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Hawthorne ignored this, his grip still firm on her arm as though he expected her to lunge for Seb.

She wanted to, hatred simmering just below the surface at the bastard who was so intent on humiliating her. She yanked her arm out of Wilder’s grip. ‘Iwillbeat him,’ she muttered determinedly.

Hawthorne didn’t move from her side. ‘Perhaps one day,’ he said. ‘But not today. Not tomorrow. You know it, and worse, he knows it.’

Thea’s throat constricted. ‘Why are you here? Talking to me?’ she asked quietly. ‘You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me.’

Hawthorne’s eyes darkened, and he shook his head in disbelief. ‘Is that what you took from that conversation?’ His low voice vibrated against her skin and once more Thea became particularly aware of her heart thudding against her chest.

The Warsword considered her for a moment before he wet his lips and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Not here,’ he said. He stepped away and pointed to Kipp. ‘You!’

Whatever they were doing, it was playing with fire. Still, she tried to hide her disappointment as Kipp approached. She liked her friend a lot, she really did, but he was no born fighter andif she wanted to master her own abilities, she needed stronger opponents.

As though sensing her hesitation, Hawthorne spoke again. ‘You do not become a legend overnight,’ he told her quietly. ‘A legend is forged with blood and steel. It takes time.’

I don’t have time, Thea wanted to shout at him, but she clamped her mouth shut and stopped herself from grabbing her fate stone.

‘Learn the rules,’ he said, his voice low and rumbling. ‘Only then can you break them.’

‘Any other pearls of wisdom for me?’ Thea asked, wishing he’d stay to instruct her and Kipp, but knowing that he wouldn’t.

‘Youarein desperate need of wisdom,’ he replied wryly. ‘But start with this: if you fight like a fool, you’ll die like a fool.’

‘Great.’

Kipp stood beside her now, shifting from foot to foot, interest bright in his eyes at the presence of the mighty warrior.

Hawthorne waited until the lanky shieldbearer had composed himself and stopped fidgeting. ‘One more thing,’ he added. ‘Always end your opponent when you can. Men are known for playing dead and running away in the night, or coming back to slit your throat in your sleep. But no man or monster can run away with his guts hanging out or with his head detached from his body.’

And on that brutal note, the Warsword left the two shieldbearers to stare after him as he stalked through the sparring pairs.

‘Well, that was morose,’ Kipp stated, his expression somewhat baffled. ‘What else did he tell you?’

‘Something about if you fight like a fool, you’ll die like a fool?’ Thea replied, the hair on the back of her neck rising as her heart pounded wildly.

Kipp huffed a laugh. ‘Guess I’m a dead man then.’

With Vernich the Bloodletter yelling orders from the arena, they began their drills.

The rest of the day slipped away from them and by sundown, every muscle in Thea’s body was screaming in protest. The week had taken its toll and she could hardly walk the trail back to the fortress without limping. She wasn’t the only one suffering. Two recruits left Thezmarr that evening without farewells.

Despite all her prior efforts, Thea was unfit and undisciplined. She was certainly no match for Seb, and if she was no match for the likes of him, then she wasn’t worthy of any warrior title. With the apprenticeships for Warswords now in play, she was going to have to push herself harder than ever before.

If you seek power in a world of men and monsters, there is nothing more powerful than knowledge and the ability to wield it.

Filled with a renewed sense of purpose, Thea curled up in her cold narrow bed, Dax once again at her feet and, with no fear for her safety, fell soundly asleep.

She woke long before dawn and slipped from the room to train alone in the dark.

The weeks that followed very much resembled Thea’s first as a shieldbearer. Training and sparring, training and sparring, with endurance sessions and shield wall lessons thrown in for good measure. At first, Thea was in perpetual pain, her muscles, her lungs, her bones… Everything hurt from the relentless exertion she put her body through, yet she persisted and, ever so slowly, she felt herself growing stronger, faster. She woke up and trained before the rest every day, no matter the violent storms that seemed to lash Thezmarr in the early hours of the morning.

As Esyllt had predicted, a handful of recruits dropped out, unable to stand the thankless drills and dire warnings of impending doom. Some days they simply found themselves down a person, and no one said anything about it. Kipp and Cal became her constant companions, and though she often missed Wren, Sam and Ida, she was grateful to the young men for their friendship. Without them, the Bloodwoods, the arena and the Great Hall would have been bitter, lonely places. Together, they celebrated their small wins and commiserated with each other over their bruises, cuts and scrapes. Kipp and Cal understood her in a way that her sister and their friends never had. They knew what being a warrior of Thezmarr meant to her.

Thea fell into a steady routine of more training, drills, eating, researching former trials and Warsword history with Malik in the library and passing out in her bed with Dax curled up at her feet. Depending on her level of exhaustion, she switched between using the masters’ baths and the women’s bathing quarters on the other side of the fortress, not wanting to push her luck.

With each passing day, the urgency and desperation to pass the initiation test grew, as did her burning desire to be named one of the Warsword apprentices. That tension rippled through the entire cohort, the competition amplifying with every lesson, every drill.

Her spying days were not altogether forgotten, and Thea listened for whispers in the fortress, for news of breaches in the Veil and the scourge Hawthorne had mentioned to her. Such secrets were heavily guarded among the higher ranks of the guild, but the unease was palpable nonetheless. Something was coming.