I thought he was there for Paris—to bolster him if something went wrong. I was grateful for it.

Paris stopped reading, and Brett set up right, but Brandon made no announcements to the room at large. Instead, he crossed in quick steps, moving so fast that he had to steady himself with a grip on Brett’s shoulder as he leaned down.

He said something quiet in the chief’s ear, and Brett’s expression closed off in a flash. “Excuse me.”

They both left the room, Paris staring after them.

“Do you need to go?”

He shook himself and adjusted the book on his lap.

“No, no. If Brett needs something, he’ll say so.”

Paris took up reading again, and I fell asleep before Brett returned.

He wasn’t back when I next woke, and Paris was gone, but Helena was there. When I first came to, I watched as she paced across the room beyond the foot of the bed, her hand curled over her mouth. I thought she was biting her fingernails—I hadn’t seen her do that since—well, since King Albany had stated his intention to marry her to Prince Tybalt.

“What’s happened?”

At my question, she froze and blinked at me, wide-eyed. Her face was pale and sunken. Even the light of the sunrise beyond the window didn’t give her a golden glow, but fell across her horrified expression and was lost.

Her lips were pale and trembling. She curled her fingers in and tucked her fist against the hollow of her throat, bending over it like she could make herself small and⁠—

Had I taken a turn? I didn’t feel worse than before. If anything, the clarity that always came after a decent sleep had me feeling more like myself.

Or it would’ve, if my stomach didn’t twist with concern.

“Helena, what’s wrong?”

She wrung her hands together and shook her head, blinking fast and avoiding my gaze. “Killian’s been hurt.”

“What? How?” In Hawk lands? It was impossible. He was a friend there, and they were farmers. Perhaps he’d taken a fall off a horse or something of the like, but the man could fly. Why bother with riding when I wasn’t tagging along, demanding it of him?

Helena swallowed. “An attack. Or—he stopped it before anyone⁠—”

“The Falcon?” Heat and fury made my head pound.

She shook her head. “From the south. It’s . . . rather bad.”

That was Urial for “Killian’s on death’s door.”

I threw myself out of bed. Unused muscles in my legs spasmed at the sudden movement, and I caught myself on the headboard.

“What are you doing?” Helena exclaimed, rushing up to catch my arm and steady me, trying to press me back into the bed.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Let me go.” I jerked away from her. I had to get⁠—

Had to⁠—

I crashed out of the room, unsteady and completely lacking grace, and Helena followed behind. Brett’s home was full—fuller than I’d ever seen it—but the activity was concentrated around the chief’s own room.

People were rushing in and out, but Brett himself was one still point, stationed right outside.

I stared, and he caught my eye. After a moment, he inclined his chin.

“They’re doing what they can,” he said softly.

As I rushed past him, he followed, and⁠—

And there Killian was, his face paler than his silver hair, his purpled eyelids closed. There was blood—sheets sopping with it, pushed into the corners of the room. Buckets turned red from the effort of cleaning him.

He was naked—covered to his hip with a sheet. A pulley had been rigged over the bed frame to hold one leg up, so the sheet slipped down his calf. But moving higher—there was an enormous bandage wrapped around his middle, thick and white and already stained with a spot of red.

My knees hit the wooden floor as I stared, but I was scarcely aware of the pain that rushed up my legs.

All I could do, as healers rushed around and Rosaline brought supplies and Brett tried to comfort me, was stare at Killian’s still form and will whatever life remained in me to preserve him too.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

KILLIAN

Stitching was the worst part of being wounded.

Well, recovery in general was my least favorite part of being injured, but stitching was awful. It didn’t hurt all that much, just tiny added pinpricks and tugs, but the tugs were the problem. Not that they were painful, but that your skin wasn’t supposed to tug in those directions. If you were conscious for the stitching, aware of the movement, it was the most unsettling feeling in the world.

So when I woke to the healer stitching my wound, it was irritating.

After all, being rendered unconscious by blood loss was supposed to get you a free pass to not have to live with being stitched.

The Hawk healer, an older woman with a face like she’d spent all her free time sucking on a lemon, scowled up at me as my eyes fluttered open. “Stop moving,” she demanded.

I only blinked at her, not sure my tongue would move on command just yet.

“Damned Cranes, always trouble,” she mumbled as she went back to stitching. “Who can move around so much while injured this badly, that he tears his stitching?”

Ah.

Yes, that would be me.

The first time I’d woken up after major injury, I’d been strapped to my own bed, because I’d reacted in my sleep as though in a fight, trying to dodge the needle.

I was considering the merits of asking the sour woman to tie me up when the bed moved next to me, and I turned immediately to defend myself.

Well, I tried. The healer’s large hand pressed into my chest, and for perhaps the first time I remembered in my life, I didn’t have the strength to fight. Not that I actually wanted to fight the healer.

Instead of trying anything more strenuous, I turned my head to see what was happening on the other side of the bed.

It was a bed I didn’t know, but that was nothing new. I’d woken in plenty of places I didn’t know after injury before.

It was clear, however, from turning my head, that I’d never been injured this badly before. Just that tiny movement, rolling my neck to one side, had taken every scrap of effort I had. Or maybe it had been the attempt to roll my whole body and defend myself that had left me exhausted, sweaty and panting.

Next to me on the bed, though, was Hector.

He looked like a corpse from a battlefield had just stood up and walked to me, with deep circles under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks that had never been there before. No amount of broth and oats could keep a person’s strength up like actual, substantial food.

It was his eyes that held my attention, though.

His absolutely irate glare.

“Three months,” he hissed. “Three months, you insist that I can’t go fight on the wall. I can’t fuck you, for fear of Avianitis. I can barely fucking move or breathe, because if I step wrongly, I might be killed, and you can’t abide that. But then you—” He broke off for a moment, panting, his breaths wheezy and wrong. “How dare you demand of me what you’re not willing to give yourself?”

I blinked at him for a moment, uncertain of how we’d gone from my concern for his life to something I demanded from him before . . . oh. He was worried I was going to die. Angry that I’d insisted he live and then gone and possibly gotten myself killed.

But getting myself killed was my job. It was a minor miracle I was alive. I’d already passed the age my mother would never reach. I was a Crane.

I was Crane.

Dying to defend Nemeda was what we did. It was all we were good for anymore.

I wanted to turn toward him. To explain that dying was what I was supposed to do, but not him. Never him. But the healer’s hand on my chest seemed made of steel, so I settled for looking him in the eye.

For a moment I just breathed, centering myself, making sure that when I opened my mouth words would come out. The last thing I needed was for my voice to fail me, and worry him more. I glanced around the room, looking for any clear signs I was about to die, not that I knew what those might be.

Brett was standing in the doorway, looking pale and concerned, but mostly fine. The only other people in the room were Hector and the healer.

I glanced at her, and my instinct was to tell her to look after him, not me.

Which was when I realized he was right.

“ ’M I dying?” I asked the healer, and it mostly came out right. Not as slurred or broken or raspy as I’d feared it might.

She pursed her lips, and for a moment, stared at my wound. Then she looked up and met my eye. “If you tear these stitches again, I might kill you myself,” she began, and then she didn’t continue. There was hesitation in her voice. Worry. She thought I might die.

Damn.

I sighed and looked back to Hector. “Sorry. I’ll try to live.” Now my voice was going raspy. That was a little pathetic. The tickle at the back of my throat said if I tried to do much more talking, I’d have to cough, and I had enough experience with stitches to know that wouldn’t end well.

Fuck, I wished Orestes were there. Not only because he would be the perfect replacement for me if I did go dying on everyone, but because the bastard was big enough to sit on me and keep me from thrashing about if he needed to. More than that, he knew I thrashed, and he’d have told them to tie me up to begin with.

Instead of trying to reassure Hector further, I reached out and grabbed his hand with my own. Even as the tugging in my skin continued, something settled inside me at the touch. As though he’d read my mind and knew my throat was tickling, a moment later Brett was propping me up and forcing me to drink water.

I looked up at him as I let him move me around like a doll, drinking as much as I could manage, and he sighed, glancing over to the rest of the room. “We’ve got to start replacing all the damned blood you lost, you ass. Drink more.”

I glanced where he had, and that was . . . well, it looked like a triage room. Which was disconcerting because it was clearly a bedroom, not intended for this sort of work. Also, it wasn’t the blood of everyone who’d been treated after a southern incursion . . . well, except that it was. The problem was that in this case, everyone was me.

When Brett let me back down, resettling me on the bed, I looked back at Hector. My voice was stronger this time, when I said, “I’ll live if you will.”

From the look on his face, I wasn’t sure if he wanted to hit me or kiss me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

HECTOR

What a fucking condition he’d forced on me. I had to live or he wouldn’t?

I had no choice.

Yes, presumably, if I were dead, I wouldn’t be all that aware of whether or not Killian’s heart still beat, but I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. I’d never leaned much on the promise of the gods for some sort of afterlife. What mattered to me was Killian and knowing that he was there with me.

The healer did not try to drag me from his side, though I got the sense that Brett had cautioned her against it. I had no intention of being parted from him for a second. If I could just keep my eyes on him, he’d keep breathing.

There was no way he’d dare stop while I watched.

Thankfully, the bed was large enough that I didn’t have to crowd him, and we stayed in it, holding hands, entirely useless as people came in and out with food and medicine and—gods, I was glad I didn’t have to keep track myself.

One evening, Paris finished reading to us and slipped out of the room. Killian stared at me, as alert as I’d seen him since he’d been wounded.

“Why does he do that?”

“Read to us?”

“Mm,” he hummed.

I shrugged. “I asked him to.”

“Really?”

“Well, I asked him to tell me a story. It seemed like something he could do that might make him feel better while I was stuck in bed, and—it’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It is if you like it,” Killian muttered, warmth radiating from his eyes that filled me up and coiled in my belly.

“Our father used to tell stories to Paris and Helena before bed. I was always jealous. Not of the stories, precisely. Just that they got to be his children while I was his . . . ”

“Heir?”

I shook my head, dropping back against the pillows to stare at the ceiling and avoid his shrewd gaze. “Partner. In his grief and his business and—everything. I didn’t realize at the time—it seemed so normal for us. Looking back now, it was . . . heavy. Exhausting. I’m glad Paris and Helena were spared having to grow too quickly, but⁠—”

“You weren’t.”

My lips twitched. “No.”

When I turned to meet Killian’s eye, it was with the full understanding that Killian had not been afforded an easy childhood either. Seeing that understanding reflected back at me—no, I could not stand to lose him.

Days passed slowly. The healer had left tonics to help Killian sleep, incense that burned sweet and herbal that was meant to dull the senses.

Fruits from the Duck Clan and the bone broth that Rosaline made seemed to work together to make me more myself. At the very least, I didn’t ache so much.

The moment I could get out of bed, I did. If I could show Killian how seriously I meant to recover, perhaps it’d push him in that direction. I was holding him to his word, and if I managed this, then he damn well would too.

“We’re out of water,” I said, lifting the pitcher. “I’ll be right back.”

A few minutes away. A set of stairs.

The slow, creaky way down was too much, and I managed it anyway, only to find Brett and Paris in the kitchen.

My brother was leaning on the counter, glaring at his husband. Brett only glanced at me for a moment before he flinched and went out into the garden behind the house where Rosaline kept her chickens.

“I’m sorry, did I interrupt something?”

Paris shook his head. “He’s . . . just being strange. He’ll get over it.”

“Anything I can help with?”

Paris sent me a sharp look, like he thought I didn’t have any business out of bed, much less offering help. But after a moment, he slumped and chewed his lip. “Brett feels guilty. The attackers were on Hawk land. If Killian hadn’t been there⁠—”

Paris shuddered. This was why I’d never allow him to serve time on the wall.

“No one is blaming Brett.”

“But our clan would’ve had to fight, might’ve lost people. We weren’t prepared.”

“And I’m certain Killian would tell you that the southerners never should’ve gotten past the wall, that we weren’t fortified enough to repel them, that our attention waned during the council meeting and all that’s followed. Blame serves no one here.”

Paris took a slow breath through his nose. “You’re right. He’ll . . . move past this. It’d help if Killian⁠—”

“He’ll recover,” I promised. It was the only option I could contemplate.

A soft smile lit Paris’s face. That was my little brother—one dose of optimism was all he needed to pull himself out of a spiral. “What about you? Are you starting to feel better?”

“Much,” I said. If my own smile was a bit tight, a bit forced, well, I was still upright and I’d navigated the damned stairs, so I was the picture of health.

“Perhaps you could try to fly?” Paris suggested. “It might help. The shift isn’t so hard, and if you manage it, maybe it’ll . . . recenter your body as it is now. Steady everything.”

No.

There was no Nemeda for me without Killian. If I didn’t have him, I had no interest in a bird, whether it be owl, goose, or pigeon.

I shook my head. “I’m not—ready for that yet. I still feel⁠—”

I was losing my mind, clearly. All I could do was shake my head.

I went for the water pump against the outside wall. “I just need water,” I mumbled.

Paris didn’t stop me as I tried to slip past him and escape.

From the bed, Killian smirked up at me. He was still pale, still pitiful, but that smirk made my heart thump hard.

“You made it back,” he said, voice slightly raspy.

I hummed. “Quite the arduous journey, to be sure. Let me pour you a drink.”

The next morning, there was a knock on the door.

Helena had softened to Killian since he’d gotten injured. It likely didn’t hurt that he’d gotten harmed in defense of the Hawk Clan, but it was more than that. The significant looks she’d shared with Minerva before the Raven Chief offered to fly south to carry word to the Crane Clan said Helena was thinking of war and what Minerva risked in fighting it.

When she came into our room, Helena was wearing a serious expression. She must’ve had news.

I wanted to talk to her privately, leave Killian to rest while he recovered, but I knew how being held apart and kept in the dark felt. It wouldn’t make him better, to wonder how his people fared without him.

“Minerva’s made it safely to the wall,” Helena offered without prompting. “She didn’t see any other southerners on the way down. She and Nia have matters in hand while you recover, Killian.” She looked at me. “They’re fortifying the coast and the river mouths with your bolt throwers. Abram’s overseeing the work.”

I nodded. “Good. He has a better sense than me about where they’d be used best.”

Killian huffed through his nose. “No one has more sense than you.”

“Except Abram,” I countered.

His lips twitched. “Except maybe Abram.”

“I’m not sure either one of you has any damned sense,” Helena muttered.

A moment later, she shook herself. “Sorry. It’s just—” She waved her hand imperiously at the pair of us, the mess we were.

Killian snorted. “Your point’s well taken, Raven owl.”

Helena’s eyelids fluttered in surprise, but pleasure fell over her like a shroud, and she lifted her chin up. She must’ve liked the moniker.

“Good,” she said. “Then you’ll do better. Fewer brushes with death. No blades to your vitals.”

“I’ll do my best,” Killian swore.

Under the covers, I gripped his hand tight. We were capable of better, I was sure, but what was best? The idea still eluded me, like an itch in my mind I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The answer wasn’t letting the Hawk Clan militarize, surrendering the whole of Nemeda to war.

We’d find another way. I just had to figure out what was missing first.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

KILLIAN

Carlyle had been a golden, shining example of humanity. He’d been one of the tallest men I ever met, almost as tall as Orestes, built with strength, if not the same massiveness of my friend. He’d always been clean-shaven, as was the habit of southern warriors, and his eyes had been a vivid green, like the sour apples the Hummingbird Clan grew. Everything about him had screamed of strength, from his muscled form to his wide, authoritative stance, and I, still something of a scrawny teenager, had been enamored almost instantly.

It was the pinnacle of southern manliness, which was important to them, because for some reason that couldn’t quite penetrate my Nemedan simplicity, southerners thought women to be other, lesser creatures. Almost not human, definitely not people with minds of their own. Property. Like particularly impressive pieces of furniture or art that they intended to pass on to their children.

It was why Esmerelda had run away as a young woman—her father had intended to pass her on to be owned by a man she found repugnant, and no one had thought she deserved an opinion on that.

Carlyle had never cared much about my opinion of women as equals, though he’d clearly thought me silly when I’d told him I trusted a woman at my back as much as a man.

What he’d cared about had been making his father proud.

Like the man who had stabbed me, he’d spoken of bringing his father a trophy. A stone from the top of the wall, a Crane feather, a spear carried by one of our warriors. Trinkets, whose value I’d never been able to figure out.

I had found him while running patrols into the northern edges of the southland, trying to locate enemy camps and fortifications so that we could prepare for them.

I’d come across him separated from his camp, unarmed, bathing alone in the river.

My instinct, of course, had simply been to kill him.

Then I had realized that he presented a unique opportunity. So I had instead interrupted his bath and demanded that he speak to me. Give me answers about the incomprehensible southern need for aggression.

He’d reacted oddly helpfully, more than willing to speak of his people and their goals, as though it wasn’t borderline treason to do so. If I’d shared so much about our people, my mother would have beaten me bloody. But Carlyle had never minded when I’d danced around subjects or refused to give him information in return. He hadn’t asked for anything useful to begin with, like troop strength or weak points on the wall. He’d only absorbed everything I’d given him and listened avidly for more.

He had wanted to know everything. Wished, openly, for there to be no war, so that he could travel the lands freely and learn more about everyone.

We had met in secret for months, stolen hours that had felt like nothing so much as a courtship.

When my mother had learned of our meetings, she’d been furious with me. She’d questioned me for hours about every single thing I’d told him, and hadn’t believed me when I explained it all. He must have been after something, she had insisted. She’d demanded to know if I’d offered to fuck him, to give him Avianitis. But I hadn’t, and he hadn’t asked for it.

I, a teenage boy with a bit of a crush on a dashing young man, had told her that he and I wanted to end the war.

She had laughed.

She’d been right, in the end.

Carlyle had led his father’s men against the wall, and there had been no choice. I had killed him myself.

It had been thirty years since then, and I rarely spoke of him anymore, except when trying to explain to young warriors that we all made mistakes, even me. Or that no, there was no way to reason with the southerners. They could seem perfectly rational, and still, they would break their bodies on the wall as though propelled forward by an ocean wave.

But I told Hector, as we lay there in bed together, everything. My crush. How I’d been sorely tempted to offer him precisely what the southerners had claimed to be after for all those years, because I’d been so in love with the golden, shining man, that I’d have given him anything.

Anything except the military victory his father had required.

And Carlyle had never asked, because he hadn’t expected me to betray my people any more than he would have betrayed his.

“The younger one reminded me of him,” I whispered into his hair, like it was a shameful secret. “He wasn’t, of course, but he was golden like Carlyle. And they all spoke of his father. It’s important to them, the relationship between father and son.”

I tried not to laugh at the concept, since Hector and I didn’t have the best examples of father-son relationships. I didn’t even know who my father was, and Hector had practically parented his own.

“He was here to attack the Hawk,” he whispered back, squeezing me tight against him. It jostled my wound slightly, but I didn’t so much as wince. I didn’t want him to pull away from me, not ever. “Maybe he was just like Carlyle, because he didn’t leave you a choice just the same way. There are children in the village, Killian. Old people. None of them are fighters unless it’s because they spent a year on the wall, defending Nemeda from other people just like him.”

He was right. It turned out that when I listened to him, Hector was almost always right. Oh sure, he was a Urial, with all their dramatic passion, and he overthought things as often as not. But he was one of the cleverest men I’d ever met, my Hector.

Like Carlyle.

Maybe I simply saw the long-dead man in everyone, but I didn’t think that was the case. I thought I’d always been a fucking sucker for a beautiful, intelligent man.

For some reason, all the clever men I met always seemed determined to throw themselves away on behalf of others. Carlyle for his father, Hector for his siblings.

“I just don’t understand,” I sighed, burying my face in his neck and breathing in the scent of him. “They don’t hate us. They just . . . attack. Forever. They don’t want Nemeda. Hells, so many of them die thrown against the wall, they barely seem to have enough people to inhabit their own land any longer. Why won’t they leave us alone?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

HECTOR

It was weeks before Killian was recovered enough to get out of bed. Once he could, his torn thigh gave him an awkward shuffle.

We walked slowly, little steps along the path in Rosaline’s garden. It smelled like fresh herbs and overturned earth, with just a whiff of the nearby coop carried on the breeze. The sun was nice.

I wished⁠—

I would’ve wished for Killian to have such a peaceful, agrarian life, but the thought brought me up short. Killian wasn’t meant for sticking his long, graceful hands in the soil, but I didn’t think he was meant for fighting and dying, either. It was easier to imagine him sweeping through the halls of the Crane palace, clad in silk, his mind on⁠—

Well, he’d said his forebears were artists. Perhaps that.

Perhaps he’d just rest. Gods knew he’d earned it.

Soon, we’d have to return to the wall. I could already feel Killian itching to get back to his people. It was hard, to sit aside, knowing that the landscape changed around you.

I was . . . well, at least I could say I was eager to get back to the smithy. The steady beat of a hammer would center me and, I hoped, give shape to thoughts I couldn’t quite grasp.

I wasn’t so eager for Killian’s distraction. I was worried that he’d push too hard, too fast, and get himself hurt, but when I’d broached the topic, his eyes had turned hazy and dark, and he’d assured me that he knew the cost of such risks.

Really, I much preferred walking arm in arm with him through a garden he stuck out in like a pearl surrounded by sand, to the war we’d return to. Unfortunately, avoiding the war wasn’t an option, and until it ended, we all had to face it. Had Killian given me another chance to stay behind and out of harm’s way, I wouldn’t have taken it any more now than I had when I’d first pressed the matter.

Minerva had already returned to the Raven Clan, and once it was clear that I’d recover from my battle with Avianitis, Helena followed her.

I’d stayed with the Hawk Clan for months after fleeing Urial, and even in the serene garden, things were markedly different after the attack. The Hawk was on edge, Brett himself flying high around clan lands, on the lookout for danger.

There was a sharp avian cry, and my neck stiffened. Killian froze beside me, his arms stiff like he’d lash out for a weapon at any moment. The nearest thing at hand was a pitchfork that I was not entirely sure he could lift at the moment.

But it wasn’t a warning call; it was a greeting. A moment later, a large white owl sprang from the second-floor window of Brett’s house and flew up to greet him.

Good . . . none of us should have to face our fears alone.

Seeing Paris fly to Brett’s side, we both took a long, deep breath. Mine went straight to my belly, cool and full. When I let it out and looked down from the sky above, I found Killian staring at me, his eyes narrowed.

“You have a bird now,” Killian said, the tilt of his lips almost sly enough to distract me from the fact that his next step was pained. The healer said he ought to move—not much, but a little every day. We hadn’t gone far, but I did think the fresh air and sunlight was better for him than the closed off room he’d been stuck in for the better part of a month.

I snorted. “Theoretically, I do.”

“But you haven’t seen it yet.”

My eyebrows shot up. “No one’s seen it yet.”

“Ah, I’d just wondered⁠—”

“If I’d fly without you?”

Killian shrugged. “Nemedans can’t always control their shift so soon after their Cresting.”

“Have you ever known me to surrender control?”

The tip of his tongue flashed pink when he caught it between his teeth. “Once or twice.”

Heat flooded my face. “Well, not this time. I’ll⁠—”

I bit the inside of my cheek. We’d taken a few steps down the path, but I came up short once again, stared at the center of his chest for a moment, and steeled my resolve before I met his eye.

“I’ll fly with you or not at all.” I watched as Killian’s teasing smirk disappeared in an intense stare that held me trapped there. Thing was, I’d never minded being trapped by him. “Perhaps, when you feel up to it, you’ll help me with the shift. Show me how to fly.”

“As you like,” Killian agreed smoothly.

I bit my lip against a smile. “I haven’t actually seen you, Crane.”

Killian blinked. “You haven’t?”

I shook my head. “Not up close, certainly.”

He stood a bit taller, satisfaction draping around him like a thick winter cloak. “Well, that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”

Gods above, I hoped my bird was half as impressive as Killian’s surely was. As beautiful as he was as a man, his Crane had to be awe-inspiring.

CHAPTER FORTY

KILLIAN

Being home was awful, and for the first time, I truly understood why Mother had gone and gotten herself killed.

It wasn’t just the boredom. While that was annoying, I could have lived with it. There were always books to do, or hells, books to read if I ran out of paperwork, which was frankly unlikely, after spending nearly a month away from home.

But there had been southerners in Hawk lands.

And four months earlier, southerners landing in that boat north of the wall as we’d traveled home. The southerners were, for the first time in centuries, trying new ways to get to us. To murder us.

Part of me was impressed that some of them had let go of their hidebound nonsense. Maybe soon they would bring their women with them on these expeditions, when they realized women often made the best tacticians.

But most of me was just frightened.

We’d had a solid way to hold the southerners back. To keep Nemeda safe. And they were taking that away from us. It made me want to fight back in the ways we never had before. Invade them, kill their people and take their land. The only way we could be sure they would stop attacking us forever was if we eradicated them. Wiped them from the face of the world.

But that was my anger talking. My frustration with my current inability to walk the wall and defend my people.

Things were more precarious than they had ever been in my lifetime. Twice, southerners had been seen inside Nemeda. Once a mere stone’s throw from the homes of innocents who had no ability to fight them.

And there was me, sitting on my ass half the day because I wasn’t healed enough to fight yet.

Worse still, people were fucking babying me. Bringing me lunch and checking in and asking me how I was. Like I was a sickly child and might take a turn for the worse at any moment.

It made me want to apologize to Hector for hiding him away from the wall and treating him like he was too precious to fight. I had, in fact, more than once.

The bastard had laughed at me and told me that I could say it again when I wasn’t so annoyed with my own convalescence, if I truly meant it.

He wasn’t wrong, but it was still annoying.

Maybe it was even more annoying because he was right.

A clatter in the hall outside my office snatched my attention, and I had a vision of the southerners crawling over Crane Palace like a horrific army of ants, covering every inch of the home my ancestors had built and defended for generations before my birth. Of course I would be the one to⁠—

The office door flew open to admit a harried young man, who had to stop and pant for breath, resting his hands on his knees, his whole body heaving with the effort.

I pressed up out of my chair, even knowing as I did that if they were attacking the wall, I wasn’t allowed to join the fight.

Well, not unless things were so dire that we needed all hands. Even Hector.

But that had never happened. Half of me had been convinced they didn’t even have enough men to launch such an attack anymore, with the way their numbers had seemed to thin over the decades. It was like they took the wall itself as a challenge. Scaling it alone was an honor, never mind if they were tossed directly off its peak.

“What is it? Are the southerners attacking? Is there a breach? Have they bypassed the wall again?”

The Raven had started sending parties crisscrossing both of our lands, searching for any signs of southern incursions by boat, but Minerva hadn’t sent word of finding anything as yet.

The young man held up a hand, asking me to wait, and I quirked a brow at him. His face flushed even more than it had already been upon his arrival. “Sorry. M’lord. Man. Southerner.” He still stopped and panted between each word, but he finally started speaking. Then he said the word that turned my blood to ice. “Smithy.”

Without listening to another sound from him, I was up, rushing past, almost running down the hallway. My leg still wouldn’t allow me to move as quickly as I wanted to, but I had to be there. I had to see Hector, to see him safe and hale and whole, immediately.

The young man who’d brought the stilted message started trying to follow, but he was even slower than myself.

I burst through the smithy doors with all the strength I had in me, barely keeping hold of my balance, and only too late remembering that I didn’t even have a fucking weapon in my hands. Why carry a spear around the palace on days when I wasn’t going to be allowed to fight? I certainly wasn’t going to treat it like a fucking cane and balance my weight on it.

The smithy was silent, which in itself was unnatural. Oh, the fire still roared, but there was none of the usual clanging of hammers, hiss of hot metal put to water, or chatter of the workers there.

The workers all stood in a semi-circle with Hector and Abram on one end, looking at something in the middle. Nothing was happening, no fight, no shouting, not even conversation.

I didn’t give two fucks about what they were looking at, because first I had to go to Hector. To put my hands on his skin and assure myself that he was well. I rushed to his side, grabbing his arm and spinning him to face me.

No blood. No expression of pain. No fear.

Well, until he laid eyes on me. “Killian. What are you doing here? Are you okay?”

“I sent Tad to tell him what happened,” Abram said, his eyes still glued to the corner of the room.

I rolled my eyes at that. “He managed to make it to my office, and I believe his exact words were ‘man, southerner, smithy.’ He was barely breathing. He’s in quite poor shape for a smith worker.”

“We don’t usually do a lot of running,” one of the other men defended, but it was half-hearted, and he didn’t stop staring into the corner either.

Finally, I turned to look at what none but Hector seemed able to glance away from.

A man, crumpled in a heap, but conscious. Clutching his ribs as though they pained him. A man with golden hair and blue eyes, wearing an emblem of one of the southern houses, staring in terror.

I cast my eyes about, looking for the nearest weapon.

Hector had a hammer in his hands.

That connected the moment in my mind. The man wasn’t staring at the lot of us in fear. Only Hector.

I reached down to take the hammer in his hands, and the look of fear transferred to me. As well it fucking should. I took a step toward him, ready to take out all my simmering anger on the bastard who had dared come into my smithy. Threatened my fucking Hector.

I’d smash his skull open all over the smithy floor.

I froze when Hector’s arms came around me. “Don’t.”

I turned, incredulous, to look at him. “Don’t? Did he not come here to kill you?”

“Maybe,” Hector admitted. “But . . . I want . . . He’s alive. I want to talk to him.”

Ah. That was an impulse I knew all too fucking well. Carlyle.

But I wasn’t my mother, and I had no doubt Hector wouldn’t spill our secrets to the enemy. If he needed this to satisfy some sad curiosity, then he would have it. I flipped the hammer in my hand and held it back out to Hector, then turned to look at the bastard southerner. “Someone go get the guards. I’d have him secured, so he can’t do any further damage, with however the fuck he got in here.”

Another of the smithy workers rushed off, and Abram murmured something to a third about a healer. I squinted at him, and he shrugged at me. “Hector’s broken a fair few of his ribs with his hammer swing. Boy has a hell of an arm. Don’t want the southlander to die before your consort has his answers, do you?”

Once more, the whole room seemed to freeze.

My consort.

And yet.

I pursed my lips at Abram and sighed. “Fine. A healer.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

HECTOR

His consort.

Oh, I wasn’t sure we were anything so serious as that. I wouldn’t have minded, and we’d certainly discussed what we were to each other while wearing serious, manly expressions.

You’re mine.

I want only you.

I’ll live if you will.

I didn’t doubt what we meant to each other, but despite the way we’d spoken aloud, we’d made no specific promises. I wasn’t his consort, but I liked the moniker. The numb, tingling feeling in my fingers since I’d swung that hammer disappeared at the warmth that rushed through me.

“Thank you,” I murmured to Killian.

He huffed, his jaw flexing in annoyance, his glare darting to the southerner like he posed too much of a risk to ignore. “I don’t like this.”

“Which part?”

Grumbling, he dropped his head and pressed his cool mouth against my shoulder, sweaty and overheated from a day spent in front of the forge.

“That they are here,” he finally admitted, glancing up at me from beneath the fan of his pale lashes.

My breath caught, and I forgot the horror of only minutes before—the stranger, sword in hand, lunging for Nym. Swinging my hammer at his side without thinking. The worst of it—a moment of work and contemplation, interrupted by murderous intent.

“We’ll figure it out. I promise.” It seemed impossible, that the southerner would come here by chance, stumble his way into the smithy after miraculously slipping past every guard and soldier on the wall and beyond. This felt more pointed than that.

Killian nodded, but he didn’t leave the forge until the prisoner had been taken away and every smith had given up work for the day.

That night, I wrote to Helena.

In all my wondering about how to solve the problem at hand, I had one large blank space around what the south was actually like. If I would solve this, I needed to get a better handle on what we were dealing with.

Helena said the Raven collected stories.

Days ticked by while I waited for their reply—while Killian waited for me to ask my questions of our captive.

In the end, it was Helena herself who came. All night, we sat up discussing what she’d learned of the south. The Nemedans were very sure that the southerners were brutal, selfish to the point of being self-destructive, and desired nothing more than Avianitis.

Perhaps they were right, but having survived the illness myself, I couldn’t imagine risking life and limb for the opportunity to die at the hands of someone who loved me. There had to be more to this than the bird form that Nemedans rarely even used to fight their unending war.

The next morning, after only a couple hours’ sleep, I woke as Killian sat up. It was like I’d been waiting for him, and my eyes simply popped open.

“I want to go and see him today.”

It’d been days of waiting, holding us all in this stasis while I tried to puzzle it out—not just this one man, but the southlands as a whole. Understanding still eluded me, and the only recourse was hoping that in speaking directly, this one would be as frank and honest as Carlyle had been.

Killian’s cheeks puffed out before he let out a slow breath. “I’ll go with you.”

The Crane palace was not well arranged to hold prisoners. In fact, the very idea seemed contrary to how Nemeda functioned. People weren’t tucked away and problems forgotten. Instead, they held each other, bound to oaths of honesty.

Since the war, I suspected there’d simply not been reason to keep many prisoners alive.

The room they’d kept this one in was more pleasant than any in Urial’s palace, to be sure. It had a large, open window that overlooked a stream, cut so artfully through the garden that it must’ve been intentionally made.

Guards stood over him, kept him bound and on his knees, but all of this—it was still at odds with what I’d assumed war would look like.

With a jerk of his head, Killian sent the guards away. The southerner was still bound, and I crouched before him.

“I’m Hector,” I said, pleasant as I’d ever been in Urial’s court. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but . . . ”

The southerner grunted.

“If you’re here for Avianitis, perhaps I could find someone willing to fuck you?” Yes, it was up in the air whether the illness took without some affection, but if we didn’t know the specifics, neither did the southerner, and I wanted to see something.

The southerner caught his breath, his eyes wide. “My feet belong to the earth.”

Behind me, Killian shifted his weight.

I ignored him. “So you, at least, don’t want a bird?”

The southerner’s jaw flexed. He did not answer, but the way he withdrew was clear enough.

“What do you want?”

The man sneered, but he provided no answer.

“We could slit your throat here, leave you with nothing. I would prefer to speak with you.”

The man shot his glare back at me. “We watched.”

“Watched what?”

“When you raised your giants’ bows.”

“The bolt throwers?”

The man scoffed, turned his head, and spat on the ground. “Coward weapons. Bad enough, those spears the birds use.” He threw his chin at Killian behind me. “Too fearful to face us like men. But there is no honor in your bows. You mean to shoot us down like dogs.”

“We mean to protect Nemeda,” Killian growled.

I held up a hand, and I heard him shuffle behind me and sigh.

“We mean to protect our people,” I said.

The man sucked in his cheeks and glanced away. Perhaps that, at least, he could understand.

“That’s what we fight for—the people.”

“And as you hide behind your walls and bows, the gods will strike you down. They will burn your very soul to ash for your cowardice.”

My lips twitched. “Not my gods.”

The southerner jerked back. “Your gods?”

“In Urial, there are gods in every snowdrift. They don’t care for us any more than they care for the grass they cover in winter. They burn nothing—not souls, not brush.”

He looked at me like I’d gone mad. “You do not fear your gods?”

I shook my head. “I fear losing the people I love without rhyme or reason.”

He grunted. “You will lose them in this life and the next.”

“Do you mean that as a threat?”

“Truth is no threat.”

“So you mean to take those I love, no matter what I say here?”

“The gods,” he said. “I take nothing.”

“I want to understand. Would you please elaborate?”

His voice turned sharp and annoyed, like a teacher who’d given the same lesson dozens of times. “If you do not prove you are brave of heart and strong of fist, the gods will burn you away. Your mothers and daughters may see the other side, but you will be gone. You will lose them.”

“And that is why you fight—to prove your bravery and strength?”

“It is why we will take the birds,” he sneered between his teeth.

He was so ardent, so sure, that it overwhelmed me. I stood, and when I turned toward the door, Killian followed. He already knew everything he needed to about the southerners.

In the corridor, he touched my back between my shoulder blades. “You see now? We can’t reason with them. Brutality is too intrinsic to their culture. It won’t end.”

I looked up, but Killian had averted his eyes. Disappointment fell heavy over him. Perhaps he could wage war, maybe win it if he set his mind to vengeance, but that was not his nature. No god pressed Killian to war.

“That is not acceptable to me,” I said.

Killian scowled. “I’m not sure you get to decide.”

His face was smooth beneath my palm when I cupped his cheek. “I cannot wait to see who you are without the burden of bloodshed on your shoulders.”

Killian blinked, wide eyed. His lips fell slack when I brushed my thumb across them.

Then I turned away. I needed to see Helena, speak to someone who hadn’t been trapped in this since birth. I would find a way to end this, and I would live the rest of my life knowing that the people I loved were safe.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

KILLIAN

Hector was quiet for too long—not to be measured in minutes or hours, but days—after meeting with the southerner.

He was the first southerner I’d ever spoken to who hadn’t wanted a bird, so that was . . . odd. I worried perhaps Hector had gotten a defective southerner, and as such, the answers he’d been given had been wrong or skewed.

Carlyle had never spoken of gods or burning. On the other hand, Hector had never spoken of snow gods before meeting with the southerner. I couldn’t help but think gods needlessly complicated things. Especially demanding ones. It sounded like a particularly cruel lord who forced people to grow crops and then demanded more than the total amount they’d grown in tithe. Worse than that, a feudal lord who somehow sent bad weather and then demanded crops that had failed to grow, as though he weren’t the very reason they didn’t exist.

No, the Nemedan way made more sense. The only people I owed anything to were my fellow Nemedans, and the only thing I owed them was what I could give. None of them would ask for more, not knowingly. Not even the biggest jackasses among them. They’d demanded I give up Orestes, and while it was painful, it was possible.

Nemeda as a whole certainly hadn’t ever demanded bravery. It was something not everyone could give, and demanding it was cruel at best. Some people weren’t brave, and that was fine. There was no shame in it. They were simply people better suited to work that didn’t require bravery. Why the hell did burning souls to ash come into it? What kind of assholes were the gods of these southerners?

Still, Hector had taken it deadly seriously and fallen into silent consideration. He’d invited his sister to the palace, who at least wasn’t trying to bore holes into my head with her glares anymore, and they’d closed themselves away and spent days talking.

But I was done.

Not to say I didn’t want to give Hector all the time he wanted to think, but I was done worrying about the nonsense with the southerners. There was no reasoning with them, particularly not if they were trying to appease fickle, cruel, malicious gods with their attacks on us. Even Avianitis couldn’t solve that. My experience was that a man’s god always said precisely what he wanted to hear, and reason never came into it.

The morning after Helena left, though, I knocked on Hector’s door first thing in the morning, with purpose.

We had increased guard rotations inside the palace, since that damned southerner had gotten in somehow, and we hadn’t figured it out yet.

Hector was dressed and ready when he answered the door, a smile on his face. Almost like he’d been waiting on me. Or at least ready to go back to work. Except that I couldn’t go back to work properly, not yet.

Oh, I could certainly go to my office and do more paperwork, but the day I was chipper and ready to go fill out more papers was the day I’d cracked, and they should find someone to take my place in the clan.

No, this morning was time for something else.

I smiled down at Hector’s beautiful face, overtaken by the urge to lean in and kiss him softly. “We’re going to take breakfast to one of my favorite places,” I told him when I pulled away.

Because I’d had the kitchen put together a basket, and we were walking out to a spot on the opposite side of the palace from the wall.

He smiled back, not even questioning me, just nodding and holding out a hand to take mine as we walked. It was perfect, like a painting or a ballad, a beautiful, shining moment that I’d be able to hold in my mind for the rest of my life.

Walking to the overlook with Hector.

It was a beautiful walk too, thanks to my ancestors’ artistry and my own people’s hard work keeping the path up. Paving stones that led up a great grassy hill and then down the other side, where it turned into steps built into the side of the hill down to a grassy outcropping over a river. On the other side of the river, a small marsh, and then woods, as far as the eye could see.

I could tell the moment we crested the hill, not because I was looking, but because of Hector’s indrawn breath.

I glanced up to take it in as well.

The cranes were feeding in the marsh, picking through the reeds looking like long-legged dancers at a party. The whole flock of them.

Most cranes moved with the seasons, like other birds. Most cranes were gray, in my knowledge. But these were Nemedan cranes. They had pure white bodies with black-tipped wings that made them look like they had black tails when their wings were folded as they stood, and bright red crowns on their heads.

“What are they?” Hector asked, fascinated, paying more attention to the birds than the path.

Gently, I tugged him back onto the steps, guiding him down toward the grassy outlook. “They’re Nemedan cranes.”

His head whipped around and he stared at me. “No. But cranes are gray. And they’re so bright.”

I pulled him to a stop when we reached the spot I’d intended, pulling the blanket from the basket the kitchen had made, and laying it lightly across the grass. I motioned him onto it, and followed when he sat down. “Nemedan cranes are a different breed,” I said, looking down at them, smiling.

“You’re one of them,” he said. Not a question, an absolute certainty.

“I am.”

He huffed a sigh, turning back to look at the birds. “Of course you are. And Paris and Helena are great snow owls. Beautiful. I’m going to be a damned pigeon, you know. Or maybe a mourning dove. Gray and boring and dirty and universally hated.”

“Your siblings are owls,” I corrected. “Birds tend to run in families. In all likelihood, you’ll be an owl as well.”

“Half-siblings,” he corrected, not looking at me.

This, then, was why he’d not mentioned the change, or flying. He was worried that he would be somehow lesser, and that given a bird, he wouldn’t be able to hide it. “Esmerelda is a sparrow,” I told him. “She almost died for that sparrow, and it makes her no different a person. She is, has always been, and will always be, a fighter. A tenacious, strong, beautiful creature. Sparrow, hawk, vulture, crane, or any other kind of bird doesn’t change who you are.”

Still, he bit his lip, staring at his hands as I started pulling food out of the basket.

When I’d finished setting it out, instead of starting to eat, I pulled my hair around in front of me, running my fingers through the mass of silver and feathers, before locating the one I’d been looking for. “You said cranes are gray. You’re right. Most of them are. This”—I held up a gray flight feather, worn with age—“this was my mother’s. She was a common gray crane. And head of our clan for most of her life.”

Tentatively, he reached out and ran a finger across the feather.

“She was small for a crane too. And small for a person. Shorter than your sister, but easily the most dangerous person I’ve ever known. The best leader.” I leaned in and pressed my lips to his again. “I promise, no one will judge you by a bird. Not even if you somehow turn into an eagle.”

He scoffed at that, and finally picked up his plate to start eating, watching the cranes wade through the reeds. “I wouldn’t even know how to change. It’s not like I was born to this.”

“Then eat your breakfast, and I’ll show you.” I leaned across and kissed him on the cheek before starting on my own meal. “We’ll have you turned into a magnificent specimen of a bird in no time at all. Whatever kind of bird it might be.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

HECTOR

Seeing the Cranes, it’d been so perfectly apparent that Killian, with his silvery hair and striking grace, was one of those ethereal creatures.

Once we’d eaten, I expected him to stand and shift effortlessly into one of the most beautiful creatures I’d ever seen. But Killian, as ever, was more considerate than I gave him credit for.

When we stood to get to work, he didn’t shift but loosened my shirt at the hollow of my throat. He reached for the front of my trousers with such brusque efficiency that heat flooded my face. When he glanced at my red cheeks, Killian smirked, but he saved any comment as he leaned closer.

“For me,” he said, resting the heel of his palm against my neck, “it starts here.”

His fingertips probed the back of my head, into the small dip at the top of my neck.

“A kind of hazy feeling. It might be different for you. Your brother was startled the first time he shifted. But—don’t think too much about the particulars of it. Think more about the wind, how it’ll feel between your feathers. You’re a part of the sky as much as the land.”

That sounded absurd, and despite the sickness and the creaking pain in my bones for weeks as I’d battled off illness, I didn’t think I could do it.

Changing into a bird? That was the stuff of children’s tales. Just because I’d seen it didn’t mean it was real. It certainly didn’t mean that I had that sort of magic.

But when I closed my eyes and matched my breathing to Killian’s, something changed. It was the wind, moving through my lungs, running through my hair. What would it feel like to have not hair, but feathers—firm and flexible at once.

To belong to the sky.

I felt the world shrink. Watched it, when I opened my eyes and even the blades of grass looked sharper in my field of vision.

And then, I was stuck inside my shirt.

Despite Killian’s foresight in loosening it, it took a lot of squirming and wing flapping to fight my way out of my clothes. I opened my mouth—beak—to an unholy screech, and when I finally got free of the fabric that’d shrouded me, one of the beautiful cranes had decided he’d had enough of the chaos and taken flight.

Not Killian though.

He still stood there, looking at me like—like he’d never adored anything more.

Free of the tangle of clothing, I looked down at myself.

Pigeon indeed.

My heart clenched. All I saw was a sea of brown—light and dark feathers speckling my chest, enormous talons tucked beneath hundreds of feathers.

I . . . was nothing like Paris or Helena at all.

Even with Killian’s assurances that a bird did not change my character or where I belonged, I’d still held out hope that whatever transformation I had would prove beyond all doubt that I shared blood with my siblings, that I wasn’t so different from them after all.

And there I was, brown.

A mournful coo escaped me as I looked up at Killian, and he only shook his head.

“Hector,” he said, his soft voice trapped between empathy and bemusement, “you’re an owl.”

The world tilted, and suddenly, I was back on two very human legs. The shift this way was easier—natural, given that it was the only shape I’d had in my life and the one that felt the most me. Perhaps one day I’d integrate having a bird better, but as soon as Killian spoke, I needed my own voice.

“An owl?”

He nodded.

“But I’m . . . brown.”

Killian shook his head as if I were the strangest being he’d ever met. “Yes. There are brown owls and white ones and gray ones, just like cranes.”

My breath escaped me in a rush. “You’re sure? An owl?”

At this, Killian laughed, but it didn’t feel like he was laughing at my expense. “Yes, Hector. Enormous and horned. Forgive me for saying so, but you look even more formidable than your siblings.”

Paris and Helena . . . we were all owls.

That mattered to me more than the color of my feathers. And perhaps—perhaps it would’ve been all right if I hadn’t been an owl at all.

The shift alone proved that I was Nemedan. I had survived. Not just Avianitis, but everything. I’d survived Urial. Losing first my mother, then Paris and Helena’s mother, and then our father. I’d survived poisoning.

Now, I was home. It was all real. Nothing remained that would let me doubt it.

As all this fell over me, I glanced up to see Killian smiling. It wasn’t his sharp, slick smile he got when he thought he’d been clever. His expression was softer than that. Open, even.

I’d rarely seen that look from him before.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Killian pursed his lips in an attempt to stop smiling. It didn’t work.

“I like seeing you happy,” he admitted.

Happy.

I was. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been happy, not entirely, but in that quiet moment overlooking the marsh, yes. I knew what it meant now.

Had you asked me months or years ago, I might’ve said I was happy, thoughtlessly tried to move on from the topic before I had to pick at the idea too much, but now—it fell on me heavy and true. I was happy.

I stepped closer to Killian, the sun warm on my bare skin. Biting the tip of my tongue between my teeth, I slid down to my knees.

“What are you doing?” Killian’s voice hitched, slightly choked, and a delicious thrill coursed through me. I was naked and he was still wrapped up in all his clothes, but rather than need him bare, I liked the contrast.

I ran my hands up his thighs, feeling their warmth, their strength, through the loose linen. His breath hitched, and his cock plumped up, tenting the fabric.

“Perhaps I want to see you happy too,” I said, leaning forward to mumble the words against his bulge.

Killian made a sound, deep in his throat, and I smiled. If he wanted me to stop, he’d have said it. Instead, his hand slipped down from the top of my head, fingers spread wide, pulling at the cord at the nape of my neck and freeing wild locks to fall around my cheekbones.

I eased him out of his trousers. His cock was as pretty as the rest of him—thick and veined, flushed so red against the silvery curls at the base, mouthwatering. I licked the tip.

He whined, and it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

I love you, I thought as I turned my eyes up to meet his.

I love you. I flicked his slit with the tip of my tongue. Kissed him and spread my lips to take him inside.

I love you. He pressed the soft palette of my mouth, the back of my throat, but I couldn’t pull away. Didn’t want to. I needed Killian more than air, more than ease, more than comfort. He moaned raggedly, his fingers tightening in my hair. A tingle rushed down to the base of my spine and I groaned around him..

I love you. The words carried too much promise, too much risk, to say aloud, but I said them with my eyes, with every move, with every indulgent swipe of my tongue or fingers over his body. Every swallow when he pumped down my throat, shattered and panting, but still trapped in my gaze.

He caught himself on my shoulder and eased back from me, only to fall to his knees. For once, I was gratified that he wasn’t the least bit graceful, and he toppled into me, pushing me back onto the picnic blanket for a sloppy, bittersweet kiss.

His clothes against my skin were rough and nice at the same time, but where they were parted—that triangle of his lower stomach and groin—was my favorite. I pressed against him, needing nothing so much as to have him closer.

“Happy?” I whispered against his lips—just there at the corner, where I could feel his smile widen.

Killian nodded. His tongue delved into my mouth.

He caught my hands, pressed them into the blanket, and nibbled his way down my throat.

“Very,” he promised.

Then and there, I swore to myself that I’d keep him that way, whatever it took.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

KILLIAN

The day ended up being mostly idle, but that was acceptable.

I still wasn’t allowed to do half my work because of the healing wounds, so lounging on a hillside with Hector was something I could afford to do for a change. Then taking dinner in my quarters, and eating with him as well. I could do that.

Even better, it was . . . surprisingly lovely.

We sat on my bed with our food, feeding each other more than eating off our own plates.

He smiled more than I’d seen him smile in the entire time I’d known him, and something about that lifted my entire soul up. I felt more like I was flying than when I actually took to the air.

Of course he’d been a beautiful bird. It wasn’t a kind of owl I’d seen before, with enormous feathers on top of his head that looked almost like horns, but it had been very impressive. Like his siblings, yes, but just as in his human body, bigger, more substantial. The earthy tones just fit in with that, not that I would tell him I thought brown suited him.

Not many people found brown an exciting color.

Me? I was coming to love the color. Hector’s eyes, Hector’s hair, Hector’s feathers . . . hell, even his pert nipples when I managed to slide him out of his shirt. All brown. All my favorite things in the world.

Yes, brown was an inspired color. Maybe my favorite.

Speaking of sliding Hector out of his shirt, after dinner, I decided it was time. In the afternoon, it had been to get him to change, and so he wouldn’t get trapped inside his clothes and panic when he did. I’d seen young people hurt themselves on their first shift, because the feeling of one’s shirt twisting around feathered wings was wrong and stifling and awful, and sometimes made it hard to breathe.

But Hector hadn’t panicked. He’d just glared down at himself like the most adorable grumpy owl I’d ever seen in my life.

“We’ll have to get you some clothes that are easier to get off,” I mused to him as I undid the row of buttons down his front. “These Urial clothes are too constricting. I don’t know how you breathe in them.”

He lifted a brow, somehow both amused and unimpressed with my trying to get rid of his wardrobe. “I hardly think I’m going to spend that much time changing into a bird. Not much call for flying in the smithy.”

I scoffed, tossing his finally open shirt off to one side. “I can’t imagine why you think my motivation is to make it easier for you to fly.”

His second brow lifted to meet the first, and his lips quirked in a near-smile. “Then why would you want to change my wardrobe, when it’s already perfectly serviceable?”

I leaned away, pulling the tie on my own shirt and letting it fall from my shoulders in a single sinuous movement. “Because, my dear, it will be so very much easier to strip you out of traditional Nemedan clothing. Besides, you’re Nemedan now. No reason to hold onto buttons and such.”

His expression melted into that same carefree smile as it had in the afternoon, and I made a mental note to remind him, as often as possible, that he was entirely Nemedan. It seemed to make him truly happy.

It made sense. It was everything to Esmerelda, too. It was something she’d worked hard for; something she’d almost died for. It had to mean more to them than it did to one like me, who’d been born to it, like stumbling over a treasure and not comprehending its value and importance. Admittedly, I understood better than some, since I fought for it nearly every day of my life, but still. I would never understand the gift of belonging the way people like Hector and Esmerelda did, because they were forced to.

I doubted Paris truly understood it, even, because he’d never felt the odd man out in either nation. Never had to fight for everything he was given. And Hector wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, as much as it hurt him to have to fight for his own place.

Forcibly, I shook off my worries about Hector and belonging. He did belong. He belonged here, with me. At my side. For as long as he was willing to stay.

So I stripped him out of the rest of his clothes and spent half the night worshipping at the altar of his golden body, kissing every inch of him until he was squirming, complaining that I should get a move on and fuck him already. Or let him fuck me, something.

So I laughed and rolled onto my back, letting him have his own way. He happily took over and took all he wanted.

When I woke some hours later with the daylight filtering through my bedroom window, though, I was alone in bed, the sheets where Hector had been the night before cold and empty. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt wrong. I’d been sleeping in the same bed, alone, for most of my adult life. But it wasn’t right anymore.

Nothing was right without Hector.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

HECTOR

Iarrived early at the smithy.

No one else was there yet, so I stoked the coals myself. The fire would burn in the forge all day, and it was rarely as cool in our workspace as it was first thing in the morning.

With everyone in the forge working for weeks to make bolts and throwers, I didn’t need to rush to work, but I needed the steady thump of a hammer on hot metal to center my thoughts. Strange, how such a physically demanding job had become the center of my essence. I wondered if my father would’ve approved. We weren’t lords anymore. I was a smith, and I adored the work. If I could set my mind to a fiddly, solvable problem at my anvil, the bigger ones ahead would seem more manageable.

The tools I reached for were smaller than those I’d been using since coming to the Crane palace. In fact, the tools and molds I picked up were those I’d only seen in passing—they had no place in weapon making, but I didn’t particularly want to make a weapon.

I’d just finished heating up the crucible when I heard someone shift something on a worktable behind me. Normally, when I was working, I lost myself. This time, some part of me must’ve been waiting for the company, because I spun around at once.

Abram was there, his broad, ruddy face tilted curiously to the left.

“You’re here early.”

My mouth fell open. “I . . . couldn’t sleep.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Sleeping beside Killian, as spent as I had been, was comfortable and warm. But once I’d opened my eyes that morning, thirsty for a drink of water, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking.

Rather than toss and turn and demand that Killian wake up to keep me company or provide me some more pleasant distraction, I’d carried myself to the forge.

In the time Helena had been with us, I’d been neglecting my work, less interested in bolt throwers or violent solutions than I had been.

Still, Abram had said nothing of my distraction, of how even when I was there, I sat and stared off as my mind drifted to anything but what was before me. It wasn’t the first time I’d taken on a project, lost myself in it, and moved on entirely. It was just the first time that so many people were relying on me to keep steady for them.

And somehow, Abram had made space for my mind to wander.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I’ve been⁠—”

“Distracted?” He sat on a stool and looked at me, his enormous arms crossed his broad chest.

I nodded. “I⁠—”

He shook his head, and I fell silent.

“Hector, I’ve seen you work. You’re not lazy or inept. You show up, offer your best. Frankly, your distraction is worth it—not because it’s inconvenient or something you should manage. You’re clever, innovative, and if you’re distracted, it’s usually because you’re in the grips of something new and important.”

My tongue was dry, my forehead clammy under his stare. “It’s not . . . an issue?”

Abram shook his head. “We have space here for you to be your best, as you are.”

My breath caught, and I looked away. There was a giant lump in my throat. It took a couple of swallows before I could speak again. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome. Now, tell me, what is it this time?”

I pinched my cheeks between my molars. “I want to end the war.”

Abram’s brows shot high. “A bold idea. How would you do it?”

That was the problem—I could think of no way, and the one solution Helena and I had come up with would require too great a concession from those who’d suffered too much.

The thing was, did sacrificing ego really cost more than sacrificing life?

“Do you mind if I keep working? It helps me organize my thoughts.”

Abram shook his head. He even went to far as to abandon his seat and come over to the anvil where I’d gathered my tools.

I kept my eyes on the molten silver as I worked.

“How much do you think Nemedans would tolerate for peace?”

“A great deal,” Abram said, shifting his weight.

“And if it meant looking into the eyes of their once-enemies and celebrating them?”

I glanced up to see Abram grimacing.

“Celebrating them for what?” Even Abram, steady as he was, spoke with dripping disdain.

I sighed, turning back to the anvil. “It doesn’t really matter, for what. From all the reading Helena and I have done about the southlands, it is . . . it is critical to their culture to be seen as formidable outside of their own clans and families. Acts of bravery are the only thing that get their gods’ attention. I don’t think that there is anything Nemeda could offer them that would convince them to give up the fight.”

Abram frowned. “We’ve tried for peace before. Not in a while, but it was made quite clear that it’d come to nothing.”

“But if there were some . . . show or exhibition that allowed the southerners to prove themselves without sacrificing lives? If we offered them eyes and recognition, not from the dead but from thousands of living people? More people than will see them in quick-ended skirmishes . . . ”

“Sounds like quite the ask,” Abram said. His low voice belied his doubts, and I sighed.

For a long time, we were quiet. I could think of no more reasonable answer, and the prospect of unending war stretched out before me.

I’d lose Killian to wounds just like he’d already endured, and I couldn’t stand the thought of putting his body forward, over and over, to a southerner’s blade.

“What’s that for?” Abram jerked his chin at the ring I’d just quenched, pinched in my forging tongs.

I scowled at it. Yes, I’d made it with my own two hands, but I hadn’t been thinking critically about what I was making. Something small and intricate, round and whole.

Silver, with delicate filigree that reminded me of Killian’s hair lifted by the gentle breeze.

I frowned down at it, hollowing my cheeks. “A custom from Urial.”

With it cool enough not to burn, I tucked the ring into my pocket.

Abram raised a brow. “A gift for someone special?”

What could I say to that? Abram saw far too much. It was a blessing and a curse.

“One day. There’s a problem I need to untangle first.”

Abram hummed. “There will always be another problem to solve. Don’t forget to live while you can.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

KILLIAN

Iwent to my office and worked like a zombie, unable to do anything else after long years of habit, but my heart wasn’t in it.

My heart was with Hector.

Beautiful, clever, perfect Hector.

I could do most of my reports with my eyes closed, and though my handwriting might suffer for it, it would all end up essentially correct.

So that left me plenty of time to focus on Hector. On how I’d told him, what felt like years ago, but had only been a few months, that love was a children’s story. That I didn’t believe in any such silly thing. I wanted him, yes, but only that.

In retrospect, it wasn’t just patronizing, telling a grown man that I was going to make his choices for him, because he didn’t understand the political fallout that would inevitably come from them . . . it was plain old wrong.

And given how tight-lipped Hector had been on the subject since, he’d no doubt taken me at my word, and intended to go on that way.

The very idea made my stomach twist and writhe.

Or maybe it was that I’d forgotten to eat breakfast.

When I finished what I was working on, I went down to the kitchens and grabbed what they had on at the moment, some bread and some kind of stew. It wasn’t terrible, but the bread was nothing like what they managed in Hawk lands—soft and fluffy, moist and just . . .

I stared at the dry slice in my hand, and it struck me as unjust, suddenly.

It had never bothered me before, but now . . .

Oh, it didn’t bother me that the Hawk had better bread. No, it was that the cooks in our kitchens had to make do with the time they had, to feed as many people as possible. If they had more people, more time, there was no doubt in my mind they could produce food every bit as impressive as the Hawk Clan’s bread or the Hummingbird’s mead. Instead, we assigned as few people as possible to the kitchens, because every body was needed on the wall, defending our lives.

It was a dangerous line of thought, and one I’d never spent much time on before; dissatisfaction with our granted lot in life. But the Crane were more than martial prowess, damn it all. Our ancestors had been artists.

Maybe I wasn’t more than a soldier, but the others should have that chance if they wanted it. The ability to paint or sculpt or garden or fucking cook what they wanted to.

I ended up staring at my food for rather longer than normal, but no one approached me. It was early for lunch, so there weren’t many people in the dining hall, but also, those few who did come in gave me a wide berth. My expression must have been even more forbidding than usual, I supposed.

By the time I was finished, the stew had long since gone cold, but it was fine. I’d eaten worse food, under worse circumstances.

More important that I figure out how to deal with Hector.

He deserved someone like that asshole Duck, Nestor, smooth bastard that he was, with his gifts of wagons of lemons and oranges and other fruits. Or Brett, so soft and kind, despite his years on the wall. Hells, Orestes, soft and kind perhaps because of his years on the wall. He certainly hadn’t learned that from his father. But I didn’t think he’d learned it from me, either.

If he were still at my side, I’d have asked him where he’d learned it, so I could try to do the same.

He’d have laughed at me and told me something irreverent about how one didn’t learn what came naturally, or something like that.

And that was probably it. I was made for this life: hard and cold and efficient. The world I wanted to make had no place in it for me. But that was fine, because it was a world that would nurture my people. No one else would ever have to be like me, and that was best for everyone.

And it had to start with Hector, who was the most important person I wanted to make the world better for.

Cleaning up my plate and leaving it for the dishwasher, I headed for the smithy. That was where he’d be. Where he had spent every free minute, working on his bolt throwers. Protecting my people—our people. Solving our biggest problems.

The smithy was exactly as it always was. A hive of work and noise and stifling heat worse than the hottest summer day. And in the middle of all that activity, there was Hector. Beautiful even covered with the grime and sweat of a day’s work—maybe even more beautiful for it, in fact. Giving Abram his quiet, hesitant smile as he slid his hands into his pockets, then returning his gaze to the floor, where it stayed so often.

Too often.

Suddenly, what I’d come to do wasn’t something I was looking for yet another reason to avoid. It was imperative. I didn’t think I could spend another hour of my life without doing it. Couldn’t keep breathing and thinking and not do it.

With more steely resolve than usual, I stalked over to the spot where Hector was standing and spun to stand in front of him. Reaching up, I took his face in both hands and looked deep into his soft, perfect brown eyes.

And I said it. The words I’d never thought would cross my lips in my entire life.

“I love you.”

The smithy went unnaturally silent around us as the last word rang through the air with the finality of a hammer blow, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was him. Was Hector. So I said it again.

“I never thought I’d say this to anyone, but . . . but I love you.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

HECTOR

Killian was so stoic, so serious, that all I could do was stare up at him. His intentions were like an iron wall, impossible to move, there and unassailable.

And then, I started to smile.

“I know,” I whispered. I could feel everyone in the smithy looking at us, eyes drawn by the silvery perfection of their chief, but I kept my eyes trained on his. “Killian, I know. I love you too.”

His brow furrowed in confusion. His lips fell a bit slack.

All right, I was still too Urial to stand there in the middle of the smithy and talk openly about my feelings while everyone watched.

When I bit my lip and glanced at Abram, he jerked his chin at the door. “See you tomorrow, lad.”

I grabbed Killian’s wrist and pulled him into the alley out back.

As soon as we were alone, Killian came up short. The steadiness of his stop was enough to draw me around, and he caught my hip as my momentum made me clumsy.

“What do you mean?”

I scowled. “What do you mean, what do I mean?”

“How did you . . . know?”

I bit the edges of my tongue, then stepped closer. His body was warm against my front, and I looped my arms around his hips. “Because I—well . . . I never meant to presume. It’s—well, isn’t it obvious? You’ve done so much for me, been so careful, so generous. The way you smile sometimes, when we’re alone—you don’t smile like that anywhere else. I wasn’t counting on anything romantic or any—any promises, but on every metric by which I measure what love is . . . ” Nervous, I swallowed, but when I tightened my arms around his hips, I felt stronger for it. “Killian, you excel. You’ve cared for me better than I knew I could be cared for, given me things I never would’ve dreamed to ask. There is nothing more you must do to prove yourself or your feelings. They are apparent in every touch, every glance, every smile. Every concession you make because I’m stubborn and I’d like to give you as much as you’ve given me. I’m glad that you said it, but if you hadn’t? It’s no longer possible for me to doubt you.”

He stared at me, stunned and red cheeked. A thrill rushed through me at having made the Crane so dizzy.

But this had cost him something—rearranging his whole world was a show of feeling I hadn’t expected.

I wanted to give him something in return.

The ring sat heavy in my pocket, and I pulled it out, offering it between us.

“I, ah, made this for you.” I uncurled my fingers to reveal the delicate silver ring in my hand. It wouldn’t have suited my fingers at all, but Killian had nice hands with long, graceful fingers. They were what I’d thought of with every curl of metal. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. I just wanted you to have a piece of me when we’re apart. Or, well, I thought it would be nice, is all. After all, you gave me a bird. A trinket’s not so much.”

Once I slipped the ring on him, Killian stared at the back of his hand, his fingers spread, that silver band a perfect fit. I liked it there, imagined it could protect him from the worst of what he faced.

A muscle in his jaw twitched before he looked at me again.

“And if it meant something, it’d mean that I’m yours?” he asked.

Heat flooded my face. “Well . . . traditionally, but I’m not looking for something so concrete. I just want you to have⁠—”

Killian cut me off with a steady palm against the side of my neck. His thumb brushed my lips, and I fell silent.

“Let it mean something.” His voice was low and serious, infused with feeling that stole my breath and warmed my skin.

I pushed in to claim his lips, parted them beneath my tongue. His fingers slid into my hair and he pulled me in.

When we had to catch our breaths, his fingers were still fisted in my hair, my hands twisted in his shirt. Gods, he was right—Nemeda had better clothes. The way his shirt fell open beneath his neck, revealing golden skin and the mark of a lighter scar across his tempting chest, was too perfect. Whining, I dragged my hands down and let the shirt spread wider.

His lips were only a hair’s breadth from mine when he whispered, “And you’re mine.”

I didn’t know if that was a question or a proclamation, but it didn’t matter. Desperately, I nodded and leaned in. Another kiss. Another taste of my Killian.

His hands were everywhere, sliding up and down my sides, tugging at cloth that I wished he would tear off me.

But there wasn’t a chance we could have each other right there on the street. Even in an alley, it was too exposed.

I could hardly think with his lips on me, but I knew if I could clear my head for one second, we could both get what we wanted.

The door—if we didn’t go all the way back into the smithy, we could take the stairs right up to the storeroom. Over the sound of hammers below, no one would hear us.

I grabbed Killian’s hand and pulled. “Come on.”

We stumbled our way up the stairs. Or, well, I stumbled. Killian was surer footed than that, but he gripped me by the hips and pushed me on.

Up in the storeroom, I spun into his arms, and he walked me back until my shoulders hit the wall. Alone, in the heat above the smithy, Killian slipped his clever hands beneath my clothes and shed them. I tugged his, and they were so marvelously easy to remove.

Naked and needy, I turned to face the wall, my hands braced against the rough wood.

”Hector—” Killian’s voice was rough with need, raspy with concern.

I glanced back at him. “Fuck my thighs,” I begged, forcing my legs together tight. We had no supplies, no comfort, but we had our own bodies, and gods knew those could be pleasurable enough.

Killian growled, crowding into the space behind me. Before I even felt the blunt head of his cock nudging between my legs, he reached around and pulled my dick. I muffled a whine against my arm and pushed up on my toes, arching my back to offer myself to him.

The way his cock pressed into my perineum, slid against my sensitive balls, had me whining and whimpering as if he fucked me for real. I couldn’t wait for that—to have him inside me, knowing he loved me.

Knowing he finally accepted that he did, and I didn’t have to fret.

His hand was quick and efficient, striping along my shaft as a quick pace, until I was muffling my moans against his neck. He must’ve felt me shake, go stiff in his arms, because then his strokes were shorter. Tighter.

He focused near the head as I squeezed my eyes shut and came apart in his arms. Less than a minute later, I felt the sticky mess of his come between my thighs, smelled the familiar bitterness of him.

Together, we sank to the floor. Laughing and breathless, we knelt on there. Killian wrapped his arms around me tight. The way his nose buried in my hair and his breath tickled my neck lit my skin up, tingling all the way down my chest.

I turned to catch his lips, kissing between panted breaths.

“I love you,” I whispered into them.

And as I stared up into his beautiful eyes, I watched his expression soften, a kind of peace settling over him that I wanted to keep forever.

“Love you too, Crane Owl.”

Behind my bit lip, I whined, high and tight. “Take me home,” I rasped. If I got nothing else done the whole night, fine, but I’d have him, now that we stood before each other without masks.

He nodded, and when he nuzzled my shoulder, I felt the graze of his teeth across my skin. It was as much a “yes” as I’d ever gotten, and I grinned in the shadows of the storeroom.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

KILLIAN

Iwoke every morning with the warmth and scent of Hector on my sheets, and went to bed each night with him by my side. It was more than I’d ever expected from life, so much more. It was peaceful and happy in a way I never thought I would feel.

I understood, suddenly, my mother’s life. The way she’d always seemed so happy with her many partners and bed that had never been empty. I’d always assumed it barren, like the assignations I’d had in dark rooms, seeking nothing but release, and left empty and longing afterward. But that wasn’t what she’d gotten out of her half-dozen lovers. This was what she’d gotten. This entirely sated feeling, not emptiness, but like I’d forgotten what it truly was to be that empty. That alone.

As though alone had ceased to exist, because even when he wasn’t with me, Hector was there. He existed, and I knew that I’d be with him again. He would always be there, always fill my life with his presence.

It was a shame that I only now understood, so many years after she’d died. I wished I could tell her that I finally got it. I’d been such a little shit to her when I was a child.

I wanted to tell Abram, but he’d just say the same thing he always said when I went to him, to tell him something I hadn’t said to her.

She knew, Killian.

Maybe that was just the story of my whole life. I was just so fucking stunted that everyone else knew how I felt before I did. Not because I was incapable of feeling as I’d assumed for so many years, but because I didn’t comprehend feelings, so I didn’t know how to name how I felt.

Still, there was a freedom in that. Not that I no longer had to try to figure myself out as I went, but that when I could no longer apologize to my mother, no longer tell her how wrong I’d been, that . . . she knew.

She had always known.

She’d just given me the time to figure it out for myself.

I was staring at my monthly food requisition thinking about my mother when footsteps came thundering down the hallway.

My office door flung open to reveal three soldiers. I recognized them immediately: two from positions on the northwest end of the wall, and the third, a scout. He’d spent almost a decade sliding out into the southland, searching out their armies and coming back to us with information. He was possibly the best scout we’d ever had; a hummingbird in origin—small, slight, and quicker than a dragonfly in flight. He’d also done the years of more than a dozen of his people on the wall, since I insisted on counting each of his years as two. He wasn’t just defending Nemeda, after all. He was risking his life every single moment of every day, going into enemy lands. Eating and sleeping and bathing there for weeks at a time.

Now, he was sporting a slice on his side, covered with a thin bandage that he was already in the process of bleeding through.

I leaped from my chair, looking to one of the men who’d accompanied him. “Go get a healer and bring them here.” Then I pressed him into a chair. “How soon?”

He shook his head. “They only saw me when I was almost home. They don’t . . . they don’t know I know.” He reached out and grabbed my wrist, his grip like an iron vise. “They’re massing at the foot of the western hills. It’s . . . it’s a bigger force than they’ve thrown after us in all the years I’ve been scouting, m’lord. Three thousand that I could count, and more arriving as I left.”

Three thousand.

I leaned back against my desk, the breath knocked out of me.

We hadn’t seen a force that big since Carlyle had come, and it had been a bloody fucking mess. Thousands dead on both sides. More theirs than ours, yes, but that was because we had the wall and our spears. And if the man Hector had captured was to be believed, all because we weren’t ignorant asses who thought we needed to impress our gods by doing inane things that got ourselves and our loved ones killed.

I wondered at the logic of following a god who demanded such unreasonable things, but being Nemedan, well . . . I couldn’t fathom it. Foreigners thought we worshipped birds, but the truth was that if we worshipped anything, it was freedom.

The scout, Phaedo, took just a moment to catch his breath, and went on to start giving me details. With each one, the situation seemed to get worse. Cavalry. The camp they had built, which implied to my mind an even bigger force than the three thousand Phaedo had counted, which he clearly also suspected, though he never said anything like it. He was very good about giving me all the information, detailed and perfect, and letting me see the damning truth for myself.

He continued talking as the healer arrived, even as she pulled out her tool kit, washing and then stitching his wound.

I made notes, already mentally changing my food requisition form in my mind. If we were going to be fighting, we’d need more. There would be no time for hunting, and soldiers who had spent the day fighting needed more food than ones who’d spent the day staring into the horizon.

The ones that survived it, anyway.

But I was never going to preemptively change my food orders assuming people would die. It was perhaps the singular area where I insisted on being optimistic. My people were going to live, gods damn it. Whatever I had to do to make that more likely, I’d do it. My Crane were worth every moment of struggle I had to go through to keep them alive. Every last one of them.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

HECTOR

It was my fault.

All right, yes, I was prone to taking on more responsibility than belonged to me alone, but this⁠—

I could trace a line directly from building that first bolt thrower to a southern army, massing beyond the wall.

With new weapons, and ones that the southerners felt were so distasteful, I hadn’t kept Nemeda safe at all. Instead, I’d invited a more concentrated assault. It was an overstep, and one I hadn’t realized I could make until it was too late.

Now, I was afraid that the southerners would mount increasingly dramatic attacks until one or both sides were wiped out, all because they were affronted by something I’d made.

I should have spent the past days trying to refine my plan to offer them something other than bloodshed, find some compromise. Instead, I’d lost too much time.

It had been easy, from the comfort of the palace and the rosy hue that had surrounded Killian and me now that we were sure of each other, to forget the war entirely. The palace was beautiful—not a place built for war. Yes, the gardens were not perfectly manicured, but the structure of them, the thought put into the design, made me wish I’d seen this place at its finest.

For days, I’d lost myself in Killian, because that was a much happier pursuit than trying to figure out the problem before me. It felt too large for any one person to tackle, but the Cranes and Ravens had long since let go of the promise of peace.

Asking them, or any Nemedan, to tolerate the southerners was unkind and unreasonable. They shouldn’t have to face the people who’d wronged them for so long, but what was the other option?

If the war ended, they’d have to tolerate peace with the southerners, at the very least. And in my less charitable moments, I thought that anyone thinking the matter through logically would prefer to tolerate an enemy than watch a loved one die.

Certainly, I’d break bread with a southerner before watching Killian hurt again.

So . . . I had to keep pursuing whatever chance I had at making peace until time had truly run out. It might feel like it was too late already, but until there was blood spilled, I could—I could figure out something.

My life and love wouldn’t be defined by someone else’s gods.

The smithy was busier than it’d ever been, so I didn’t drag my feet back to the palace until late in the evening. Killian hadn’t been by the smithy all day, which wasn’t so strange, considering how busy he must’ve been, but I missed him. I’d gotten used to him stopping by to see me, steal a quick kiss, check in on work that he had to know was being done while it was under Abram’s control.

I’d been pondering the idea of the southerners for days, for nothing. Abram had offered no solution, and I’d reached the limit of what I could think of alone. Perhaps Killian would have some insight.

But when I found him, he wasn’t in his room, but in a small armory, being fitted for pauldrons and a chest plate. I’d made some of the pieces myself.

Seeing Killian in them shattered my heart. “You’re planning to fight.”

Killian turned toward me, his expression softening, like he’d never been sorrier about anything.

He said nothing, and it took me a moment to shake off the blow of devastation.

“You’re not yet recovered.” All the time we’d been back in Crane lands, Killian had been taking it easy. He moaned on and on about the endless paperwork, and I’d been quietly glad that was all he had before him. I wasn’t looking forward to the day he picked up his spear again. Perhaps he was more skilled with it than anyone I’d ever seen, but I didn’t want him to bear the weight of it even one more day.

He stepped close to me, and his hand was warm when he touched my cheek. He wore no gauntlets to keep him away from me. “I’m recovered enough.”

“Your mother must’ve thought so too.”

I winced even faster than he did.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was . . . unkind. I didn’t mean it.”

He shook his head. “But you’re right. If I had a choice⁠—”

“You do.”

He stared at me with the same look he’d given me when I insisted on talking to the southerner who’d gotten into the smithy. He couldn’t see another option.

“Hector, it’s been so long since we’ve seen a southern force of this size. I cannot sit idly by and let them break over us.”

I shook my head. “We take down the bolt throwers.”

Killian scoffed. “Why would we do that? They’re brilliant.”

“The southerners think they’re a threat. If we’re not a threat⁠—”

“You heard the prisoner, Hector. I assure you, once the southerners decide to fight, they do not withdraw until the battle is finished.” He spoke with the kind of surety and sadness that I wondered if this was a truth Carlyle had shared with him.

“You heard him too! They—I had a thought.”

Killian’s expression did not light with hope, but it was open enough that I’d set my impossible plan before him. He might have more insight than Abram had shared, if he saw any potential there at all.

“What if,” I said haltingly, “we . . . offered the southerners another way to showcase their bravery. They don’t have to kill us to impress their gods.”

“How would we manage that?”

“An arena. An . . . event, maybe. Games or fights or something, but something more controlled than open warfare and bloody murder. They’re not a proper army, and their interests are individual. If Nemeda offered them goods⁠—”

“You mean tribute?”

I scowled. “No, I mean a negotiation. Nemeda, especially a Nemeda at peace, has plenty. Imagine if the Crane could do . . . anything other than fight. Our people are innovative, balanced, careful. And the things the Crane once made—their beauty hasn’t been tarnished by time. Already, Nemedans meet once a season. If we invited the southerners on a similar schedule, let them return home with some token of victory⁠—”

“And let them think they’d beaten us properly?”

“Is it a loss if you and your people survive?”

Killian sighed through his nose. “I understand why you want this. I’ve wanted it too. But it’s not possible. Certainly not now, when they’re already advancing.”

“Fine,” I snipped, irked by the corner I’d been backed into. “Still, there’s no sense in you fighting only to die.”

Killian huffed. “You have so little faith in me?”

I shook my head. “I have all the faith in the world in you, but you were wounded deeply. You’ve been recovering for weeks. If—you know I’m a disaster with a spear, but I’ve practiced enough. If you spar with me and put me on my back, I’ll . . . I’ll feel better about you fighting. Spar with me, for my peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Killian’s smile was reserved. “All right.” He reached for the straps holding his armor in place, flicked them open almost as easily as he’d removed my shirt the night before. “Shall we get it over with now?”

CHAPTER FIFTY

KILLIAN

Icouldn’t blame Hector for being concerned. It was a thought that’d been weighing heavy on my own mind since I’d realized I was going to have to fight.

Was I following in my mother’s footsteps and rejoining the fight too soon? The wound was still a red reminder on my side, though it didn’t even twinge anymore most days.

Perhaps more importantly, I hadn’t spent much time getting back fighting fit since being injured.

No, I’d spent weeks abed and then weeks doing nothing but sitting at a desk, so was I in any shape to be fighting?

But even if I wasn’t, how could I leave my clan alone to face the disaster of a major southern invasion, the likes of which we hadn’t seen in generations? No, they wouldn’t be lost without me, but if I lay in bed while my people fought and died, how could I ever face myself again?

I’d probably be dead anyway with an encroaching southern force that size. If we lost, they would overrun the wall and slaughter the rest of us in our beds and homes. Hector thought they had some honor and wanted to prove their prowess, and maybe that was true for some. It’d certainly been true for Carlyle. But it didn’t change the fact that some of them clearly just liked to fight and kill, and it would make no difference if the targets were invalids and children.

So I kept that in mind as I led him to the practice yard. No, I didn’t want to beat him. I didn’t want to knock him down at all, either physically or emotionally. But I had to be there for my people.

He was beautiful in his determination, mouth set in a firm line and eyes alight with emotion, but . . . well, he was always beautiful, and almost always determined. Some days it was just to beat a little puzzle he’d set before himself in the smithy, but some days it was—well, like today, it was me. I was the thing he had to beat.

The practice yard quieted as we took a spot in the center, me with my spear and him with one of his own. He held it with more confidence than when Orestes had first been teaching him, but that wasn’t a surprise. He was more confident in every way than he’d been when we met. He stood taller, as though he was no longer afraid of standing strong, no longer felt as though he needed to make himself less to accommodate others. His shoulders were straight and broad and . . . well, it wasn’t a surprise either, that they had grown in those months he’d spent in the smithy. He’d always been strong, but now he was covered with muscle, and it looked damned good on him.

Not that anything ever looked bad on him.

When he struck out, it was quick and merciless, and he almost nailed me right in the gut with his first strike. For a moment, I was on my back foot, distracted by the immediate near-failure.

I let myself fall into a rhythm, defending against his flurry of blows, considering my situation. Did it hurt? Was the wound pulling? Was I getting out of breath quicker than usual?

But no. I was doing fine. I’d just been so damned distracted by thoughts of Hector that I’d had my guard down. Clever as always, Hector had taken advantage of my mind being elsewhere.

On his very fine body, mostly.

I let it go on that way for a moment, him throwing everything he had at me. Long, sweeping, elegant motions with the spear, going for my side, my injured hip, and even trying to sweep my legs out from under me. He’d improved at this as well as smithing. He must have been practicing with the spear in his free time when I hadn’t been paying attention, because he was downright good. Maybe better than a lot of the people we had on the wall.

The men were gathering around, and I could hear the noises of approval for Hector’s tactics and skill, murmurs they’d have never bothered with if they didn’t think he was doing well.

He didn’t tire easily, either, which was no surprise. He’d spent most of the last few months in the smithy, hours and hours of hard labor every day, lifting and carrying and creating, and it built stamina like few other endeavors. If fighting were just about that, I suspected Abram could still outfight every person who was on the wall, even at his age and missing those fingers.

But this wasn’t about Abram, who was happy where he was now.

This was about me, and even more, it was about Hector.

If anything, though, the spar firmed my resolve. I wasn’t at one hundred percent—of course I wasn’t, I’d nearly died just a few months ago—but I was fine. I wasn’t impaired by the injury.

In fact, the longer we went, the more I could hear relief in the growing crowd around us. They had also been worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle the coming fight, and as much as none of us, including me, liked to acknowledge it, I was a focal point. Perhaps the Crane could and would go on without me, but that didn’t mean I was just another cog on the Hawk weaving contraption. I was central and visible, and my people needed me to be well.

To be there.

So I let the spar continue, until both of us were sweaty and panting for breath, long minutes of fighting. I’d seen a few openings where I could have gone in for an attack, were we fighting, and I’d feinted toward each, reminding Hector to close the openings and protect himself. He’d adjusted masterfully, keeping himself protected. It was almost like he’d been fighting for years, and by the time he stopped, panting, and took a step back, I must have been grinning like a madman.

He frowned, sighing, and nodded. “Well, you’re . . . that was impressive. I couldn’t⁠—”

“You should join us,” I told him, then quickly added a caveat: “If you want to. You’re getting very good, and if you want to join us on the wall for the assault, you should.”

His mouth fell open, and for a moment, all he did was stare at me. Uh-oh. Had that been the wrong thing to say?

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

HECTOR

Killian wanted me at his side.

Of course there was nowhere else I’d rather be, even if that meant facing the storm that was about to break across the wall.

“I want to,” I rushed to say when my senses returned. “I’ll be with you.”

Through anything, I’d be with Killian.

In the days that followed, the Nemedans tracked the movements of the southerners, ever closer. There wasn’t enough time—not to say all I wanted or figure out plans and plans and plans that I was convinced could save us all from catastrophe.

On the morning of the battle, I mounted the wall in all seriousness for the very first time. Yes, I’d been there before, but never with a spear in hand or armor around me, already scuffed by battled I’d never seen before.

I told myself that I’d be there to ensure the bolt throwers functioned properly, that I wouldn’t make myself a hinderance, but it wasn’t just that. Mostly, I wanted to be there to protect Killian, to watch his back if his back needed watching, to keep him from what danger I could.

Despite my training and what improvements I’d made, I still couldn’t match him, even when he was out of shape. But there was a huge difference between sparring with each other and the chaos of a battle.

At least, that’s what everyone who’d seen battle had told me. You practiced so that, when the chaos broke out, you weren’t so overwhelmed that you forgot your forms and the ways to protect yourself.

A southerner wouldn’t remind me of an opening before lunging for it.

And as much as I wanted to be there with Killian, I dreaded fighting. I’d killed one man and struck another, and though my arm was admired in the smith for the strength of that blow, I hadn’t relished violence on either occasion. Blood and pain and—in Urial, death was quieter. Perhaps northern death was no less insidious for its subtleties, but it was easier to contextualize and push away.

Blood and screaming, the scents of a body torn open? No, there was no misunderstanding that.

Over a lifetime of war, how many horrors had Killian seen?

It was impossible to tell, even standing at his side atop the wall.

His face was serious and firm, his eyes sharp. The grip on his spear was delicate and balanced, but I had no doubt that he could lash out with it in a moment.

It was horrible, standing there on the wall. When two armies clashed, I imagined marching across a battlefield—two equal forces, a hammer and an anvil clanging against each other.

Instead, we had to wait and watch as the southerners approached. At first, we saw only a cloud of dust rising beyond the treeline.

It took an hour to see the first men break through the treeline.

The forest was cut back from the wall, not only for visibility, but because after decades of fighting, nothing would grow in the blood-soaked ground.

I’d never allowed myself to look at it too closely, but now, even the dirt seemed stark red in the light of the rising son.

As I looked down at the approaching force between the crenelations, my stomach dropped. The only thing worse than being there, ready to fight for my life alongside these people who I now belonged to and the man I loved, would’ve been being stuck beyond the wall in the forge, waiting for word of what’d happened.

Yes, I’d wanted this—to stand amongst the Crane and know I’d earned my place, to stay at Killian’s side whatever danger he faced. But . . . it wasn’t worth risking everything, just to belong in this horrible moment.

It was, however, worth risking everything for a chance at something better.

I reached for the buckle on my left shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Killian’s voice was tight and low as he leaned toward me, trying to steal a moment’s privacy pressed in amongst his people.

I caught his eye, and the wariness in his gaze only steeled my resolve. I’d find something better for him—or failing that, I’d make it. If I had to reshape the world, I’d hold onto this man’s smile.

“I need you to trust me.”

A muscle in Killian’s jaw twitched, but he gave a terse nod. If he’d known what I had in mind, I doubted he’d give even that much.

Nemedan armor wasn’t usually built for people was broad as I’d gotten in my time in the smithy, but Abram had fitted me with his old set. The leather was supple, the clasps well-oiled. It’d been one of the strangest things I’d learned about making armor here—it needed to come off far more easily than it was put on. More than once, a Nemedan in a pinch had shed their armor and taken to the skies to escape danger.

I didn’t think any of them had ever flown directly into it.

I shed my armor and it fell with a clang. After taking a deep breath, sharp and earthy after the march of the southern approach, I slipped out of cloth and into feathers.

The southerners’ eyes turned skyward as I swooped down from the wall. It was nothing more than a dive, and before my feet hit the ground, I’d changed back. Too easy, for them to assume I meant harm while I had talon and beak and no apparent logic or reason.

Of course, I hadn’t thought this through perfectly, because it was the sole of my foot on the dirt, every inch of my skin exposed to open air and the swords carried by thousands of southerners stretched out before me.

A still tension overtook the battlefield the second I’d flown down, as if they waited for me. Even once I’d landed, unsure what to say and horribly exposed, we were all frozen.

There was a clang behind me, a threatening cry. I turned to see the angle of a sharp, white crane dive from the wall overhead. It was the first time I’d seen Killian like this, but I knew him as well as I knew myself, had heard his anger beating in my head even before his shriek cut through the air.

And, formidable as he was, I knew he didn’t belong here, on blood-soaked earth, facing down an army. Could he manage? Of course. He had for decades. But I would not rest until I saw something better for him. He belonged in beautiful, serene gardens, bathed in sunlight.

Firmer in my resolve, I turned toward the army of southerners before me.

Finally, one man was bold enough to break the silence.

“What do you want, bird?”

The way he spat it, voice dripping with such disdain and familiarity, made my stomach twist.

“I am not only Nemedan,” I called across the bare stretch of dirt at the base of the wall. “I hail from Urial. I am Hector, son of Sampson, and I have a proposition for you.”

There was some murmuring and shuffling on either side of the southerner, but it fell silent when the man held up a hand.

“This man stands before our great army with no weapon, no armor. He may be a fool, or he may have the heart of a god.” A ripple carried through the gathered warriors. I didn’t like that—the way he said it, or the way the warriors beside him looked at me with hunger in their eyes. Those words meant something to these men. Their stares made me want to shrink back, but there was too much at stake to let nerves cow me now.

“I would hear what he has to say,” the man finished.

Time for me to push for something impossible.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

KILLIAN

Damn it all.

Join us on the wall, I’d said. I didn’t recall suggesting he leap off it into the oncoming horde of fucking southerners.

Had he run mad?

Along the wall nearby, everyone watched in shock, staring at where he’d landed naked in the dirt before the looming menace.

Cursing under my breath, I reached for the clasps of my own armor. I couldn’t leave him down there alone, even though this was certain to end in disaster. My own people were about to begin a fight by watching me get killed. It wasn’t going to go well for anyone but the southerners.

As I lifted my spear and dropped it over the edge of the wall, I turned to look at Viola. “Write Orestes. He’ll be in charge of the Clan until—unless—he finds someone better suited. Until he arrives, Nia is in charge.”

Her eyes were round in shock, but she didn’t yell at me. Didn’t tell me I was mad and had to stop. Just nodded once. I turned and looked around. “Whoever survives. Orestes.”

“Orestes,” one of the people behind me repeated, so I accepted that enough of them had heard me and jumped, following Hector over the side of the wall, shifting as I dropped and swooping down to the ground, barely using my wings to slow enough to keep from injuring myself as I landed, then shifting back and picking up my spear as I did and coming up behind Hector.

The southerners narrowed their eyes at me as I marched up behind him, but they didn’t immediately attack when I didn’t.

Hector, meanwhile, was talking about . . . about building an arena in the area where we stood. About how the southerners could compete with Nemedans in some sort of . . . tournaments of strength.

I lifted a brow at him, but didn’t interrupt. It was madness. But the southerners weren’t interrupting either. More than one of them looked . . . interested?

They were also looking Hector and me over like we were slabs of meat, and I thought they were sizing us up for where the swords should go in.

“Obviously we’d take down the bolt throwers,” Hector told the man. “But you’d have to stop attacking. No more killing. At all. And the Nemedans aren’t willing to infect your people with Avianitis, not as a whole.”

The man who was apparently in charge listened to Hector avidly the whole time he spoke, but now he turned to look at me. “What say you, Crane? I know naught of Urial, but does this naked man speak for you?”

I looked down at myself, like I needed to point out that I, too, was naked, and when I looked back up, he was eyeing both of us. His eyes twinkled with something like amusement. And attraction.

He looked so like . . .

“My brother spoke highly of you, when I was a child. He said you would be the greatest war leader the Nemedans ever had. He hasn’t been proven wrong, not until this”—he motioned to one of the bolt throwers, high above us—“travesty.”

Hector sighed and shook his head. “Nemeda isn’t fighting for the same reasons you are. They don’t have gods who require feats of bravery. They’re only defending themselves from aggression.”

Suddenly, every eye was back on Hector, as though he’d said something shocking. There was whispering along the southern line.

“Your bird gods don’t require you to prove yourselves?” the leader asked. “My brother never much mentioned them.”

I dredged up memories of my school days, when we’d learned about the gods Nemeda had worshipped years earlier, when we’d worried about such things, and shook my head. “The Crane worshipped a god of art. She required that we hone our skills and create. The Raven had a god of learning, who required them to gather information. There was no Nemedan god of bravery.”

“Was?” one of the men asked. “Have the Nemedans killed their gods?”

I cocked my head in consideration. “No. We simply haven’t had time for art or learning in recent generations. We’ve been too busy defending our lands from your attacks.”

The indrawn breath was almost a collective thing, and the men started whispering madly amongst themselves. Their leader, the one who looked so like Carlyle, paled. “Our quest for valor has forced you to abandon your own sacred quests?”

Hector, for some reason, beamed at me. “Yes,” he insisted. “And Nemeda wants to go back to their sacred quests. To art and learning and . . . well, I imagine every clan had their own quest. But they’re willing to help you in yours, still. So as I said. An arena. And four times a year, we’ll meet and you can show your skills. Compete with each other.”

“And Nemedans,” one of them said. “Surely some Nemedans wish to show their valor. Do none of your gods care for valor?”

In fact, I did not think any of our gods had given a single fuck about valor, but the sharp look Hector shot me told me I was not to say that. So I thought fast and reached hard. “The Heron worshipped a god of hunting. He favored the quick. And the Vulture always favored strength.”

No reason they needed to know that strength was literal, and more about the lifting of heavy stones rather than beating other people senseless.

There was some judicious nodding at that, and Hector smiled in approval.

“Your people will work with us, then?” the one who looked like Carlyle asked. Brother, he’d said. The age was about right, since he was close to my own age. It was a wonder a southerner had lived that long. “To build this arena and plan these . . . shows of valor?”

Hector looked up at me, brown eyes wide and nervous.

He, I realized, had just negotiated a stop to the fighting. Possibly a permanent one. If Nemeda was willing to help build an arena and take part in . . . games of valor? To show off everyone’s skill and—hells, I wasn’t even certain what valor meant. I wasn’t a Raven, after all. Learning had never been my goal in life.

Not that I’d spent a lot of time thinking about painting or sculpting, either.

“You don’t need to take part personally, obviously,” one of them said, looking me over, his gaze lingering on my scars. “The lord of birds has shown enough valor for a hundred men in his life.”

“Crane,” I corrected. “I’m only the chief of one Nemedan clan, not all of them.”

That caused no small amount of surprise. I imagined it would be an even bigger surprise for them to learn that many of our leaders were women, given their odd views on that.

“Then why has another not—” the leader started, then stopped, sitting back on his horse, shock and realization writ large across his face. “No requirement of valor. Your gods did not require that another prove himself, so you remained, always. We wondered sometimes, how much valor a single man had to show among your people, because you were always there. But it was never that. Your gods wished you an artist, and we have kept you from that quest.”

He slid down off his horse and marched toward us, sticking out his hand. Hector, seeming to know what he was about, reached forward in the same way, and the man clasped his wrist, shaking it slightly as they gripped. Then they broke apart and he turned his hand to me. Since Hector was giving me that same pleading look, I offered my own hand, for it to be grasped and jerked about in the same manner for a moment. Then the man pressed a fist to his chest. “You have given us much to think on this day, lord of bir—Cranes, and son of Sampson, of Urial. I believe we can come to an accord in this. Perhaps your gods do not require a quest for valor, but both of you are seen today by our gods. Your valor will not go unnoticed.” He glanced back to me, ducking his head. “I apologize that we have interfered in your quest. Perhaps when this arena is built, you will be able to pursue your . . . art.”

Art. He was entirely serious. He thought we’d make peace and I’d go become a painter. How bizarre.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

HECTOR

Once we’d talked to the southerners, the first thing for me to do was disassemble the bolt throwers.

There were twice as many guards up on the wall as I’d ever seen, and those nearest me were watching warily as I disassembled the first bolt thrower I’d put up there only months before.

The Cranes didn’t like giving up an advantage, but—well, we’d still have the pieces. If it came down to it, we could reinstall them. It’d take a bit of time, but I had to hold onto the idea that the war was really over. Peace would be easier for me than for the people who’d fought and seen their loved ones die or turn hard and bitter after so much bloodshed. The best thing I could do for Nemeda was lean into the opportunity as much as I could and hope that made it easier for everyone else.

Killian had already agreed, even if he remained somewhat skeptical, and his people adored him. The southerners were right—Killian bore the marks of a lifetime fighting for his people. He would be the last person to risk any of them if he didn’t believe there was a chance this could work. He was too practical to let my optimism risk their safety.

Perhaps I was not so different from Paris after all, it had just taken a journey this far south for me to dig into the little spark of hope I’d buried up in Urial.

Bodhi, the southerner’s elected war leader and Carlyle’s brother, had seemed genuinely affronted to have denied Nemedan “gods” anything. I didn’t know how much any god would play in what came next for the Nemedans, but as long as the southerners agreed to our plan, it didn’t matter. Faith could take any shape, so far as I cared, and while I didn’t think Nemedans held faith in any particular deities, they had faith in each other.

That’d proven just as strong.

As such, I couldn’t blame them for being careful. The Cranes had prepared for a battle, and we’d denied them one. Maybe that was for the best, but no doubt it’d be difficult to accept that a fight wasn’t coming as soon as they let their guard down. It could take years or longer, but the peace would hold. I needed it to hold. There was too much precious potential here, and I’d do whatever it took to keep the future I wanted.

A future that walked toward me, between torches lining the wall. The warm firelight turned all his silvery magnificence golden, and I watched him approach, holding my breath.

“I thought I might find you here.” He glanced at the bolt thrower I was working on.

“No time like the present.”

Killian arched a brow at me. “This could’ve waited for tomorrow. You’ve done plenty today already.”

“It’s . . . a show of sincerity and good will.” The southerners were so offended by the bolt throwers that I wanted to show our willingness to abandon them. It would take time to remove them all, not least because some Nemedans struggled with the idea of casting their weapons aside, but if I had to do each one on my own, I’d start here and see it done.

“And you suspect that if you can do all of the work ahead at once, that will solidify this peace?”

I scoffed. “Oh, no. I don’t have that much power.”

“Don’t you?”

The way Killian was looking at me then made heat rush into my cheeks. I glanced at the bolt thrower.

“I am willing,” I said slowly, “to do any work ahead of me that will keep you and our people safe. The faster, the better. And this? It’s a small thing.”

He sighed, turning toward the imposing weapon as well.

“They are very fine,” Killian said wistfully, dragging a hand along the polished wood. We’d sanded it down to keep from giving soldiers splinters in the middle of battle, polished it—all right, yes, a little indulgently. No need for such weapons to be pretty, but there was an impulse amongst the Crane, even now, toward beauty.

When Killian’s gaze fell on me, it was with a certain amount of . . . pity? That wasn’t precisely the feeling he was conveying, but close enough that I wanted to laugh.

I smiled to myself as I removed another bolt.

“Will you hold right here?” I tapped a stretch of metal, and he put his hand just where I’d said while I loosened the attachments. Once the metal piece was free, he lifted it loose and set it on the floor.

“Killian, I spent my life working to maintain my family’s holdings in a kingdom we cannot ever return to. I spent all that time and energy for nothing.”

Killian grimaced, but he stayed quiet. I’d seen the man lash out with words like a whip, but with me, at least, he’d gotten so careful, and the consideration warmed my heart enough to tell him the truth without leaving him scrambling to figure out how to comfort me in my time of loss.

He had to see how much I’d gained in return for letting go of this one project. Having him safe and free was worth everything I’d ever given up.

“And I wouldn’t change any of it. If we hadn’t fled Urial, I wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t have found you or a place I belong. I enjoyed putting my mind to the problem of these bolt throwers. Creating them, working together with Abram and the others, finding my place in the smithy and in Nemeda—all of that was worthwhile. But the end result? Another weapon wasn’t the right solution, and holding onto these now, out of pride, would do more damage than good. I can admit that it wasn’t always easy for me to let go of things I once thought were important, but this is easy. There is too much good in my life today to get caught up on projects that aren’t worth saving. In Urial, this would’ve felt like a blow, a failure. Today, I’ve won. I am delighted not to have to see these weapons in practice. I hope I never do.”

I stepped back, hands on my hips and lips screwed up. What would we do with them? We weren’t getting rid of them right away, only taking them down, but I hoped this could work and we’d never need to put them back up.

“Perhaps we could repurpose them,” I said. “Rope and tension might make it easier for the Owl clan to control the fall of trees they harvest, or⁠—”

I stepped back to get a better look at the whole thing, and Killian caught me with an arm around my shoulders to keep me steady.

When I looked up at him, Killian’s eyes shone at me mirthfully, his lips curled into the truest smile I’d seen since receiving word about the southern approach.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re already trying to cleverly tinker your way into another project.” He slowly slipped his arm around the small of my back and pulled me in for a soft kiss.

I shook my head, grinning. “We’ll both be plenty busy with building the arena. I don’t need another thing to think about.”

“Mmhmm.” He sounded like he believed me about as much as I believed myself, but I didn’t care when he dragged his lips across mine.

I took a deep breath, enjoying the firmness of his chest against mine, the warmth of his skin through cloth. He’d never put his armor back on. If I had my way, he’d never have to.

I could stay there all night, up on the wall, kissing him while the guards fretted over us taking down a weapon they’d been so excited by only a couple months earlier, but it was better to get the work done. Then, I’d bring him down to the palace, cozy up with him in bed, and if it took hours or days or months, I would watch him shed the mantle of violence.

I pressed on his chest and he let me edge him back a foot or two. “Come on. Let’s get this finished. I’m hungry.”

“You know, once upon a time, the Cranes had some masterfully inventive cooks in our number.”

I arched a brow, and my stomach rumbled. “You think there are still people interested in that?”

He shrugged. “I’d wager so. We’ll certainly find out. Maybe rediscover some traditional dishes.”

I bit my tongue against the urge to lick my lips. I couldn’t wait for what came next.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

KILLIAN

“That is stunning,” Minerva said, a tiny smirk playing around the corners of her lips. “Truly a work of art, Killian.”

“Shut up.”

Hector bumped his shoulder against mine, whispering, “Be nice.”

But I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to do anything.

I also probably hadn’t needed to write the peace agreement out in the old calligraphy for both sides to sign.

But . . . I’d been curious. Artistic calligraphy was something our ancestors had spent time on. Years in school not just learning to write well enough to be readable, but to write as a thing of beauty.

And now, with this peace, new and tentative as it was, I had a lot of time on my hands. We all did.

Many simply went home to their previous clans, continuing their lives as farmers or builders or loggers or such, but the Crane was still the biggest clan in Nemeda, because for generations, we’d been accepting everyone who needed a place to find themselves. We’d folded in large parts of the former Gull and Eagle Clans, most of the refugees from other nations, and every Nemedan who simply didn’t feel at home with their own people’s ways.

I had been worried at first, that there would be a rush for them all to find a new way to make themselves useful, but frankly, there was not.

As it turned out, not having to pay for a war lessened the strain on every clan. They were having to send us less, because we needed less, and everyone was grateful for it. In fact, one of the things that had gone onto the docket for the next clan meeting was what to do with the surplus goods.

The chief of the Vulture had tentatively suggested trade with the southerners.

Trade.

With the southerners.

So we were to discuss it at length in the fall.

For now, some of the surplus was being taken up by the building of the arena, though the southerners were being shockingly accommodating, offering most of the hard goods necessary to do construction. The Vulture chief had drawn up the plans himself, and come to oversee the laying of stone. The southerners had been quite impressed by him, and thought he had clearly well-pleased his god of strength, since he could move stones by himself that took two or three of them.

Nemedans had quickly become accustomed to talk of gods, and some had even started adopting the terms for themselves, even if they clearly didn’t have the religious fervor of the southerners. We’d lived too long on our own cleverness and hard work to give over control to creatures who may or may not exist.

The other clans had been adjusting well, though, and the Crane . . .

Well, some of us were doing well.

The kitchens and the smithy had twice as many workers as before. Some Crane had started farming the land that had been allowed to grow wild for generations of war. Some were still simply resting, waiting, uncertain of what to do next.

An adventurous few had leaped into artistry with both feet. Viola had started a sculpting studio, where the Vulture had supplied her with thousands of pounds of clay and stone. They were everywhere in Crane lands suddenly, the Vulture. They’d been the most distant clan for all our lives, but suddenly, the Crane were building. We needed them, and without a moment’s hesitation, they had descended in force, to give anything we needed.

I’d refrained from crying, but only just, to be honest.

My clan had, for so long, given Nemeda everything. Our lives in their entirety. Having Nemeda come, unquestioning, to give back was overwhelming in the extreme.

But then . . . well, calligraphy wasn’t so bad.

I didn’t think one could make a life of it, but it had been fun to shape the letters correctly, spelling out the words that had changed all of our lives, forever.

Because for the first time in my life, Nemeda was at peace.

And somehow, so was I.

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SNEAK PEEK OF DRAGON’S DAWN

TO KILL A KING BOOK ONE

Chapter One

Genya

“It’s an opportunity,” Prince Georgiy told my father. I watched a sly tilt grow on his lips from the shadows outside my family’s private dining room. “The king requires a favor—a partner for his rough-edged cousin. Someone who can tumble him until he’s smooth and docile. Of course, he thought first of your family, as you have always been such loyal friends.”

“It would be an honor for either of my sons to marry into the Vasiliev line.” Father was standing at the head of the table, his hands on the back of the chair before him. My brother, Feofan, was slumped in the seat beside him, spread out, his elbow only inches from sticking in his plate of salted pork.

As I’d dressed, I heard the sound of men’s laughter and sneaked into the hall to listen with the top buttons of my kaftan still undone. Grusha, my mink, perched on my shoulder, curious and completely still. He was listening as intently as I was.

When I’d heard Prince Georgiy’s voice, I’d hoped for some interesting gossip to share with the ladies over tea, but I’d never thought their machinations would apply to me.

Feofan’s scoff assured me that it could apply to no one else. He, after all, was Father’s heir apparent. There was no way he’d be marrying a Vasiliev Prince.

I, however, was expendable, which was about the only quality that was required in these arrangements.

It was not uncommon, among the Vasilievs, to pair their problem relatives off to partners they could not hope to conceive a child with. It was to simplify matters of succession. Occasionally, it went well.

Most of the time, it did not.

There were even rumors that Georgiy himself had killed his husband. Prince Daniil had fallen from dragon back and broken his neck, dead as soon as he hit the ground, less than a year after their wedding.

I imagined the fall then, thrown from a dragon and lost with nothing to hold onto, no way to stop the ground from coming up to meet me. I’d never minded heights, but the thought sprouted roots that chilled my marrow.

Were this marriage to occur, I would be the tool our king used to deny Prince Mikhail the things he desired. If I displeased him, why would he do anything but toss me from the back of his own great red titan, Maraht?

Blood and land, stories said that beast had nearly burnt the whole palace down in his youth, ruling the corridors with Prince Mikhail well before my time.

“We were, of course, considering a match with young Evgeny. He seems . . . most agreeable,” the prince said smoothly.

I did not like that pause.

Father rubbed his beard. “Perhaps having a piece of fine china for a match will keep our quick-tempered prince from bashing his way through the kingdom.”

Feofan’s laugh was sharp. “Or give him something else to break.”

“Provide a distraction from causing more mayhem, at least,” Prince Georgiy said.

I couldn’t take this anymore. I hastily fastened the last two buttons of my long coat and stepped into the dining room. “Good morning, Father, my prince . . . Feofan.”

At the sight of me, they went silent. I was, after all, not privy to this crucial conversation about my fate. I should have known better than to think I might be included in discussions that affected me so intimately.

But as soon as I turned away, before I’d reached the door to the public hall, I heard my father agree to Georgiy’s offer. My doom was sealed.

I could have dug in my heels or thrown a tantrum, but in Voronezh, family was everything. If I rejected both the Belyaev name and the Vasilievs, I’d have nothing.

On the way to the ladies’ drawing room, my chest spasmed around each strangled inhale. It was time for tea and I needed⁠—

Winter’s frigid cock, I needed more than blasted tea!

The moment I entered the opulent sitting room, I searched out my mother. She was sitting with the Balakins. Perfect. I could use Sonya’s support.

I dropped into an empty seat with a gusty sigh, and the ladies turned, frowning at the interruption of their genteel afternoon. There was no energy left in me to apologize for causing a scene.

Not before tea.

I poured myself a cup of chamomile.

“Lady Balakin, if you wouldn’t mind passing the vodka, I would be very much obliged.” My voice came out hoarse, as if I’d been screaming. I felt like screaming.

Perhaps I should scream. That seemed a justifiable recourse in this situation.

Instead, I tightened my smile and swallowed the urge.

The elder Lady Balakin frowned my way. Yes, the vodka was there, but it was early in the day, and I’d not even had my first cup. It was uncouth to add spirits to your very first cup. In the Voronezh court, the second was fair game.

To my left, Mother also wore a pinched expression, but her onyx brow was furrowed with worry rather than judgement.

“Lapochka, are you all right?”

At the familiar diminutive, Grusha peeked his head up from where he’d rested it on my shoulder. Long and lithe, he skittered down the sleeve of my blue coat, holding on with his little claws. His front paws hit my thigh, and he scrambled across my knee and onto the arm of my chair.

It took him a moment to stretch across the space between my chair and hers, but he managed it and used a tight grip on the upholstery to hoist himself over.

The moment he was in her lap, he curled one way in the folds of her skirt. She scratched his forehead, and he pressed into the comforting touch. Squirming happily, he got up, twisted around, and curled the other way before settling down.

I was too old to put my head in my mother’s lap and cry, but Grusha? He would never have to hold back.

It was soothing to watch her long, pale fingers move through his velvety umber fur. Some prickle of his pleasure and comfort passed between our bond and soothed the sharpest edges of my panic.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Sonya biting her pink lip. She snatched the decanter of vodka from in front of her mother and abandoned the couch they’d shared in favor of squeezing into the chair I was sitting in.

With her full hips, we barely fit, but for once, I had no impulse to push her onto the floor and reclaim my glorious solitude to peals of laughter and much cursing. I wanted to hold her tight instead, and I’d never, ever let her go.

If anyone could protect me from that madman, it’d be her.

Not that she could do much about his dragon.

Frosty tits, he was going to have his dragon eat me whole, wasn’t he?

Sonya leaned over the low table between our cluster of seats and poured a generous splash of liquor into my teacup. “Clearly, he’s not all right in the slightest. He’s as pale as Yuli.”

At the mention of my mother’s snow leopard, Grusha chirped and looked around for his friend. That was the way of creatures bonded to us—even if they’d have been natural enemies, they formed bonds as fierce as those we’d forged between each other.

“What’s happened, darling?” Sonya asked.

I snatched my teacup from its saucer and took a large gulp before I could find the strength to answer her.

“I’m getting married,” I rasped, lips wet and bitter with tea and vodka from my clumsy swallow.

Lady Balakin blinked.

“Oh dear.” Her daughter sighed, tipping another generous portion of vodka into my cup.

Gratefully, I took another sip before I met my mother’s eyes. I needed the familiar burn to steel my resolve.

Those gorgeous irises were the only thing I hadn’t inherited from her. We shared the same long, dark hair—the same skin pale as snow. But her eyes were burning onyx coals, and mine were the flat, pale gray of the bottom of a shallow pool on a cloudy day. They were my father’s eyes, and I would be the first to admit, they were not half so expressive as hers.

“To whom?” she asked, voice calm and measured, but oh so cold.

“I—” Fear gripped my chest again, strangling the air from my lungs. I couldn’t find the words.

With a squeak, Grusha rushed back over to me, squeezing between the small of my back and the seat’s cushions to hide.

“To”—Mother sat her teacup down on her saucer with a sharp clink, her eyes never leaving mine—“whom?”

I swallowed.

How had it become my responsibility to explain this whole mess to Mother? I was hardly its architect.

Sonya’s eager gaze was boring into the side of my face, but I was trapped in the sights of a predator. Yes, yes, I knew that Mother wasn’t angry with me. I wasn’t sure that she ever had been angry with me, come to think of it. But that didn’t make her any less formidable.

“Prince Mikhail,” I whispered.

“Fucking shit.” Sonya snatched the half-empty teacup from my hands and replaced it with the whole decanter of vodka. Thoughtfully, she’d kept the stopper in her hand, and I took a drink straight from the bottle.

“Sonya!” Lady Balakin hissed, looking around the room to see if any of the other ladies had heard the obscene exclamation.

“Sorry, Mother. But really. Prince Mikhail is so beastly.” She pouted at me, clicking her tongue. “How could anyone think he’s a suitable match for our sweet Genya?”

That . . . somehow did not sound so very different from Prince Georgiy calling me a fine bit of china for his nephew to break. I supposed Sonya’s connotations were a bit kinder.

I took another drink. Vodka burned in my belly. I was going to make myself sick.

Good. Prince Mikhail might find me unsuitable if I were to vomit on his boots.

My mother’s sharp gaze had gone distant, but it only lasted a moment. Every movement she made afterward—leaning forward, setting her saucer on the table, standing and smoothing her hands over her skirt—was carefully controlled.

“Please, excuse me.” She dipped politely without sparing any of us another glance. I knew the hardness that’d taken over her profile. She was going to talk to Father.

I swallowed again.

Sonya leaned against my arm and lowered her voice. “Don’t you worry.” She gripped my hand. “She’ll see you free of all this.”

Blood and land, I hoped so.

“And if she doesn’t,” Sonya whispered, “maybe that’s just as well?”

Oh fuck, I was actually going to be sick. I pressed my fist against my tightly closed lips and swallowed down the bile.

“How so?” I croaked, once I had a better handle on the vodka that was both keeping me from fainting and burning through my insides like dragon fire.

“Anastasia told me that our youngest prince fucks like a stallion.”

Heat flooded my face, and I was hardly the only one.

“By the blood, Sonya!” Lady Balakin looked like she was going to swoon. Her and me both.

People were beginning to look at us. Lady Balakin started fanning her face desperately.

Sonya’s lashes fluttered. She knew precisely what she was doing to her mother, but did she know what she was doing to me?

Nerves squirmed in my lower belly like a coil of snakes, and heat flooded every inch of me.

She did. The minx knew exactly what she was doing. There was no other explanation for what came next.

“You see, it’s not just that he has a nice cock, straight as a ramrod, but when it’s hard, it curves upward just so, so that, well—” She made a gesture with two curved fingers and her gently closed fist that had my heart threatening to blow apart in my chest. My head was on fire. It was. It had to be.

Sonya stared right at me as her fingers fucked her hand. The thing was, those fingers had⁠—

I’d—

Well, I’d had those fingers inside me. There was little to do at court, and Sonya and I had tried everything our young minds could think of. She’d not wanted to go to a husband with no knowledge, and I’d been sick of relieving myself. Distractions were necessary when the winter nights stretched out forever and we were all stuck in the palace. Experimentation was natural for young people, damn it.

Everyone said so.

And truth was, there was nothing we had done that I’d liked half so much as her pushing those fingers inside me. I’d asked her to do it when I was only sixteen, stammering and uncertain. She’d been delighted to try—it was one of her best qualities, really, a readiness for anything—and when she had found that place that spread magic through my whole body, I had gasped, and she had laughed, and I’d come apart like the stripling I’d been.

At nineteen, was I any different?

Now, that startling pleasure was all I could think about. But a man handling me that way? A man with a man’s rough fingers and brash confidence?

I’d had boys before, but none of them stood quite so tall as Prince Mikhail.

I very nearly squeaked like Grusha.

“Not only that,” she said, glancing around at us with a smile. Some of the ladies were shifting closer to our little group, intrigued now that they’d realized we were discussing something lewd. “But it’s the way he thrusts his hips, leaving no quarter. Each movement so . . . so fierce.”

Sweet blood, did that actually sound appealing?

Fuck.

It did.

“Are you talking about Prince Mikhail?” Lady Semenov asked.

Fuck. She was married. She’d been married for years. How did she identify him so readily?

That was two women, at least, that Prince Mikhail had taken. What if he preferred women to men?

What if he left me alone each night to bed them?

The whole court would know. Every lady in this room would have opportunity to snicker behind my back. I’d be the laughingstock of all of Voronezh—not man enough to keep my husband’s interest. Just a bauble.

With a groan, I dropped my head into my hands. Bad enough that I was marrying a beast, but this one wouldn’t even be satisfied with me.

Sonya tapped her nails on the decanter hanging from my loose grip. “Take another sip. You’ll feel better.”

“Actually, I think I’ll feel . . . worse.” Hard to imagine how this could get any worse, really. “I—I should go. Check on Mother. Make sure she’s⁠—”

Getting me out of this? Absolutely.

With a shrug and no answer, I left the ladies to their gossiping, but when I made my way to the residential wing of the palace, I heard raised voices and froze at the end of the hall.

It was not far from the ladies’ sitting room to our quarters. The palace arranged so that every living area, each place a person of position might want to spend time, was toward the center. Storage rooms and servants’ quarters took up the outside walls, but here was better insulated and more likely to stay warm in the long winters.

My feet scuffed the long carpet that covered the length of the hallway we lived in. I could hear my mother’s shouting from the corridor’s mouth. Grusha had scampered behind me from the drawing room, but when I walked toward the door, he hung back in fear of her.

“He is mine, Ivan! Mine.”

“He is a man grown, and he’ll act like it,” my father replied. He wasn’t shouting, but he had a way of speaking in a voice so loud that it filled whatever room he was in. Like Feo, he enjoyed taking up space in the world.

“He is a boy still, and he is mine. After Ekaterina⁠—”

She came up short, and I could imagine the tick of her jaw when she shut her mouth.

“You said he was mine,” she hissed.

Ekaterina had died—their last child, the daughter she had always hoped for. Mother had been heartbroken, and Father, disappointed. Losing Ekaterina was only one of a long line of disappointments—lost pregnancies and those poor children bound to creatures they couldn’t handle, who had died as a result of Father’s hubris—tragedy after tragedy. Now there was just Feofan and me, and I could still remember sinking my tiny hand into Yuli’s soft fur while tears streamed down my mother’s cheeks and my parents negotiated our futures.

They would not try again. Father would raise Feofan to be a soldier, and Mother could do as she liked with me. I had feared then that I wasn’t enough to make up for all her sadness, but afterward, she’d come to me with the softest smile and swung me up into her arms, and things had gone back to being precisely as I liked them. Mother and I played all day and ate biscuits at teatime each afternoon.

Feofan learned the sword, and I⁠—

Well, I supposed I learned to sit still and look pretty, but I also learned how the court really worked—the things that husbands missed and rulers overlooked.

“You cannot trade him away without discussing it with me first. And to that boor? It’s unconscionable. I won’t allow it.”

“It is already done, Ulyana. But by all means, drag him before the king and make your case. I’m certain His Majesty will understand why you’d throw the generous offer of a prince for our son’s match back in his face.”

King Dmitri would take that very poorly. Everyone knew that he had no love for Prince Mikhail, and even less for Prince Konstantin after the tragedy that had blinded Princess Darya and her dragon. But still, it would be seen as an insult, and nothing, nothing, was worth risking the king’s wrath.

The room beyond the door had gone silent, but I still waited for my heartbeat to slow before I cracked the door open. Only my mother was standing there in the center of the foyer, practically shaking with fury, her lovely face red. Redder on one side than the other, I noticed.

The moment I stepped inside, she turned to me, her expression crumpling into one of depthless sorrow.

“I will fix this, lapochka,” she swore, but her breath shook, and I knew that she was promising more than she could give.

There was nothing to do but soothe her fears, and my practiced smile had yet to fail me. “There’s no need. Prince Mikhail may not be what everyone says.”

She huffed, a faint line appearing between her brows when she frowned.

“And there’s always divorce,” I offered when she remained unconvinced.

It was the law of the land—marriages could fail, and assets were split fairly between partners. If this was a disaster, I would require nothing of Prince Mikhail but a clean escape, and maybe he would be happier for it. We could tell the king that we had tried and failed.

There was no need to feed me to his terrifying dragon simply to be rid of me.

Unless, of course, the prince wanted to offer the king an affront of his own.

When Mother sighed, some of the tension went out of her shoulders. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“I should at least meet him. I would . . . I would like to meet him, I think. Before causing any affront to His Majesty, at the very least.”

That was certainly the only reason. Sonya had not said one single word to pique my interest in our hotheaded prince.

Not one.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to Grace Long Pope, our Regent of Llangard, and to all of our Patrons over on our Patreon page. Your support is enabling us to commission artwork based on our stories, ship signed paperbacks, offer our books in different formats, and more. We love getting to take this journey with you.

Thank you to our incredible PA, Kim Licki, who never fails to keep us sane and human-shaped! And to Natasha Snow for the beautiful cover.

Thank you to our families—yes, cats included—who let us glare at our screens for hours on end and make sure we don’t forget to eat.

And last but certainly not least, a great big thank you to you, readers! We couldn’t do this amazing job and write all the kissing books under the rainbow without your faith, energy, and support.

You’re the best. <3

ALSO BY SAM BURNS & W.M. FAWKES

ON THE WIND

Sanctuary

Guardian

Harbor

TO KILL A KING

Dragon’s Dawn

Dragon’s Dusk

Dragon’s Descent

FIRE & VALOR

The King’s Dragon

The Prince’s Dragon

The Assassin’s Dragon

LORDS OF THE UNDERWORLD

Prince of Death

Prisoner of Shadows

Patron of Mercy

SONS OF OLYMPUS

Wildfire

Fireforged

Warfire

POISONWOOD & LYRIC NOVELLAS

Poisonwood

Wyrmwood

Hardwood

WOLF MOON RISING

Black Moon

Harvest Moon

Hunter Moon

Cold Moon

Strawberry Moon

STAR MARKED WARRIORS

Captured

Declared

Submitted

STAND-ALONE BOOKS

Pool of Dreams

A Dragon’s Fortune (Magic Emporium #3)

For Life & In Death

The Black King

First Bite

Trickster

Zephyr & the Western Wolf

ALSO BY SAM BURNS

THE SUMMERTIDE CHRONICLES

Gloombringer

Dawnchaser

Sunrunner

Moonstriker (March 2025)

SLEEPING FOXES

Where Foxes Say Goodnight

Let Sleeping Foxes Lie

CIRCLE THE SQUARE

The Elemental Keyes

The Elemental Ruins

THE FANTASTIC FLUKE

The Fantastic Fluke

Fluke and the Faithless Father

Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco

Fluke and the Frontier Farce

Fluke and the Fantastic Finale

THE WOLVES OF KISMET

Wolf Lost

Wolf Found

Wolf Reborn

THE ROWAN HARBOR CYCLE

Blackbird in the Reeds

Wolf and the Holly

Fox and Birch

Hawk in the Rowan

Stag and the Ash

Adder and Willow

In Any Light

Eagle in the Hawthorn

Salmon and the Hazel

Wren and Oak

WILDE LOVE

Straight from the Heart

Sins of the Father

Strike up the Band

Saint and the Sinner

A Very Wilde Christmas

MISCELLANEOUS

The Fairest

The Cat Returns to Adderly

Lightning Born

ABOUT SAM BURNS

Sam is an author of LGBTQIA+ fiction, mostly light-hearted fantasy romances. Most of her books include a little violence, a fair amount of swearing, and maybe a sex scene or two.

Oh, and let’s not forget a fox. He’d be offended at being forgotten.

She is a full-time writer who lives near the ocean with her husband and cat.

For more information:

sam@burnswrites.com

ABOUT W.M. FAWKES

W.M. Fawkes is an author of LGBTQ+ urban fantasy and paranormal romance. She lives with her partner in a house owned by three halloween-hued felines that dabble regularly in shadow walking.

For more information:

www.fawkeswrites.com

waverly@fawkeswrites.com