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“Oh?” Dyrian raised a fair eyebrow against freckled skin. “Am I mistaken? Did you not save a Spindleblade from Taristan of Old Cor’s grasp?”

“Yes, but—” Andry faltered. He curled a fist to stave off a fresh wave of painful memories. “I suppose that feels like a long time ago now.”

“For you,” Dyrian said thoughtfully, holding his gaze.

Andry’s flush deepened.

“True,” he muttered, finding little else to say.A year must seem like a few days to him, if that.

He eyed the doors again, and the guards pretending to ignore them both. “Can you hear what they’re saying in there?”

“Yes,” Dyrian answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Then it was his turn to blush, a rare pink creeping over his face. “Oh, can you not?”

Andry stifled a laugh and shook his head. “No, my lord.”

Dyrian’s eyes went round with fascination. Elder though he was, dozens of years old, his wonderment betrayed his true age.

“How strange,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Shall I tell you?”

It felt wrong to manipulate a child, but Andry brushed it off as best he could.

“I’d like that immensely.”

The young lord grinned, showing a gap in otherwise perfect teeth.

“Isibel is angry with my uncle Valnir,” he said, his focus shifting to the throne room beyond. “She says he is driven by guilt, not sense.”

Corayne had explained as much to Andry when he first arrived. Valnir was not only the brother of Lady Eyda, but forcibly exiled to Allward, cast out of Glorian before the Elders lost their realm. Because he fearedthe Spindles and made weapons to destroy them.

He forged the Spindleblades, and now we all pay the price.

“Isibel says...” Dyrian’s voice faltered, his conspiratorial smile fading. A shadow crossed his face. “She says that Valnir and my mother proved war is too dangerous. They spilled too much Elder blood. She will not make the same mistake.”

The Monarch of Kovalinn was too young to hide his emotions well. Tears shimmered in his eyes, a red flush creeping up his neck as he did his best not to cry. Andry’s hand twitched and he nearly embraced him, forgetting for a moment that Dyrian was an Elder lord, and not a homesick boy crying in the barracks.

“I’m sorry about your people,” Andry murmured, crouching so they were eye level. “And your home.”

Dyrian wrinkled his nose, as if scrunching his face might keep the tears from falling. He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, embarrassed.

“Kovalinn was never our home. Not truly. We are children of Glorian,” he said stiffly, as if reciting a prayer. It did not help his mood. “But Kovalinn was the only home I ever knew,” he added, half whispering.

Elders and lords be damned.

Andry could not help himself. He reached out to take the young immortal by the shoulder. Behind him, the Kovalinn guards went tense, but Dyrian relaxed into his grip. He even sniffled.

“My home is gone too,” Andry said, his own voice breaking. He thought of Ascal, the palace, the knights and squires he’d lived all his life beside. The queen he served, who betrayed them all. Andry mourned for it all, as he mourned for himself, and a fate long dead.

“Burn the life behind you,” he murmured, remembering Valtik’s words from a lifetime ago.

Dyrian peered up at him. “What?”

“Just something a friend said once,” Andry answered. “That I needed to burn the life behind me, to save the realm. And that life is certainly ashes now.”

“My life burned too.” Dyrian sniffled.

Then the Ionians jumped to attention, a flurry of motion as they reached for the doors. Andry turned in time to see them swing open, revealing the Elder nobles in all their splendor.

Isibel led the other two, still in her white robes, her silver-gold hair unbound and streaming. Her moon-gray eyes pierced through Andry as if he were only mist. The ash branch shivered in her hand, its leaves gleaming as she strode forward, forceful in her steps. Valnir and Lady Eyda followed inches behind, alike in their pale skin and red hair.