: Chapter 25

The forge is busier than ever now that the winter snows are well behind us and more travelers take to the road. Word has spread widely about the Royal Challenge, and travelers needing a blacksmith are full of gossip: what cities are already boasting champions, what prizes the Crown will offer, what competitions will be held. Callyn’s bakery is busy, too, and I see horses and carriages out in front of her shop more often than not. I heard hammers pounding a few days ago and went to look, and there were roofers replacing worn and rotted shingles on the roof of her barn. Business must be going very well. Cal used to bring me her leftover pastries every afternoon, but now days will pass before I’ll see her—and when I do, she’s always rushing back.

Like the change in the weather, something has shifted between her and me.

Lord Alek hasn’t returned. Lady Karyl hasn’t returned. Any silver I had is gone, paid to the tax collector or lost to ale, courtesy of my father. At first, I was glad for their absence. After watching Lord Alek put a blade into Tycho, I haven’t been eager to see him again.

But as the weeks have drawn on, I’ve begun to worry about how we’re going to pay the rest of what we owe.

I wonder if Cal is still mad at me. Our last argument haunts my waking thoughts.

I’d ask her if I could find a chance to see her.

My days have found a new routine anyway. I wake early every morning, pull the bow and arrows from beneath my bed, and venture into the woods for a few hours before I attack the forge. I’ve never been weak on my crutches, but trekking out to retrieve my arrows every morning has given me a greater endurance I didn’t realize I was lacking. I have the balance and strength to stand and shoot without bracing against a tree now. Two dozen arrows have joined my first four, and I’ve acquired a heavy quiver, too, thanks to an early spring hunting party. They needed a wagon axle fixed and asked if I was willing to barter. A few weeks later, a fur trader noticed bruising along the inside of my wrist from where the bowstring snaps, and she offered a well-worn bracer. It covers my palm and stretches the length of my forearm, with brass buckles and a small sheath for a knife.

While I was shoeing her horse, the trader leaned against the work table and said, “Are you trying to qualify for the Royal Challenge?”

I laughed without any humor and didn’t look up from my work. “Sure,” I said caustically. “I think I’ve got a real shot.”

“My sister is hopeful, too,” she said. “You might see her there. Her name is Hanna. She has a green kit, with black stars on her quiver.”

I glanced up, confused, but then I realized she wasn’t teasing—and she heard my answer as truth instead of sarcasm.

It was the first time anyone looked at me as capable of anything other than swinging a hammer, and I think about that moment a lot— a lot more than I’d like to admit. After that, the idea of the Royal Challenge became wedged in my thoughts, and I can’t seem to shake it loose.

It’s a ridiculous idea anyway. It costs five silvers to enter. If I had five silvers, I’d hide them away for the tax collector.

I shoot every morning, I work the forge all day, and I collapse into bed at night. I try not to think about how we’ll pay the rest of what we owe.

But when it’s very dark, and very late, and very quiet, I allow myself to think of Lord Tycho, and how that fur trader wasn’t the first person to see me as capable. I’ll remember his encouraging voice or the snow in his hair or the way he let me ride his horse. The way he sat with me beside the forge and spoke quietly about his life.

You fancy him, Cal said.

Maybe I did. Does it matter? I may as well fancy a star in the sky.

I don’t know if he ever made it back to the palace, but surely gossip about harm to the King’s Courier would’ve made it to Briarlock by now. It’s been almost two months since his blood was soaking into the dirt beside the forge. I’ve given up hope of ever seeing him again, which is fine. Better, actually, because the memory no longer stings like I once worried it would. Befriending a member of the nobility is an impossibility. He’s very likely forgotten all about Briarlock, about the blacksmith he once taught to shoot a bow.

Which is why I nearly put a hammer right through my hand when I see him riding up the lane.

He’s not alone today. Another man rides alongside, mounted on a large black gelding with four white socks. The man is older than Tycho, though not by too much, and seems taller too. He’s got curly dark hair that’s a bit windblown, along with a thin beard. He’s trimmed in armor that’s every bit as fine as Tycho’s, all rich leather and gleaming buckles, though the insignia over his heart is different: the crest of Syhl Shallow backed by a shield of gold.

Clouds above. I don’t know what it means, but this man is clearly someone important. I seize my crutches and stand before they reach the courtyard.

Tycho leaps down from his horse first. He looks every bit as windblown as his companion, with a few days of beard growth coating his jaw, but his eyes are bright and alert, no hint of the tense exhaustion that clung to him the last time he was here.

“Jax!” he says so brightly that it forces a smile onto my face. “Well met.”

“Well met,” I say, and I can feel warmth in my cheeks. “Lord Tycho.” I glance at the man swinging down from his horse more sedately. “My lord.”

“This is Jacob of Disi,” Tycho says. “Counsel to the King, Man-at-Arms to the Queen’s Army of Syhl—”

“Jake is fine,” the other man says. He’s got more of an accent, so he must originally be from Emberfall as well. He gives me an appraising glance that would make me bristle if it didn’t seem so unprejudiced. This is a man who sizes up everyone he meets, I can tell. He glances at Tycho and then back at me, and a light sparks in his eyes as if he’s solved a puzzle. “Well met.” He smiles. “Jax.”

I’m so surprised that they’re here. The last time I saw Lord Tycho, his blood was spilling into the dirt and I was worried he wouldn’t make it home. Now he’s here, and he’s well, and I almost can’t stop staring at him to reassure myself that this moment is real. I’m not quite sure what to say, but I have to say something. “What can I offer?”

Lord Jacob turns to look at his companion, and his smile broadens. “Yes, Lord Tycho,” he says. “What can he offer?”

Tycho gives him a shove. “We’re on our way back to the Crystal City. We were going to stop at Callyn’s bakery first,” he says to me, “but she has a line out the door, so we decided to come here.”

They’re friends. Or … something close. A militaristic camaraderie that reminds me of that moment when Tycho hit me in the arm with the arrow. I’m off balance, uncertain how to respond. “Do you need something from the forge?” I glance at Lord Jacob again. “My lords?”

Tycho loses the smile. “Oh. No.” He hesitates, and his eyes flick past me to the glowing forge. “Forgive me. I should have realized we would be interrupting your work—”

“No!” I say. “It’s not an interruption.”

But then I’m not sure what else to say. Maybe he’s not either, because he stands there until an awkward silence builds between us.

“Silver hell,” Lord Jacob mutters. “Tycho mentioned that the last time he was here ended in bloodshed, so he wanted to make sure that Alek hadn’t caused any further … issues.”

“No.” I was more worried about Tycho, but I’m unsure how to voice that. “I haven’t seen Lord Alek since that day. He may have business in town,” I offer, “but I rarely have cause to leave the forge.”

Lord Jacob nods. “That’s what Tycho said, too.” He pauses. “Do you know what his messages might have contained?”

I shake my head quickly. “They were sealed.” I hesitate and try not to squirm under his scrutinizing gaze. There’s a part of me that wishes I had broken the seal, just so I’d have something to offer now. But of course that’s ridiculous, because if I read treasonous messages and passed them on, I’d be headed for the gallows myself. “I never read them,” I say hollowly.

Tycho says something to him in Emberish, his voice low. I don’t catch the words, but the tone sounds a lot like I told you so.

Lord Jacob nods. “The merchants in town might know something,” he says in Syssalah. He gives me a nod and turns back for his horse.

They’re leaving. I swallow. This … this can’t be it.

But of course it is. I’m not sure what I was expecting.

“Find me later, T,” Lord Jacob says as he swings aboard the gelding. “I’m going to seek out some food and talk to the shopkeepers.”

Tycho hesitates. “You don’t need me to come with you?”

“Nah. We’ve been setting a hard pace. I could use a break. I’ll go lose a few coins at the dice tables, too.” He grins. “Stay here for a while.

Get some sweetcakes if the line dies down.” He gives me a nod. “It was nice to meet you, Jax.”

He clucks to his horse, the gelding whirls, and he’s gone.

A cool breeze swirls through the courtyard, pulling smoke from the forge and scattering a few dried leaves along the turf. Tycho stands beside his horse. All the quiet openness from our last meeting is long gone, much like the radiant smile from when he arrived and leaped off his mare.

I don’t understand how I can fearlessly demand coins from a cruel man like Lord Alek, but when Tycho is in front of me, I can barely get it together to say my own name.

“I truly did not mean to be an interruption,” he finally says.

“You’re truly not.”

He smiles, and something about it is a bit bashful. “Want to shoot arrows again?”

His voice is lightly teasing, and I think he really is joking, but now it’s my turn to smile. “I’ll get my bow.”

I enjoy Tycho’s surprise at my bow and my bracer, but that’s nothing compared to when we get into the woods and he sees my targets.

“Whoa,” he breathes. “You’ve been busy.”

“It’s not much,” I say, but I’m pleased. “Just what I can carry.” I have a dozen steel rings suspended from tree branches, set at various locations and distances, as well as scraps of leather that I’ve nailed to numerous tree trunks.

He turns in a circle to see them all. “This is great.” His eyebrows go up when he sees some of the far targets. “That’s quite a distance.”

“I haven’t been able to hit them all yet.”

“Show me.”

I pull an arrow from my quiver. The woods are cooler. Darker. I’m keenly aware of his presence. It’s one thing to shoot by myself, with no one to witness my many misses—entirely different to know he could probably hit every single one of my targets blindfolded.

But I nock the arrow on the string, aim for something midrange, and take a slow breath. The arrow sails through one of the steel rings to embed itself in a leather square fifty feet away. I draw another and hit a tree farther down. But when I go for a third target, the arrow drifts to the ground well before reaching it.

I wince. “As you see.”

He shrugs. “That’s not you, that’s the bow. You’re trying to hit a seventy-five-yard target with a thirty-pound draw. Here.” He holds out his own.

I’ve shot his bow before, but now, after weeks of using my own, I realize how much heavier the wood is, how much more tension in the string. I nock an arrow and aim. The bow snaps hard, and I’m doubly grateful for the bracer. I have to hop once to keep my balance.

Thwick. The arrow snaps right into the leather square.

Tycho whistles. “I know soldiers who can’t hit a target at that distance.”

“That can’t be true.”

“My word that it is. You should be entering the Royal Challenge.”

He’s the second person to suggest that, but it means a lot more to hear it from him. I hold out his bow and try not to blush. “Can you?”

I mean for it to be a genuine question, but it comes out like a dare. Tycho draws four arrows from his quiver, and before I can blink, he’s flipping them across his knuckles and firing them off the string in rapid succession. Each arrow drives into a separate tree beside the one I shot. Thwick. Thwick. Thwick. Thwick.

I blink and stare. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to shoot in front of him again—but a bigger part that wants to know how he did that.

He smiles at my reaction. “That’s just army training.”

“Do it again,” I say.

He does, but this time, he shows me how he pins the extra arrows in his palm, hooking them with his middle finger as he needs to flip them into place. After he shoots, he takes two more arrows. “Give me your hand.”

He folds my fingers around the wooden shafts, just above the fletching. His hands are warm against mine, and it puts us very close. I’m aware of his breathing, of the way the sunlight brings out the gold in his hair, of the bare edge of corded muscle just above his bracer. I find myself wanting to wind my fingers through his, to step just a bit closer, to hear his voice deepen. Show me. Teach me. Tell me. Anything. Everything. Every time I see him, my thoughts don’t want to process that he’s here, that this moment is happening, that he’s invited me to shoot arrows or share apple tarts or ride his horse.

And the instant I have the thought, I realize that this moment will end, just like the last one, and it’ll be weeks or months or years before it happens again. If it happens again.

“Jax.”

I glance up, and I realize that he’s said something I’ve missed completely. His eyes are such a dark brown, searching mine.

My chest is tight, and I can’t get a handle on my emotions. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what he’s doing here. Just like last time, I can’t tell if this is charity or pity or if he still thinks I’m involved with whatever Alek is doing, but none of it matters. The last time he left, it was agonizing. That’s not his fault—but it’s not mine either.

I don’t want to do it again.

I grip the arrows and shove them into his chest. “I—I should really get back to the forge.” I seize my crutches and start walking.

“Jax!”

I ignore him. An icy breeze comes down from the mountain to whip through the trees, defying the spring sunlight. I’m not sure where my anger came from, but now I have nowhere to put it. An hour ago, I was flailing because they were leaving, and now I wish they’d never come. My crutches stab into the ground with each step. “Surely Lord Jacob is waiting for you,” I call.

“What just happened?”

Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. But much like the moment he healed my hand, this might feel like a kindness from his side, and it is, but from my end, it’ll just serve to show me everything I lack.