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Wilder’s cheeks flushed and he outwardly grimaced.

‘What?’ Thea pressed. ‘It can’t be worse than Brutus, surely?’

Wilder scoffed at that. ‘You tell me…’ He gave the stallion another affectionate pat. ‘His name is Biscuit.’

Thea blinked. ‘Biscuit?’

Wilder was clearly trying to keep a straight face. ‘Malik and Talemir’s idea of a joke,’ he admitted. ‘Bastards were there when I claimed him. They jumped in when it came to finalising the poor creature’s name. It stuck.’

A laugh bubbled out of her. ‘Biscuit. Yourwarhorse, the gift you received for being one of the most infamous warriors in all the midrealms… is calledBiscuit.’ Thea shook her head in joyful disbelief. ‘Gods, I love Malik.’

The tips of his cheeks were still flushed, and something flashed across Wilder’s face before he recovered. ‘Yes, well…’

Thea watched him, wondering what was going through his mind. She had to suppress the urge to reach across the gap between them and squeeze his hand.

‘We should get moving,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today.’

Knots twisted slowly in Thea’s stomach. She wanted to talk, to know him, to understand him. But deciding it was too soon to push him in this new phase of their relationship – theirfriendship– she ignored the sensation and simply nodded. ‘Then lead the way, Warsword.’

* * *

The spring day around them was bright as they rode through the morning. The first wildflowers of the season were blossoming at the border of the road, birds chirping in the surrounding woodlands. Here in the heart of the midrealms, nature seemed unaware of the blight that marred the lands at its edges.

Thea took the opportunity to drink in the sights. It had been dark the last time she had ridden to Delmira, when the Thezmarrian forces had battled the reapers amid the ruins. There had been no opportunity to scout the landscape, to note what the road to her homeland looked like. Though, she’d not known what Delmira was to her then. Looking back, she could barely remember the details beyond the pulse of terror she’d felt during that journey.

She had to catch herself. There was no home waiting for her at the end of this ride – only ruins; an echo of what she might once have known, had darkness not descended.

Wilder led her through a narrow pass between the mountains to the north, and she marvelled at how the light filtered down from above, the walls of the fissure glistening. There was still so much of the midrealms she hadn’t seen.

Her fate stone knocked against her sternum, a constant reminder that she wouldneversee all there was to these lands.

Thea peered at Wilder as he rode ahead, his blades of Naarvian steel strapped to his tapered back. He had seen so much of the world, and the pieces she’d seen herself were pieces he’d shown her. What would it mean for them if she became a Warsword? From what she had gathered, the Warswords rarely worked in teams.

She chastised herself. What had she expected? That after the Great Rite, they could travel the midrealms together, fighting monsters as a pair for the little time she had left?

Pushing the thought aside, she returned her attention to her fate stone and the problem it had posed her whole life.

‘Do you know any Warswords who were granted immortality during the Great Rite?’ she asked Wilder. She had wanted to ask the question for a long while now, the idea always playing at the frayed edges of her mind. It had never seemed the right time to bring up such a well-guarded legend. But as her fate stone reminded her, she couldn’t always afford to wait for the right moment.

Wilder flinched in his saddle. ‘What?’

‘You heard me.’ She noted how his shoulders rose and fell, as though he were inhaling deeply to gather himself.

He didn’t look back as he spoke. ‘Tell me that’s not why you’re doing all this? Tell me it’s not why you want to become a Warsword? Because you want to live forever?’

His words were like a slice to the gut, sharp with disappointment, disdain.

Thea took a measured breath herself. ‘I want to live longer than two and a half more fucking years.’

The silence that followed was crushing. She could almost hear his mind whirring over the top of hers.

He still didn’t look back to meet her gaze. ‘If immortality is the reason you’ve put yourself through all of this, then you’re out of luck.’

Thea’s heart clenched. ‘It’s a myth?’

‘Not a myth, no. But rare. Incredibly rare.’

‘Do you know any Warswords who —’