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At a much more grueling pace than I’d expected. Mila instructed me on a work out circuit that had me panting on the floor in a puddle of my own sweat not an hour later, all without touching a weapon.

“By the fucking Angels,” I swore at her. “What was that for?”

“How’s your mind?” She sat down beside me and crossed her legs.

“What?” I shoved my damp hair out of my face.

“Your mind? Is it racing like normal?”

I narrowed my eyes, lifting my head to assess her. “How do you know what my mind normally does?”

A shrug and no response.

Flopping my head back against the floorboards, I counted dust specks floating through the sun beams and dug into my mind. Oddly, it was calm.

“It’s…slower.” I caught her nod out of the corner of my eye. “The thoughts aren’t as loud.”

Like a roaring stream had slowed to a trickle, the patronizing memories had ceased. For that hour when I was paying attention to where my body was placed and how my muscles contracted and making sure I remembered to breathe through each set, my mind calmed for the first time in months.

I’d grown so used to the constant hum—could feel it mounting again as I lay there, but it had stopped.

“Because you focused,” Mila explained. “You spent the past hour giving every scrap of your attention to your physical fight rather than your mental one. I can guarantee the opposite happened yesterday, and it distracted you. Rightfully so, given what you’ve been through.”

My brow quirked. She’d said it in such an offhand manner, as if it was something I obviously already knew. Like my memories and the scars I bore were all valid and real, and I did not have to hide from them.

I sat up, abdominal muscles already groaning, and leaned my weight on my palms. “So, I have to be exerting myself in order to escape?”

“You won’t always,” Mila reassured. “But I wanted you to see you could. When there weren’t distractions and blades clashing around you, I wanted you to see what you were capable of.”

“But there will be distractions if I ever make it onto a battlefield.”

“Small steps win races, Warrior Prince.” Pushing to her feet, Mila extended a hand and pulled me to my feet. “That’s what my very first instructor told me. I was eager and wanted to train with my older brother’s class. Mind you, I wasn’t even thirteen.” As she talked, I poured us both glasses of water and handed one to her. “That instructor let me practice in small increments, with children my own age, and when I complained, he reminded me that the smallest lessons would one day serve me.”

“Where’s your brother now?” I asked.

Mila spun her water glass between her hands. “I have four, but I lost that one during the first war.” Her words rattled the cage around my heart. When she lifted her eyes to mine, there was steel within the blues. An admirable strength that I wanted to study. “I learned a lot of lessons from that day, too.”

I didn’t ask what they were; I could imagine how raw and vulnerable they must be. Instead, I searched for her original meaning and considered all the lessons I’d learned—from the brutally honest to the crushing losses to the hopeful attempts—and thought about how they’d all gotten me to where I was today. To a place where I had a calm head for once after months of roaring thoughts.

“I’m sure he’d be proud of the little girl who relentlessly trained and the general she’s become,” I said, tapping my glass against hers.

And I wondered about the boy I once was, who thought his dreams were crushed with the signing of a treaty. Perhaps there was hope for him yet.

Mila smiled. “Today you saw that you could take steps forward. Tomorrow we’ll work on controlling how.”

And for days, that’s what we did. The two of us in an abandoned stable reeking of stale hay and must. Before the sun rose fully and until voices drifted to us from the proper training yard. We compared the different methods we’d grown up with, exchanged stories of summer exchanges and techniques we’d learned from the minor clans. Truthfully, in those sessions, my mind quieted and I forgot the world outside.

First, it was only workouts. Each morning of that week, she never allowed me to raise a weapon. There were raids almost daily and a few close breaches of the border, though I was kept from the fighting.

Evenings were spent with us and at least a few other members of Lyria’s council in their cabin, planning the next move. Whoever was not stationed with our soldiers at that moment was within those walls. There, I was more helpful, relying on the leadership training I’d undergone my entire life.

Every time the horns sounded through camp and Mila was called away, I remained where I was instructed like a well-behaved soldier and awaited her return. I hated it, but I was dedicated to the structure. Grateful for it.

And after days that felt endless with sweat and the stench of death in the air, Mila and I moved to the basics of sparring with wooden swords. Things about footing and grip my instructors had drilled into my muscle memory when I was six.

We were two weeks into our arrangement when I found myself grumbling, “I already know how to slash.” And where to do it based on my opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, assessed quickly and covertly.

“You learned these techniques as a child, yes,” Mila agreed, pouring herself a glass of water. She may be a ruthless trainer, but at least she was working right beside me.