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He looked like he might change his mind about giving them the pies for free.

“With one single token, I make the best meat pies in the city of Fallon. ‘Pauper’s token’ is highborn thinking.

Dragons, sitting on their hoards, who never have to be properly creative because they rely on numbers to solve their problems. And then they dare to act like they know everything about Aurean gold. ”

“They do, don’t they?” Kat muttered, weighing the pie in her hand.

She’d been training first under Mira, then with Adrien and his companions, who were even more deeply entrenched in the philosophy that Aurean power was better off in the hands of people who could attune handfuls of tokens at a time.

She’d seen firsthand the way that Mira’s tokens chained together to enhance her power—speed, lightness, that thing she did with the glowing sword.

Compared to that, what could Kat hope to achieve?

Maybe this was her answer. She lifted the pie to her lips and took a bite.

She’d developed a sneaking suspicion over the years that Emory’s dedication to this long-lost perfect meal was a bit—and if not a bit, then a fixation colored by the Fallon campaign’s unique horribleness.

It made perfect sense that he’d found a miracle—something decent to eat in a city that had spent fifteen years as a cesspool of demonic suffering—that had given him a reason to keep going when reasons to keep going were few and far between.

It followed that she’d built up this hallowed meat pie in her mind, based on nothing but Emory’s over-the-top description of it, and that reality could never compare to the fantasy that she’d latched onto mid-battle.

But with one bite she knew. If she had no other reason to visit Fallon, if she was on the far end of the continent and there was no prince dragging her around, no festival worth coming for, no once-in-a-lifetime event that called her to the city, she’d make the journey just for this pie.

The crust was somehow both sturdy and elastic enough to keep the filling from escaping its bounds, but crisped and flaky on the outside, melting in her mouth.

The beef inside had been cooked to perfection, finely ground without even a hint of gaminess, the fat rendered down just enough to bind it to the rest of the diced vegetables, which were seasoned with a spice medley she couldn’t hope to replicate even if she were given full run of the royal kitchens.

Roberto had heated it flawlessly with his little flourish, so flawlessly that she had to hold herself back from wolfing the rest of the pastry down before it could cool.

She caught Emory’s eye.

“So you see now,” he said.

“I see now.”

Roberto had every right to look as smug as he did. “ Pauper’s token, eh?” The old man scoffed.

Kat’s hand dropped to her coin purse, doing a strenuous mental calculation as she eyed the pastries remaining in the cart. “How long do you usually park here?”

“Until I sell out or sundown, whichever comes first.”

“And if I bought every last pie in your cart, would you teach me everything you can in the time until sundown?”

Roberto looked her up and down. “You’re quite a vision, miss, but I worry if you plan to eat the rest of my inventory all by yourself.”

She glanced back over her shoulder at the kids playing in the plaza.

It wasn’t hard to guess where they’d come from or why therewere so many of them—not in a city like Fallon, not whenthere were only a few older caretakers watching over them from the sidelines.

“Think there’s enough for everyone?” she asked Emory.

Her battle partner beamed.

There was an attempt at an orderly line, but these were no legionnaires.

Kat did her best to make sure no one got shunted to the back of the pack, grabbing a few little scamps by their collars when they tried to shove back in for second helpings.

As she marshaled her tiny troops, she watched Roberto work with more intensity than she’d ever spared for Mira or Adrien.

There was something hypnotic about it, a sleight of hand she was sure she’d catch if she could just keep her eyes focused on the right part of the trick.

Having Adrien’s words to describe everything she saw happening made a world of difference.

The breath Roberto took preceded coming into alignment, he made a conducting gesture when he flipped his hand beneath his target, and the total effort allowed him to flow seamlessly in and out of the focused state that maintained his connection to heavenly power.

It reminded her of her father, of the forge—a thought that came all too readily at the sight of heat being steadily applied, over and over.

Her training thus far had been focused on the practical application of Aurean magic, on honing it as a weapon or a tool, but nowhere in the past month had there been a mention of artistry, and that was all she could think of at the sight of Roberto’s skill.

“How did you start?” Kat asked once the last pie had been delivered into an eager pair of tiny hands. “Family business?”

“Manner of speaking. Married into it, you might say. And then divorced from it, when it turned out the Aurean tokens we exchanged with our vows were the only thing the two of us had in common.” Roberto barked a laugh at Kat’s incredulous look.

“Decades ago—before the city fell. No idea where she’s ended up or what she’s done with the token that used to be mine. ”

“So you already had foundations as an Aurean before you started working with this token in particular?”

“Suppose you could say that, but my first token was a Water of Angels. It felt like learning to walk again after breaking a leg, trying to figure out how to wield this one.” He tugged on the chain as if it were a collar, but the smile on his lips was fond.

“I suppose the principles are the same, but the practice—manipulating a quality instead of a quantity—had so little overlap that I would have pawned the sucker if I didn’t have my ex-wife to guide me.

And if she hadn’t been relying on me to guide her through the same process.

Nothing strengthens you like a complementary. ”

Across the square, Emory was tussling with some of the older kids as they kicked a ball around, one tiny scrap of a girl draped over his shoulders and shrieking in his ear with every jolt and spin. It made it extremely difficult for Kat to keep her attention on Roberto’s words.

“What kind of token do you have?” he asked, and from the sly look in his eyes, she knew it hadn’t been the first time he’d saidit.

“Light of Angels,” she blurted.

Roberto let out a low whistle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe it’s my thinking as an old man set in his ways, but that sounds like a hell of a thing to wield.

I started with water, which was both physical and perceivable.

Then I swapped to heat, which you can’t quite cup in your hands but you can feel.

But anchoring yourself in the concept of light? That’s no small feat.”

Kat’s brow furrowed. “You’re telling me this is supposed to be hard?”

“No one’s told you it’s supposed to be hard?”

“Everyone I’ve ever trained with has at least ten tokens. They’ve always made it sound like that was the feat. Like managing one is the bare minimum.”

“And of course they only think of you as a soldier. To a highborn, you’re a tool, and they’re teaching you as if they’re going to use you like a tool.

But the angels didn’t just give us these tokens so that we might be productive.

I think I’m starting to understand what’s wrong with you,” Roberto said.

“Do you think it can be fixed?” Kat replied.

“Probably not before sundown, but it’s worth a shot.”

By the time Kat and Emory were making their way back down the worn dirt path that led to the Third Century’s encampment, night had fallen completely and the moon was a bare sliver overhead.

Part of this was Kat’s fault, for she’d wanted to soak in every last second of Roberto’s rough but incisive tutelage, but in the end it was Emory who’d had to be pried away—though not before emptying his coin purse to match Kat’s, some of it into the hands of the orphanage matrons and some distributed individually to the kids he’d been playing with to soothe the broken hearts he’d left in his wake.

She would have thought him dead tired after all the walking they’d done to find the pie cart and all the roughhousing he’d added on top of it, but Emory moved with a lightness she’d never before seen in him. Kat had spent half of the walk in silence, trying to puzzle out the difference.

There had been plenty of kids on the campaign trail, and Emory had never held himself back from doing whatever he could to take care of them.

He’d dried tears, carried them on his back as the troops helped guard civilians fleeing a demon raid, grabbed stuffed animals and jogged like a persistence hunter after the cart they’d fallen from.

But all of it had been infused with a somber sense of duty.

A fear he could never shake. It was wartime.

He could let himself help, but he could never let himself get close.

In peace, that restraint was gone, and now Kat saw a whole new side of her battle partner.

Without the looming threat of thralls and demons, he could let the man win over the soldier, let himself be loose and lighthearted, let something shine through that had been part of him all along.

Kat had been contemplating her own future for months, but now she wondered about Emory’s—about whether the only path he could see for himself was that of a solider.

When he’d told her about Von, about the way he’d come into the vision for his life, she’d been awed at his certainty.

But that vision had sprung fully formed from the mind of an Emory who’d grown up under the shadow of the Demon Lord’s invasion. An Emory who might never have considered the possibilities beyond the doors that soldiering opened for an orphan from the far east of the continent.

Kat’s eyes had dropped to his hand, swinging loose at his side, barely visible in the low light.

The road was empty, the noise of the camp still distant on the horizon, smothered completely by the sound of their footfalls, which had fallen in step with each other naturally the moment they set off on this path.

She considered her own possibilities.

Ever since she’d become aware of her grounding gesture, calling on her token without it had been a fight.

Part of her had accepted this—tokens, after all, were gifts the angels had once given to humanity to allow them to fight back against demonkind.

It was only natural that utility came with a burden.

If it were easy, everyone should have a token, not just the elites.

Roberto hadn’t been burdened. He saw his gift as artistry, as letting something loose from within him, and though Kat knew it would take decades to get to the natural ease with which he wielded his magic, just that notion had unlocked a bit of the tension that came upon her as she reached for her alignment and struggled to keep her hand at her side.

The light came gently, a glow that crept up her throat, but for once she didn’t pull like an anxious cart horse, didn’t fear that her alignment would falter, didn’t try to drink every last drop of the connection to the angels’ power before it slipped from her grasp.

It wasn’t about building a perfect channel, Roberto had told her.

It was about figuring out exactly what you wanted to express in this world and inviting the heavenly plane to help with that process.

Kat brought her palm up, cupping beneath her token. She’d never tried conducting like this, but after watching Roberto do it, she’d begun to wonder what it might feel like to project her power the way he did—not localized to his token, but somewhere different where he’d set his intention.

She spread her fingertips.

Her goal had been five, but the angels had their own surprises in mind.

The light from her token split into hundreds of tiny beads, like the pinpricks of stars, and spread outward from her in a slow, circling swarm.

Kat spun as they whirled around her, her lightheadedness nearly toppling her before she remembered she needed to breathe.

When she finished her turn, she found Emory stopped in his tracks, staring at her.

He’d seen her magic before. Every morning on the training field.

During that disastrous game of Goal. He’d seen the fits and starts, the slow scrape for progress, and he’d seen that every step she took carried her further and further away from where he stood with the rest of the infantry.

But he’d only ever seen her magic under the highborns’ guidance.

This was different. This was her magic. Her token’s gift, not as her commanding officers or her future rulers wanted it to be, but powered purely by Kat’s own desire.

To bring something beautiful into the world. To light up the night. To share her gift.

With him.

“Kat,” he said hoarsely, the awe of it almost unbearable.

It was alignment—the same as the feeling of drawing that connecting thread between herself and another plane. Of knowing she could have what she wanted. Of everything falling into place.

She’d been preparing to lose him. He’d been doing the same. But on the battlefield, you didn’t prepare to lose. If you did, it was already over. They’d both learned the trick of this long ago—to fix in your mind’s eye the thing that you wanted, even if it was as small as a perfectly warm meat pie.

Then you dug in. You fought to your last breath for a chance at that scrap of goodness. You made it worth the risk.

Kat reached out and took his hand.