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As though it were so simple.

I close my eyes, feel the heat coming off the steel, even though it wasn’t in the kiln that long. Zovid is keeping it raging over 2,500 degrees.

I pull my hands into fists as I’d been doing while magicking everything else up to this point, muscles tensing, my mind thinking the wordstrong.Unbreakable. Impenetrable. Untouchable.Every synonym I can imagine going through my head.

But instead of focusing the thoughts dead ahead, to one item, I expand, imagine my magic filling the room.

And the magic—it catches on every heated iron item in the forge.

I’m grinning so wide it hurts my cheeks.

“It worked!” I say.

“Good,” Serutha says. “Now enough of this nonsense.”

She and Ashper go to the piles of armor just outside the forge. They bring back inside armloads, chucking individual sheets into the opening in the kiln. Breastplates, greaves, helmets, gauntlets, faulds, pauldrons, and more.

Serutha points to the opening. “Now do it again.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It’s only the addition of the wordemergencyto Petrik’s call of a meeting that convinces me to join him.

I was enjoying an afternoon off. With my new ability to magic several things at once discovered, it really only took another day to get through all the armor presented to me.

I sigh at the thought of what I’m losing. An entire afternoon to myself.

But I follow the scholar down the halls.

The shouting starts before I even reach the room.

“… stubborn idiot!” Skiro’s voice fills the halls, so I really hope the conversation isn’t meant to be private. “Imbecile. Useless wretch!”

“Verak always was Mother’s favorite,” Marossa says as I step through the door. “She babied him. Gave him a complex. He’s never been able to see danger with any real clarity.”

“He’ll see it when it’s on his doorstep.”

Princess Marossa cleans dirt from under her fingernails withthe sharp end of a knife. “By then we’ll be dead, so you won’t be able to say I told you so.”

Skiro rounds on her. “Yes,that’swhat I’m worrying about! Me missing my opportunity to be obnoxious! Could you take this seriously! We don’t have enough numbers.”

“Orena and Lisady are both sending troops through the portals.”

“Barely a hundred men each! What are we supposed to do with those?”

“I imagine we’ll send them to fight.”

“And when they die, our sisters will have no men left to guard their own lands. If only they would come. If only they would join us here to strategize and plan so we can present Kymora with some semblance of a united front! Instead, they’re content to hide in their own realms.”

Marossa turns over her hand to inspect her nails. “Don’t forget Verak, who’s just being a horse’s ass to spite us.”

“This is all Father’s fault. If he wouldn’t have divided the kingdoms. If he would have just given the whole damn thing to Ravis—”

Petrik steps forward. “You don’t mean that.”

“I certainly do! If Ravis ruled everything, I wouldn’t have so many people to protect. I’d be spending my days in the Great Library, meeting artists from around the globe.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”