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“You’re right,” I sighed. I hated to admit that, but I often had no choice. “Now is not the time to pick a fight with a Merlord. But I have an idea.”

Kalen’s brows shot up. “Oh?”

“Tonight, at the ball. I’ll get it back from him.”

As if it would be that easy.

“How exactly do you plan to do that, Brave Gwynore?”

I gave him a nasty look. He knew how much I hated the nickname everyone seemed to know about. Even someone as distant from me as Tyr. Though I would admit I kind of liked the way he said it. On everyone else, the title seemed to come off as one of nobility. A well-deserved epithet I couldn’t remember earning.

But when the words tumbled off the General’s tongue, it seemed almost suggestive, maybe even sensual. Then again, everything he said seemed to suggest something worth blushing over.

My mouth turned up, and I was sure my cheeks actually reddened as I made up the plan in my head. It was going to be the least fun I’d ever had but finding my way back to mysoul would not come without sacrifice. Even if it meant handing myself over to the ballroom floor.

“You hate dancing,” Kalen said, breaking my focus. I turned to him; eyes wide. I wished there was an enchantment I could learn to keep him from inviting himself into my thoughts.

“I also hate when you read my mind without permission.”

“I wasn’t.” He scrunched his nose, offended that I would even suggest it. “You hate dancing. It’s just something I know about you.”

Yes. That’s right. Because he knew me and I did not.

“The scholars of Leoth must have been pretty nuanced when they wrote that book about my life.”

“Or you’re just easier to read than you think you are.”

Across the room, Tyr’s recruits spread out, forcing Kalen and me to the edges of the training pit. I let my back press against one of the white stone monoliths that formed a large circle around the ring and I looked up into the cloudless sky.

Aegedonia’s sky was purest shade of blue I had seen anywhere on the Continent, like the sky and the sea poured themselves into each other, taking and giving until you couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other began.

“That’s beside the point,” I whispered to Kalen. “Do you think it will work?”

We were far enough away from Tyr and his troops, but not far enough to ward off the flies on the wall, or the crabs in the sand, I supposed, that could still be listening.

“What? Your plan to flirt with him all night long, ply him with alcohol, and then dance him into a drunken stupor for just long enough to steal the dagger back?”

I tilted my chin down at him in jest. “So you were listening?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

Kalen stuffed his duffel with our supplies, clearly eager to beanywhere but the training ring. He hefted it across one of his shoulders. “Yes, the gods-damned plan will work,” he grumbled and flipped an obscene gesture my way.

I laughed, truly, for the first time in so long. Tyr’s men stared, but I didn’t pay any attention, enjoying the sound as it spilled out of me.

THE GODS-DAMNED PLANwas not working. Perhaps I had given too much of myself away earlier in the training room, or maybe my ego had been so inflated by the general that I didn’t realize his flirtation was all just a tease. Whichever it was, Tyr was pointedly ignoring me tonight.

I stood hidden behind the curve of the dais, where Ione surveyed the revelry before her. I watched, grateful that I was not asked to join her at the top, seated a step below her throne as a guest of honor like Kalen had been. She’d allowed me not keep cover, for reasons I was completely unable to grasp.

Ione was not my ally, but with the threat of my identity hanging over my head like a constant cloud, I didn’t feel inclined to question why she agreed to keep my presence a secret from the larger population of her faction.

From the look of it, Ione had gone to great lengths to celebrate the Preserver’s arrival. Hundreds of guests drifted in and out of the throne room, lining up to the foot of Ione’s throne to give thanks, and then wading out to the center to indulge in food and drykkja. Most of the party-goers were members of the High Mer’s regime: royal merchants, Merlords, esteemed privateers, and the like. However, some citizens who lived close to the castle walls had journeyed to enjoy the palace they helped sustain.

The dress of the middle class was only one of the ways Icould tell these guests apart. The clothes were sturdier, built to last. Color palettes were darker shades of teal and blue, like the deepest parts of the ocean they came from. Looking at them, I felt rather immodestly dressed in my pearly silk dress, but I was grateful for my deep neckline and the panels that cut across my side. If there was one thing absolutely un-enchanting about this faction, it was the heat.

My skin constantly felt like it was coated in a gloss, attracting every bit of sand that floated through the air. The only relief I had found tonight was in the frosted flutes of alcohol that some server or another kept shoving into my hands whenever they were spotted empty.