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“Katrien,” she replied, and thank the hosts her voice didn’t shake. It was a mercy she only had a low name to choke out.

“Lovely to meet you, Katrien. You’re a spectacular fighter—areal credit to the legions. The moment I saw you, I just knew I had to make your acquaintance. Tell me about your token.”

She let the order steady her. Orders, she knew how to handle. “It’s a Light of Angels. It’s not the most useful in battle, and it’s uncultivated—”

He cut her off with a gesture, and for a moment Kat feared he was wise to her attempt to talk down its value. But Adrien Augustine only shook his head. “No, not that. I mean yes, it’s lovely, but I want to know how a commoner comes into a token like this.”

In different hands, the words could easily come off as accusing, but the prince’s eyes shone with a genuine curiosity.

He didn’t seem the manipulative type—more clueless than anything—and Kat was inclined to suspect his request was an attempt to patch that lack of knowledge.

He’d grown up sheltered, training relentlessly for a singular purpose.

Now that he’d achieved it, perhaps he’d realized how oblivious it had left him about the way the rest of the world functioned.

“It’s been in my family for generations,” Kat replied.

“Probably same as the shine you wear.” Mira threw her a consternated look, but she didn’t see the harm in drawing a line between Adrien Augustine’s hundred-token array and her own small inheritance.

Better to remind him that most common people came into their tokens the same way he had, in case he suspected otherwise. “It was my mother’s,” she added softly.

The prince nodded. “Naturally, naturally. About fifteen of mine are from my mother’s vault as well. But you mentioned it’s uncultivated? If it was handed down, surely it retains some of the power developed by its lineage?”

Kat shook her head, trying to keep her expression diplomatic.

Her play for sympathy had failed miserably.

It meant something vastly different to inherit your parents’ tokens when your parents had vaults full of them.

“No, Your Highness. If it had any power in it to start, my mother had let it go by the time she passed it to me.”

Admitting that in front of the most decorated Aureans Kat had ever seen in her life was tantamount to sacrilege.

Tokens were meant to be cultivated. Squandering the hosts’ blessing was as good as spitting in their faces.

With the Seal of Heaven firmly in place, Aurean power was the last vestige of the angels’ touch upon the material plane, meant to give humanity the gifts they needed to resist the forces of Hell.

To be starting from scratch a thousand years after the Forging was an outright waste.

But Kat’s mother had thought differently.

To Kat, the magic of her mom’s token had been barely more than a parlor trick, an additional bit of brightness refracted through the already luminous beacon that was her mother.

Bronwyn would call on it from time to time—when she needed to bring the winter bedding down from the attic, when a noise in the street in the middle of the night had startled Kat awake.

Some nights, she’d use it to cast shadows upon the wall and tell her stories.

The classic, grand romantic adventures from the Age of Hosts, folklore that trickled into Rusta’s fringes from every corner of the continent, all of it twice as vibrant when whispered like a secret long after the candles had burned down.

It was an everyday kind of magic, just as big as it needed to be, and it had seemed perfectly natural to Kat.

Before she’d met other Aureans. Before she’d seen what a truly cultivated token coulddo.

“So you only hold it for…sentiment?” one of the prince’s companions asked, wrinkling her nose.

She was elegant, but the kind of elegance that seemed to have been assembled out of obligation rather than any genuine interest, her long black hair bound back in simple, straight layers that Kat recognized as a northern style and her deeply dark eyes made deeper and darker by deliberate shadowing.

“Celia,” another of the young women warned her from the opposite couch, twisting one of her brunette curls anxiously. “I’m sure the soldier has her reasons.”

“And I’m sure the token does her about as much good as your metal-softening one,” the third woman interjected wryly, nudging Celia with an elbow.

“Let’s not make a bad impression,” the only man in the group said, holding out his hands in a placating gesture.

Kat’s head spun.

“Might be a little late for that,” Adrien Augustine said with a sigh.

His previous cheer had evaporated like blood spattered on the Mouth of Hell itself the second his companions had opened their mouths.

“Katrien, Lady Morgenstern, please excuse my friends. All of you, since you seem so intent on hopping into this conversation, why don’t you go around and say your names and a fun fact about yourselves. ”

“This isn’t the first day of High Training,” Celia muttered, but she fixed her slouch marginally and made eye contact with Kat. “Lady Celia Vai, Countess of Sprill. Eighty-two tokens.”

A beat passed, but Lady Vai seemed to think that was sufficient.

“Tough act to follow,” the woman seated next to her said.

“I’m Daya Imonde. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Katrien.

Since Celia’s already gone and done it, I suppose it’s not too gauche to say I have ninety-five, but that’s so boring.

My fun fact is that the first token I ever cultivated was one I stole from my family’s vault when I was eight years old.

Simple Hand of Angels telekinesis—Iwas an absolute terror pickpocketing the guests of our keep until they figured it out.

” She tapped the token in her array, grinning proudly.

Kat’s grip on her own token tightened, just in case.

“ Daya, ” the woman on the opposite couch scolded, then caught Kat’s eye.

Unlike Celia’s detached cool, this woman’s presentation—from her prim posture to the careful styling of her curls—was overladen with intention.

“I’m Faye Laurent, Duchess of Halston. And since Daya didn’t mention it, she’s a provincial duchess too. ”

“Because it’s hardly a fun fact,” Daya replied, looking sour. “If I were heir to Halston, that would be one thing. Egren’s so far from the capital and so sparse I’ve heard the advisers claim it’s hardly worth taxing.”

“Well, I’m from Halston, but my battle partner’s from Egren,” Kat offered, earning a warning glare from Mira that she hardly found fair.

Her orders were not to speak unless spoken to, but she’d taken that to mean the prince.

Surely she was allowed to make conversation with these nobles, if only to remind them she was more than the token around her neck.

“You’ll have to introduce me,” Daya said, her smile returning. She was round-cheeked and lovely, and with her hair cropped close to her skull, it made her wide grin all the more dazzling. “I hear we’ve turned out many a valiant soldier.”

“Some might say too valiant,” Mira interjected. “Her battle partner was the one being disciplined for breaking rank to defend Katrien in the engagement yesterday.”

“Well, then you’ll definitely have to introduce me,” Daya replied, her grin turning wicked.

“ Daya, ” Faye huffed again. “Apologies. Some of us have had too much Aurean training and too little etiquette.”

“Give us a fun fact about your etiquette training,” Celia said, earning her an approving look from Daya and a glare from Faye.

“Fine. Did you know that Hand of Angels tokens have standardized etiquette rules, laid out in the first edition of the Codex of Manners ?”

“I did not, Your…Grace?” Kat hazarded. Her knowledge of courtly address began and ended at the one example Mira had thought to cover before they entered the tent.

Faye gave her an encouraging nod.

“Neither did I,” Daya added.

“That much is obvious,” Faye replied.

“ Bodhi, ” Adrien Augustine interjected, turning to the man at his right. “Would you like to introduce yourself too?”

The final member of the prince’s entourage was watching the conversation with the air of a man at a sporting match who’d placed his bets but was mostly just happy to be there.

He was handsome past the point of reason, strong-featured and well-built, and though Kat knew very little of Vaya, the allied state that bordered Telrus on the continent’s southeastern reach, she knew enough to suspect that the intricately embroidered sash he wore over one shoulder marked him as some form of royalty.

“Ah!” the young man exclaimed. “Absolutely, Your Highness.”

Adrien pulled a face.

“My name is Bodhi Ranjan, and my fun fact is that it’s lovely, just lovely, to meet the two of you,” he said, nodding to both Kat and Mira over a chorus of groans from his companions.

“Fine, fine. My real fun fact is that in addition to mastering ninety-nine Aurean tokens”—he gestured over his array, puffing out his chest to be sure they’d noticed—“I have also mastered all sixteen forms of Telrusian courtly dance outlined in the Codex of Manners that Faye prizes so dearly, and I am very much looking forward to putting that mastery to good use at Adrien’s victory ball. ”

All three of the women stiffened, and Kat got the sense that a deeply treacherous topic had just been broached.

Adrien, too, looked suddenly wary. The prince clapped his hands twice.

“There. Done. Miraculous. I’ve just decided that the four of you exhaust me.

Out. Now. Please.” He punctuated each word with a flick of his fingers, and the entourage wasted no time in pushing themselves to their feet and rushing out of the tent.

Kat blinked, feeling as if she’d just been spun around. The prince’s abrupt change of mood had brought with it a sudden, bitter charge, and she wasn’t sure what it meant that any potential witnesses were clearing out. Her only solace was the fact that Mira looked just as disoriented.

“Sit, please, Katrien. Close.” The prince pointed to one of the couches that had just been abandoned. Kat lowered herself on the corner of the couch, trying to invite as little contact as possible between the fine plush cushion and her hopelessly dirty ass.

“Everyone else, take a break,” the prince hollered, his voice token-powered enough to blast through the tent’s arching canopy.

Every valet in the vicinity set down what they were doing and rushed to make themselves scarce.

“And you as well,” he said, flapping a hand at Mira.

“Outside for a moment. I’ll have Katrien call you back in when I need you. ”

It might have been the first time Kat had ever seen her centurion look at her with genuine concern, but as always, Mira took her orders without question.

And then the two of them were alone—Katrien, single-tokened, common, Aurean in name only, and the prince of the realm with his hundred-strong array.

Mira’s order stilled the myriad questions boiling in her throat, but Mira wasn’t here to know if she’d spoken out of turn, and Kat was right on the verge of her second drastic act of insubordination of the day when Adrien leaned out over his knees and beckoned her close.

“Katrien,” he said, gravely serious. “My life is in danger, and you’re the only one who can help me.”